It's an attack roll, but it depends on beating the opposed melee attacks attack roll. The parry is an attack roll, but it would seem that a natural twenty wouldn't matter unless you exceeded the opposed roll, and if that's true then a natural one shouldn't count as an automatic failure.
Per the rules an attack roll of a 1 is always a miss(does not hit the AC), and a nat 20 is always hit(does not miss the AC).
Attack Roll
An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target's Armor Class, you hit and deal damage.Automatic Misses and Hits: A natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) on an attack roll is always a miss. A natural 20 (the d20 comes up 20) is always a hit. A natural 20 is also a threat—a possible critical hit (see the attack action).
In this case since you are not targeting AC I would say that a nat 1 or nat 20 is not a factor.
Some may try to argue that it is an "auto failure" and try to stretch the argument to other uses of an attack roll, but the rules do not support that per the above rules quote.
Thanks. That seems like a great way to put it.
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Per the rules an attack roll of a 1 is always a miss(does not hit the AC), and a nat 20 is always hit(does not miss the AC).
Attack Roll
An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target's Armor Class, you hit and deal damage.Automatic Misses and Hits: A natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) on an attack roll is always a miss. A natural 20 (the d20 comes up 20) is always a hit. A natural 20 is also a threat—a possible critical hit (see the attack action).
In this case since you are not targeting AC I would say that a nat 1 or nat 20 is not a factor.
Some may try to argue that it is an "auto failure" and try to stretch the argument to other uses of an attack roll, but the rules do not support that per the above rules quote.
Opportune Parry and Riposte (Ex):
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The swashbuckler makes an attack roll as if she were making an attack of opportunity;
"A natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) on an attack roll is always a miss."
Based on your citation, a nat 20 is always a success, and a nat 1 is always a failed parry as the parry is an attack roll.
You're not trying to hit with the parry I believe is the point.
The natural 1 is a miss, but the parry is not about hitting or missing. It's a matter of overcoming your opponents number.
Wraithstrike has the right of it.
The natural 1 is a miss, but the parry is not about hitting or missing. It's a matter of overcoming your opponents number.
Wraithstrike has the right of it.
I think a better analysis -- especially if you're not in PFS -- is to look at the effect of each possible interpretation. Basically, Rule of Fun.
Auto-succeed and auto-fail rules are generally considered not to be fun, which is why they've been stripped out of successive editions of D&D since the early 70s. There is currently no special rules for skill checks, or for caster level checks, for arcane failure checks, and so forth. In fact, the take 10 mechanic was added specifically to allow people to avoid a low probability of failure.
So the basic question is : is it more fun to have more randomness in parrying, or less randomness. Based on the above, I'd say "less randomness." (From a game design perspective, more randomness hurts players more than it helps.)
I'd also say that the auto-succeed/fail rules are unbalanced. A 20 being an autosuccess will come in only when someone has an unbalancingly high attack bonus that you wouldn't match their attack roll even with a 20. This is something that will almost never happen. On the other hand, you can always roll a 1. So the effect will be to make opportunistic parry 5% less effective (at random) without any concommittant bonus.
So,... while I agree with Wraithstrike's reasoning, I also think that the game is more fun if he's right than if he's wrong, which is more important.
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Regarding Opportune Parry and Riposte: You can threaten/confirm a critical hit for 0 damage, as all the Critical Hit rules only require an attack roll. This allows you to regain panache. Auto hit and auto miss don't factor on the opposed roll. Technically, you would automatically hit them (0 damage effect) but the ability only factors whether you beat their roll, which differs from hitting them.