
Jeraa |

How do you resolve critical hits? It has been a matter of debate amongst my group. Some say its you roll the damage die the number of times the mulitplier says. While others say its you roll damage once then muliply that by the multiplier. Can I get n official response on this? Thanks for the help.
Whats to debate? The rules are actually very clear. From the Combat chapter:
Critical Hits: 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 (or “crit”). To find out if it's a critical hit, you immediately make an attempt to “confirm” the critical hit—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the confirmation roll also results in a hit against the target's AC, your original hit is a critical hit. (The critical roll just needs to hit to give you a crit, it doesn't need to come up 20 again.) If the confirmation roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.
A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.
And from the Equipment chapter:
Critical: The entry in this column notes how the weapon is used with the rules for critical hits. When your character scores a critical hit, roll the damage two, three, or four times, as indicated by its critical multiplier (using all applicable modifiers on each roll), and add all the results together.
You roll multiple times and add. You don't roll once and multiply.

Kazaan |
If you roll once and multiply, you aren't getting the right damage spread. Say, for example, your damage die is 1d8. If you just multiply x2, you have a 12.5% chance to get each of the following: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16. But if you roll 2d8, it creates a bell-curve and you have greater chance to land around the center (average 9 damage, 12.5% chance) and far lower chance to land at the extreme edges (only about 1.5% chance to roll 2 and 16).