I'm trying to find the exact rule, but I'm pretty sure a damage 'source' is anything gated behind an attack roll or saving throw (with the exception of things like Magic Missile and falling damage that don't have an attack roll or saving throw).
As such, if you have an attack that also has a saving throw against secondary damage, those are considered two different damage sources. You can score a critical hit on the attack roll, doubling the damage dice for that, but it won't affect the damage dice that are linked to the saving throw because you can't crit on saving throws.
Regarding the OPs original question, and assuming I'm remembering correctly (source/RAW to come hopefully), the answers would be:
Relentless Endurance kicks in on the damage from the attack roll and if they fail the save, they'd go unconscious
For any other PC, they'd go unconscious from the damage from the attack roll, then lose a death save from the saving throw damage
The critical hit would double the damage dice for the first lot of damage, but not the damage contingent on the saving throw
I’d be more inclined to agree if the damage in the example was truly gated behind the save (ie “no damage on a successful save”) but it isn’t. There is always poison damage (using the same die) with the saving throw determining mitigation of such. Since A hit from this creature will always cause poison damage, that poison damage has to be part of the hit, and since the save doesn’t change the dice, I’d say the full dice are part of the hit and can be doubled on a crit the same as any other feature of an attack roll
You do realize that the tweet you have been referring to explicitly states that JC's tweets are not rules? Neither RAW nor RAI?
"The intent is no. The saving throw, not the attack, determines whether the poison takes effect after a hit."
"Back in 2015, I kicked off the Sage Advice series with an article about rules, rulings, RAW, and more. From then to now, my tweets have never been RAW"
You can't just ignore the part of the tweet that proves you wrong. And even the part of the tweet that you did choose to cherrypick doesn't support your claim. It doesn't state that "pre 2015, JC tweets were de facto RAW". Even if it did, we are no longer in pre 2015 which means that even if they were. they no longer are.
Besides all that, you are ignoring this little tidbit which is quite important in this context: "If someone has told you that my tweets are rules in the game you're playing, that game isn't D&D."
I'm trying to find the exact rule, but I'm pretty sure a damage 'source' is anything gated behind an attack roll or saving throw (with the exception of things like Magic Missile and falling damage that don't have an attack roll or saving throw).
As such, if you have an attack that also has a saving throw against secondary damage, those are considered two different damage sources. You can score a critical hit on the attack roll, doubling the damage dice for that, but it won't affect the damage dice that are linked to the saving throw because you can't crit on saving throws.
If you can find the rule, please post it! I've been diving through my books to find anything saying that, yet all I can find is what has already been posted. Whether-or-not it was actually the intention for anything with a saving throw to be excluded, they don't seem to have written that anywhere.
We know that there can be no criticals on abilities that are only based on a saving throw (like Fireball), but we only know that by inference since the spell doesn't have an attack roll.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Unfortunately I've been unable to find anything explicit or concrete, just some implicit stuff about how attack rolls determine if an attack hits and does damage, combined with some stuff about how saving throws can prevent an effect. There's nothing definitive, just a lot of reading between the lines unfortunately.
You do realize that the tweet you have been referring to explicitly states that JC's tweets are not rules? Neither RAW nor RAI?
"The intent is no. The saving throw, not the attack, determines whether the poison takes effect after a hit."
"Back in 2015, I kicked off the Sage Advice series with an article about rules, rulings, RAW, and more. From then to now, my tweets have never been RAW"
You can't just ignore the part of the tweet that proves you wrong. And even the part of the tweet that you did choose to cherrypick doesn't support your claim. It doesn't state that "pre 2015, JC tweets were de facto RAW". Even if it did, we are no longer in pre 2015 which means that even if they were. they no longer are.
Besides all that, you are ignoring this little tidbit which is quite important in this context: "If someone has told you that my tweets are rules in the game you're playing, that game isn't D&D."
And you do realise that claiming that they are neither RAW nor RAI was also totally wrong ? The only thing I've said is that it is clearly RAI (and it's a good thing that you don't dispute this further), and that it might be considered RAW as it was posted before 2015 (and no one should care what date it is when they are reading it, it is obviously the date of posting that counts). And no, I did not claim that all his tweets were RAW, ever, so the last part is worthless.
