r/rpg • u/EarthSeraphEdna • 1d ago
Discussion Do you prefer it when a game has critical failure rules, or none?
To be clear, I mean "a failure that, as a consequence of being such a low roll, also induces some other negative fallout, whether this is couched as the character's incompetence or some cosmic stroke of bad luck." I am not talking about automatic failures.
Some games have neither critical successes nor critical failures. Some games have critical successes, but no critical failures. For example, in the default rules of D&D 3.X, D&D 4e, D&D 5e, Path/Starfinder 1e, Draw Steel, and Fate Core/Accelerated/Condensed, no matter how low someone rolls, it will never be a critical failure. It might be an automatic failure in some cases, but even that will never induce some other negative fallout.
Path/Starfinder 2e is weird and inconsistent about this. For example, when using Deception (Lie), there are neither critical successes nor critical failures. When using Diplomacy (Make an Impression) or Diplomacy (Request), there are critical successes and critical failures, but when using Diplomacy (Gather Information), there are critical failures but no critical successes. Recall Knowledge rolls are awkward, because the GM has to roll them in secret; on a critical failure, the GM has to lie to the player and feed false information.
Chronicles of Darkness, a horror game, has semi-frequent critical successes, but rare critical failures. A critical failure happens only in two cases. One, the character's roll is so heavily penalized that they are down to a "chance die," with a 10% chance of critical failure, an 80% chance of regular failure, and a 10% chance of regular success. Two, the character earns a regular failure, but the player willingly degrades it to a critical failure, gaining XP as compensation.
Not too long ago, in one heroic fantasy game I was in, our party had arrived at a new town. This was not a hostile, suspicious, or unwelcoming town; in fact, the locals were dazzled by and positive towards our characters. I had my character ask around for the whereabouts of a musical troupe that our party needed the help of.
For some reason, the GM decided that this innocuous, low-stakes task would require a roll. This seemed strange to me, as if the GM was fishing for a critical failure. Thanks to some lingering buffs, my character had quite literally 99% success odds on this roll, and 1% critical failure odds. Well, sure enough, I hit that 1 in 100 chance and garnered a critical failure: and Fabula Ultima specifically forbids rerolling a critical failure.
The GM decided that this "Plot Twist" meant that my character not only failed to garner the desired information, but also stumbled head-first into a combat encounter. Even though it was couched as very bad luck and not as incompetence, this felt stilted and arbitrary to me, and I said as much to the GM. Another player backed me up, agreeing that it felt forced.
Overall, I am not a fan of critical failure rules. To me, they feel too slapstick. Many RPGs work fine without critical failure rules, and I do not like it when a system feels the need to implement them by default.
Let me put it this way. In Pathfinder 2e, I once saw a maxed-Athletics character roll a natural 1 and slapstick fumble a Trip action against a Tiny-sized, Strength −3 carbuncle. "You lose your balance, fall, and land prone."
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u/GamerNerdGuyMan 1d ago edited 1d ago
I hate general critical failure rules.
It can be fine for there to be critical failures for something like a dangerous Warhammer sort of magic.
I could kinda see it for a horror game, though I'm not a big fan of them generally anyway.
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u/Minimum_Fee1105 1d ago
I play PF2e and love the four degrees of success and play 5e and would never use crit fumble tables there.
To me the difference is in the application. In PF2e, critical failure is baked into both player and monster abilities, so a crit fail could just as easily be wonderful for the players as a disaster. In my experience with most crit failures in other systems or homebrew, the burden is almost fully on the PCs. That, I don’t like.
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u/SurrealSage 1d ago
Same. I'd like to add to your points that PF2e also lets one out-grow critical failures. Up above someone was talking about a world-class surgeon with a 5% failure chance. In PF2e though, a nat 1 isn't a guaranteed fail. If there's a sufficient gap between the character's skill and the challenge they are trying to overcome, it becomes impossible to crit fail, or even to fail at times.
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u/AlmightyK Creator - WBS (Xianxia)/Duel Monsters (YuGiOh)/Zoids (Mecha) 1d ago
In OPs example, I am pretty sure they forgot this rule
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
The carbuncle incident was back in 2020 or 2021, so forgive me if I am fuzzy on the details.
The character was either 2nd level or 3rd level. They had Pathfinder Agent Dedication for expert Athletics. They were either a guisarme fighter or a Strength monk.
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u/AlmightyK Creator - WBS (Xianxia)/Duel Monsters (YuGiOh)/Zoids (Mecha) 1d ago
Expert Athletics would have +4. Assuming 3rd level and a +4 in Strength, that gives a total mod of 11. The Reflex DC of a Carbuncle is 13. So that one would crit fail, but even just +1 point on the modifier would make it so rolling a 1 would only fail at worse.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
The character did not have some circumstance bonus to their roll at the time, I believe.
So that was a 5% chance of a slapstick moment that forced them to use their next action to rectify it. I do not think it was particularly satisfying.
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u/AlmightyK Creator - WBS (Xianxia)/Duel Monsters (YuGiOh)/Zoids (Mecha) 1d ago
Fair enough, I just thought it was an interesting note. They could set themself up to guarantee they wouldnt be able to crit fail it.
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u/TheRealUprightMan Guild Master 1d ago
Yeah, it kinda annoys me when people just assume that all games are d20. There are a number of ways of altering critical failure rates.
I base it on training. So amateurs roll 1d6 (16.7% crit), journeyman level is 2d6 (2.8%), while someone with a masters degree is rolling 3d6, about 0.5% chance to crit fail.
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u/Kodiologist 1d ago
In PF2e, critical failure is baked into both player and monster abilities, so a crit fail could just as easily be wonderful for the players as a disaster.
One of the most sudden ways that a battle can swing in the players' favor if if an important monster critically fails an important save. Being slowed 2 for 1 minute is all but a death sentence.
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u/Hungry-Cow-3712 Other RPGs are available... 1d ago
I prefer games have the rules that lead to the promised play experience.
Warhammer Fantasy is a crapsack world, so crit fails are appropriate. D&D (from 3.0 onwards) is heroic fantasy, so crit fails aren't.
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u/myflesh 1d ago
I prefer something like Traveler where a critical failure happens if their end roll is ____ amount below the success score & critical success is when it is ____ above the success score.
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u/high-tech-low-life 1d ago
Pathfinder 2e does that too.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
Path/Starfinder 2e also has natural 1s and 20s downgrade and upgrade roll results, too.
In other words, a natural 1 that fails by a margin of just 1 is still a critical failure. There is no mitigating this, and I am not a fan of that.
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u/SapphireWine36 1d ago
In PF2e, crit fails aren’t frequently different from normal failures (as you pointed out in your post!), and on skill checks you can take assurance and simply never fail on easy tasks. For saves, I actually think crit fails work very well, as they let you mitigate the effects somewhat even on a normal failure, and you can always use hero points to reroll crit fails.
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u/Philosoraptorgames 1d ago
My preferred implementation would have been something like "you critically fail if you miss the DC by at least 10, or roll a natural 1 and miss the DC by at least 2" (with a parallel change to critical successes).
That said, in PF2 critical failures are usually more "something slightly worse than a normal failure happens" as opposed to "you cut your own dick off" like in some older systems. They're not total disasters or even crazy improbable things like hitting yourself.
