I really don't think so since the confirmation RAW say: If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.
But if other people need more clarification that's certainly something they can ask for, but not every little thing needs to be spelled out word for word in the books. If that was the case, we'd have bloated up 20,000 page rule books for what the developers believed all the variables were, and still have people asking for more FAQ's.
If they wanted the confirmation for firearms to be DIFFERENT than that of other weapons or spells (where they put in a section for spells needing to hit vs AC), then they would have already done so. It is up to us to use our best judgement on the situation(s) that occur.
I've FAQed it as well.
Though, I still feel that there's no RAW implication that misfires can happen on confirmation rolls.
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.
That phrasing implies that attack rolls made to perform shots are checked against the weapon's misfire range. Critical confirmation rolls are attack rolls, sure, but they aren't made to perform shots, they're made to determine damage multiplication. There's never a shot in the context of a critical confirmation roll. So the phrasing "that shot misses" doesn't do anything in the context of critical confirmation checks.
Just like the sentence "If you kick a person in the groin, that man will suffer agonizing pain in the testicles." doesn't tell you anything about what happens when you kick a woman there, but you can be sure she won't suffer agonizing pain in the testicles.
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The point is that a misfire is more than a "Miss", it is special to firearms only. It isn't a critical fumble, which is still an auto miss, but it does have specific effects when your "Attack Roll" lands on those numbers.
I think it would be ridiculous for it to work this way, BUT pathfinder has a bunch of ridiculous things (Human rogues can't backstab in the dark, reach weapons don't threaten corners, etc.), so how can I be sure it isn't intended to be read as written?
Why is the confirmation roll not a shot? Confirmation attack rolls are part of the original shot, so it seems they would be connected
The"shot" is the attack roll for when the bullet is released. The confirmation roll is not a "shot". If it were then there would be a 2nd bullet released in addition to the original attack roll.
I really don't think so since the confirmation RAW say: If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.
Sure. You roll a 20 on attack, and a misfire on confirm you get a normal hit. But in addition, because you rolled a misfire your gun is broken. Early firearmy have been fickle. They couls shoot, the could explode the could do both or nothing at all.
I, as a gm, would always allow someone using a gun to not roll his confirmation roll and choose to take normal damage instead.
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Why is the confirmation roll not a shot? Confirmation attack rolls are part of the original shot, so it seems they would be connected
When interpreting something RAW, you can't take a shortcut by ignoring the grammar and semantics of what's written. If you do that, you've skipped past the "as written" part. In the english language, the word "that" is a demonstrative determiner, a word used to point out a definite thing, not a word used to signify a relationship to a thing.
"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."
"That shot" implies that something that came up earlier in conversation, written text or even some means of body language is a shot. Not that this particular something is something that relates to a shot. The only things it can be considered to refer to in the context of the paragraph on misfires are the phrases "the natural result of your attack roll" and "your attack roll", because there are no earlier noun constructions in the paragraph. But this thing can't be a shot, because there already was another roll with a natural result that was a shot, and there's only one shot being considered.
The rules phrase in its entirety can't have a meaning when it's applied to critical confirmation checks, because it presupposes the presence of something that's not actually there.
A further complication is the fact that the rules don't actually support the notion that a natural result on a roll, or that roll itself, can be a shot to begin with. They're things that come up while determining the result of a shot. Going down that avenue, we could even conclude that there isn't a well-formulated rule to determine misfires at all, even when just considering the original attack roll.
I realize all of this is terribly pedantic, but when going for RAW, you need to go all the way. When you need to use gap fillers like "so it seems they would be connected", you're doing what the I in RAI stands for.
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I really don't think so since the confirmation RAW say: If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.Sure. You roll a 20 on attack, and a misfire on confirm you get a normal hit. But in addition, because you rolled a misfire your gun is broken. Early firearmy have been fickle. They couls shoot, the could explode the could do both or nothing at all.
I, as a gm, would always allow someone using a gun to not roll his confirmation roll and choose to take normal damage instead.
False, absolutely and completely false.
A misfire is when the weapon FAILS to discharge. If you hit with a natural 20, you have not failed to discharge, you have in fact hit. You can't have a paradox in the game where you succeed at firing the shot and then a moment later with that same exact shot you fail, it's an impossibility.
I guess I'm just not understanding why or how people can see this as even being an issue because it is so clear cut to me.
If the attack hits, it hits and if it threatens all you are doing is using another dice to roll to confirm whether it was a critical or a normal hit.
This isn't a 2nd attack, it doesn't get a 2nd roll to see if it hits, it's only a confirmation of the 1 attack to see if the damage was multiplied. The only reason they say in the RAW to roll a 'another attack roll' is that was the easiest and fastest way to language it and there are feats/traits that ADD to the modifiers that are part of this kind of roll.
The misfire chance would ONLY be applicable to the original roll to hit and not the confirmation for possible multiplied damage. It really is that simple guys and it doesn't need a FAQ or further explanation by Developers. The language is right in the RAW already.
you are also separating the two rolls as separate actions. The two rolls together are the shot.
The Attack Roll and Crit Confirm are connected but the Crit Confirm Roll is not the Shot. It is to test if the Shot hit a Vital Spot not whether it hit its target. The Shot hit and didn't Misfire. The Crit Confirm is just to test whether you hit a major Artery where as the Attack Roll is to test whether the Bullet hit them at all.
