Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
crit failure and crit success rules are a thing i have seen go real bad in the past
some characters roll more dice than others so if you make rolling lots of dice extra good or extra bad it can affect the play experience in a not fun way
Crit fails especially on attacks suck. They disproportionately affect melee classes and make it so that as a melee gets more competent and powerful they are likelier to stab themselves in the butt with their great sword or whatever the fuck
There aren't actual rules about "critical failures" in the 5e PHB.
It's one of those brainbugs that's left over from older editions where the players/GMs have been Stockholm Syndrome'd into thinking when they experienced it before it was actually fun for them.
It's not fun. Failing a roll is already bad enough in a binary pass/fail system like D&D. You don't have to add on some sort of additional negative effect that the player experiences, especially since, because there's no official guide on how bad a critfail should be, the consequences can be unbalanced, unfun, and unfair for a player.
Oh, you critfail? I guess you chop your own leg off! Oh, you drop your +3 Psychic Greatflail and it falls into the lava, never to be recovered! Oh, you fall asleep and are out of the rest of the encounter!
I don't have a hard and fast rule on Nat1's. Usually its very rare and something relatively minor in combat (your bowstring snaps and you need to spend a turn to replace it) or mostly its with regards to non-combat things like social rolls or even scouting (which leads to combat mostly, I suppose). But its 95% played for laughs. For example: Rolling a 1 while trying to peek through keyhole of a door usually leads to a comedic sight gag of the whole party spilling through the door and ending up in one giant pile.
If your GM makes you drop your +3 psychic greatflair into the lava... they are an asshole.
I had a Bard who rolled a 1 trying to leap a ten foot gap over a chasm; after we all got done laughing, I ruled that he fell some distance but eventually hit an outcropping, taking some damage... and smashing his lute underneath him, heh. It was nonmagical, so not a huge loss other than some bruises to the character's ego.
Im new to the game still so I never considered this. So far the worst thing was I hit and Ally with firebolt. Other wise it's mostly been comedic or a bowstring snapping.
Oh, and our DM let us name an NPC guard that accompanied us. Greg Grapes III, who also has the nickname "Jimmy Bean".
My crit fails, when I use them, are generally "burn your bonus action to fix this" caliber. If the party is just curbstomping the other side, or if it's really funny, I'll crank it up to "burn your action".
Like, one of my players critmissed with his axe, and it landed in a table, and I told him he had to burn a bonus action to pry it out. Instead he wanted to use it as a handle to lift the table, and then rolled a nat20, so he clobbered three goblins with an improvised double-great club.
I had a Bard who rolled a 1 trying to leap a ten foot gap over a chasm; after we all got done laughing, I ruled that he fell some distance but eventually hit an outcropping, taking some damage... and smashing his lute underneath him, heh. It was nonmagical, so not a huge loss other than some bruises to the character's ego.
Can Bards cast spells without an instrument? I know they don't need to play one to cast, but I was under the impression they still needed one to act as a focus. I guess if there are no material components?
I had a Bard who rolled a 1 trying to leap a ten foot gap over a chasm; after we all got done laughing, I ruled that he fell some distance but eventually hit an outcropping, taking some damage... and smashing his lute underneath him, heh. It was nonmagical, so not a huge loss other than some bruises to the character's ego.
Can Bards cast spells without an instrument? I know they don't need to play one to cast, but I was under the impression they still needed one to act as a focus. I guess if there are no material components?
They can't, but you get 3 when you make your character so it's almost never a problem.
I had a Bard who rolled a 1 trying to leap a ten foot gap over a chasm; after we all got done laughing, I ruled that he fell some distance but eventually hit an outcropping, taking some damage... and smashing his lute underneath him, heh. It was nonmagical, so not a huge loss other than some bruises to the character's ego.
Can Bards cast spells without an instrument? I know they don't need to play one to cast, but I was under the impression they still needed one to act as a focus. I guess if there are no material components?
