If I'm playing a swashbuckler and confirm a critical hit and use Butterfly's Sting to pass the critical's damage on to an ally, do I regain a point of panache?
The crux seems to be what does "forego the effects of the critical hit" mean? You have already confirmed the crit to get to Butterfly's Sting, so do you regain the panache when you successfully confirm, and then the "effect" is just the extra damage? Or do you have to forego the bonus damage and the panache?
I'm contemplating a sleuth investigator build with the Helpful trait, focusing on Knowledge skills and with the Swift Aid investigator talent. He'd focus on a small rapier and have Amateur Swashbuckler, and hand out crits to allies.
Critical Hit with a Light or One-Handed Piercing Melee Weapon: Each time the swashbuckler confirms a critical hit with a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon, she regains 1 panache point. Confirming a critical hit on a helpless or unaware creature or a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the swashbuckler's character level doesn't restore panache.
Butterfly’s Sting (Critical)
You can forgo a critical hit in order to pass it on to an ally.Prerequisite: Combat Expertise.
Benefit: When you confirm a critical hit against a creature, you can choose to forgo the effect of the critical hit and grant a critical hit to the next ally who hits the creature with a melee attack before the start of your next turn. Your attack only deals normal damage, and the next ally automatically confirms the hit as a critical.
I would allow it. You got the critical. You just changed it's normal effect.
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I'd say you would get the panache back. You have confirmed a critical hit which would trigger both feats. The effect of the critical is anything that happens after confirming.
You have to confirm before you get the effects, therefore confirming can't be part of the effect, and confirming is all the swashbuckler cares about to refill panache.
Respectfully, I'd disagree. I'd say that regaining the panache point is one of the effects of the critical hit you just made. Butterfly Sting requires that you forgo the effect of the critical hit in-order to pass it to your ally. Therefore you would forgo the panache gain.
Now if one of the swashbuckler's allies pass them a critical hit via Butterfly Strike, I'd say the swashbuckler receiving the passed crit would gain the panache.
Not interpreting it this way opens the gates for groups of Swashbucklers passing critical hits to each other in a chain and making one critical hit confirmation give everyone in the chain panache.
[This doesn't even begin address the implications for the separately debatable interpretation that you can use Butterfly Strike to pass crits to you yourself. If that were the case, could you roll a crit on your first attack, take the panache but pass the crit to your second attack, take the panache again, pass it to your third attack, take the panache a third time...]
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I wouldn't really reccomend doing it either way.
A swashbuckler, with a combination of precise strike & slashing grace, has enough static damage that they should probably just keep the crit & not burn the feat.
Butterfly sting is really more for a support character with a keen rapier etc whose own damage is low.
I agree with CyderGnome. You forgo all benefit of the critical to pass it on.
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You have to confirm before you get the effects, therefore confirming can't be part of the effect, and confirming is all the swashbuckler cares about to refill panache.
How do you counteract that with this logic though? It's either the cause or the effect, it can't be both.
I wouldn't really reccomend doing it either way.
A swashbuckler, with a combination of precise strike & slashing grace, has enough static damage that they should probably just keep the crit & not burn the feat.
Butterfly sting is really more for a support character with a keen rapier etc whose own damage is low.
The build I'm thinking about is a support character with Amateur Swashbuckler, actually.
Here's how I would interpret it in my game if someone else came to me about it.
You get the panache back, as the trigger for that is "confirm the critical hit". You don't get the extra damage, since you dropped that for the effect of Butterfly's Sting.
However, the ally doesn't get any benefits from confirming a crit other than the extra damage, as they didn't roll the crit, preventing, say, another swashbuckler from getting panache from it.
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The panache isn't regained from making a critical hit, only confirming the critical hit. The confirmation is not "the effect of a critical hit", the confirmation comes before the critical hit.
So it should go like:
1) attack
2) crit threat
3) confirm the crit
4) regain panache
5) choose whether to use Butterfly's Sting
The important point is regaining panache is not an effect of the critical hit per se, it is an effect of the confirmation of the critical hit.