Not true. I'm stating it's one action with two rolls. It's 1 roll to hit and 1 roll to confirm what kind of damage is done. The RAW explicitly state that if you miss on the confirmation roll it's still a NORMAL hit that doesn't get the multiplied damage boost.
I go back to my earlier example of RL at a firing range:
a) You shoot your gun, it fires (not misfires) and hits the target.
b) You heard the bullet hit the target, but you are too far away to tell where exactly it hit.
c) You go to the target and confirm (with your eyes) that it either hit the target in a vital area or not. The vital area would be head/heart shots.
If it worked the way that some have been arguing it would go like thus:
a) You shoot your gun, it fires and hits the target
b) You hear that it hit the target, but too far away to tell where exactly it hit.
c) You see that the target wasn't in fact hit! Your gun blows up in your hand and hurts you.
d) Paradox ensues... WTF?
The confirmation roll is more like a skill check, you roll a d20 for skills and you either pass or fail it with the roll of the dice + modifiers.
Sometimes, you don't know what you're going to hit until you hit it. Take Mirror Image for example.
I shoot at a wizard who has some images out and about. I roll a natural 20, a hit! If I hit one of the images, it is instantly destroyed. Images have no hit points, they don't even have substance, aren't even creatures at all. If something isn't susceptible to critical hits, we don't roll to confirm threats. So, if it is determined we hit an image, the image is destroyed and the attack resolution is finished, without the need for a critical confirmation roll. If we hit the real target however, we need to make a critical confirmation roll, and oh my, the natural die result falls within our misfire range.
What now? If we consider this a misfiring attack, we end up with an attack for which we have resolved steps that only happen when it's a hit, so how can it suddenly not be a hit anymore? We were so sure it was one only seconds ago, back when we rolled to see if we hit the wizard or one of his images.
Checking for critical confirmation before determining the actual target makes no sense either under the rules. If you do that, and get a misfire result, the shot would miss and the gun would mess itself up, while the actual recipient of the attack might not even be susceptible to criticals, which is clearly nonsensical.
Edit: nevermind all that, there's a huge mistake somewhere in the above.
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The Pathfinder Design Team response in thread is awesome.
Interesting. Logically, that should probably mean that there is no Natural 20 auto-hit on Crit Confirms either, so if you are only hitting on a 20 because it is an auto-hit (not because you beat the AC/CMD), then the Crit will not Confirm even with a Natural 20 on the Confirm roll.
Interesting. Logically, that should probably mean that there is no Natural 20 auto-hit on Crit Confirms either, so if you are only hitting on a 20 because it is an auto-hit (not because you beat the AC/CMD), then the Crit will not Confirm even with a Natural 20 on the Confirm roll.
Sounds good to me. It means that much weaker creatures might land hits but are unlikely to crit
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Interesting. Logically, that should probably mean that there is no Natural 20 auto-hit on Crit Confirms either, so if you are only hitting on a 20 because it is an auto-hit (not because you beat the AC/CMD), then the Crit will not Confirm even with a Natural 20 on the Confirm roll.
I disagree.
The 'normal result' of a natural 20 on an attack roll is an auto hit, and the 'normal result' of a natural 1 on an attack roll is an auto miss. This applies as much to crit confirmation rolls as it does to attack rolls.
Sure, that's how I've always played it up to now, but the FAQ is over-riding the 'normal result' of a Mis-Fire on Confirm checks.
It certainly deserves further clarification if this is the case, but it seems PLAUSIBLE for other 'special roll results' (Nat 1/Nat 20) to not apply to Confirm checks based on this FAQ. I'm not saying that is THE valid rules interpretation, just that it is a plausible extension of the FAQ's logic.
I actually think that the Crit Confirm Roll should have an Auto-Fail/Auto-Succeed Ability. It makes things different.
This doesn't seem that hard.
When you fire your gun one time, how many bullets come out and strike the target, one or two?
Just one.
There is only one bullet, one shot, one attack, one attack roll to see if the bullet hits.
Furthermore, the Critical Hit rule says
"When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20 (the d20 shows 20), you hit regardless of your target's Armor Class, and you have scored a "threat," meaning the hit might be a critical hit".
So, you roll a natural 20 on your Attack Roll and you hit. Period. Whatever else happens, this attack is a hit. The rule says so.
Now you roll a "confirmation roll" which is an "attack roll" to find out if your hit is a normal hit or a critical hit, but either way, your hit is still a hit, no matter what.
The Misfire rule says that all misfires are misses. So, if we try to assume that the "confirmation roll" is an "attack roll" subject to misfires just like the attack roll was, then every time it happens, you have two mutually exclusive results. One bullet, one shot, but it hits AND it misses.
It cannot do both. It cannot hit AND miss.
You already know the bullet hit because you rolled a natural 20 and that is always a hit. You also know that the bullet did not misfire when it left the gun and hit the target.
Since you already know your attack was a hit, thee is no way this confirmation roll can make the gun misfire when the bullet is already lodged squarely in the target.
Ruling it any other way means there is a second bullet misfiring in the gun. That also means that every critical that succeeds without misfiring seems to fire the gun twice. And by extrapolation, that means that EVERY critical requires two hits, so when the fighter hits the monster with his greatsword and rolls a critical, he must then hurry and swing the sword again, or, more oddly, when a fighter with exactly one throwing axe throws his axe at a monster and scores a critical, it means a second throwing axe mystically appears in his hand and he throws that to confirm his critical.
Obviously not. No two throwing axes, no two greatwords, and no two bullets, so no second chance to misfire after the bullet has already been designated as a hit.