Critical Hit from monsters..

[なかの31]

While exploring a cave full of Daedras earlier this day, I ended up noticing that I got a critical hit from a Daedroth I was fighting against, and I wonder: How is that possible?

The wiki says that the critical hits causes 4 times the damage, and can only be inflicted on the first hit inflicted on the target if one's sneaking (not sure if need to be undetected or not).
Does that means any monster in the game has the chance of critically hitting my character on its first attack? Or is the Daedroth's case special?

[theo]

How do you know it was a critical hit?
Yes of course you have to be undetected.

[なかの31]

Caught on the act.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943912975

I was mashing the Daedroth for a while, and it caused a Critical Hit on me on his first melee attack.
Gladly my character didn't got instant death from that, but was very close.

[theo]

Originally posted by Nakano29:

Caught on the act.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943912975

I was mashing the Daedroth for a while, and it caused a Critical Hit on me on his first melee attack.

That pops up when you do a critical hit.
I don't remember if NPCs even can do critical hits, probably not

[なかの31]

I guess I'm not the only one who found this..
https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/gjhdki/received_critical_damage/

[theo]

As far as I remember critical damage doesn't require to sneak, just to be undetected, and can happen when enemy detection resets for some reason.
Here on your screenshot you stand at the opposite sides of a doorway, so that definitely could happen. Doorways are complicated for Morrowind AI in terms of pathing and line of sight.
So if enemies actually can deal critical damage and it wasn't your hit, this is also probably the reason

[なかの31]

That makes sense. I was backtracking my way through the dungeon (moving backwards) while stabbing it with the spear, so that could be what happened.
I see that there's something else I need to watch for in this game then..

[Ghost]

Any monster could theoretically do it, though it's fairly rare.
It might be a case of the spell/sneak bug triggering - a hit from an unseen ranged attack might cause the next physical to be considered a sneak attack.

[Captain Skinny]

Its interesting Ive seen this thread, as I just got one bonk'd by a dreamora lord and his dwarven warhammer with a critical hit.
I was surprised and dead to say the least

[なかの31]

Haha, and the game wasn't hard enough I guess.