This was back in 4e so the only thing he got locked out of were rituals that had a musical requirement. It was mostly an opportunity for the player to roleplay that he'd totally meant to do that!
I do critfails but it just essentially puts a guiding bolt debuff on you until the start of your next turn and against the next attack roll
Basically you overextended or the enemy got a particular good counter, or something along those lines is how I flavor it past low levels
At level 1 I'll straight up "you're holding the wrong end of the sword" but by level 7 or so the adventurer is a certified badass motherfucker so failures tend to be success on the part of the enemy's defense, or an external environmental factor, rather than the player's own incompetence
I often forget to do it and I have been mulling over just axing it but my players insist they like it
I do however have a special dice I crack out when someone is disintegrated and survives to see which part of them they have to scoop up with a dustpan and I do so with maximum shithead DM glee
My group automatically starts describing horrible things they do wrong whenever they roll low. "oh a low CHA check...I make an utter ass of myself by mispronouncing her name!" I don't know why they do it. They enjoy slapstick?
Whenever I tell players in my games that a 1 is just a 1 and to continue adding their bonuses, they look at me like I just gave them a Christmas present.
If they've played a lot of 3.X they look at me like I just gave them a Christmas present but didn't know it isn't Christmas and they just got away with something.
What's interesting is that even though I make clear that critical misses don't exist, my players often still narrate a 1 that misses naturally as though it was a critical miss. Which works for me I guess, we get the amusement of a fumble without the shitiness of an actual crit-fail rule.
I had a crit fail come up recently, it was one of mine though cause that goblin rolled 2 natural ones in a row so he shot the ogre he was riding in the back of the head.
My group automatically starts describing horrible things they do wrong whenever they roll low. "oh a low CHA check...I make an utter ass of myself by mispronouncing her name!" I don't know why they do it. They enjoy slapstick?
my party's favorite nat 1 was when the bard player in my TOA game rolled a 1 on performance at a bathhouse performance and I described that she played so well that everyone went absolutely fucking crazy and tried to just rip off a clump of hair or clothing or anything they could and she had to get the fuck out of there, a screaming teenage fan being dragged along, clinging onto her tail briefly
ever since then she was accosted in Nyanzaru by adoring fans, she bought a private room at the bathhouse in the temple of Sune to just chill after killing the death tyrant and the Sunnite priests and priestesses wouldn't leave her alone, wanting autographs, the merchant princes fight for private performances
DM introduces new system to make critical failures a bigger deal.
His boss monster rolls a crit failure on the first roll.
I hope it's made him reconsider the whole concept of crit fails. That shit is stupid as hell. Once you get extra attack, you suddenly become twice as likely every turn to accidentally stab yourself in the foot? 5% odds of going to tie your shoes but you end up tying yourself to the bedpost instead? Oops, your master thief was sneaking down an empty corridor, but you rolled a one, so now he's stepped in a saucepan that just appeared on the floor and tripped over a xylophone into that conveniently- placed wind chime.
Not my idea of a mechanic conducive to good roleplay, is what I'm trying to say.
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KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
edited May 2019
Best use of a critical failure in a game I was part of, was when our druid was insisting on perfecting her archery game in the training grounds (proficient, Dex 14) in case her magic goes away forever, and she gets a critical failure.
Another character was also training in that general area. My Firbolg Barbarian, who hasn't sleep for three days thanks to a Raksasha's cursed claws.
The arrow hits him.
Sadly, I succeeded on a Wisdom save at disadvantage and didn't fly into a murderous rage and instead handed the arrow back, suggesting that she stick with what she's good at.
I really wanted him to go berserk, but as he's generally chill AF, a Wisdom save seemed fair.
If you're going to use critical failures, roll again if you roll a 1. If you fail a second time, crit fail. Otherwise just a normal failure.
To me it depends on the level of comedy, drama or action hero-ness your game has. This should be agreed upon up front before you start your campaign.
If it’s a fun one shot, I’d pull out the Gygax style shooting yourself in the foot malarkey.
