Critting on a touch attack with Cure X Wounds

[Covert Operator]

Core Rulebook/Combat/Cast a Spell
scroll to "Touch Attacks"

touch attacks wrote:

Touch attacks come in two types: melee touch attacks and ranged touch attacks. You can score critical hits with either type of attack as long as the spell deals damage.

Technically, Cure X Wounds is a touch spell that deals damage because it damages undead. Now, this is obviously the opposite of RAI, but RAW can you choose to roll a touch attack against your ally when casting this spell, and you would heal double if you manage to roll a confirmed critical?

[Rynjin]

Only if in your bizarro world healing and damage are the same thing.

[Covert Operator]

But this spell does deal damage. It just only deals damage to undead.
It is still a spell that deals damage, even if it isn't against this target.
If you used it on a random creature, not knowing if that creature was living or undead, you wouldn't know whether it would damage or heal.

[Rynjin]

Covert Operator wrote:

But this spell does deal damage. It just only deals damage to undead.

It doesn't matter.

A simple reading of the critical hit rules shows you that you are wrong by RAW and RAI and any other acronyms you care to think of.

"A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together."

Well look at that.

0 damage multiplied by 2 is still 0.

And that's just the first way you're wrong.

The second is in assuming, for some unexplained reason, that "Can deal damage" is the same as "Is dealing damage".

They are not the same thing.

Cure Light Wounds CAN deal damage.

When used to heal, it is NOT dealing damage.

[wraithstrike]

Covert Operator wrote:

But this spell does deal damage. It just only deals damage to undead.

It is still a spell that deals damage, even if it isn't against this target.
If you used it on a random creature, not knowing if that creature was living or undead, you wouldn't know whether it would damage or heal.

It does not matter what you know. The spell and the creatures physiology decide interaction.

Damage and healing are both defined in the combat chapter. Damage removes hit points and healing adds hit points.

If you are adding hit points then you are healing and therefore not doing damage, and the rules don't allow for crit healing.

[Covert Operator]

Cool. This was a pondering of mine, and thank you for explaining it, people who are greatly versed in the ways of the pathfinder ruleset.

[Globetrotter]

It would be an interesting house rule to allow coup de grace healing... But a house rule is all it would be.