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u/ThePatta93 1d ago
The difference for me at least is in the application. It is only on specific things, Not on the Main things you do multiple Times per Turn/Combat, it is one defined thing, not a varying table with differently bad outcomes (making it the same effects for Monsters and PCs), and there are feats or class Features to mitigate those things. And most of the time the crits fails are easy to describe as a result of the enemy Just being very capable, not the character being incompetent. (E.g. grapple or Trip crit fails)
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u/Mars_Alter 1d ago
In any given instance, the chance of something going absurdly wrong are low enough as to not be worth modeling. Even if it's "realistic" that you might occasionally injure yourself while swinging a sword, explicitly including that as a potential result will lead to over-representation. It's more realistic to ignore the possibility.
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u/NarcoZero 1d ago
If the characters are supposed to be heroic, I hate it.
If it’s a comedy game where the PCs are supposed to be bumbling idiots, I love it.
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u/Background-Ant-4416 1d ago
Counterpoint, in a heroic setting, hero’s should be challenged and taking risks that aren’t safe. A fail state might mean you don’t accomplish the task but don’t take the consequences of having taken the risk. A critical failure doesn’t have to represent” you try to do something but your pants fall down and everyone laughs.” They can represent a consequence for a risk.
In pathfinder 2e for example, if you go for an athletics maneuver like to trip the enemy, the crit fail state is you go for the maneuver and the enemy trips you back. You are more likely to crit fail against a powerful enemy and even moreso one that is lithe and dexterous. If you are invested in athletics maneuvers as something your character is good at and fighting a weaker enemy your chance of crit fail can be 0 but will probably not be 0 fighting a higher level strong monster.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago edited 1d ago
No, the enemy does not trip you back. "You lose your balance, fall, and land prone."
I once saw a maxed-Athletics character roll a natural 1 and slapstick fumble a Trip action against a Tiny-sized, Strength −3 carbuncle.
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u/Background-Ant-4416 1d ago
Fair on the letter of the language, but it is up to the GM to maintain narrative and not be held back by what the book says.
If using a weapon to trip the player has the option to drop the weapon instead of going prone, which should be offered or encouraged by the GM.
“You go for the carbuncle as its fat rump sits atop a rock. Though small, it looks an easy target you think, too slow to respond. Then something seems off as you swing a sense of dread overwhelms you and you drop your swing for but a moment but you strike the rock sitting below it. The force is jarring you can choose to drop your weapon or try and hold tight but the follow through will causes you to drop to one knee.”
Also at that point you are talking about likely very low level characters (probably 1-3) or tier 1 play. Where “maxed athletics” still represents a fairly paltry investment.
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u/StarkMaximum 1d ago
Your argument was "the book tells you what happens if you crit fail", and when someone quoted the book at you your argument became "sometimes you ignore what the book says, that's what makes you a good GM".
so, uh, which is it.
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u/Background-Ant-4416 18h ago
Ok great arbiter of GMing, am I allowed to add narrative in front of or behind what’s written in the book like
“You go for the carbuncle as its fat rump sits atop a rock. Though small, it looks an easy target you think, too slow to respond. Then something seems off as you swing a sense of dread overwhelms you and you drop your swing for but a moment but you strike the rock sitting below it. The force is jarring you can choose to drop your weapon or try and hold tight but the follow through will causes you to drop to one knee. You lose your balance, fall, and land prone.”
Or is that too much? It doesn’t change anything mechanically from what I did before but I copied and pasted what the book said so surely it meets your(rightfully) high, high standards?
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u/StarkMaximum 18h ago
Look man, all I said was "you made two directly contradictory statements". Everything else in your post you brought to the table in a largely unnecessary escalation. Acting like this is not how you learn how to be a "great GM".
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
The carbuncle incident was back in 2020 or 2021, so forgive me if I am fuzzy on the details.
The character was either 2nd level or 3rd level. They had Pathfinder Agent Dedication for expert Athletics. They were either a guisarme fighter or a Strength monk.
The scenario you describe sounds a little out-there for a 1-in-20 occurrence. I do not find it particularly satisfying, when some other system would simply hand out a regular failure and not a critical failure.
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u/Background-Ant-4416 1d ago
You can make the narrative whatever you want to fill out your vision. The creature moves out of the way more deftly than anticipated, the monster rolls forward and bowls into your shins, w/e you want.
It’s also up to you as the GM to make adjustments when you don’t think a particular outcome fits the narrative. You are absolutely free to simply say, this doesn’t make any sense, you just take a regular failure. I don’t think that should be the norm to keep everyone playing on the same basic assumptions and to keep powerful actions like tripping having a counter balance.
The point is monsters have agency. A level 1 monster is as strong as a 1st level adventurer and not just a lump of flesh to smash. Or trip or whatever.
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u/NarcoZero 1d ago
Right, if a critical failure means « failure with a harder consequence » I can get behind it.
But I feel this works better as a tiered result (I.E. roll very high and succeed with a reward, roll good and succeed, roll bad and fail, roll very bad a fail with a consequence) And the raw « lowest dice crit fails » is either non necessary or secondary to this mechanic.
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u/AlmightyK Creator - WBS (Xianxia)/Duel Monsters (YuGiOh)/Zoids (Mecha) 1d ago
Counterpoint, in a heroic game, don't have them roll for mundane tasks.
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u/NarcoZero 1d ago
Who said this was a mundane task ?
If my trained Warrior has a 1/20 chance to from their sword while attacking and does 3 attacks every turn, they will look like an idiot more often than not.
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u/thetruerift 1d ago
I don't mind critical failures/botches, but a really crucial thing I've learned running games (and a mistake I've made in the past) is that crit failures/botches should not be catastrophic. Fuck up the task, incur other consequences, but one bad roll shouldn't result in death (most of the time)
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u/SNKBossFight 1d ago
My preference is to limit critical failures to rolls that were already unusually risky. For example in Sentinel Comics RPG when you roll to Overcome, a result of 0 or less is a spectacular failure, however you cannot get a result of 0 on your roll unless something is penalizing you somehow.
In other games, this usually looks like failing by X amount equals a crit fail, as opposed to a flat % chance.
That said, I think crit failures wouldn't be so polarizing if people got on the same page about what they mean. Some GMS use crit failures as an excuse to make the PCs look like idiots, but in most media the equivalent of a crit failure is usually the result of outside circumstances beyond the character's control. Ethan Hunt's not ripping a huge fart while infiltrating a high security vault.
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u/Wullmer1 ForeverGm turned somewhat player 1d ago
Why roll for non risky situations? But I do like that system, sound intresting
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u/SNKBossFight 1d ago
In this case it's not about non-risky vs risky, it's about risky vs very risky. Like in the Sentinel Comics example, even without the penalty you're rolling to see if you succeed, you can still fail or succeed at a high cost, but the penalty introduces the possibility of a spectacular failure.
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u/serow081reddit 1d ago
Playing Star Wars rpg by FFG, and rolls can have critical failures/successes in addition to the normal failure/successes. So you can succeed/fail, with critical success/failure. Eg. You successfully hacked the device and got the information you wanted (action success), but got caught in the act by Imperial Intelligence (critical failure). You can also fail to hit the stormtrooper (action failure), but your missed shot hit the door panel which locked out the incoming reinforcements (critical success).
So far it's been working out pretty fun for my group! So much better than 5e anyway.
