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If my gunslinger rolls too low on her attack, her gun will gain the broken condition. Do I have to worry about this mechanic when rolling to confirm a critical hit as well?

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3 Answers

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I would answer no while using many the same quotes as @ladenedge. Note that the emphasis is mine.

Note the wording on misfires:

If the natural result of your attack roll falls within a firearm’s misfire value, that shot misses, even if you would have otherwise hit the target. When a firearm misfires, it gains the broken condition.

Note the text regarding confirming critical hits:

To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to "confirm" the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made...If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target's AC, your original hit is a critical hit... If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.

In this case, the second roll does not represent a second attack, it's clearly a "confirmation roll", it's just an extension, a "how lucky did I get"?

We can look at this a different way, based on the logic of the situation.

Let's say that you roll a natural 20 on the "attack" and then roll a natural 1 on the "confirmation", then the critical rules say "you automatically hit" and the misfire rules say "you automatically miss". Clearly these statements cannot both be true.

We can apply the rule of "last exception wins" or we can just go with the actual logic here. Take a look at the Wikipedia page on Firearm Malfunction. It's pretty clear from the descriptions that when a firearm "misfires", it's not hitting anything. But your natural 20 has already ascertained that your firearm both fired and hit. At this point, we're no longer worried about "misfires", you already fired and made contact.

Of course, this is clearly an edge case that is up to your DM. He could honestly rule in the middle, you could roll a 20 then a 2 (misfire) resulting in a critical hit & a jammed weapon. But that's definitely in the realm of DM's call.

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5  
Clearly these statements cannot both be true. -- Actually, they can both be true given the full text of the rule: If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit. If something causes you to automatically miss on your confirmation roll, then your original result would be a (non-critical) hit. No contradiction exists... Just some wording that isn't clear on first glance. – AceCalhoon Jul 2 '12 at 4:07
@AceCalhoon, that's a great point. Kind of why I dug into the deeper details. Of course, your interpretation would place the "confirmation roll" as a definite "sub-roll". – Gates VP Jul 2 '12 at 20:36
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The rules are pretty clear that it's a sub-roll: "another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made...If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target's AC, your original hit is a critical hit... If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit." And I'm not seeing anything in your answer to contradict that. The questions becomes 1. whether this sub roll is an "attack roll." and 2. whether the "attack roll" referenced by misfire is intended to apply to it. – AceCalhoon Jul 2 '12 at 21:11
up vote 4 down vote

Yes.

Note the wording on misfires:

If the natural result of your attack roll falls within a firearm’s misfire value ..

(emphasis mine). Now note the text regarding confirming critical hits:

To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to "confirm" the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made.

(emphasis mine again). Both the initial attack and the confirmation are actual attack rolls, and all attack rolls risk a misfire.

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while both are attack rolls within the game, it sounds a bit too much like double jeopardy for the PCs. I would only play it this way if Crit fails included confirmations and on those confirmations they could turn that crit fail into a critical hit. – Joshua Aslan Smith Jun 29 '12 at 20:23
nWod has a similar mechanic which I rather like. For an in-game Pathfinder explanation, however, one might say that a crit-misfire roll indicates that the bullet can be abnormal in not just the normal misfirey ways (imbalanced, elongated), but also that extra powder (or extra-efficient powder) happened to be used - perhaps too much for the gun to handle. But if it can handle it, more the better! – ladenedge Jun 29 '12 at 20:40
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I'm not saying you can't rationalize it, but rather that its very "gotcha." I disagree with crit confirm as a mechanic in general, but if there was a chance for a critical hit to become a critical fail I would only see it as fair if players had the same chance to turn a critfail into a critical hit by dumb luck (crit fail, you fumble and drop your weapon. The gun goes off when it hist the ground shooting the enemy in the face). – Joshua Aslan Smith Jun 29 '12 at 20:58
up vote 0 down vote

I do agree with most of what people said. If you wanted to even it out, the hit could have overclocked the gun and jammed it after the bullet left the chamber. Just an idea.

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Welcome Stuart. Could you amplify this into being a full answer? – Brian Ballsun-Stanton♦ Jun 2 at 3:01

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