After that, up to you, my interpretation is 100% in line with the RAW in the books, and is supported by the RAI. That makes it better to use for me, in particular because it makes criticals less ridiculous on specific monsters and therefore overall is in favour of the players (except those, of course, who try to minmax the system to the utmost, but again this is not something that I want to particularly encourage in my games).
RAI are still rules, which the tweet clearly state that tweets are not. Look, obviously this is very important to you and you feel very strongly about this. All I'm doing is pointing out that the tweet you are basing your arguments on quite obviously disagree with you so you might want to find something else to base your standpoint on?
RAI are still rules, which the tweet clearly state that tweets are not. Look, obviously this is very important to you and you feel very strongly about this. All I'm doing is pointing out that the tweet you are basing your arguments on quite obviously disagree with you so you might want to find something else to base your standpoint on?
Alright, just pointing out that the SAC clearly states: "RAI. Some of you are especially interested in knowing the intent behind a rule. " Well, the first tweet clearly shows an intent. That's all, and it's a ruling namely that the poison is not doubled. What more do you need on RAI ?
That doesn't change the fact that tweets aren't rules nor that RAI are still a a kind of rule nor that the source of the tweets you use as a source has explicitly stated not to use the tweets as rules, neither RAI nor RAW. Either way, I have shown you the facts. If you want to dispute your own sources, that is completely your prerogative.
All the damage that is added to a Hit is described in all the rules as being extra damage (multiple examples given in a previous post). The poison is not specified as extra damage.
I agree it's not extra damage. Extra damage comes from an external source and is dependent on that element's requirements - Sneak Attack, Hex, etc.
The snake's poison damage is not extra damage because it is base damage. It is an inevitable part of the attack. The save only modulates how much you take, not whether it happens. Same goes for the poisoned weapon in your later point, although I'll admit this is clunky and blurs the line about what extra damage should encompass. I'm going to attribute it to the fact that it's evident they spent about 5 minutes total thinking about PC's using poison before spewing out some words and moving on to stuff they actually wanted to think about. But it totally tracks that applying poison turns a weapon into a poisoned weapon that will invariably apply poison when it hits - it's not dependent on spells or advantage or any external feature that would classify it as extra damage.
There is either a comma or a full stop before the description of the poison, meaning that it's a consequence of a hit, but not the hit itself.
If I take the shadows action (Strength Drain.Melee Weapon Attack:+4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) necrotic damage, and the target's Strength score is reduced by 1d4. ), the part after the comma is obviously not a hit, because it is not damage, it is special effect of the attack if it succeeds.
This is clearly supported by the RAW, which says: "Some attacks cause special effects in addition to or instead of damage."
The wording being exactly the same in all instances in the Monster Manual, whether the consequence of the attack is damage or something else shows that it is consistently a special effect as a result of the attack, and not the damage of the attack itself.
Because it is a special effect, it is not affected by the critical rule, which says: "When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target." It says nothing about the special effects that are induced by an attack.
The special effects are governed by their own rules, and in particular by saves. These cannot crit, only the attack's damage, which the special effect is not part of.
I don't follow the reasoning that something after a comma is a consequence of a hit but not the hit. The initial damage is a consequence of a hit too. An attack doesn't have words that aren't part of the attack - the whole thing is a unit, and critical effects are applied to that unit. The existance of extra damage rules don't refute this at all - they simply add things that the crit can apply to.
The special effects you're referring to - well they're not damage. The critical rules only specify damage rolls being doubled, so of course nothing happens there. So if I'm reading this correctly, the main argument is grammatical? That snake's poison is like a ghoul's paralyze because they both come after a comma?
I think the whole comma argument is flimsy at best. We're ascribing mechanical effects to regular, expected grammatical patterns. It's much simpler to conclude that all of the text in an attack block is "the attack" - there's no rules that state otherwise and no reason for other effects to be included there. Additional consequences of attacks are described as features and generally have some requirements or constraints.