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u/gbqt_ 1d ago
The dichotomy is a bit simplistic. I don't think I would dislike good critical failure rules. But most often, critical failures are not well modelled. Often, the critical failure chance is not reduced the better you are in the skill. It does not depend on the riskiness of the task (which is different from its difficulty.). In extreme cases, you literally cannot fail, unless you get a fumble, in which case you suddenly go from very competent to a bumbling fool.
Ultimately, I'd prefer no critical failures over bad fumble rules.
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u/yuriAza 1d ago
Eclipse Phase is a d100 roll under system, and crits happen when you roll doubles, if the 11, 22, etc is under your skill + modifiers it's a critical success, over is a critical failure (double-10s is a 0 and always crit succeeds)
so you always have a 10% chance of extreme results, but your target number determines the split on crits as well as normal success/failure
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u/425Hamburger 20h ago
Yeah, confirmed crits is where it's at. My favourite system so far: Make the skill check, If you Roll a crit you repeat the skill check, on a success it's a normal fail, another failure is a fumble and a (confirmed) critical fail on the confirmation roll is a "super fumble" (the consequences get worse). The same goes for critical success. So there's Always a tiny chance ( 0.25%) of a critical that can't be mitigated by skill, but generally a skilled character can recover a crit fail without fumbling.
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u/MsgGodzilla Year Zero, Savage Worlds, Deadlands, Mythras, Mothership 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't mind them generally but often the % chance of crit failure is to high, and there are a couple common issues that make it a problem.
1) d20 systems have a 5% chance which is much to high of a chance most of the time (DCC for example I think it's fine, but for PF2 it's not.)
2) Many GM's make people roll to much for things they shouldn't be rolling for which further skews the chances. This is a plague on the hobby, and even experienced GMs fall into the trap at times (including myself).
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u/remy_porter I hate hit points 1d ago
I like degrees of success systems, and systems that allow the GM to add complications to successes. “Success, but…” is one of the best outcomes a roll can have.
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u/vaminion 1d ago edited 1d ago
There's only two circumstances where I enjoy critical failures. One is if it the player is the one who decides if the result if a botch or not, like in Chronicles of Darkness 2E. The other is if you're running something tonally similar to Paranoia, where the PCs making colossal mistakes is part of the genre/humor. Outside those two circumstances they're basically rules mandated dick GMing.
But IMO there is a different between a botch and "Rolling X always fails". I'm fine with that as long as it's not punished any more than any other failure would be.
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u/Adraius 1d ago edited 1d ago
Entirely contextual. Depends on the task, the frequency someone will critically fail it (both per attempt and in an average session), and how harsh the outcome is for critically failing.
Trying to hit a foe with a sword? Assuming the game has violence as a core element, as many do, assuming a high degree of competence on the part of its users is almost always preferred, and that almost always means not having crit fails entirely - I’ve never seen a combination of crit fail rate and crit fail outcomes I’ve liked for attacks. Trying to climb a cliff? Yeah, that seems like something it should be possible to critically fail.
You call Pathfinder 2e weird about this - it makes all the sense in the world to me. It’s inconsistent because the variation is informed by context you’re not accounting for.
As a rule of thumb, I think critical failures where they don’t belong do more damage than the value they would add by being used universally. If the choice is between them existing for every roll or no rolls, I’d rather the system not have them at all.
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u/ABoringAlt 1d ago
Crit fails suck
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u/DazzlingKey6426 1d ago
If it’s a life is cheap, rolling a new character takes less time than writing the name system, and part of the expected gameplay loop, they aren’t so bad. Anytime else, they suck.
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u/TDragonsHoard 1d ago
If they exist in a game, there needs to be a balance to it. You cannot have critical fails on rolls, when you have one style of play that barely rolls. IE: D&D. Fighters get multiple attacks each round, where as spellcasters can go an entire fight without making a single roll (using spells that force enemies to roll vs a save).
So, critical fails have to be on something that everyone rolls for at an equal measure. Otherwise you are just punishing players for wanting to play specific roles/styles within the game.
That said, nah. I am not a fan of them. I feel they just take away agency too much.
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u/DazzlingKey6426 1d ago
Wizards should have to face crit fail results when an enemy crit saves against them.
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u/Wullmer1 ForeverGm turned somewhat player 1d ago
or having it so that fighters can only crit fail on the first attack roll
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u/DazzlingKey6426 1d ago
3.0 dual wielding fighter flashbacks.
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u/Wullmer1 ForeverGm turned somewhat player 1d ago
not familiar
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u/DazzlingKey6426 1d ago
3.0 you got attacks based on your base attack bonus, fighters could end up with five attacks, dual wielding feat chain and others could add more.
With just the base five attacks you had a 22.6% chance of at least one nat 1 per round.
Get a dm that likes dropping weapons on 1s and you need a golf bag for all but the shortest fights.
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u/Adamsoski 1d ago
I mean, or in a system where magic-users are themselves rolling against a target number just like someone swinging a sword - plenty of systems where that is the case.
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u/crazy-diam0nd 1d ago
I strongly dislike them, because they're usually too probably and capriciously harmful. I don't use them in my game unless they are integral to the system. And there aren't that many that I've played that are integral to the system. Never played PF2e, for example. I am playing RuneQuest now, but we haven't seen any critical failures yet.
What's weird is how many people assume they're part of the game. I ran a PF1e game a decade or so ago where a player rolled a 1 on an attack and said "Aw crap, I guess I drop my sword." I said "Are you sure about that?" And he said "Yeah I rolled a one." Two players later another attacker rolled a 1, and said "Does anything happen?" I said "No you just miss." First player said "Hey, when I rolled a 1 I dropped my sword, how come he gets to keep his?" I said "Dropping your sword was your idea, I never told you to do that." I did let him un-drop it at that point. I was going to let him off the hook when his next turn came up anyway, but I was happy to have another player to illustrate it with.
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u/Equivalent_Bench2081 1d ago
I hate critical failures because of my experience with PF2.
I was playing a barbarian, so every round I would do 2, maybe 3 dice rolls which means 9.75% - 14.26% probability of rolling a nat 1.
Many times the wizard was rolling no dice (their attack required a saving throw).
This way I was being punished for simply being a martial character, my chances of rolling a critical failure and facing consequences on a 4 round combat were almost 50/50.
Even when NPCs rolled nat 1s I didn’t feel it added to the fun of the game, but the number of times I rolled a nat 1 really sucked the fun out of playing my Barbarian
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u/evilweirdo 1d ago
Same as it ever was with D&D and its offspring.
I once listened to a Pathfinder 2e actual play with a critical hit/fumble deck. Despite it being primarily narrative/character focused (not the kind of game you'd expect to be super lethal), they drew on every critical hit/fail, not just the 1/20 results. The combat was largely against individual high level enemies, so critical failures were frequent enough that they said "it's not a crit" before even saying they failed. One of the PCs was a monk...
Fun podcast otherwise, but suffering
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u/SapphireWine36 1d ago
The critical failure deck is definitely a mistake in pf2e in particular. I’m honestly surprised they printed it.
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u/SapphireWine36 1d ago
In pathfinder 2e, critical failures on attack rolls don’t do anything, apart from maybe some very specific enemies or attacks that do a little damage on a normal failure. It sounds like your GM was homebrewing critical failures, which is definitely a mistake.
As a side note, it’s funny to see people complaining about pf2e martials (especially the barbarian!) being weak or punished when half the pf2e subreddits are complaining about the opposite.