If the players are high fantasy Avengers, I’d call a natural 1 ‘your action is twisted against you’. Your fireball is too big, your charge takes out the goblin and lands you 10 feet further into the enemy line than you planned, and so on.
If you’re going for A Song of Ice and Fire, maybe just have it be a regular miss, but tell them this mistake will have lasting consequences, like you’re open to further damage, or offending the merchant prince that badly will mean something in days to come.
‘Be a fan of the characters’ is a rule I keep, and it can carry any system.
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MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
I prefer complications to crit fails.
Your attack hits... their shield and now your sword (which you still are grasping) is stuck in it and the other guy is trying to get his shield off from your sword. Good luck on the new relationship!
You managed to play the lute - oddly. Now another bard keeps following you around demanding that you fork over the sheet music for the piece you just one-time-in-a-lifetime mangled, which you don't have and can't quite understand how to produce.
And so on.
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
Extra negative effects happening 5% of the time when you try to do something seems like a disproportionally high failure rate. Especially if it's while doing something your character has done literal hundreds of times before.
Extra negative effects happening 5% of the time when you try to do something seems like a disproportionally high failure rate. Especially if it's while doing something your character has done literal hundreds of times before.
Especially when it's something you're specialized in, like a rogue with expertise in stealth and 20 Dex. Even a 1 on the die gives you an 11, but that means nothing to the fumble table.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
About to start the Fane of the Night Serpent section of Tomb of Annihilation. Has anyone run it before, and has some DM pointers?
also none of these "here the fun ways i do crit fail" pitches account for how they explicitly fuck over melee and hardly touch spell casters
Meh.... there are a number of spells that use an attack bonus. Its not the same as a melee character, of course. But depending on one's casting selections, it could come into play more or less often.
also none of these "here the fun ways i do crit fail" pitches account for how they explicitly fuck over melee and hardly touch spell casters
Meh.... there are a number of spells that use an attack bonus. Its not the same as a melee character, of course. But depending on one's casting selections, it could come into play more or less often.
If you were a wizard in a world where crit-fails happened, would you make a habit of casting spells it could happen to? It hardly takes a 20 int to notice that 1 in 20 firebolts backfires and injure the caster. It could easily be called bad RP for a wizard to cast anything requiring an attack roll.
DM introduces new system to make critical failures a bigger deal.
His boss monster rolls a crit failure on the first roll.
I hope it's made him reconsider the whole concept of crit fails. That shit is stupid as hell. Once you get extra attack, you suddenly become twice as likely every turn to accidentally stab yourself in the foot? 5% odds of going to tie your shoes but you end up tying yourself to the bedpost instead? Oops, your master thief was sneaking down an empty corridor, but you rolled a one, so now he's stepped in a saucepan that just appeared on the floor and tripped over a xylophone into that conveniently- placed wind chime.
Not my idea of a mechanic conducive to good roleplay, is what I'm trying to say.
Everybody always focuses on the critical failures, but nobody mentions the critical success.
I mean, you also have a 5% chance to be tying your shoes and have them sneeze out an adorable little kitten (or maybe a spectacularly affectionate fuzzy spider, if you're a Drow), but nobody complains about the realism of that scenario.
Or the 5% chance of sneaking down that empty corridor spectacularly well. What does that even mean? What does that look like? A sudden gust of wind blows out all the candles allowing you to sneak even better through the shadows? A glint of gold out of the corner of your eye catches your attention drawing you to an unanticipated cache of treasure?
Are there any provisions for crits on attacks that require saving throws as opposed to attack rolls?
Not 100% sure about 5E, but generally, like on attack rolls, on saving throws a 1 always fails and a 20 always succeeds regardless of modifiers.
In 5e, the only saving throw that can crit is a death saving throw. Other than that, there is no such thing, RAW, as a critical fail or success on a save.
Criticals in combat I chalk up to combat being a chaotic thing.