The difference between the poison and the paralyze is simple - poison is a damage roll and paralyze isn't. Therefore one is affected by a crit and the other isn't. Likewise Strength Drain is a roll, but it's not a damage roll.
This is also a consistent position across all possibilities. Snake poison and poisoned weapons have additional base damage amended to their attacks. They are not extra damage because they are not "extra" and they are intrinsic to the attack. They are doubled on a crit for the same reasons.
If you want to kill this line of reasoning, find any damage roll in an attack block that explicitly is not to be doubled by a crit. Because I can't think of one anywhere.
Note - I'm not saying this is the definite RAW interpretation. I'm with Saga here - I think both sides can make a decent argument. But I do feel that this one is a bit stronger.
Considering that there have been arguments on both sides that have some merit to them, as a DM I would likely simply rule in favor of benefit to players. When comparing attack actions that deliver a save, we're really mostly talking about monster abilities, so I'd probably not double the damage. When talking about abilities that just come with more damage, those tend to be player abilities, and so I'd double that damage. If a druid wildshapes into a beast that delivers poison via a bite and crits, I might let them double that damage.
Really, RAW isn't quite clear enough to decide one way or another. In those cases, I prefer being generous to players rather than "fair" or completely consistent or anything else.
It's not clunky, it's just not compatible. Please read again the description of the poison. Nowhere does it say that is is extra damage, and "base" damage simply does not exist in the rule. The only thing that the poison rules say is that, if you are exposed to the poison, you have a save to take less damage. It says nothing about it being added to anything.
Which really doesn't matter, since nothing in the rules for critical hits limits it to 'extra' damage; it says 'other' damage dice that are 'involved' in the attack. There is no question that the poison damage is damage dice, nor that they are involved in the attack (as they would not occur if the attack missed).
Easy, all the poison attacks are consistent with the poison rules and with all the stat blocks descriptions that show special effects as consequence of a successful attack, exactly as mentioned in the PH: "Some attacks cause special effects in addition to or instead of damage."
Note - I'm not saying this is the definite RAW interpretation. I'm with Saga here - I think both sides can make a decent argument. But I do feel that this one is a bit stronger.
Not only is it much weaker in terms of consistency with all the rules, but it is also contrary to the intent of the rules as defined by JC. Now, of course, up to you as to how you want to put it in place in your game...
What poison rules? You are ascribing a set of rules that was never codified. Poison rules are only for an individual effect, not a general set of effects. The only rules that can be consistently applied as a set in this conversation are the critical hit rules, which at best you could argue are unclear.
for a clear distinction where the damage effects are separated, look at ice knife. There are two clear moments of damage, one type of which is clearly gated behind a saving throw (it is written separately, the damage is untied from the attack roll, etc). In the poisonous snake example, that distinction is not present. The damage occurs based on the attack roll, no save of any level will eliminate it, nor change the dice rolled. It can’t be distinct because it is not written to be. With ice knife, you can get cold damage without a hit, or miss it with a hit, but with this bite, you always get poison with a hit, and you never do in a miss. Therefore, the poison is tied to the hit, and the dice can be doubled.
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
Edit: I know the conversation has moved past this, but to be clear, you should be able to treat "hit or miss" separately. It is equivalent to "hitor miss X happens" or "hit ormiss X happens." Read that way, the hit portion reads near-identically to the poison rider.
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
They are written completely differently. ice knife has two separate incidences of damage, one tied solely to an attack roll, and one tied solely to a saving throw. On a critical hit, distinguishing the damage dice associated with the attack roll is easy as the secondary damage dice is clearly not tied to the attack roll (“hit or miss...”)
the bite does not distinguish the two damages...both the piercing and the poison damage are tied to the hit (“on a hit...and”) and all dice are rolled based on that hit. The save only determines whether you halve the result of some of those dice. The save is not determining the damage dice used, only the attack roll does. If the attack roll determines the damage dice, those dice can be doubled on a crit, just like any other extra or added damage effect (sneak attack, hex, etc)
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
They are written completely differently. ice knife has two separate incidences of damage, one tied solely to an attack roll, and one tied solely to a saving throw. On a critical hit, distinguishing the damage dice associated with the attack roll is easy as the secondary damage dice is clearly not tied to the attack roll (“hit or miss...”)