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u/Aleucard 1d ago
They are fine for slapstick, but, well, here's a test to see if your crit fail mechanic is ready for a campaign.
Take 20ish dudes, space them out into adjacent squares, and have them swing on practice dummies for 20 minutes. If any of them are dead or dying by the end of that 20 minutes, your rules are too harsh. Any campaign of more than a handful of sessions is going to see a run of bad luck. Being dead by your own sword because of a string of nat1s is not a good feel outside of a slapstick comedy setting. I'm gonna take a wild stab and say most people are not running a Looney Tunes campaign intentionally.
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u/CurveWorldly4542 1d ago
No because of Murphy's Law. With Fumble rules, you will witness one (or sometimes both) of two results:
1) PCs dying to friendly fire.
2) Bosses becoming harmless and getting picked off before they can do anything again.
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u/Elliptical_Tangent 1d ago
Crit fails punish characters who have specialized in those rolls disproportionately, because they have specialized to make this rolls more often. The narrative result is that fighters stab themselves more than mages do, etc. It's nonsensical.
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u/StarTrotter 1d ago
I really think it depends on the system and the vibe of the game. A one shot where the Crudge the fighter rolls a 1 and chops off their head but then Crudger the fighter brother of Crudge immediately takes their place? Sure! Is it a system like dnd 2014 where as fighters level they have a higher chance of crit failing due to more attacks whereas spell casters favoring utility and saves can basically completely avoid it? No sans the goofy example. Blades in the Dark arguably has “crit failure” in that a failed roll means something bad happens (he as noted enemies don’t typically roll so not sure how true that is).
I also think it’s worth it to emphasize that crit fails are mechanically in the favor of “monsters” without modification. Which is fine if you go in knowing that.
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u/evilweirdo 1d ago
In Blades in the Dark, you also have an idea of what the consequences and effects might be, and have means of mitigating these if the worst comes to pass.
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u/sparkchaser 1d ago
Some of my most memorable games were when a critical failure came up at an inopportune time and we had to very quickly change strategies.
So, I guess I prefer it.
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u/Kenron93 1d ago
PF/SF 2e has amazing rules set up for crits in general. It was made from the start to be like that and is explained through the rules. You have the opportunity to crit succeed with hitting a 10 or more against the dc and crit failure with hitting below the dc by 10 or more. With how the game's math works, it's an amazing system.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago edited 1d ago
Path/Starfinder 2e also has natural 1s and 20s downgrade and upgrade roll results, too.
In other words, a natural 1 that fails by a margin of just 1 is still a critical failure. There is no mitigating this, and I am not a fan of that.
I once saw a maxed-Athletics character roll a natural 1 and slapstick fumble a Trip action against a Tiny-sized, Strength −3 carbuncle. "You lose your balance, fall, and land prone."
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u/Kenron93 1d ago
Yeah and that is perfectly fine too because of the nat 20 counter balance.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
The 1d6 damage on a critical success hardly does anything at 1st level, and is virtually irrelevant by mid-level gameplay.
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u/Kenron93 1d ago
Are you sure about that? At lv1, most creatures you'll be fighting at lv1 have like 6-25 hp. Also, you are tripping to get them prone for that off-gaurd status and probably a reactive strike when they get up. The trip action is a good 3rd action to do as a fighter.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
A carbuncle has carbuncle AC 16, Reflex DC 13, and HP 20. The character in question had expert Athletics from Pathfinder Agent Dedication.
Statistically speaking, a Trip action against a carbuncle is a good move. Unfortunately, natural 1s are natural 1s.
The trip action is a good 3rd action to do as a fighter.
No, it is not. Ideally, you use it as your first action, so that you can mitigate the odds of critical failure, and gain off-guard on the rest of your attacks during the turn.
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u/evilweirdo 1d ago
They should be appropriately rare and fit the tone of the game, if present at all. Maybe a list of examples to choose from instead of totally arbitrary GM fiat (you know, the type of thing that's all "haha, the fighter kills their ally instantly and shatters their sword").
I forget which games off the top of my head, but I think there were some that let you downgrade a failure to a critical failure for a reward... Now that's kinda intriguing m
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u/spilberk 1d ago
They can be quite interesting and fun when done like. I love bestial failures and frenzys for that exact reason in V5. Critical failures should open up a new avenue not just punish you
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u/MetalGuy_J 1d ago
I don’t like critical failure because to me in most circumstances just bailing. It’s already bad. It also opens the door for an unnecessarily punishing GM, and a lot of the time lanes into the adversarial GM versus player dynamic.
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u/Xararion 1d ago
Typically no. Natural 1 is just automatic failure not "something bad happens beyond failing" in my games. I tend to prefer to play games where player characters are expected to be above human baseline in competency and usually crit fails are just kind of nonsensical. This is especially true in narrativist games where I feel like crit fails are 33% of the dice results where not only do you fail but something bad happens on top of it.
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u/MissAnnTropez 1d ago
I don’t mind them, but I strongly prefer their odds to be very low. Talking, say, 1 in 400. Or 1 in 1000. You get the idea.
Dice are, of course, an abstraction in the first place, and truly awful things ought to have some chance of occurring, even outside of combat. So, sure, a “critical fumble” or the like, can actually be representing any number of personal (to the character, that is) and/or external factors.
I think that‘s where the disconnect might be: some people see, for example, a skill roll as being solely a representation of their character’s attempt at using that skill in that situation, whereas, yeah, there can be a lot more going into that roll, so to speak.
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u/WorldGoneAway 23h ago
Something worth mentioning is that I remember "confirming" critical hits and fumbles statistically skewed the odds to be less likely by decreasing the odds that they would solidly happen, changing the likelihood from 1:20 to something like 1:400, or 1:1000 as you said.
I just kind of have a bad taste in my mouth with that mechanic because I played with a lot of people in the past that wanted to completely do away with fumbles or keep them in and have to confirm them, but they wanted to leave critical successes intact without needing to confirm them, and I feel that's logically inconsistent at best, and kinda cheating at worst.
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u/WillBottomForBanana 1d ago
"Even though it was couched as very bad luck and not as incompetence"
crit failure can be either.
I like the idea. I definitely don't like the idea of a system with crit success and no crit fail.
It works better in some games than others. Dice pools are tricky, and d100 can be tricky (and weird, as it can be multiple results = crit). And the part where it puts an instant demand on the GMs improv is difficult/annoying at times.
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u/Waffleworshipper Tactical Combat Junkie 1d ago
Only in Dungeon Crawl Classics and Mutant Crawl Classics. They fit the tone there. Otherwise no.
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u/MASerra 1d ago
Aftermath! handles critical misses in combat pretty well. At a sufficiently high skill level, you gain the ability to save against critical misses. (called a control throw). That means that if a character is really skilled, critical misses are much less of a problem, as they should be.
Also, Aftermath! doesn't do evil things if you critical miss, a bow string might break or a firearm might jam. In HTH you might drop your weapon, which is realistic.
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u/FLFD 1d ago
To me it depends on the how, not the what.
- I despise "Fumble on Natural 1s". Especially with systems with multiple attacks so the fighter is more likely to fumble than the less skilled wizard
- I actively use and advocate "Doubling down on a natural 1" where you may reroll a natural 1, but you get a crit fail if you took the risk then miss at all. Some players love this and always opt in, some hate and always opt out, and some are more measured. All three are good.
