[RPG] Can a Barbarian choose which weapon die to add for his Brutal Critical

barbariancritical-hitdnd-5eweapons

Our Barbarian has a Flame Tongue longsword.

While the sword is ablaze, it deals an extra 2d6 fire damage to any target it hits.

When the Barbarian crits, he doubles all the weapons damage dice, and then adds a few more due to Brutal Critical. In other words, assuming first rank of Brutal Critical (for simplicity), a crit would give him 1d8+2d6 (regular damage) + 1d8+2d6 (critical damage) + X (brutal critical damage). If I understand correctly, X will be a single die, like 1d8.

However, we have argued that maybe it could be 1d6 (if the Barbarian wanted to deal fire damage instead of slashing damage). We are also not positive if this is correct, or if maybe we should be adding 1 of each die, so X would be 1d8+1d6.

When weapons have different damage dice, how does Brutal Critical interact with them?

Best Answer

Following the discussion here, where a weapon's extra damage also counts as weapon damage dice, then

You can choose either 1d8 slashing or 1d6 fire extra damage for your Brutal Criticals.

Crawford supports this idea with the tweet:

Savage Attacks: add 1 of a weapon's dice to a crit. again. Frost brand is a wpn. w/ 1d6 cold as 1 of its dice

For Frost Brand, which has a very similar wording to Flame Tongue, you can add the frost damage dice to the Orc's Savage Attacks, not only the sword's damage. Therefore, we can extrapolate and assume Flame Tongue behaves similarly with the Barbarian's Brutal Critical.

Related Topic