I may have a brain dysfunction but i'm suddenly not sure how the critical hit rule works. Situation: I shoot with B4 and have 1 hit and lets say 2 normal hits. Opponent has ARO, doesn't roll a crit but beats my 2 normal hits. My crit cancels his ARO hit but what happens to my 2 normal hits? Do they get cancelled by my opponents hit before my crit cancels his hit or does my crit cancel his hit and i get to use my 2 additional normal hits? Could anyone explain this and point to specific rules texts?
The two normal hits would still get canceled by the opponent’s dice. Take crits out of the equation for a moment - say you hit with a 10 and a 5, and your opponent hit with a 7. That 7 is canceled by your 10, but it still cancels the 5 in turn. Crits don’t change that.
This isn't the full story though. Assume the result is. 12 (Crit), 11, 11, 7 Vs 8 (Crit) Your opponent's Crit cancels all of your hits and the Crits cancel each other. This is because you still apply the same methodology: you compare each of your successful dice against each of your opponent's. So the 11, 11, 7 all lose to your opponent's Crit. Compare 13 (Miss), 11, 11, 7 Vs 8 (Crit) The 8 (Crit) beats the 11, 11, 7. Edit: and this is what you get from answering rules questions without caffeine. I'm literally just saying what Toadchild said but more long-winded.
In my opinion, a good way to think about a crit is simply as a success with an astronomically high value, like 50. I succeed on a "50," fail on a 12, succeed on a 6, and succeed on a 2. My opponent succeeds on an 11. My 12 isn't a success so we ignore it. Then we compare the value of all successes. 11 beats 2. 11 beats 6. 50 beats 11. 50 is the only remaining success. 50 is a critical success, and so the effects of a critical are applied. If my opponent had rolled a crit as well, then we'd have two successes with a hypothetical value of "50." This is handled the exact same way as any successes with the same value, they cancel out. The crits beat every success that is not a critical success, and then cancel each other out because they are both the same "value," which is higher than the value of all other successes. The rules could have been written something like, "Critical successes are always considered to be the highest value successes of any Face to Face roll. Critical successes are always treated as having an equal value."