By RAW, it was the same in 3e, minus death saves. I think crit fails came from a different game, like Hackmaster, and crit success for anything besides attacks was too "balance out" the lameness of the fails.
My first real memorable moment was basically a test game. A friend came over and I was DM. He was in town watching a bard performance, afterwards he goes to talk to the bard. Two brutes interrupt their conversation trying to extort the bard. A fight breaks out and they kill one of the brutes, the other tries to run. My friend, a rogue, whips his bow out to shoot him. Before he can roll, I have the bard quip up.
"10g says you can't do it with your eyes closed."
My friend grins and laughs. He doesn't exactly want to do it, but it is totally something his character would do. So he agrees (basically a massive DC shot).
And rolls a 1.
There's a moment of silence before I describe him loosing the arrow....
Right in to the skull of the already dead guy on the ground in front of him.
Those kind of moments are why I enjoy DMing.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
We had our first triple 1 in our campaign last night. A super critical failure. The party was trying sneak up on a group of orcs with captives in bags. The penalty for the triple fail was negative proficiency on stealth checks.
We got some random treasure at the end of the adventure when we returned the captives home, and got a cape of elven kind. So she has that now to help balance out the negative proficiency.
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some characters roll more dice than others so if you make rolling lots of dice extra good or extra bad it can affect the play experience in a not fun way
It's one of those brainbugs that's left over from older editions where the players/GMs have been Stockholm Syndrome'd into thinking when they experienced it before it was actually fun for them.
It's not fun. Failing a roll is already bad enough in a binary pass/fail system like D&D. You don't have to add on some sort of additional negative effect that the player experiences, especially since, because there's no official guide on how bad a critfail should be, the consequences can be unbalanced, unfun, and unfair for a player.
Oh, you critfail? I guess you chop your own leg off! Oh, you drop your +3 Psychic Greatflail and it falls into the lava, never to be recovered! Oh, you fall asleep and are out of the rest of the encounter!
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If your GM makes you drop your +3 psychic greatflair into the lava... they are an asshole.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
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Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Oh, and our DM let us name an NPC guard that accompanied us. Greg Grapes III, who also has the nickname "Jimmy Bean".
Like, one of my players critmissed with his axe, and it landed in a table, and I told him he had to burn a bonus action to pry it out. Instead he wanted to use it as a handle to lift the table, and then rolled a nat20, so he clobbered three goblins with an improvised double-great club.
Fun times all around.
They can't, but you get 3 when you make your character so it's almost never a problem.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This was back in 4e so the only thing he got locked out of were rituals that had a musical requirement. It was mostly an opportunity for the player to roleplay that he'd totally meant to do that!
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Basically you overextended or the enemy got a particular good counter, or something along those lines is how I flavor it past low levels
At level 1 I'll straight up "you're holding the wrong end of the sword" but by level 7 or so the adventurer is a certified badass motherfucker so failures tend to be success on the part of the enemy's defense, or an external environmental factor, rather than the player's own incompetence
I often forget to do it and I have been mulling over just axing it but my players insist they like it
If they've played a lot of 3.X they look at me like I just gave them a Christmas present but didn't know it isn't Christmas and they just got away with something.
What's interesting is that even though I make clear that critical misses don't exist, my players often still narrate a 1 that misses naturally as though it was a critical miss. Which works for me I guess, we get the amusement of a fumble without the shitiness of an actual crit-fail rule.
my party's favorite nat 1 was when the bard player in my TOA game rolled a 1 on performance at a bathhouse performance and I described that she played so well that everyone went absolutely fucking crazy and tried to just rip off a clump of hair or clothing or anything they could and she had to get the fuck out of there, a screaming teenage fan being dragged along, clinging onto her tail briefly
ever since then she was accosted in Nyanzaru by adoring fans, she bought a private room at the bathhouse in the temple of Sune to just chill after killing the death tyrant and the Sunnite priests and priestesses wouldn't leave her alone, wanting autographs, the merchant princes fight for private performances
Hamboning will save your life some day!
