Alright /tg/, i have a conundrum. I just got my players into D&D 3/3.5 a few months back. They understand the game VERY well and pick things up quickly. They roleplay their characters well but aren't afraid to take a step back to lighten things up a bit. They even have their own rulebooks and dice and we all contribute to minis and terrain stuff. My problem is that they are fucking luck incarnate. They roll nat 20's left and right, and when they roll a nat 1, it always ends up being a critical success on a crit fail (i came up with about a dozen tables for possible crit failures depending on circumstances and some outcomes are actually good or semi-avoidable because fuck "you failed so badly you stabbed yourself" ).
What does a DM do when they are smart enough to beat your puzzles and lucky/resourseful enough to take down a tarrasque in a half dozen rounds. Just being a dick and saying no is fucking weak.
>pic unrelated but scramasax are awesome
Use 3D6 instead of D20 (3 being critical failure and 18 being critical success). It vastly reduces the number of crits.
>>46544998
>using meme curves
>>46544998
that sounds less tedious than i came up with. I roll to crit, roll to confirm crit, then roll to comfirm a hit, then roll to confirm beating AC. they dont crit every time, but about once every 5 or 6 rolls they crit. they crit fail about that often too, but most of the time they avoid the consequences through reflex or something awesome happening.
>>46544937
Seaxs are grand but that is not very good reproduction.
The biggest issue is the handle. Scale-tang handles don't show up on British knives until the mid-14thC, long past the date-range of seaxs. To put it bluntly the handle/tang design is made up and does not correspond to any seax design at all. Every single seax, just like all other knives in Britain and Scandinavia in this period were whittle-tanged.
The runic inscription is also dodgy. The "broken-back" seax with the sharply angled point is a characteristically English design. By the time that broken-back style seaxs came into use in the 9thC, Old English had already switched from Runic to Latin script. There has only been one find of a seax with a runic blade inscription; the Battersea/Beagnoth seax. This was a langseax unlike the hadseax in the image, and that is thought to be a deliberate throwback for a prestige item given the simplistic nature of the inscription and the other decoration. There is no reason to think that a hadseax of this type would ever have had a runic blade inscription, especially as we do actually have a fairly large body of finds. Latin script yes, Runes no.
The sheath looks to be made of wood, whereas all the finds of seax sheaths have been leather. The decoration of seax sheaths are well-documented and don't look like that. It's hard to say whether the general style of knotwork is inspired by any period examples so it can be given the benefit of the doubt in terms of design if not in application. Naturally as this is wood rather than leather the style and location of the metal fittings don't match up with any finds either.
It looks like a fairly well-made item, but does have several glaring flaws. The sheath is of course replaceable, and a tenous case could be made for the unlikely runic inscription but the handle is pretty much unsalvageable. They just did not look like that, and we have a mountain of evidence to prove it.
>>46545032
5% chance to crit fail no matter your level is more meme tier than the bell curve could ever be. He can go with a meme pyramid in 1d100 but with either of those he'd need to readjust the modifiers and that's not worth the extra work.
>>46544937
what kind of knife is that?
>>46545597
I love you.
>>46545597
What if it's not supposed to be an accurate reproduction and the artisan was aware of everything you just said?
>>46544937
I legit don't understand what the problem is. Are they having fun?
Sounds like they're doing well for themselves, is the issue that they're not appropriately challenged? Start scaling up the difficulty of encounters, cut them a bit less slack, design adventures so they're a bit more under pressure, just.. make shit harder.
Your post title seems super melodramatic... "game breaking" because they get kind of lucky?
>>46545860
I just can't help myself.
>>46545967
There is no problem with that, provided every effort is made to acknowledge it and it is not presented as being an accurate reproduction.
Even then, the artisan might know but does OP or anyone else who looks at it know?
As an aside; scramaseax is not a term used by contemporaries to broken-back seaxes. It comes from a history written in the 6th century but the term has somehow stuck in re-enactment and weaponry circles. Just seax will suffice, hadseax if you need to differentiate between shorter knives with blades 14" or lower and the much longer langseaxes.
>>46546201
it isnt "kind of lucky". every one of them, at least twice per encounter just completely wreck the fucking enemies. they have level ten-12 characters and can completely wreck a fucking wyrm red dragon in a matter of a few rounds. they have 4d6-lowest stats too. they simply always make the save every time, most of the time well enough to one-hit the fucker. i cant figure out how to scale up to the point where they have a challenge. they are doing level 20 adventures like its a cakewalk. i roll them new characters every month or so and every time they manage to do this.
we have fun, but i have been dming for fifteen years and cant challenge my pcs
Get gud newb
>>46545090
>crit on roll
>roll to confirm crit
>roll to confirm hit
>roll to hit AC... a fourth time?
Why? Just why?
>>46544937
If your players are having fun, then I don't see the problem.
As for your strange crit situation, introduce more combatants and some planning in their approach. Make it 4v4 fights, rather than just 4v1. The best way is just plan on what the NPCs will do beforehand - the barbarian challenges and goes after the toughest PC, while the archer keeps harassing any attacking magic users - and stick with that to keep the DM turns simple. Slightly larger enemy groups means you can have weaker and more interesting encounters. If, say, you have some frontline fighters and an archer, then the archer can be a danger even if one of the fighters goes down.
Also, each enemy has less total HP, so it isn't such a "loss" if one gets critted and killed.
Four enemies at CR -2 the party's level is going to be a decent challenge, although not a threat if the party is competent and organized. Four CR -4 enemies will be a pushover, but party members might get wounded and need a bit of healing or might burn through some Rage/spell slots. CR below that can be fun for hordes, but you need to manage it properly to avoid making it a mess: restrict how many enemies show up at once in such a fight.
Four CR = party level NPCs is a recipe for a Total Party Kill. If your party can handle themselves properly (or are really abusing the system) then it could be a cakewalk, but most fights against a mirror-NPC party would result in most PCs dead thanks to the DM having better organization between the NPCs. I would highly recommend against that idea unless you know your party can handle the situation, unless you know the party is smart enough to retreat (and do so successfully) if they are in danger, or unless the party is really wanting that sort of challenge.
>lucky/resourseful enough to take down a tarrasque in a half dozen rounds.
If your players are taking down tarrasques at all, chances are all of the games mechanical and balance issues are your fault and not theirs.