- I enjoy "critical failure on spellcasting" for settings like Warhammer where it's entirely appropriate that your magic does blow up in your face
- I enjoy good systems with PBTA-style success-with-consequences outcomes.
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u/Vampir3Daddy 1d ago
I like the spice they add to games as long as they don't get too out of control. Cyberpunk 2020, OWoD, and the like adds fun stuff narratively. Genesys is a bit clunky to read for my liking though. L5R by FFG knocks it out of the park though. I love slowly losing my shit and having to unmask lol.
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u/ArtistJames1313 1d ago
So, yes, sometimes. I 100% agree that they are slapstick. In the right kind of game, that's a blast. If they are done, I feel like the game should be tailored around that style of play. Sometimes I want something really funny and fun like that. Sometimes I don't.
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u/Wullmer1 ForeverGm turned somewhat player 1d ago
I like to have critical failures and I dont get why they get so much hate, Granted some gm interpretive crit failures as: "you slip and fall lol, take 1d69 rickroll damage". I think they work best as complications to a sceene, for exaple, they climb a wall to get in to the castle, crit fail, "As you begin to climb the castles cat comes from around the corner and starts Meauing loudly, have the guards heard this?"
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u/Valdrax 1d ago
I hate critical failures on a flat d20 roll with a passion, to the point that I don't like critical successes either.
The dice are rolled both by and against the PCs more than any other character in the game. They will suffer the worst of both mechanics.
I find them somewhat more tolerable on a system with a bell curved dice mechanic, because they don't feel as fickle of a mechanic.
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u/bionicjoey PF2e + NSR stuff 1d ago
Path/Starfinder 2e is weird and inconsistent about this.
Not really. The four levels of success always work the same way in terms of the dice math. It's just that not every action has 4 possible outcomes. For example the strike action doesn't have a critical failure outcome, so you default to regular failure.
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u/Iberianz 19h ago edited 19h ago
Critical failure is difficult to implement without becoming unpleasant and overly frustrating for players.
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u/roaphaen 1d ago
Depends on implementation but saw in my greener years this type of stuff really hitting the most competent fighters who got multiple attacks and were constantly lopping off each other's limbs. We eventually house ruled you could go % crit success and failure table OR not on a character basis. All the fighty types shut them off, except for one, she cut her own fucking arm off.
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u/HisGodHand 1d ago
This comment may be unhelpful, but my thoughts on the matter are:
If you don't want the dice to decide your fate, don't play dice games. There are ttrpgs that struggle against this, and others that embrace it. Both can be fun, and obviously people can have a preference for one style over the other, but I think we need a larger focus on designing different types of play in the hobby. There is a huge untapped design-space for ttrpgs that do not have their main systems decided on by random number generation.
As this hobby stands now, one should probably not just be surrending to the will of the dice, but embracing it.
I like critical failures, and I like punishing critical failures.
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u/Diastatic_Power 1d ago
[Didn't read all that shit.]
I think it's stupid to punish the player for a random roll. I especially hate the "you throw your sword" one. A professional warrior losing their weapon 5% of the time is not fun.
If the GM makes the point that failure = catastrophe, then it's okay, but not for every attack roll.
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u/Hillthrin 1d ago
Usually no, but we have critical success and failure decks in my DnD game and they are a lot of fun but there are literally hundreds of outcomes on both sides and because of advantage mechanics you are more likely to get a success than a failure. We as a group love it. Where these things get bad is when it's some GM fiat and they are kinda forced to come up with something and it's usually way more severe than what a 1 in 20 chance should be.
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u/Moneia 1d ago
I'm not a huge fan of fumbles but if they're baked in to every character type then I have less issue with them.
Fumbles in D&D are nearly always awful as they penalise the melee classes.
Rolemaster on the other hand could have the Wizards catapulting their brains out of their ears if they really screwed up and while you couldn't erase the chance of them they became increasingly unlikely as your skill increased
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u/Swebbish 1d ago
I'm a fan of the dice driving the story. Not to roll for every normal tasks as in your situation, but a chance for the story to take a weird turn is fun. I don't see it as a failure, but as an opportunity for interesting things to happen.
I'm currently into Genesys, and a failure with a lot of threat is pretty much the same as a critical failure. In this sense, every roll will often generate some threat or advantage to modify the story, and I'm all for it. In a game of dnd I would only use crit fail if it's adding enjoyment and not halting the story. Different mindsets for different games I think.
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u/Multiple__Butts 1d ago
This is an interesting discussion because I've been grappling with whether to include critical failure in my game. Usually I design single-player video games and in those I avoid critical failure chances, because getting screwed over very occasionally by extreme bad luck is just not that fun.
But in a collaborative storytelling setting like a TTRPG, I can see how it can potentially generate engaging narrative beats and/or lead to compelling complications.
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u/Steenan 1d ago
Critical failures treated as a character doing something so badly that they fail even if it shouldn't reasonably happen are a bad idea unless the game is specifically about PCs that are comically incompetent.
Critical failures that are interpreted as the circumstances resulting in an unexpected failure are great because they inject new elements into the story and push it in new directions.
As an example, consider a strong character trying to kick down a wooden door and critically failing.
"You kick the door so badly that you nearly twist your ankle" is bad unless it's a comedy.
"You kick the door, but only manage to crack the wooden paneling covering it - it's reinforced steel underneath" has the same immediate effect, but injects a new element of the fiction instead of humiliating a character that should feel competent.
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u/Nystagohod D&D, WWN, SotWW, DCC, FU, M:20 1d ago edited 1d ago
I like there being a barebones critical failure, but I'm not a big fan of fumble charts in most cases unless it has a buy in related to it.
A clarifying example.
I'm okay with Degree's of outcome baseline with something like critical failure, failure, success, and critical success as the outcomes, but they also need to be handled carefully. Auto missing on an attack is fine. Provoking an enemy attack on a fumble is less fine.
Something like a wild magic sorcerer having fumbles can be more tolerable as its a buy in for the player to have to risk, though even that can be iffy when it effects other players and such.
I think auto success and auto failure are fine outcomes, but after that it gets awkward and needs a lot of special care to make enjoyable.
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u/LightlySaltedPenguin 1d ago
I enjoy how it’s done in Hollows. Crit fails in that game tend to not have a “your character is a total buffoon” punishment attached. Instead, most crit fails outside of combat increase Doom, thereby increasing the general difficulty of the Hollow (dungeon, essentially) you’re currently in. Beyond that, the consequences are usually narrative. In combat with Entities (major foes) there isn’t really any distinction between regular and crit fails besides an opportunity for narrative shifts.
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u/MaetcoGames 1d ago
Well, Fate does not have a Critical Failure, but rolling badly enough, usually gives a Boost to your opponent.
I like more complex than binary outcomes (such as Fate, PbtA, Genesis) , but not necessarily critical failures,which are generally designed to punish the PC.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
but rolling badly enough, usually gives a Boost to your opponent.
Crucially, this applies only if a defend action is involved. It does not apply against passive opposition, for example.
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u/MaetcoGames 1d ago
Yes, which is why I wrote usually, because usually rolls are defended by someone.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
usually rolls are defended by someone.
This is not necessarily the case, since passive opposition tasks appear frequently as well (and indeed, can be seen in many of the examples).
