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Last night during play, the ranger rolled a crit and wanted to deal max. damage on her hunter's quarry die. The rules seemed a bit vague, and the group was fairly neutral (and the only fight we were doing that night was against a solo) so I made a call and we adopted a general policy on such things, but I wanted to check if there was an official reponse or ongoing discussion of such bonus dice and critical hits.

All damage dice are maximized on a crit, except for dice that are only rolled on a crit.

Chipacabra wrote:

All damage dice are maximized on a crit, except for dice that are only rolled on a crit.

Dido.

This is a verbose way of stating it, but it's the natural mental image you need to conjure up when it comes to criticals:

When a player rolls a successful critical hit,
pretend for a moment, that it was a non-critical hit.
Take all the damage dice he would roll, and put them in your hand.
Turn every single of of those dice to their max value.
That's how much damage the character does,
plus other static bonuses, like strength and weapon focus.

Remember: Non-crit dice, though rare, do not get maximized. For exmple, a +1 magic weapon deals +1d6 damage on a critical. Using the example above, this extra die would not be rolled on a non-crit, so don't maximize it.

Elrith wrote:

Last night during play, the ranger rolled a crit and wanted to deal max. damage on her hunter's quarry die. The rules seemed a bit vague, and the group was fairly neutral (and the only fight we were doing that night was against a solo) so I made a call and we adopted a general policy on such things, but I wanted to check if there was an official reponse or ongoing discussion of such bonus dice and critical hits.

Page 278 PH says what is not maximized:

"Magic weapons and implements, as well as high crit weapons, can increase the damage you deal when you score a critical hit. If this extra damage is a die roll, it’s not automatically maximum damage; you add the result of the roll."

Hunter's quarry is neither a magic weapon, nor a high crit weapon.  Therefore, it is maximized.

TBP

Confirmed by Mike Mearls of WOTC on twitter:

twitter.com/mikemearls/status/2134206722

Oct 3, 2012 -- 10:14PM, Whorobi wrote:

Confirmed by Mike Mearls of WOTC on twitter:

twitter.com/mikemearls/status/2134206722

Within the space of a half hour, you necroed two threads on this topic on enworld and this one here, all 4 years old, to provide an "update" confirming the answer the threads had already reached, again, 4 years ago.  As I can't see how anyone could accidentally search for sneak attack threads on two websites and not notice that they're 4 years old before posting, I'll just say please stop.

Especially since "update" is a 3+ year old twitter post.