armour / regeneration and critical hits

let's say a beastman lands a critical hit on an orc who is wearing armour.

the critical hit causes 2 wounds but does not negate the armour save.

is the armour save taken before the doubling of the wound or afterwards? So:

a) one armour save to avoid BOTH in case of success and suffer BOTH in case of failure

b) roll twice for both wounds seperately (resulting in either 0,1, or 2 wounds depending on the rolls)?


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actually i have the same question for regeneration: is the 4+ roll taken BEFORE or AFTER the doubling?

thanks a lot in advance for your answers!

Good question. I don't know if we have any rules to back us but we take 2 armor saves or 2 regeneration rolls. (Or 2 step aside rolls.)

The extended Critical Hit Tables in the appendix mention (in the rare cases where multiple wounds are caused and armour saves still allowed) that armour saves are taken separately for each wound (Cf. LRB, p. 117), so personally, I would (and do ) apply this to all comparable cases (unless noted otherwise - like when using the normal Critical Hit Charts on p. 16 in the LRB, where it is explicitly stated that armour saves are taken before doubling the wound. ).

Living Rule Book, p. 117 wrote:

3-4 Bladestorm.
The warrior unleashes a virtual hail of blows. The attack causes 2 wounds instead of 1. Take armour saves separately for each wound. Remember that, as with other critical hits, if an attack causes multiple wounds for other reasons as well, you choose the highest number of wounds.

Living Rule Book, p. 16 wrote:

1-2 Hits a vital part.
The wound is doubled to 2 wounds. Roll any armour saves before doubling the wound.

So at the end of the day, it boils down to what rules you are using - the base ones or the extended ones (and maybe, to a certain degree, how the situation presents itself, fluffwise, i.e. if the damage is the result of many independent woundings or one single hit to a vulnerable spot).
There are precedents for both ways of handling things (and when in doubt, just dice it out).

/Edit: The good thing about this - there is no wrong way.

It actually says in the book,


CRITICAL HIT CHART
1-2 Hits a vital part The wound is doubled to 2
wounds. Roll any armour saves before doubling the
wound

So you roll 1 save, and if you fail, you take two wounds. That's how we play it.

Ah, so since we use the Extended Critical Hit Tables, we roll for 2 saves. Sorted.

We've used them for so long I've forgotten the rules for the regular Crits.
Its all DaBank's fault. Never would have used those "Optional" rules except for him.

thanks a lot for your answers. as we are using the extended critical hits, I guess it comes down to roll the armour saves seperately then...

In the case of regeneration I'm still not sure how I would handle this, as it is not really an armour save...

Yeah, regeneration is a bit different. I probably would roll them separately.

The way we play is that if you roll the Crit then you roll to find-out what type of crit it is. If it is the 2 wounds with an armor save then the model you hit would make you would roll 2 armor saves (assuming they have an armor save). For every Armor save they make they get to ignore a wound. So if they make both then they are fine.

Regeneration works the same, but it is in addition to any armor saves. So let's say you attacked a Troll with a dagger, hit and rolled a crit 2 wounds with an armor save. The Troll would get to roll two 6+ armor saves (flaw from the dagger), then if they didn't save the would get to roll the regeneration. If they failed to save on both the armor and the regeneration then they would take the wound as normal.

It is kind of like Parry and Step-Aside, with WS to hit rolls. If the attacking model hits a character with a sword and Step-Aside then the model that was hit could roll for both the Parry and the Step-Aside.