the bite does not distinguish the two damages...both the piercing and the poison damage are tied to the hit (“on a hit...and”) and all dice are rolled based on that hit. The save only determines whether you halve the result of some of those dice. The save is not determining the damage dice used, only the attack roll does. If the attack roll determines the damage dice, those dice can be doubled on a crit, just like any other extra or added damage effect (sneak attack, hex, etc)
So your position is that if you crit on witch bolt, you keep getting double damage for as long as you can maintain the spell?
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
They are written completely differently. ice knife has two separate incidences of damage, one tied solely to an attack roll, and one tied solely to a saving throw. On a critical hit, distinguishing the damage dice associated with the attack roll is easy as the secondary damage dice is clearly not tied to the attack roll (“hit or miss...”)
the bite does not distinguish the two damages...both the piercing and the poison damage are tied to the hit (“on a hit...and”) and all dice are rolled based on that hit. The save only determines whether you halve the result of some of those dice. The save is not determining the damage dice used, only the attack roll does. If the attack roll determines the damage dice, those dice can be doubled on a crit, just like any other extra or added damage effect (sneak attack, hex, etc)
So your position is that if you crit on witch bolt, you keep getting double damage for as long as you can maintain the spell?
Separate actions, no additional attack rolls for the additional damage, so no. The bite attack is a single attack action and a single attack roll.
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
They are written completely differently. ice knife has two separate incidences of damage, one tied solely to an attack roll, and one tied solely to a saving throw. On a critical hit, distinguishing the damage dice associated with the attack roll is easy as the secondary damage dice is clearly not tied to the attack roll (“hit or miss...”)
the bite does not distinguish the two damages...both the piercing and the poison damage are tied to the hit (“on a hit...and”) and all dice are rolled based on that hit. The save only determines whether you halve the result of some of those dice. The save is not determining the damage dice used, only the attack roll does. If the attack roll determines the damage dice, those dice can be doubled on a crit, just like any other extra or added damage effect (sneak attack, hex, etc)
So your position is that if you crit on witch bolt, you keep getting double damage for as long as you can maintain the spell?
Separate actions, no additional attack rolls for the additional damage, so no. The bite attack is a single attack action and a single attack roll.
Why would it being a separate action matter? The damage dice are determined by the attack roll, which is exactly what you said is required for them to be double-able on a crit. Everything is grouped under “on a hit.” “On a hit, the target takes 1d12 lightning damage, and on each of your turns for the duration, you can use your action to deal 1d12 lightning damage to the target automatically.” It’s not even a separate sentence.
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
They are written completely differently. ice knife has two separate incidences of damage, one tied solely to an attack roll, and one tied solely to a saving throw. On a critical hit, distinguishing the damage dice associated with the attack roll is easy as the secondary damage dice is clearly not tied to the attack roll (“hit or miss...”)
the bite does not distinguish the two damages...both the piercing and the poison damage are tied to the hit (“on a hit...and”) and all dice are rolled based on that hit. The save only determines whether you halve the result of some of those dice. The save is not determining the damage dice used, only the attack roll does. If the attack roll determines the damage dice, those dice can be doubled on a crit, just like any other extra or added damage effect (sneak attack, hex, etc)
So your position is that if you crit on witch bolt, you keep getting double damage for as long as you can maintain the spell?
Separate actions, no additional attack rolls for the additional damage, so no. The bite attack is a single attack action and a single attack roll.
Why would it being a separate action matter? The damage dice are determined by the attack roll, which is exactly what you said is required for them to be double-able on a crit. Everything is grouped under “on a hit.” “On a hit, the target takes 1d12 lightning damage, and on each of your turns for the duration, you can use your action to deal 1d12 lightning damage to the target automatically.” It’s not even a separate sentence.
