3E/4E Critical Hit Fail

[Parthenon]

What are people's opinions on the reverse critical? You know, where if you roll a 1 on your saving throw your equipment takes damage.

I don't think its ever come up with my groups. But, it seems to be even worse than criticals. With criticals you take more damage which can make combat more swingy. But with reverse criticals you also lose your equipment.

[cthulhu]

I really hate it. Giving a special bennie for rolling a 20 adds some extra excitement, but punishing people for a 1 is just depressing.

[Roy]

Critical fumble rules of any form are made of Cataclysmic Fail, which juggles flamboyant homosexual cocks which in turn juggle 'It's Raining Men' records.

[cthulhu]

I guess if the design goal is to 'be a hero' fumbles just make you look like a retard.

Actually thinking about it - I like critical fumbles in paranoia - but that is because critical fumbles just add to the slapstick comedy effect.

So yeah.. in a heroic fantasy game they blow, but it works in some games.

[Roy]

I guess if the design goal is to 'be a hero' fumbles just make you look like a retard.

Actually thinking about it - I like critical fumbles in paranoia - but that is because critical fumbles just add to the slapstick comedy effect.

So yeah.. in a heroic fantasy game they blow, but it works in some games.

Well, if the whole point of the game is to fuck up in stupidly hilarious ways, then yes rules that help that to happen more help out. That's a given. Of course even then, there's more than enough things out there that will kill you that you don't need to commit suicide to get a funny death.

However, the very concept of fumble rules taints gaming as a whole, so it should still die in a fire while dancing the Macarena.

[Caedrus]

The usual critical fumble variants for D&D do any or all of the following:

1) They make your characters look completely retarded.
2) It makes people who supposedly have greater martial prowess fail horribly more often because more attacks means more fumbles.
3) It punishes options like TWF more.

I can't really see any design goals that are helped by this other than turning your game into a slapstick comedy.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Crits and fumbles exist because many people have an emotional response when a really big or small number shows up on the RNG. Often there is a collective cheer or groan from the group. That response comes with an expectation that something out of the ordinary is going to happen, and fulfilling that expectation is emotionally satisfying.

Now, I think a certain amount of this is the product of die-fetishizing behavior that comes out of the random-pigeon-punishment of the Gygaxian style. But not all of it is, since I've seen it in people who've only been introduced to gaming later in life, and then in very non-Gygaxian style games.

The d20 curve is really short. If you have something happen every on every 1 and every 20, that's 10% of rolls that something out of the ordinary is going to happen on, and that's going to wind up being pretty ordinary. Now, there are pulp styles where that might actually work - but it means committing to a fundamentally less predictable game.

Now, unpredictability in baseline D&D is of course undesirable, because sooner or later your heroes are going to die to a bunch of scrubs in a filler encounter in a highly anticlimactic way. That may well happen anyway, but there's no reason to push the probability for that any higher than it needs to go. So if you wanted to make 1s and 20s special like that, you might do well to also use some kind of 'Heroic Survivability' mechanic.

[TOZ]

I'm trying to lessen the occurance of crits and fumbles in my games. I'm going with double 20s/1s as threats, and a third roll to confirm. I figure that should make them more of the rare, special things they should be to me.

[Username17]

The original D&D had large numbers of player characters with a very short chargen and a very short life expectancy. Having people explode in memorable ways in a random and terrifying fashion was the entire fucking point. And within that context, critical his and even fumbles were a good thing. With the gradual shift to the 1 hour character generation of 3e and the expectation of same level adventuring parties, they should have been phased out.

But to say that crits can't work "in D&D" is silly. They were created "for D&D" and they took off because the play style at the time benefited from their inclusion.

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

Maybe you could tell us what is good about critical hit mechanics rather than what is bad about pun pun.

Just a thought.

Or you could go back to pun pun wanking, I mean it's good enough for your blood feud WOTC fan boy enemies, it must be good enough for you...

Amazingly, PL, conversations can shift topics. However, given your proclivity for screaming bloody murder at the slightest deviation from your own opinions and internal rules of reality, I can imagine that your conversations with other human beings are mercifully short, and thus you wouldn't have had the opportunity to interact with them enough to comprehend the unwritten guidelines of socializing.

