Halfling Luck and Critical Failures

[Aaaboy97]

Does Halfling Luck not trigger when you get a critical failure on what could have been the triggering check? The trigger is "You fail a skill check or saving throw."

I tried reviewing other material to see whether or not "fail" would include a critical failure:

'Warmarch Hobgoblin' includes the language "fail, but not critically fail" which would imply "fail" normally includes a critical failure

but

'Glad-Hand' includes the language "fail or critically fail", which implies otherwise.

[mrspaghetti]

To me, a critical fail is a specific type of failure. So yes, Halfling Luck would be triggered by a critical fail.

[thenobledrake]

Critical failures are a kind of failure.

When reading the rules and finding an apparent discrepancy, a useful thing to do is remember that sometimes an author includes a "helpful reminder" (scare quotes because the main result of these reminders are questions like this one) - so "fail or critically fail" is just a redundant "helpful reminder" and not proof that "fail" doesn't inherently include "critically fail"

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

CRB p445 wrote:

Step 4: Determine the Degree of Success and Effect

Many times, it’s important to determine not only if you succeed or fail, but also how spectacularly you succeed or fail. Exceptional results—either good or bad—can cause you to critically succeed at or critically fail a check.

That is, critically succeeding is defined as succeeding spectacularly, which is clearly a subset of succeeding. Ditto critical failures.

So I agree with mrspaghetti and thenobledrake, despite text such as Glad Hand's. I can only presume that was written by someone who didn't 100% get the paradigm, or else that the paradigm shifted a bit between it being written and the book being published.