You make a good point...I’d allow all the following damage to double then. A crit is a crit (and that spell is kind of shoddy anyway). I run a homebrew critical failure table, so extra oomph on a critical hit is not a big deal to me
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
They are written completely differently. ice knife has two separate incidences of damage, one tied solely to an attack roll, and one tied solely to a saving throw. On a critical hit, distinguishing the damage dice associated with the attack roll is easy as the secondary damage dice is clearly not tied to the attack roll (“hit or miss...”)
the bite does not distinguish the two damages...both the piercing and the poison damage are tied to the hit (“on a hit...and”) and all dice are rolled based on that hit. The save only determines whether you halve the result of some of those dice. The save is not determining the damage dice used, only the attack roll does. If the attack roll determines the damage dice, those dice can be doubled on a crit, just like any other extra or added damage effect (sneak attack, hex, etc)
So your position is that if you crit on witch bolt, you keep getting double damage for as long as you can maintain the spell?
Separate actions, no additional attack rolls for the additional damage, so no. The bite attack is a single attack action and a single attack roll.
Why would it being a separate action matter? The damage dice are determined by the attack roll, which is exactly what you said is required for them to be double-able on a crit. Everything is grouped under “on a hit.” “On a hit, the target takes 1d12 lightning damage, and on each of your turns for the duration, you can use your action to deal 1d12 lightning damage to the target automatically.” It’s not even a separate sentence.
To be fair - since only the initial damage is up-scaled when upcast - allowing the following damage on extra turns to critical seems like a fairly good buff to a bad spell.
What poison rules? You are ascribing a set of rules that was never codified.
Please read the DMG, it is very clear : "Injury. Injury poison can be applied to weapons, ammunition, trap components, and other objects that deal piercing or slashing damage and remains potent until delivered through a wound or washed off. A creature that takes piercing or slashing damage from an object coated with the poison is exposed to its effects."
And: "Serpent Venom (Injury). This poison must be harvested from a dead or incapacitated giant poisonous snake. A creature subjected to this poison must succeed on a DC 11 Constitution saving throw, taking 10 (3d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one."
So you have everything here. You apply the poison to a weapon (or something else), If a creature takes piercing or slashing damage from an object coated, the creature is exposed to its effects. And when you are exposed to its effects, you must succeed on a save, taking full damage if you fail and half if you succeed. This is totally independent from the attack roll, it is only a consequence of receiving piercing or slashing damage from the weapon.
Poison rules are only for an individual effect, not a general set of effects. The only rules that can be consistently applied as a set in this conversation are the critical hit rules, which at best you could argue are unclear.
Not only are the rules perfectly clear, but the designer has made his intent also crystal clear, the poison damage is NOT doubled on a crit.
At this stage, I doubt I will be able to convince you but I'm still interested to know why you persist in an interpretation that is clearly not the designer's intent when there is another interpretation that is in line with this intent and absolutely RAW ?
Those are rules for a specific poison applied to a weapon, not rules for poison in general. Even if they are the “Same” by sourceof the poison, nothing in the rules says you must cross reference a creature statblock with an items rules to make an appropriate ruling. Besides, the wording still ties the weapon poison to a hit, so I’d allow the injury poison to double as well.
as much as you want it to be clear, the RAW isn’t. And rulings have to consider RAF too...at my table, crits are powerful, and failures debilitating, my group likes that and RAF wins.
No, it is not linked to a hit, it is linked to taking piercing or slashing damage and more pointedly to a saving throw as well, which is not the same. doubling it goes not only against the RAI but against the RAW as well in this case.
This is objectively not the case. It's the hit that causes the damage, not the piercing damage. You could also have the somewhat unlikely but not impossible scenario where the target is immune to piercing damage but not to poison damage. The target the would still take poison damage sinc ethe poison damage is not dependent on whether or not they took any piercing damage.
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I’d be more inclined to agree if the damage in the example was truly gated behind the save (ie “no damage on a successful save”) but it isn’t. There is always poison damage (using the same die) with the saving throw determining mitigation of such. Since A hit from this creature will always cause poison damage, that poison damage has to be part of the hit, and since the save doesn’t change the dice, I’d say the full dice are part of the hit and can be doubled on a crit the same as any other feature of an attack roll
You can't just ignore the part of the tweet that proves you wrong. And even the part of the tweet that you did choose to cherrypick doesn't support your claim. It doesn't state that "pre 2015, JC tweets were de facto RAW". Even if it did, we are no longer in pre 2015 which means that even if they were. they no longer are.
