Does anyone else use the crit fails and successes on skill checks house rule?
I don't mean the "oh you crit failed to walk up stairs so your legs explode" or "oh I rolled a nat 20 to eat Tiamat" junk.
Our group only rolls skill checks when there is a chance for failure or success. If we crit fail, something a little worse than normal failure happens. If we nat 20, then we auto succeed.
It's been fun so far for our D&D 5e game.
>>47946402
I don't use them. 10% chance of silliness is too high.
Your auto-succeed on 20 doesn't seem to make any difference because you only allow tests that can succeed anyway. I can see the appeal of just having crit failures, it does mean that players will think twice about 'brute forcing' a skill check by just rolling until they pass. On the other hand it could work against you in a high octane situation where quite a lot might be riding on those checks (DMs shouldn't design encounters that way, but sometimes players come up with plans that DO hinge on a few checks).
>>47946402
No, D&D's probability scale is too short and too discrete to justify me accepting a 10% chance of ludicrousness, and 5% chance of succeeding at any given task, regardless of the odds.
>>47946557
I guess it all comes down to the atmosphere of your game honestly. We just have and don't take things too seriously or too lolz random.
If you are trying to keep a serious or grim tone I can understand letting that chance of something silly or odd happening could ruin the mood.
>>47946402
my groups dont do that but when i DM if you roll a 1 but make the DC you do it but you do it in a silly way. same with rolling a 20 you do it in a slightly cooler way.
it enables silliness without being full blown fucking retarded.
>>47946621
Again, we don't do it for impossible tasks. That mountain isn't splitting in half to make a path for you just because you think 20 on a strength check would.
We just do it because to us it adds a bit more... not sure the word to use. Maybe tension? Because sure you have the chance to solve certain nearly hopeless problems, but you are just as likely to have it blow up in your face.
The craziest thing thats even happened was our assassin killing a dude that walked into the room he was in, then making it look like he continued inside.
>>47946881
>The craziest thing thats even happened was our assassin killing a dude that walked into the room he was in, then making it look like he continued inside.
So you're saying your assassin killed a guy who kept on walking into the room after he was dead?
>not too lolz random
>>47946402
Players roll to confirm crit failures. So basically a 1 is just a regular failure, but two 1's is a crit failure that's usually something like dropping a weapon or hitting the ally behind the target with your arrow or whatever. Nothing game destroying
>>47947012
No, he killed a dude who walked in the room from the front. He was a bit smaller than the cultist, held him up from collapsing and drug him inside.
The roll was to see if the other unaware cultists heard or noticed it happen from the other side of a dark somewhat noisy room.
The cultist didn't just keep walking then realized "hey wait, I'm dead. Bleck"
>>47947091
>>>>>thats stupid
>>47946557
>you only allow tests that can succeed anyway.
???
What happened to letting your players make mistakes in action. I would gladly let my player make an impossible check like "I smash through themetal door with my hammer."
Nat 20? Congrats you don't crack your wrists, nobody hostile seemed to beaying attention as the loud clang rang out and your weapon doesn't snap. Although there is a tiny dent in the door now.
Nat 1? Congrats you take 1d4 to your hands and you get the feeling knocking on the door in enemy territory was a really bad idea.
>>47947177
Why?
It applies to enemies as well. Sometimes it really saves our ass when a mook fails.
>>47947212
Call of Cthulu, but I feel it fits with this.
I remember I had a player once try to disguise himself as a janitor 'working for the government'
to sneak into this cult's lair. (Those were his words, not mine)
"Congrats, you roll a perfect 1, they have absolutely no doubt in their minds that you are a janitor working for the government. They pull out their guns and try to gun you down."
Took him a minute to realize what was wrong about what he had said.
>>47947224
Assuming D&D, higher level characters tend to attack more in a round. Ergo, a 20th level fighter will drop his sword more often than a first level character on average.
>>47947674
You've misunderstood. Her isn't saying that two 1s coming up results in a crit fail. He's saying if you roll a 1, you roll once again and only crit on another 1.
>>47947884
And regardless of that, it will happen more often for the level twenty character than the level one character, because the level one character can only attack once per round, while the level twenty character can attack multiple times per round.
Meanwhile, 'it applies to the enemies as well' is not a good reason to have it, because the PCs will be making a hell of a lot more rolls than any individual enemy will over the course of the campaign. Yes, it's funny when that one mook drops his sword. He's probably going to die at the end of the fight anyways. It's less funny that your veteran fighter does it repeatedly over the course of their career (and again, doing it more often when they're The Big Heroes than when they were just starting out)
I've never understood the appeal.
The only time an "auto-success" on a nat 20 would matter is if a nat 20 + modifiers would still fail. I'd rather speed up the game and call it an impossible task (which it is) than call for a hail mary roll that's going to have a 95% chance of simply being a waste of time, and a 5% chance of letting the player succeed in a task they should otherwise be unable to.
Likewise with crit fails, I don't see the need to punish a player for rolling a nat 1 when the skill failure itself should be punishment enough.
I feel like putting nat 20s on a pedestal dis-incentivizes proper planning, strategic leveraging of bonuses (circumstance/aid another/etc), and encourages reckless actions, whereas autofailing nat 1s (with or without added penalties) actively punishes players who plan and strategize by causing a roll to fail no matter how much planning and how many bonuses go into it.
Let your "OH SHIT!" moments be when you succeed at *legitimately* improbable roll, or your "OH FUCK!" moments be when you just barely fail an important task. I don't need an arbitrary pass/fail to make those moments dramatic.
