Critical Hits with Mage

[Old Coach]

So...
I am down in depths of about 55 when I find the Great Hammer of Aule.
I am getting tired of having to avoid anything with elemental resistance because I am playing a mage with no way to damage such critters (no artifact book of battle spells yet). I teleport into a hallway between a mature and ancient multihued dragons, asleep.
hmmm.
hmmm.
I decide to just try the hammer, even though I would only get one swing per round instead of 2.5-ish. I had been using turmoril for the elemental immunity.
1 swing, dead mature dragon.
Hmmm.
I swing at the ancient.
Dead in two swings, but fleeing and nearly dead after 1.
Hmmm.

I then went on a killing spree and took some quick stats.
out of 40 swings, 33 were *GREAT* hits, 3 were great, 1 was superb, and 3 were regular.

This seems like too many crit hits for a mage.
I was wearing an amulet of weapon mastery at the time. I traded it for an amulet of trickery, and this toned it down somewhat. I wanted to switch back and forth to see how much it helped the crit process, but a lightning dragon sparked it when I dropped it.

Now, I went from not being able to touch anything with a weapon, including Ringil, to being able to three shot Great Wurms of Law with the Hammer of Aule. This with a Mage of strength 18/40 and dex 18/80.

I am not sure if this is solely a product of the weapon. It is heavy, does 18d1 damage (yowsa!!) and has massive finess and power bonuses. Is the crit system still being optimized? Everthing seemed to be working the way I expected, that is, my mage was an invalid in combat but could occasionally get lucky and stab something, until I picked up the hammer and amulet, oh, and gloves cambeleg. Now I barely use spells except for utility.