TL;DR: Lawl assburgers.

[PhoneLobster]

So just trolling again then I suppose. Unsurprising...

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

The randomness is good, to an extent. However, you also can't let it kill players.

Everyone appears to be having difficulty grasping PLs idea (self included?), but my interpretation was:
You rolled a 20 - activated a [daily] power on one enemy now.

Yes, yes you can let it kill players. It's okay to have players die to crits.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The randomness is good, to an extent. However, you also can't let it kill players.

Everyone appears to be having difficulty grasping PLs idea (self included?), but my interpretation was:
You rolled a 20 - activated a [daily] power on one enemy now.

Yes, yes you can let it kill players. It's okay to have players die to crits.

Players can't die to anything except the slow, deterministic accumulation a damage that slowly overwhelms their ability to offset it with healing surges. Anything else is wrongbadfun.

[Amra]

I *hate* critical fumbles; they are dumb, dumb, dumb and should have no place in anybody's game. When was the last time you saw somebody trained in the handling and use of a weapon drop the damn thing unless they were forcibly disarmed? Or even have it break on them? In twelve years of mediaeval re-enactment, I've seen exactly one weapon break in normal use, and we're talking about events with a thousand people on the field beating the living crap out of each other's weapons, armour, shields...[1]

Just about the only time I've been comfortable with critical fumbles is a rule used by a DM I played with in 2E; if you roll a 1, roll again, and if the second result is also a 1 you get a Really Dumb Thing happen, whilst if you get a 20 you can treat your first 1 as an 11. The reason I was confortable with it was that there was only a 1 in 400 chance of something truly shitty happening; it increased the tension for the players because something could go badly wrong, whilst at the same time ensuring that the vast majority of the time it wouldn't.

But a 1 in 20 chance of a supposedly heroic character making a mistake so bad that he accidentally smacks himself in the back of the head with a flail? That blows goats. As Frank said, it did sort of add to the overall set-light-to-your-character-sheet-every-other-session ambience of earlier editions, but has no place in 3.x


[1] Yes, I know re-enactment weapons have blunted edges and are thus less prone to critical existence failure, but even so I can't see real weapons breaking on every 20th blow!

[Roy]

The randomness is good, to an extent. However, you also can't let it kill players.

Everyone appears to be having difficulty grasping PLs idea (self included?), but my interpretation was:
You rolled a 20 - activated a [daily] power on one enemy now.

Yes, yes you can let it kill players. It's okay to have players die to crits.

Players can't die to anything except the slow, deterministic accumulation a damage that slowly overwhelms their ability to offset it with healing surges. Anything else is wrongbadfun.

So they have a sandpaper fetish?

[Parthenon]

I'm now actually curious as to whether anyone uses the rules in the PHB about natural 1s on saves against spells.

Has anyone actually had their character lose a weapon or armour or whatever to a 1 against a cone of cold or whatever?

[TarkisFlux]

Not since 2E. Played with a DM who had a thing for destroying as much player equipment as possible, but couldn't be assed to go through the motions when it happened to his side. It was... frustrating, yeah that's a good word... and I didn't stay in his games for long.

[Psychic Robot]

I'm now actually curious as to whether anyone uses the rules in the PHB about natural 1s on saves against spells.

I should fucking hope not. Those are terrible rules. Not only are they an absolute nightmare in terms of bookkeeping, but they fuck the players like sundering does.

As far as crits go:

My current group uses the Paizo crit hit/fumble cards, and we really like them. We've only had a few fumbles (since you have to confirm), and they haven't caused us to lose combat. Also, there's a limit on crit fumbles of one per encounter, which is nice.

[Caedrus]

I'm now actually curious as to whether anyone uses the rules in the PHB about natural 1s on saves against spells.

I should fucking hope not. Those are terrible rules. Not only are they an absolute nightmare in terms of bookkeeping, but they fuck the players like sundering does.

As far as crits go:

My current group uses the Paizo crit hit/fumble cards, and we really like them. We've only had a few fumbles (since you have to confirm), and they haven't caused us to lose combat. Also, there's a limit on crit fumbles of one per encounter, which is nice.

