10 Tips to Being a Better Dungeon Master – A Dungeons and Dragons Guide

[TallIan]

The balance is not against how many times you roll an attack, but against the same probability of getting a critical hit. Your wizard only had a 1 in 20 chance of getting a critical hit, and should have had a similar chance of a critical miss (or the minimal hit option I proposed). The fighters had a TON of chances for a critical hit, but without a counterbalance, they just did better overall because of the chance for extra damage with no drawback (depending on the argument of the value of saves vs. AC)

Something you (and others) seem to have in mind is for critical misses to be catastrophic in nature, and the rest of my post argued against this. The negative for a critical miss should not in any way be significantly worse than the benefit of a critical hit (thus my minimal hit suggestion instead). If you want to have catastrophic critical misses, the chance of those must be MUCH lower than 5%; I would suggest only having them happen when the roll has either advantage or disadvantage and BOTH dice roll 1. This would make regular attacks unable to critically miss, and even advantage/disadvantage attacks only have a 1/400 chance of happening. While this might happen occasionally in a campaign (creating the memorable moments), it shouldn't significantly impact even the attackiest of fighters since they're still getting all those critical hits.

I still disagree that they critical hits should be balanced off against critical failures - no matter how balanced tehy are against each other. Critical hits make martial characters more deadly (it increases their damage) conversely critical failures make martial characters less deadly. So if you have a magic system that is more powerful than the martial system in the game, adding critical hits without adding critical failures can improve the magic-martial balance.

 

[Gradine]

Maybe the player who rolled the fumble gets to decide what has gone horribly wrong, and leave it as narrative rather than mechanical?

Depends on the dominant aesthetics of play of the players at the table. For players who are all about Expression, that's great! For players who are more into Fantasy or Narrative, they might not prefer it.

It's kind of the same as the logic behind the whole "have the players describe what they find when they go over that hill" thing; Expression players love that kind of stuff, while Discovery-seekers would have wanted there to have been something important there to have found.

 

[Yaarel]

Depends on the dominant aesthetics of play of the players at the table. For players who are all about Expression, that's great! For players who are more into Fantasy or Narrative, they might not prefer it.

It's kind of the same as the logic behind the whole "have the players describe what they find when they go over that hill" thing; Expression players love that kind of stuff, while Discovery-seekers would have wanted there to have been something important there to have found.

I wonder if it is possible to have keep ones cake and eat it too.

Maybe the mechanical consequence of a fumble is disadvantage on the action of ones next turn. Then the player (or DM) can narrate why.

This might be enough to avoid slapstick in a moment where players are in more a serious mood.

 

[Shiroiken]

I still disagree that they critical hits should be balanced off against critical failures - no matter how balanced tehy are against each other. Critical hits make martial characters more deadly (it increases their damage) conversely critical failures make martial characters less deadly. So if you have a magic system that is more powerful than the martial system in the game, adding critical hits without adding critical failures can improve the magic-martial balance.

Except you still have spells that use attacks that can be a critical hit. Not to mention the cantrips everyone uses, you also have spells like Steel Wind Strike that can critically hit for 12d10 force damage (against 5 targets), plus you can flood the battlefield with 10 small objects with animate object that each can critically hit for 2d8 damage. Because 5E has so many different ways for casters to make attacks, critical hits are not a good balancing mechanism between martial and magical attacks.

 

[TallIan]

Except you still have spells that use attacks that can be a critical hit. Not to mention the cantrips everyone uses, you also have spells like Steel Wind Strike that can critically hit for 12d10 force damage (against 5 targets), plus you can flood the battlefield with 10 small objects with animate object that each can critically hit for 2d8 damage. Because 5E has so many different ways for casters to make attacks, critical hits are not a good balancing mechanism between martial and magical attacks.

You’re looking at one tiny aspect of magic - damage - when magic can do so much more that has a much greater effect on play. Compare that to martial characters who only ever do damage.

Something like hypnotic pattern has no critical effect yet it can lock down half an encounter - no matter how many hp those creatures have - a far more powerful effect than the best possible dpr character could ever hope to achieve with a single action.

