Critical failures?

raspberryfh · Sep 11, 2017

This is a mechanic a lot of other systems have that I didn't see explicitly written in the NEW book. Basically, if critical successes are possible on triple 6s, is a critical failure possible on a triple 1? I could have sworn I read it somewhere in the book but I looked hard today and couldn't find it.

If so, how would you handle it? I'd been considering it a complication, but I was also under the assumption that was what the rules said to do. Or is it intended that Triple-Ones are their own punishment? (if it's in the book already I'd love a reference!)

Morrus · Sep 11, 2017

If triple 1s have a critical failure, you’d be more likely to get a critical failure the larger your dice pool. More competent characters would be fumbling more often than less competent ones.

Sent from my iPhone using EN World

daniiren · Sep 19, 2017

I can see the OP's point, and I can also see Morrus' point. A more competent character should have a lower chance of mucking things up, but I do think a "critical fail" mechanic is a feature that can be a lot of fun. A possible compromise would be if half the dice rolled are 1s then it's a critical failure. Obviously, this would be a massive impediment if you only roll two dice (30% chance of failure), so perhaps this also would only be possible with a roll of at least 3 dice. If you require that at least half (round up? round down? Not sure) roll 1s, then the more you roll the less likely you are to crit fail. I'm not 100% sure on the probability distribution on this, I'll do a test to make sure it's as expected.

The second concern then would be what in-game mechanics do you assign to a crit fail? Apart from an automatic failure of whatever the roll was about, I'm not sure what would work. In most RPGs I've played, crit fails are handled at the discretion of the GM as most systems don't have specific rules apart from the automatic failure. Does anyone else have good ideas? I can see this kind of thing being very situational. If you crit fail while trying to shoot a gun, maybe it jams, but if you crit fail while trying to cast a spell, what happens? A miscast-like table from Warhammer?

Morrus · Sep 19, 2017

Half dice as ones was in one of the playtest iterations. It’s not a bad way to handle it. I would suggest the person got a random condition imposed. Fail to cast a spell and end up confused, for example. Needs a little more nuance but I think it would work.

Sent from my iPhone using EN World

raspberryfh · Sep 20, 2017

This is what my players and I ended up agreeing to do (we haven't had it come up yet since adopting the rule, so I can't speak to how well it's working):

Glitches will be defined as a roll in which >50% of dice are ones (e.g. 4 ones in a roll of 6d6, 5 ones in a roll of 9d6). If the roll is successful, it will be a success with consequences. If it fails in combat, an additional 2d6 will be rolled to determine outcome. If a non-combat glitch results in failure, the result will be described per GM discretion.

As for the combat table, I made it a rollable table in roll20 instead, so the probabilities are slightly tweaked, but this is what I decided to go with:

2 Friendly Fire
3 Self-injury! (1d6 weapon damage type) by shooting foot/leg and gain Slowed condition on 1-2 or Pain condition on 2-1.
4 Damaged cover! (reduce cover by 1d6)
5 Self-injury! (1d6, ignores soak)
6 Unexpected recoil (Drop weapon and it lands 10' away)
7 Weapon jam! (spend one action to unjam)
8 Weapon jam! (spend one action to unjam, next attack at -1d6)
9 Trip and Fall! (fall prone)
10 Weapon malfunction (become Disarmed)
11 Trip and Hit Your Head (take 1d6 blunt damage and gaining Dazed condition on 5-6 or Drunk condition on 6-5)
12 Friendly Fire!

Using the dice roller in roll20 gives a bit more granularity since there's an order to the dice being rolled, but it could be tweaked to work with physical dice if they're different colors too.

Critical failures?

raspberryfh

First Post

Morrus

Well, that was fun

daniiren

Explorer

Morrus

Well, that was fun

raspberryfh

First Post

Similar Threads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Recent & Upcoming Releases