Critical Hits and Attack Rolls

Critical hits in PF2e follow the Degrees of Success system rather than special critical range mechanics.

When a Strike is a Critical Hit: A melee or ranged Strike is a critical hit (critical success) when:

• Your attack roll beats the target's AC by 10 or more, OR
• You roll a natural 20 and the result would be a success (natural 20 upgrades success to critical success)

Critical Hit Effects:

• Double damage: Roll damage normally, then double the total (including all bonuses, extra dice, and modifiers).
• Critical specialization effects: Many weapon groups have special effects on critical hits (e.g., swords cause persistent bleed damage, hammers knock the target prone, picks deal extra damage to armored targets, bows pin the target in place).
• Deadly and Fatal traits: Weapons with the Deadly trait add extra dice on a critical hit (e.g., Deadly d10 adds 1d10). The Fatal trait changes the weapon's damage die to a larger one AND adds an extra die on crits.

Critical Failures on Attack Rolls: Missing the target's AC by 10 or more is a critical failure. For most Strikes, there is no additional penalty beyond missing. However, some special attacks (Grapple, Trip, Disarm) have specific critical failure consequences.

Natural 20 and Natural 1:

• Natural 20: Improves the degree of success by one step. A failure becomes a success; a success becomes a critical success.
• Natural 1: Worsens the degree by one step. A success becomes a failure; a failure becomes a critical failure.

Multiple Attack Penalty and Crits: Because MAP reduces your attack bonus by −5/−10, third attacks rarely crit. Agile weapons (−4/−8 MAP) slightly improve crit chances on subsequent strikes.

Crit-Focused Builds: Fighters reach Expert weapon proficiency at level 1 (other martials start Trained), giving them +2 to hit — which directly translates to critting 10% more often against any given AC.