Besides all that, you are ignoring this little tidbit which is quite important in this context:
"If someone has told you that my tweets are rules in the game you're playing, that game isn't D&D."
If you can find the rule, please post it! I've been diving through my books to find anything saying that, yet all I can find is what has already been posted. Whether-or-not it was actually the intention for anything with a saving throw to be excluded, they don't seem to have written that anywhere.
We know that there can be no criticals on abilities that are only based on a saving throw (like Fireball), but we only know that by inference since the spell doesn't have an attack roll.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Unfortunately I've been unable to find anything explicit or concrete, just some implicit stuff about how attack rolls determine if an attack hits and does damage, combined with some stuff about how saving throws can prevent an effect. There's nothing definitive, just a lot of reading between the lines unfortunately.
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RAI are still rules, which the tweet clearly state that tweets are not. Look, obviously this is very important to you and you feel very strongly about this. All I'm doing is pointing out that the tweet you are basing your arguments on quite obviously disagree with you so you might want to find something else to base your standpoint on?
That doesn't change the fact that tweets aren't rules nor that RAI are still a a kind of rule nor that the source of the tweets you use as a source has explicitly stated not to use the tweets as rules, neither RAI nor RAW. Either way, I have shown you the facts. If you want to dispute your own sources, that is completely your prerogative.
I agree it's not extra damage. Extra damage comes from an external source and is dependent on that element's requirements - Sneak Attack, Hex, etc.
The snake's poison damage is not extra damage because it is base damage. It is an inevitable part of the attack. The save only modulates how much you take, not whether it happens. Same goes for the poisoned weapon in your later point, although I'll admit this is clunky and blurs the line about what extra damage should encompass. I'm going to attribute it to the fact that it's evident they spent about 5 minutes total thinking about PC's using poison before spewing out some words and moving on to stuff they actually wanted to think about. But it totally tracks that applying poison turns a weapon into a poisoned weapon that will invariably apply poison when it hits - it's not dependent on spells or advantage or any external feature that would classify it as extra damage.
I don't follow the reasoning that something after a comma is a consequence of a hit but not the hit. The initial damage is a consequence of a hit too. An attack doesn't have words that aren't part of the attack - the whole thing is a unit, and critical effects are applied to that unit. The existance of extra damage rules don't refute this at all - they simply add things that the crit can apply to.
The special effects you're referring to - well they're not damage. The critical rules only specify damage rolls being doubled, so of course nothing happens there. So if I'm reading this correctly, the main argument is grammatical? That snake's poison is like a ghoul's paralyze because they both come after a comma?
I think the whole comma argument is flimsy at best. We're ascribing mechanical effects to regular, expected grammatical patterns. It's much simpler to conclude that all of the text in an attack block is "the attack" - there's no rules that state otherwise and no reason for other effects to be included there. Additional consequences of attacks are described as features and generally have some requirements or constraints.
The difference between the poison and the paralyze is simple - poison is a damage roll and paralyze isn't. Therefore one is affected by a crit and the other isn't. Likewise Strength Drain is a roll, but it's not a damage roll.
This is also a consistent position across all possibilities. Snake poison and poisoned weapons have additional base damage amended to their attacks. They are not extra damage because they are not "extra" and they are intrinsic to the attack. They are doubled on a crit for the same reasons.
If you want to kill this line of reasoning, find any damage roll in an attack block that explicitly is not to be doubled by a crit. Because I can't think of one anywhere.
Note - I'm not saying this is the definite RAW interpretation. I'm with Saga here - I think both sides can make a decent argument. But I do feel that this one is a bit stronger.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Considering that there have been arguments on both sides that have some merit to them, as a DM I would likely simply rule in favor of benefit to players. When comparing attack actions that deliver a save, we're really mostly talking about monster abilities, so I'd probably not double the damage. When talking about abilities that just come with more damage, those tend to be player abilities, and so I'd double that damage. If a druid wildshapes into a beast that delivers poison via a bite and crits, I might let them double that damage.