 

[Shiroiken]

You’re looking at one tiny aspect of magic - damage - when magic can do so much more that has a much greater effect on play. Compare that to martial characters who only ever do damage.

Something like hypnotic pattern has no critical effect yet it can lock down half an encounter - no matter how many hp those creatures have - a far more powerful effect than the best possible dpr character could ever hope to achieve with a single action.

While I don't disagree, that's off topic from the need for critical failures to balance critical hits. You were saying that critical hits without critical misses were necessary to balance martial vs. magic, but since magic can also critically hit, critical hits aren't useful as a balancing mechanic of martial vs. magic.

 

[TallIan]

While I don't disagree, that's off topic from the need for critical failures to balance critical hits. You were saying that critical hits without critical misses were necessary to balance martial vs. magic, but since magic can also critically hit, critical hits aren't useful as a balancing mechanic of martial vs. magic.

I’ve been arguing this as magic vs martial but that’s not a very good way to look at it. Damage is damage, whether from an axe or a ball of fire.

A better way to look at it would be damage vs effects (it’s just that effects are often magical). Many effects are more powerful than simply doing damage.

All critical hits do is raise your average damage. There is no need to have critical failures to lower the damage back down. You just have to ensure that the higher average damage is fair when looking at other options for your actions.

 

[robus]

I wonder if it is possible to have keep ones cake and eat it too.

Maybe the mechanical consequence of a fumble is disadvantage on the action of ones next turn. Then the player (or DM) can narrate why.

This might be enough to avoid slapstick in a moment where players are in more a serious mood.

A good option for maintaining a serious mood is to just have things generally turn against the party. Some general misfortune is suffered rather than singling out the poor player who rolled the one.

 

[Lanefan]

2. Critical failures can be funny. Most of what I have to say about this is to other commentors in this thread namely:
Sorry Shiroiken, I just found your post first.

I disagree with the premise. Critical effects should be balanced across the sub-systems of the game. As an example I am playing a wizard through Out of the Abyss - 25 sessions in and my wizard has make exactly one attack roll. So across all the sessions so far he's had 5% chance to critically fail. Compare that to the martial characters who make dozens of attacks each round. If you have critical fails that have a mechanical effect then it needs to affect combat, magic, skill, etc.

The flaw there isn't the critical fail rules, it's that casters should be forced to roll aim for placement of ranged spells just like any other character using a ranged item or missile. And on said aiming rolls, a fumble would of course be possible.

Just ask Jack, a mage from an old campaign of mine, what happens when you fumble with a fireball and it goes off inside the fireproof cloak you're wearing...

The long-distance message sent to the mage's wife shortly after: "It's OK. We've got Jack. He's in our Dustbuster...."

 

[TallIan]

The flaw there isn't the critical fail rules, it's that casters should be forced to roll aim for placement of ranged spells just like any other character using a ranged item or missile. And on said aiming rolls, a fumble would of course be possible.

Just ask Jack, a mage from an old campaign of mine, what happens when you fumble with a fireball and it goes off inside the fireproof cloak you're wearing...

The long-distance message sent to the mage's wife shortly after: "It's OK. We've got Jack. He's in our Dustbuster...."

This is certainly a possible solution to help balance different mechanical subsystems within a game (martial damage vs magical effects). I still don't consider a lack of critical failure a flaw though - its a mechanism to balance a game and not just crit hits need to be balanced with crit failures.

If you roll to place AoE it lowers the effectiveness - it is now harder to get optimal placement. If you also allow critical failure wen rolling to place AoE it lowers the effectiveness even further - you now could hit your own party. This brings magic down in effectiveness to make sure damage can compete as a viable option. Alternatively you could add criticals to damage and increase its effectiveness to compete with magic.

I find that critical failure cannot be implemented without making the game either much gimmer or much more comical (unless you brush over the failure so casually that you might as well not have bothered). Critical hits less so. Though they can still have their own comedy moments. I had a game where a possessed baker bludgeoned a PC unconscious and to the brink of death with a loaf of bread. The PC was only saved when another PC doused the baker with water, making the bread soggy and less effective. All of this from a critical hit.