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I see one line in the SRD stating:

A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.

However, that is immediately followed by the line:

Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon’s normal damage is not multiplied when you score a critical hit.

At the moment, I have a +2 strength bonus and a +2 weapon specialization bonus.

My question is this: On a critical hit, do I get to add those bonuses to my total twice?

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From Combat Statistics, SRD:

Multiplying Damage

Sometimes you multiply damage by some factor, such as on a critical hit. Roll the damage (with all modifiers) multiple times and total the results. Note: When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage.

Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon’s normal damage are never multiplied.

Thus, you include all modifiers that are just numbers, but do not include any extra rolled dice, like Sneak Attack. The only di(c)e that gets multiplied is the weapon’s base damage di(c)e.

For example, you Sneak Attack for +3d6 with a Rapier (1d8) and have Strength 14 (+2) and Weapon Specialization (Rapier) (+2), your normal attack is 1d8+4+3d6, and a Critical Hit is (1d8+4)×2+3d6.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Explicit dice bonuses being a Flaming Burst weapon, vs a regular Flaming weapon. There also a few feats that allow sneak attack (and variations) to be able to crit, usually against a few enemies. In such cases, the multiplier is always x2 (not the weapon's). \$\endgroup\$ – Lucas Famelli Jul 29 '13 at 14:00
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    \$\begingroup\$ @LucasFamelli Flaming Burst et al. don't multiply their dice on a critical hit, they simply only get dice on a critical hit. Also, I'm not familiar with any feats that allow crit-multiplied Sneak Attack dice, in any situation: can you tell me where those are found? Those would be a good addition to my answer. \$\endgroup\$ – KRyan Jul 29 '13 at 14:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ @KRyan The description for Flaming Burst is that the dice is +1d6 for x2, +2d6 for x3 etc, I simply abstracted the 1d6 * crit mult. About the feats, if I remember right it's the something's ruin from Complete Champion. The feats allow for sneak attack to deal half/normal/crit damage, in a 3 feat progression, considering that the 3rd feat is epic. \$\endgroup\$ – Lucas Famelli Jul 29 '13 at 17:52
  • \$\begingroup\$ @KRyan I've made a mistake, I misunderstood the feats. The feat I was thinking of is Telling Blow, that adds sneak attack to the crit. The Ruin feats only let a character do sneak attack/crits to the otherwise immune enemy (undead, constructs etc), no to crit-mult those sneak attacks. \$\endgroup\$ – Lucas Famelli Jul 29 '13 at 17:59
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    \$\begingroup\$ @LucasFamelli Everyone who doesn't have Epic Spellcasting is "underpowered epic-wise." The Epic rules don't really work. Anyway, critical hits are too infrequent to really justify putting much resources into them. The best way to "multiply" Sneak Attack is to simply attack more times per turn. \$\endgroup\$ – KRyan Jul 29 '13 at 19:07

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