So, if an AoE attack rolls a critical hit (example rolling two 3s) but misses, do any Critical Effects take effect?
For a Critical Hit the requirements are 1) Hit the target and 2) Roll Doubles.
An AoE hits the target on a miss, fulfilling criteria 1.
My interpretation is no, as the AOE rule that says that attacks that miss still hit requires that the attack does initially miss, therefore making the double 3âs not matter. Only after the attack has been determined to miss does the AOE rule kick in saying that it deal a non-direct hit.
Granted this is also based on a bit of âthis is how itâs always worked so I assume itâs intended to work this wayâ; I could be wrong and/or the rule could use clarification from a more official source.
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Looking at the attack timing chart, you would miss and then determine the AoE hit before applying effects on hit.
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I feel confident that I answered this question on here once before. Let me see if I can find it.
(The answer is: no. A miss is not a critical hit because, you know, you miss. It only reads in a confusing manner when the two paragraphs are taken out of context.)
I thought there was a discussion and ruling about it before, but couldnât find anything.
For the life of me, I canât figure out where I answered this question.
Iâll try to get back to this and post my full rationale later. 
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I searched as well, for AoE, Critical, and more. No dice.
Yeah, same here. Oh well!
Iâll extract quotes and whatnot later, but the crux of it is: yes, the rules under Attack Roll say âif the attack hitsâ, not âdirectly hitsâ, and AOE says âwhen an AOE attack hits is targetâ, not âdirectly hitsâ, but the previous sentences in the respective relevant paragraphs talk about direct hits, and the only sensible way to interpret these in context is as if they say âdirectly hits.â
If a pedant chooses to argue otherwise, choosing to read everything utterly, strictly literally and take sentences out of context and as if they are all 100% stand-alone imperatives, you end up in insane situations where a roll of all 1âs is a miss, and also a hit, and also a critical hit, and all models in the AOE suffer the effects.
WhichâŚas interpretations go, is pretty much nonsense and cannot reasonably be the intent, in my opinion. 
Shouldnât the rules be read literally?
And itâs not like evey rule in the book only references or applies to other clauses that immediately precede or follow it. Plenty of snippets are only relevant in the context of something defined a dozen pages away.
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And that is exactly why context matters. Players need to be able to interpret what applies where.
I can absolutely guarantee that itâs possible to make the game non-functional in various ways if we read each sentence 100% strictly literally without stopping to consider the context or whether that strict reading leads to sensible interpretations.
Like, I get that people want precision, but there comes a point where the demand for ultra-precision reaches silly extremes. Iâm just trying to head that off.
In this case, look at the various rules Malkav quoted. Someone can either take them 100% literally, in which case, you end up in a situation like the one I described in a previous post, or common sense can be used (ââan auto-miss critical hit fully-functional AOEâ makes no senseâ) to determine the intent.
I disagree. If we follow the attack timing chart we get the following.
5d) The attack has missed. AoE rules now say that the target is hit and takes Blast damage.
- We now check for any effects that happen on hit.
The attack has hit, as per AoE rules, and any two dice show the same number.
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Then also, per the same rules, and by this logic, an AOE attack (check) hit its target (check), which means that all models in the AOE are hit.
⌠Which doesnât make any sense whatsoever.
If the intent was âAOEs always hit a number of models listed in the AOE statâ then the rules wouldnât bother making any distinctions at all; it would just say that all models are hit by the AOE all the time and save a couple paragraphs.
However, the preceding sentence says âDirectly Hitâ, modifying the âhit followingâ. Now, I would enjoy them using Directly Hit there again, but the context of the paragraph makes it clear.
A couple down, when we get to what happens on a miss, we get additional information.
Where does it say, that the previously rolled dice for an AoE miss are relevant in the context of the automatically hit attack that follows it, rather than the âautomaticâ hit hits without the need of rolling any dice?
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This feels like the key thing here. The intention of the rules here is totally clear, that a âcritical missâ isnât a thing. Itâs getting a little tiring having these discussions, âif I take these certain snippets from the rulebook and read them creatively, I can make it say thisâ. Also, it takes oxygen away from rules questions that actually matter.
Thatâs covered under the attack roll rules.
Thanks for the official answer. Would it be possible to get a line in the core rules then to help clarify that?
Something like âCritical Hit effects can only be triggered on a Direct Hit?â
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I will send that of to devs
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Thanks. I know that this isnât the first time that it has come up, and with an easier to edit rule book, it would be great to have things constantly improving.