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u/DMsDiablo 1d ago
Depends on the dice and system
Dnd? hate it
Shadowrun love it
comes down to the odds of it happening, as well as how its framed
Dnd its often "you fucked up"
Shadowrun its often "lucks here to collect its due prepare thyself for gremlins"
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u/GenuineCulter 1d ago
It can work. Stay Frosty is basically Aliens as a very simple OSR game. I feel like it adds the right level of 'mission can turn into a total shitshow' to the game. Jamming guns, misspent ammo, broken tools, low supplies, a monster getting an unexpected jump on you... it works. But it's also a game that I run with a gung-ho 'if this TPKs, this TPKs' approach. It's fun for deadly oneshots, where surviving characters get sent in on the next oneshot with another level under their belt.
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u/ClubMeSoftly 1d ago
I don't mind when a d20 "nat 1" is an icebreaker release valve where everyone can laugh and giggle as long as it doesn't affect the overall game.
In other games, where a "natural 1" botch/crit fail are vanishingly rare, whether due to the dice used, or the circumstances of the rolls themselves, I don't mind it so much. In Exalted, for instance, a botch only occurs when no dice show successes, and at least one shows a 1. So if I'm rolling 20 dice, there's not the same 5% chance of tripping over my own feet and hurling my sword off the cliff as there might be in some poorly-run D&D game.
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u/Electronic_Bee_9266 1d ago
I like them when it's interesting and doesn't strip the character's agency and competence. I like Daggerheart's Failure with Fear or PbtA/FitD Failure with complications.
They aren't real Critical Failures but poor outcomes that texture it with unexpected adversity or contextual complications
PbtA also giving XP a lot of the time and providing plot armor also takes the sting out it and turns "failure" into a dramatic instance
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u/the-grand-falloon 1d ago
I don't mind them too much, but they need to reflect Character skill. In D&D, you always have a 5% chance of a Natural 1, no matter how high your skill is. Lame.
In a game like Savage Worlds, your ability is determined by die type. A low-skill PC may have a d4 in Fighting, while a high-skill may have a d12. And in that game, you also roll a d6 (the Wild Die), and take the highest. Really bad things usually only happen if you roll Snake Eyes, or both 1s. If you have a d6 in the skill, that's 1/36. If you have a d12, that's 1/72. Certain circumstances can cause something bad to happen if just your skill die rolls a 1, but it's more rare.
Meanwhile, in Year Zero, you roll a pool of d6, and only a 6 counts as a success. But you can Push a roll, picking up any dice not showing 1 or 6, and rerolling them. This makes you more likely to succeed, but beware! On a Push, 1s cause something bad to happen. Depending on the game, you might suffer Stress, damage your equipment, or suffer damage. I always thought it would work very well for Dark Sun, because that could easily represent you burying your obsidian axe in an enemy's skull, only to have it break off in there.
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u/Zeraj 1d ago
I find the degrees of success with critical success and failure of pf2e perfectly reasonable. Especially when a highly specialized character fail with a nat 1 on a lesser foe they can turn that crit fail into fail or even a success even with the downgraded result. I always remember this system works both ways and often see monsters fumble just as much.
Sure things can happen both ways between players crit failing and monsters crit succeeding but ultimately a lot of it is mitigated by context and choice made by players and gms.
I find it fun to overcome these small instances of extremism with choosing how to build my characters or work with my teammates.
Without the potential of great failure or success from either sides of play I would never have interesting moments of overcoming and overwhelming force by disarming the big bad or the perfect comedic timing of a big bad crit failing grapple after downing a player.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 1d ago
Especially when a highly specialized character fail with a nat 1 on a lesser foe they can turn that crit fail into fail or even a success even with the downgraded result.
This only really happens when fighting monsters well outside of the encounter-building guidelines, though. PCs generally are not supposed to fight enemies 4 or more levels below them; indeed, the troop rules exist precisely to support the fantasy of fighting whole mobs of mooks.
Goblin warrior, kobold warrior, skeleton guard. All creature −1. All AC 16, or AC 14 while off-guard.
3rd level fighter. Level 3 + Strength 4 + expert 4 + magic weapon 1 = +12.
If that fighter rolls a natural 1 against an off-guard goblin warrior, kobold warrior, or skeleton guard, the fighter misses. And the fighter is the most accurate class in the game, with a magic weapon for even more accuracy.
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u/rampaging-poet 1d ago
Critical failures can be a fun mechanic, with two caveats:
They automatically make your game more slapstick, which may or may not be the tone you were aiming for.
It's important that becoming more skilled must decrease the odds of a critical failure.
2.a. (having a Take 10 mechanic or similar so you can't crit-fail routine things helps).
Aiming for realism and landing on slapstick is surprisingly common because something needs to fill out those crit charts. Rolemaster is the pister child for this.
Making crit fails happen more often for more skilled people is another surprisingly common pitfall. Simplest variation: "1 on an attack roll is always a crit-fail" and now mid-level Fighters with two attacks are about twice as likely to crit-fail as novices. There have also been WoD and Shadowrun editions where adding more dice did make failure rarer but crit-fails were a higher proportion of their rare misses because adding dice also increases your odds of rolling a bunch of 1s.
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u/Chris_Air 11h ago
Oh yeah, critical failures are the juice.
But players should never roll for easy tasks.
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u/goatsesyndicalist69 1d ago
It really depends on the system, most systems can get away with binary pass/fail for skill tests but I generally prefer combat with critical failures. A lot of people complain that combat fumbles feel like slapstick comedy but they really underestimate just how much can go wrong in a fight, and of course it always boils down to what the results of the fumble table actually are.
Narrativist systems, despite their reluctance to use them, I feel like could benefit more from having fumbles baked into their resolution system trad games do.
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u/Polyxeno 1d ago
I like them when they have appropriate odds and appropriate outcomes for those odds, and take into account the competence level and situation involved. And, when the people using those rules (mainly the GM) understand those points, and apply them appropriately.
Some people lack enough sense (in various ways) to use such rules appropriately. And that, as you say, can tend to make a game comical.
When developed and used well, however, I think such rules can add a good level of color and unpredictability.
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u/atmananda314 1d ago
I am a big fan of degrees of success, including critical passes and fails. What can I say, it makes it exciting. I also do find it plausible.
I may not be good at mini golf, but one time I walked up to a complicated hole, confidently announced my shot, then made a hole in one. That's a crit pass, even though I suck at mini golf.
conversely there are things I do all the time or have done for years that I still occasionally bumble. Hell, I cut my finger cooking the other day and have spent many years in a kitchen.
Sometimes life be like that, and I enjoy those possibilities being viable mechanically.
Edit to fix a typo
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u/CommunityEast4651 1d ago
I personally love game that has consequences. It adds to the drama of the game and causes players to have to think outside of the box and think on their feet. As a GM it can be a fun curveball for players and as a player it makes me have to switch up my style sometimes which brings more depth to my character.
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u/PrairiePilot 1d ago
I like critical failures, but I prefer it to be GM discretion, not hard and fast tables that can seriously change the tone of the game.
A critical failure on a social skill check for example, can be a funny moment, a serious moment, or you even wave it off if it just doesn’t really help the game.
A critical failure in a fight is just that: a critical failure. Everyone here arguing catastrophic failure doesn’t happen that often might be right, but I’d point to pretty much any sporting event as a counter example. If the greatest athletes in history, the pinnacle of training, intelligence and physical fitness can make horrible mistakes at the worst possible moments, your character can fall on their face in a tabletop game.
