Is there a difference between confirming a critical hit vs scoring a critical hit in 3.5?

Question

For the sake of this question and my answer is there a mention in the rules somewhere, in the FAQ maybe? because in PF it is confirmed to be the same thing here.

Scoring VS Confirming, are they the same or not in 3.5? (it is confirmed in PF to be the same thing)

Because you can use the flaming burst critical ability on a creature immune to critical hits as shown here.

But you don't actually do critical base damage so Blood in the water might not work if confirming the actual critical hit (meaning you verify you would normally crit if it was made on a creature not immune to critical hits, activating the flaming burst critical ability)is not the same as the term ''scoring'' wich could actually mean that you have to do the extra damage for Blood in the water to activate.

I think both terms mean the same thing just as in PF, but I wanted a Rule reference or a FAQ citation etc.

Answer 1

There is a difference, but scoring a crit also means confirming one

To score a critical hit, you need to:

• Threaten a critical, by rolling 20 (or lower, if you have some way of improving your critical threat range.)
• Confirm the critical hit, by rolling the attack again to beat their AC

If you both threaten and confirm the critical hit, you've scored a critical hit. Confirming the critical hit is the second part of scoring a critical hit, after threatening one.

That's all technical talk however, because if you've confirmed a critical hit, you've also scored a critical hit, so unless something specifically deals with "threatening criticals", anything that works based on confirming criticals will also work with scoring criticals.