Do you have a link to these resources? And if they're not available online, can you summarize how they work?

[Psychic Robot]

They're not online. In short, weapons lose their crit multipliers. Instead, you draw cards equal to the weapon's crit multipliler minus one (so a x3 crit draws two cards). You select the effect of the crit based on the weapon damage type ("magic" is a type for touch spells). It ranges from stat damage to status effects to miscellaneous penalties. Most of the cards give you double damage, too.

To get a critical fumble, you have to roll a 1, and then you have to make a confirmation roll against your target's AC. If your attack misses, the crit fumble is confirmed, and you draw a card. You suffer the penalties listed on the card based on type of attack (rather than damage type). Sometimes, the fumbles end up helping you while hindering you (such as "your attack hits, but you fall prone").

They're pretty fun to use.

[CatharzGodfoot]

They're pretty fun to use.

Sounds like it. So occasionally Paizo does something cool that retains backwards compatibility with 3e. Who would have thought?

How balanced are they?

[Crissa]

...I know this guy who has shot his waterbed... And he's supposedly trained...

...And it's happened more than once...

-Crissa

[Roy]

I'm now actually curious as to whether anyone uses the rules in the PHB about natural 1s on saves against spells.

Has anyone actually had their character lose a weapon or armour or whatever to a 1 against a cone of cold or whatever?

As far as I'm concerned, anything Sundertard related doesn't exist. Improved Break Own Stuff doesn't exist (and if you need it for Cha to saves or some bullshit, you can just ignore that feat requirement). Game Disjunction doesn't exist. The natural 1 = damage item rule doesn't exist. I have made my Will save you see. Also, blasting sucks enough as is without having it break your own stuff.

On the other end, assuming the NPCs aren't dumbfucks they're genre savvy meaning they don't break their own stuff either, because they know how bad they're fucked without gear upgrades. If they are dumbfucks, then they're too busy eating the guy with the sword to do anything about the sword itself.

If a player actually mentioned wanting to do that, I'd break down why it is a terrible idea and recommend they reconsider. As most of them are only considering it because they didn't realize they're screwing themselves far more than the enemy, this is easily enough to dissuade them from Fail. If they insist on attempting to break their own stuff, I allow them to be willfully ignorant and let things happen as they will. I'd expect the other players to jump in and correct the issue of their own accord either right then, or right after he breaks his first item. And this is without them even knowing how valuable it was. Though, if the Sundertard were really bothering me I'd calmly state some narrative about the extreme value of the item... and then grimace as I describe how it's been ruined by the Sundertard. Perhaps even state its exact name and value OOC. If this doesn't get the other players to say something to the effect of 'That's coming out of your share!' IC and/or OOC then they can just deal with their self gimping liability.

After all, if they ignore my warning and walk right into the Trap anyways, there is no saving throw for stupidity.

As for the Paizo cards... since when do they make anything that isn't Fail? Even the decent products, relatively speaking are filled with DNS failures. And I am not talking about the Internet.

This is mostly because they don't know what constitutes a well made encounter, so there's some group where the enemies have like 35 HP and single digit saves at high teens levels... but auto hit for 60-150 each, no save or nothing. And there's 10 of them. Given that the only things that would save you from LULZ SIX MAGIC MISSILES A ROUND EACH is the self only Shield spell and similar (and you'd have to know you need it) and the useless 99.9% of the time Brooch of Shielding (see above), it only takes 2 to kill any character at the level, and there's 10 of them... all it takes is a surprise round for 100% TPK. Or just them going first...

[Orion]

Roy, if you were the DM couldn't you just give out more treasure to replace what gets broken? That seems an easier and more amicable way to deal with a sundering PCs.

As for the NPCs, they tend to be fighting for their lives, not fighting to advance in power. Plus is there's no Magic Walmart then they aren' t necessarily losing power by breaking stuff they won't use. So I don't see how breaking shit is out of character for NPCs.

It tends to be a dick move for a DM though for metagame reasons, unless he explains ahead of time that shit will be broken and sets up the economy and treasure to allow for that.

[Psychic Robot]

How balanced are they?

I haven't gone through and analyzed them, but they haven't destroyed combat balance.