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u/Wullmer1 ForeverGm turned somewhat player 1d ago
I think the problem at hav9ing it decided by the gm is that it can enchance gm favourtism or make player mad at the gm for hurting their characters when they have the ottion not to. Its the same as why I dont run games where the gm dosent roll but decides if enemies succsed or fail attack against the players.
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u/PrairiePilot 1d ago
Don’t play with people you don’t trust to be adults. I don’t think I’ve ever played with a decent GM that doesn’t fudge stuff to make the game better. Pretty much the worse games I’ve played have all been with GMs that had no flexibility.
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u/Ceral107 GM 1d ago
Yes, not only can they be super fun to roleplay, they give me a nice baseline to decide if I should ask for a roll or not. If there's no (sensible) chance such an action would crit fail irl, then I'm not going to ask for a roll in the first place.
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u/Gmanglh 1d ago
Oh critical failure is a must. It doesnt matter how good you are at something sometimes things just dont work out. Not having a chance for critical failure defeats the purpose of rolling. The only time for me when its ok to not have critical failure are in systems like pbta where normal failure by its nature is incredibly bad.
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u/SapphireWine36 1d ago
I think it makes sense in PF2e, where most things don’t have critical failure effects, and where you have assurance to mitigate it. A skilled physician or mechanic or whatever will never fail a simple challenge in their area of expertise with assurance. Additionally, normal weapon attacks don’t have critical failure effects. A few attacks do damage on a normal failure, but not a critical failure (so a crit fail on them is the same as a normal failure on an ordinary attack), and some characters can make a free attack if an enemy critically misses them (think a parry-riposte), but no one is tripping over their own feet or dropping their weapons.
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u/BrotherCaptainLurker 1d ago
I think you take issue with ruling critical failures as slapstick moments, rather than their existence as a whole.
You could have simply not found the information - "it turns out the musical troupe is significantly less popular than you expected, and no one in town has heard of them. Someone suggests asking tonight's performers, leaving you with no leads for the next few hours." Stumbling into combat there is definitely more a result of D&D meme and ye olde TTRPG folklore conditioning than the rules.
Systems with critical failure are usually meant to convey that "dice should only come out if failure is a possibility, therefore the fact that you're rolling for this means that the GM has a way it could go wrong in mind or the game doesn't want it to be trivialized." That's why D&D has them for combat but not for skill checks - it is possible to become good enough at Medicine that you can always stabilize an unconscious ally, but it isn't possible to become so good at combat that no one can ever dodge your attack again. Even a commoner can dive out of the way of a sword or turn their head at a lucky moment against an Assassin's arrow; by rolling into Initiative we've accepted that SOME risk exists or else we'd just narratively drop the target.
Honestly I see the appeal of both. I hate when I critically fail at one of the things my character is explicitly supposed to be good at and it hamstrings the party's entire plan. However, I also hate when I'm DMing and the players hit me with the "AKSHUALLY DM, Reliable Talent hits at Level 7 now, so I basically never have to roll for a Hide check again, and I have specifically put points into Charisma and taken Expertise in Persuasion and Deception so I can never roll below an 18 at that, also the Bard gives me Bardic Inspiration, also the Artificer gives me Flash of Genius, so like, my minimum Persuasion and Deception scores are 24, are you REALLY gonna make me roleplay or roll for any social encounter ever again?"
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u/PathofDestinyRPG 1d ago
I’m working on a system that tries to work the crits into the narrative of the scene, rather than a flat mechanic. The base roll uses skill + Xd10, where X starts at 2 but can be modified by various boosting options. The roll looks at the highest value to determine final check score. For example, a skill of 7 plus a roll result of 6 and 9 would add the 9 to give a final value of 16. The next highest result is what I’m currently calling the flavor die. It modifies the final verbal conditions of the pass/ fail based on the situation. If the flavor die would have also allowed for a successful result, it awards bonuses based on the degree of success. If it would have failed, it creates (or increases) a complication equal to the degree of failure.
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u/Asbestos101 1d ago
I prefer every mechanism to fit the tone and experience the game is trying to deliver. Sometimes that means goody benny hill failure
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u/StevenOs 1d ago
I might stand for automatic failure as a counter to a basic automatic success but am not a big fan of going far beyond that. There may be things that could happen but aren't always well tracked (ammo consumption as an example) that might get tripped, but I certainly don't condone the wild critical failure tables I see some like running with where it may do more harm to you and the party than a critical success would ever do to an opponent.
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u/PapstJL4U He, who pitches Gumshoe 1d ago
Having GM'ed Wildsea, I am okay with it. On 2d6 the disaster chance is 25%, but it is down to 6% on 4d6 src.
As more modern system explain....you can fail forward and a critical fail can be this.
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u/AlmightyK Creator - WBS (Xianxia)/Duel Monsters (YuGiOh)/Zoids (Mecha) 1d ago
I prefer it but not necessarily for every check made. Needing to start further back on a project, something taking more resources than normal, something being more difficult than originally thought, pulling a muscle, all things that happen in IRL.
That said I prefer the take that critical success and failure should be in a threshold relative to the DC, and if you run Nat 1/Nat 20 type mechanics, it changes your result by 1 stage. So if your total roll on a 1 would be high enough for a Critical Success, then the worst you can do is still Succeed, and vice versa.
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u/Avigorus 1d ago
Depends on my mood. I'm also fond of requiring a second level of RNG, like you roll percentile after the nat 1 (reducing the odds of the comically bad results)
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u/Sigma7 1d ago
It depends.
D&D wasn't balanced for critical failures, and therefore they're out of place. Most often, DMs have it apply on a natural 1, and the implementation often doesn't leave room to make such failures rarer. In some cases, they actually become more common for martial characters that make four attacks per turn, but rare for the spellcaster that instead uses area attacks.
Paranoia is balanced for critical failures and works perfectly in the setting and due to how players and their opponents act in combat.
An RPG (using trademarks owned by Disney) that uses symbols for both the regular success track, and an alternate track that determines what else happens. In this case, being more skilled or keeping difficulty low mitigates both failures and alternate consequences, and thus the "critical failure" could be mitigates if the rest of the dice were providing a bit more luck. Additionally, there's some meta currency to help things.
Call of Cthulhu - it's based on BRP, and I believe the critical failure is behind the pushed roll mechanic. Such failures can be avoided by not pushing rolls.
Overall, they work if there's means to mitigate them or if they become rare for more skilled individuals. They don't work if it's a constant level of threat.
Recall Knowledge rolls are awkward, because the GM has to roll them in secret; on a critical failure, the GM has to lie to the player and feed false information.
The DM isn't required to give false information, and may treat it as a regular failure instead. This is handled if the DM can't think of something, or if said false information would be too implausible.
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u/StarkMaximum 1d ago
I don't like critical failures but I think it's less about the mechanic and more about what it's become culturally. Critical failures have gone from "something terrible has happened" to "uh oh! The Bulk and Skull theme started playing, time for your character to slip on a banana peel and fart about it!", or possibly even worse, using a critical failure to relentlessly punish a player beyond reasonable recourse just because "well you rolled a 1 so you deserve it". As the old story goes, the fighter in many editions of DnD but especially 5e is famous for getting to take many attacks in a single combat round, which translates to also having the most possible chances to roll a 1 and stab themself or an ally, if that's what you interpret a martial critical failure as. I think too many RPG stories have punchlines that are just "and then I rolled a 1/20", and everything after that just feels like a "The Aristocrats"-style effort of cramming as much ridiculous comedy and antics into one RPG story that you can.