I hope it's made him reconsider the whole concept of crit fails. That shit is stupid as hell. Once you get extra attack, you suddenly become twice as likely every turn to accidentally stab yourself in the foot? 5% odds of going to tie your shoes but you end up tying yourself to the bedpost instead? Oops, your master thief was sneaking down an empty corridor, but you rolled a one, so now he's stepped in a saucepan that just appeared on the floor and tripped over a xylophone into that conveniently- placed wind chime.
Not my idea of a mechanic conducive to good roleplay, is what I'm trying to say.
Another character was also training in that general area. My Firbolg Barbarian, who hasn't sleep for three days thanks to a Raksasha's cursed claws.
The arrow hits him.
Sadly, I succeeded on a Wisdom save at disadvantage and didn't fly into a murderous rage and instead handed the arrow back, suggesting that she stick with what she's good at.
I really wanted him to go berserk, but as he's generally chill AF, a Wisdom save seemed fair.
If you're going to use critical failures, roll again if you roll a 1. If you fail a second time, crit fail. Otherwise just a normal failure.
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If it’s a fun one shot, I’d pull out the Gygax style shooting yourself in the foot malarkey.
If the players are high fantasy Avengers, I’d call a natural 1 ‘your action is twisted against you’. Your fireball is too big, your charge takes out the goblin and lands you 10 feet further into the enemy line than you planned, and so on.
If you’re going for A Song of Ice and Fire, maybe just have it be a regular miss, but tell them this mistake will have lasting consequences, like you’re open to further damage, or offending the merchant prince that badly will mean something in days to come.
‘Be a fan of the characters’ is a rule I keep, and it can carry any system.
Your attack hits... their shield and now your sword (which you still are grasping) is stuck in it and the other guy is trying to get his shield off from your sword. Good luck on the new relationship!
You managed to play the lute - oddly. Now another bard keeps following you around demanding that you fork over the sheet music for the piece you just one-time-in-a-lifetime mangled, which you don't have and can't quite understand how to produce.
And so on.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Not 100% sure about 5E, but generally, like on attack rolls, on saving throws a 1 always fails and a 20 always succeeds regardless of modifiers.
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Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Especially when it's something you're specialized in, like a rogue with expertise in stealth and 20 Dex. Even a 1 on the die gives you an 11, but that means nothing to the fumble table.
Meh.... there are a number of spells that use an attack bonus. Its not the same as a melee character, of course. But depending on one's casting selections, it could come into play more or less often.
If you were a wizard in a world where crit-fails happened, would you make a habit of casting spells it could happen to? It hardly takes a 20 int to notice that 1 in 20 firebolts backfires and injure the caster. It could easily be called bad RP for a wizard to cast anything requiring an attack roll.
Everybody always focuses on the critical failures, but nobody mentions the critical success.
I mean, you also have a 5% chance to be tying your shoes and have them sneeze out an adorable little kitten (or maybe a spectacularly affectionate fuzzy spider, if you're a Drow), but nobody complains about the realism of that scenario.
Or the 5% chance of sneaking down that empty corridor spectacularly well. What does that even mean? What does that look like? A sudden gust of wind blows out all the candles allowing you to sneak even better through the shadows? A glint of gold out of the corner of your eye catches your attention drawing you to an unanticipated cache of treasure?
In 5e, the only saving throw that can crit is a death saving throw. Other than that, there is no such thing, RAW, as a critical fail or success on a save.
Criticals in combat I chalk up to combat being a chaotic thing.
"10g says you can't do it with your eyes closed."
My friend grins and laughs. He doesn't exactly want to do it, but it is totally something his character would do. So he agrees (basically a massive DC shot).
And rolls a 1.
There's a moment of silence before I describe him loosing the arrow....
Right in to the skull of the already dead guy on the ground in front of him.
Those kind of moments are why I enjoy DMing.
We got some random treasure at the end of the adventure when we returned the captives home, and got a cape of elven kind. So she has that now to help balance out the negative proficiency.
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