Critical Failure... Arrghh!!!

[Lalato]

A game I play in has a glaring problem. It seems that every time we're in a situation that would normally be a simple skill check, the person rolling the skill check invariably rolls a 1 and critically fails.

These Critical Failures seem to happen a bit more often than one might expect. I guess I don't have a problem with critical failures overall, but these things are causing the entire game to switch focus from completing a task... to recovering from something that no sane human would fail at.

It's frustrating... to say the least.

What are your thoughts on Critical Failures... and more importantly do you have any Critical Failure stories that you and your character lived to tell about?

--sam

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

We roll another d20 and if less than 11, THEN it's a critical failure...

 

[EricNoah]

I like fumbles, as a DM; I should work them back into my 3e games...

 

[boxstop7]

Well, from what I've found according to the SRD and the PHB, there's no such thing as a "critical failure" on a skill check. From the SRD:

To make a skill check, roll 1d20 and add the character's skill modifier for that skill. The skill modifier incorporates the character's rank with that skill, the character's ability modifier for that skill's key ability, and any other miscellaneous modifiers the character has, including racial bonuses and any armor check penalty. The higher the result, the better. A natural 20 is not an automatic success, and a natural 1 is not an automatic failure.

For circumstances where critical failure does apply, I usually have my players make an appropriate ability check to avoid the failure (e.g., player rolls critical failure on attack roll, makes dex check to avoid being thrown off-balance and thus prone from the wild swing). Hope this helps!

~Box

 

[Tuerny]

Well, from what I've found according to the SRD and the PHB, there's no such thing as a "critical failure" on a skill check. From the SRD:



For circumstances where critical failure does apply, I usually have my players make an appropriate ability check to avoid the failure (e.g., player rolls critical failure on attack roll, makes dex check to avoid being thrown off-balance and thus prone from the wild swing). Hope this helps!

~Box

What he failed is we are using a D&D/Spycraft hybrid that uses action dice to activate critical hits/failures.

Plus there is an option in the DMG for integrating them into the game.

Btw, lalato could you please answer the questions I posted on the LJ community. I would appreciate it.

 

[Chun-tzu]

The revised DMG has a variant rule on critical success and failure. It's similar to what BFG described; if you roll a 1, you roll again, and if you still fail the roll, it's a critical failure.

You can see the scanned page from Gaming Report's preview. It's on the "adjudicating magic" page.

http://www.gamingreport.com/modules...le=index&req=ShowFile&file_wrap=html/dd13.htm

 

[tennyson]

We have a house rule in place that treats a roll of 1 as a -10, and a natural 20 as a 30 for skill checks. This way, there is no definite failure or success, instead there is "very bad luck" and "exceptional performance".

The person rolling the skill check still applies their modifier, but there is still the chance that if they excel in a certain skill, it can make up for a stroke of bad luck, and vice versa.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Our group used the critical success/failure variant. However, in our new campaign - using 3.5 from 1st level - we will be playing it straight out of the book no variants.
Perhaps the reasoning goes back to a rather bizarre incident that happened in game using the variant.

The group was on the back of a wagon on a woodland road and the main fighter of the group thinks he sees someone coming up behind them. He makes a spot check, rolls a 1 and follows it up with another 1. The DM decides that he has critially failed and has copped a poke in the eye from one of the others on the wagon when it went over a rut. The ruling was that his vision would be slightly blurred in the eye for a minute.
However, a couple of arrows come flying in but no one can see the source of the bowfire. Our heroic fighter decides to stand up and make another spot check to see the culprits - with a -2 circumstance penalty from before - and yet again he critically fails with a 1 followed by another 1. (By this stage everyone was in stitches). The DM decides that the eyes vision remains blurred - hampering the fighter in the oncoming skirmish - and later on, the news is delivered that the eye is severely infected - he nearly lost it due to further circumstances.
Suffice to say, the fighter's player was incredibly unhappy, said it was BS and that he would never make another spot check again. Perhaps the DM should not have taken the multiple critical failures quite so seriously.

Anyway, while critical failures can spice things up, they do seem to cause a lot of problems when they happen. Perhaps DM's should not be quite so zealous in making a critical failure really critical.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Lalato]

What he failed is we are using a D&D/Spycraft hybrid that uses action dice to activate critical hits/failures.

Plus there is an option in the DMG for integrating them into the game.

Btw, lalato could you please answer the questions I posted on the LJ community. I would appreciate it.

The DM speaks!!!

Yep... I neglected to mention the whole action dice thing. For those that don't know how this works... The players receive 3 action dice per session (with the chance to gain more for good roleplaying). The DM also gets a number of action dice per session.

If a player rolls a 1, the critical failure is activated at the DM's discretion. The same holds true for the players if the DM rolls a 1 for an NPC.

--sam

 

[hong]

Just use take 10 if the crits are starting to annoy you.