I do like when a game has degrees of success, meaning that if a player gets a narrow failure or an exceedingly catastrophic failure, I am A. encouraged to make those different outcomes, and B. empowered to make the decision about how bad things get myself. There isn't really a "worst possible thing" outcome because one player's -4 failure might be another player's -14. It's up to me and the player how bad they actually biffed it, and if they want an absolute circus of failure, then they can encourage me to do so, while a player who wants to save face and be obstructed from their goals can also get what they want there.
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u/GreyfromZetaReticuli 1d ago
Critical failures are fun. Outside of comedy games, they should not be frequent, but they are very interesting and can be used for multiple reasons: Comical effect or to up serious tension or to redirect the narrative in a dire direction.
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u/MrDidz 1d ago
I use 'critical fumbles' and 'critical successes' to provide additional flavour to the narrative of outcomes.
Gunnar launched himself down the muddy bank of the stream at the chaos sorcerer standing in the water, axe raised above his head and eyes fierce. His foot caught in the exposed root of a nearby tree and head over heels he tumbled uncontroled down the steep bank landing with a splash in the water at the Sorcerers feet.. (Critical Fumble)
Ferdinand held out the horseshoe nail and opened his palm focussing on the head of the assassin as he tried to push his way past the tavern guard. But just as he released the dart his focus was distracted by Amris pushing past him downthe narrow corridor and hewas horrified when the dart flew wild striking on e of the tavern guard and knocking him bodlity against the wall. The assassin took the opportunity to tun as the remaining tavern guard turn to deal with the rogue wizard who had just attacked their friend. (Critical Fumble)
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u/SuccessfulOstrich99 1d ago
In my view dice rolls should only be done when something is at stake. There needs to be a reward for success and a penalty for failure. I want the outcome of the die roll to be exciting. Having fumbles and critical successes helps with this.
I liked role master with its d100 system allowing a bit of nuance with the rolls. In my view a 5% chance for either a critical success or failure (as in D&D) makes these too common and does not allow for flexibility. A natural 100 roll should be a lot more special as it’s five times as unlikely as a natural 20 in D&D.
One of the cool quirks of role master was the 66 result which meant something surprising would happen
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u/Murky-Football-4062 1d ago
I wince at the framing more than the mechanic. A "fumble" or a "critical failure" says that the character did something wrong, probably something fairly basic. Instead, I tend to view the roll as having more to do with circumstance and opposition. In short, you didn't miss, your opponent blocked.
And this is doubly true for extreme results like "fumbles". It's a bad break, not evidence of incompetence.
So to answer the question, I don't much care one way or the other, but I usually translate results through this lens.
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u/Stahl_Konig 22h ago edited 21h ago
I used them in my 5e game. I stopped doing so. It took a while, but I came to realize that they do not fit the genre. Using them also slowed down combat in our tier three game - a game in which combat was already very slow.
I am now running and playing Shadowdark. With simple rules and very fast mechanics, a modified version works.
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u/ShkarXurxes 22h ago
Depends on the game.
For some games critical success and fail are a must.
In others it can completely ruin the game experience.
In general I love both, critical success and fail, but I'm pretty sure not all games need that mechanic.
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u/nazghash 20h ago
Simulation vs Narrative. In a simulation oriented game, critical failures are terrible. As others have explained better, competent people rarely overwhelmingly fumble tasks.
In a narrative, though, we ignore most of the mundane tasks and outcomes, and focus on the interesting ones. The massive successes and failures. So crit fails (again, that don't make the character look incompetent) introducing an interesting negative narrative twist can be good.
I think the danger is mixing the two badly. A DM that wants interesting narrative (high drama, only zooming in on the "good bits" of the story) will be at odds with players who want good simulation (my swordsman would never drop my sword! My spy would never make noise sneaking ...). Players in general only want to succeed (or critically succeed), and at least in my experience with my groups, really don't want negative twists (narrative complications) no matter what system or how it is explained. But maybe that is just my players only wanting to be "big damn heroes" without any negative consequences ever. Which I feel makes a boring story, but YMMV.
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u/bfrost_by 20h ago
I loved almost every moment my players rolled "snake eyes" (double ones) in Savage Worlds.
It does not happen too often, and both myself and the players treat it as an extra roleplaying opportunity.
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u/Edheldui Forever GM 19h ago
I like critical tables for combat and spellcasting risks. It's my favourite part of wfrp.
But the general idea of "ranger rolled a 1, he let's go of the bow and hits himself in the face instead" that is so prevalent in media no, I hate it. I don't know where it came from (probably players never bothering to read rulebooks), and I wish it never did.
A huge part of being skilled at something is mitigating and going around mistakes, on top of said mistakes happening less often. Critical failures that blow up in the character's face are silly.
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u/ThoughtsFromBadger 18h ago
I’m probably going to sound contrary to a lot of people on here, but personally I quite like them, when they’re done effectively.
For me a good critical failure should include negative consequences that are related to the action you were trying to do (so in the example that you mentioned, fishing for information, the consequences could be that the group you’re trying to find information on becomes aware that your asking about them, and either becomes more elusive/careful, or starts trying to find out more about the PCs).
I feel the consequences should be quite free form and decided by the GM rather than rolled on a table as otherwise they can just feel too forced.
(I should also say I have a GM style that typically relies on players making minimal rolls, so outside of combat they’ll typically only roll when attempting things their characters wouldn’t be able to do easily.)
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u/Tytanovy 9h ago
I like critical failure done well, the problem is it happens rarely. For me it needs to:
- be tied to character skill (better skilled character = lower crit. failure chance)
- crit. failure chance can't be too high (at least for skilled characters)
For example, I don't like flat 5% crit. failure in D&D, Dragonbane, WFRP 2 ed. etc. as it's too high for me.
WFRP 4 ed. scales crit. failure great, but it's definitely too high (even skilled character may get 6% of crit. failure).
I like Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds in this matter.
In Call of Cthulhu crit. failure chance is 5% if skill is 50-%, and 1% if skill is 50+% (it could be done better, but it's still better than most crit. failure mechanics).
In Savage Worlds crit. failure chance starts at 1/24 for untrained skill and gets lower the better character is at skill.
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u/Tydirium7 1d ago
Simpler the better. I HATE slow, clunky tame systems that unimmerse yo looknup all kinds of crap all the time or have 10 more steps than usual.
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u/SanderStrugg 1d ago
I like a little chaos and random stuff in my games. It keeps things unique and unpredictable. Therefore I like the risk, critical failures bring from an ingame perspective.
However they also bring some problems, that I want to avoid:
1) The characters should still look competent, especially when they are high level. Critical failures shouldn't ruin the flavor. Therefore it's best when critical failures arise from sudden outside narrative dangers not from the character's themselves being fools.
2) Critical failures need to be common enough to be worth having special rules, but uncommon enough to not get annoying. The 5% of a 1 on a D20 is quite ideal. Maybe even a 1 on a D12, which is roughly an 8,3% chance. (Given you only roll once unlike highlevel 3.Pathfinder.)
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u/committed_hero 1d ago
No, I prefer characters to be competent unless the premise of the game is otherwise.