Really, RAW isn't quite clear enough to decide one way or another. In those cases, I prefer being generous to players rather than "fair" or completely consistent or anything else.
Booming blade crits. Do you double the damage of the secondary damage imposed by the movement?
Which really doesn't matter, since nothing in the rules for critical hits limits it to 'extra' damage; it says 'other' damage dice that are 'involved' in the attack. There is no question that the poison damage is damage dice, nor that they are involved in the attack (as they would not occur if the attack missed).
What poison rules? You are ascribing a set of rules that was never codified. Poison rules are only for an individual effect, not a general set of effects. The only rules that can be consistently applied as a set in this conversation are the critical hit rules, which at best you could argue are unclear.
for a clear distinction where the damage effects are separated, look at ice knife. There are two clear moments of damage, one type of which is clearly gated behind a saving throw (it is written separately, the damage is untied from the attack roll, etc). In the poisonous snake example, that distinction is not present. The damage occurs based on the attack roll, no save of any level will eliminate it, nor change the dice rolled. It can’t be distinct because it is not written to be. With ice knife, you can get cold damage without a hit, or miss it with a hit, but with this bite, you always get poison with a hit, and you never do in a miss. Therefore, the poison is tied to the hit, and the dice can be doubled.
I disagree that ice knife is functionally different from the poison effects of a bite. The only difference is "hit or miss" vs "On a hit... and..."
Edit: I know the conversation has moved past this, but to be clear, you should be able to treat "hit or miss" separately. It is equivalent to "hit
or missX happens" or "hit ormiss X happens." Read that way, the hit portion reads near-identically to the poison rider.They are written completely differently. ice knife has two separate incidences of damage, one tied solely to an attack roll, and one tied solely to a saving throw. On a critical hit, distinguishing the damage dice associated with the attack roll is easy as the secondary damage dice is clearly not tied to the attack roll (“hit or miss...”)
the bite does not distinguish the two damages...both the piercing and the poison damage are tied to the hit (“on a hit...and”) and all dice are rolled based on that hit. The save only determines whether you halve the result of some of those dice. The save is not determining the damage dice used, only the attack roll does. If the attack roll determines the damage dice, those dice can be doubled on a crit, just like any other extra or added damage effect (sneak attack, hex, etc)
So your position is that if you crit on witch bolt, you keep getting double damage for as long as you can maintain the spell?
Separate actions, no additional attack rolls for the additional damage, so no. The bite attack is a single attack action and a single attack roll.
Why would it being a separate action matter? The damage dice are determined by the attack roll, which is exactly what you said is required for them to be double-able on a crit. Everything is grouped under “on a hit.” “On a hit, the target takes 1d12 lightning damage, and on each of your turns for the duration, you can use your action to deal 1d12 lightning damage to the target automatically.” It’s not even a separate sentence.
You make a good point...I’d allow all the following damage to double then. A crit is a crit (and that spell is kind of shoddy anyway). I run a homebrew critical failure table, so extra oomph on a critical hit is not a big deal to me
To be fair - since only the initial damage is up-scaled when upcast - allowing the following damage on extra turns to critical seems like a fairly good buff to a bad spell.
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Those are rules for a specific poison applied to a weapon, not rules for poison in general. Even if they are the “Same” by sourceof the poison, nothing in the rules says you must cross reference a creature statblock with an items rules to make an appropriate ruling. Besides, the wording still ties the weapon poison to a hit, so I’d allow the injury poison to double as well.
as much as you want it to be clear, the RAW isn’t. And rulings have to consider RAF too...at my table, crits are powerful, and failures debilitating, my group likes that and RAF wins.
This is objectively not the case. It's the hit that causes the damage, not the piercing damage. You could also have the somewhat unlikely but not impossible scenario where the target is immune to piercing damage but not to poison damage. The target the would still take poison damage sinc ethe poison damage is not dependent on whether or not they took any piercing damage.