Let's describe some tragic and horrible Critical Failures

[psychognome]

Think of the following recipe:
Critical miss rules that give a chance of the character critically hitting himself.
Vorpal weapons.
Ouch.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Paladin was charging some kobolds when the wizard cast magic missile. As she ran forward, she saw the magic missile fly past her and was distracted by its shiney shiney-ness. This caused her to actually run past the kobolds in question, then trip when trying to turn around, and impaling herself with her own spear.


That was way back in an AD&D game.

 

[Enkhidu]

Our group used "Good Hits, Bad Misses" from Dragon like many others did, but found that it didn't really do what we wanted to. So I sat down one afternoon and created my own, which were used consistently until 3.0 came out.

Anyway, on those tables we had two things that stand out in my memory - divine intervention and the dreaded "terrain attack!".

Divine intervention was just that - on a 00 on the % roll, one or more of the gods happened to be watching and intervened in the battle. These moments were always spectacular, and usually meant the end of a battle in favor of the one who score a crit (and against those with a fumble).

Terrain attacks came in two forms - major and minor. Minor terrain attacks meant that the battlefield itself shifted in such a way to either help or hinder the attacker (depending on if it was a crit or fumble). The could be something as simple as a slick patch on the ground, a tree falling in such a way as to provide cover for one side, or a small rockslide. Major terrain attacks were far worse - earthquakes, lightning strikes, major mudslides that swept away one side or the other - anything could happen, and usually did.

I think I remember us escaping certain death when an earthquake hit the area, dropping much of the opposing force's goons in a deep crevice and allowing us the time to run like the wind.

 

[Buttercup]

my opinion is that if you are only rewarded for a natural 20 upon a confirmation. then you should also only be penalized upon confirmation of a natural 1. the automatically hit or miss should be applied on the 20 and 1 but then you have to confirm wheather you critically hit or miss. no one seems to do this. but it seems fair to me. people seem to aplly critical miss on a 1 but make it so you have to confirm a critical hit.

That's great, but this thread is about the pain, the agony, the...oh, heck, the humor! Do you have any examples?

 

[ledded]

In our d20 modern game, I once nearly killed myself with my own pistol.

Dropped some crazy guy with my .44 magnum, and thought he was dead, so I started checking out stuff and talking to the others.

Crazy guy was really a zombie, who proceeded to bite hard into my lower left leg. We had not seen any actual weirdness (playing a very 'real' modern campaign) so my character freaks out and takes 2 successive shots. First shot, critical failure, confirms, then roll for body part... you guessed it, left leg. Did enough damage to nearly drop me. Second shot, clean through the zombie's skull (apparently the only way to really kill 'em).

In-game and our story hour, the GM basically described it as me freaking out (which I did) and shooting the zombie through the forehead, the shot proceeding out of the back of his head into my foot. Being the guy with the big gun is not always fun at low levels

 

[Spatula]

my opinion is that if you are only rewarded for a natural 20 upon a confirmation. then you should also only be penalized upon confirmation of a natural 1. the automatically hit or miss should be applied on the 20 and 1 but then you have to confirm wheather you critically hit or miss. no one seems to do this. but it seems fair to me. people seem to aplly critical miss on a 1 but make it so you have to confirm a critical hit.

Seems logical, but with the way that iterative attacks due to BAB work, such a house rule disproportionately penalizes characters with higher BABs (i.e. your combat specialists).

 

[Spatula]

I used to play in a game set in Middle-Earth using the Rolemaster fantasy rules (not the water-down MERPS version). All rolls are percentile, and if you roll a 1-5 you roll again and subtract. If you roll a 96-100 you roll again and add, and this can keep going on and on. Oh yeah, and the system has extensive crit tables that cover varying degrees of success or failure - so a really high roll will get you a really good crit (and vice versa).

Anyway, our DM had a strange knack for rolling the extreme ranges with percentile dice - any percentile dice. Which meant that, every combat, we either got decimated by our amazingly accurate opponents, or our opponents killed themselves without touching us. Like one time an orc managed to slice off the top of his own skull, which then went frisbeeing off into the distance.

One incident which sticks in my mind is when the party entered a room where, unbeknownst to us, several bad guys had laid an ambush. We enter the room, they attack - archer #1 lets go of the wrong end of his bow, gets smacked in the face, falls off his perch. archer #2 breaks his bowstring (we actually had to kill this one ourselves). one swordsman loses his grip on his weapon, sending it point-first into an ally. another stumbles and falls on his sword. yet another swordsman hits himself in the face with his blade, killing himself. Our characters just stood there, watching these guys come out of hiding screaming warcries, only to kill themselves and each other off in an amazing display of ineptitude.

Good times.

 

[Buttercup]

Like one time an orc managed to slice off the top of his own skull, which then went frisbeeing off into the distance.

Please tell me there was a bard present, to immortalize this beauty in song.

 

[Kender42]

Oh! And for a while, we tried the Rolemaster Arms Law/Claw Law critical/fumble charts.

A very short while.

I still get a laugh out of one of my gamers when I mention someone tripping over the "invisible deceased turtle" that was on one of the tables.

 

[ledded]

I used to play in a game set in Middle-Earth using the ICE fantasy rules (not the water-down MERPS version). All rolls are percentile, and if you roll a 1-5 you roll again and subtract. If you roll a 96-100 you roll again and add, and this can keep going on and on. Oh yeah, and the system has extensive crit tables that cover varying degrees of success or failure - so a really high roll will get you a really good crit (and vice versa).

Anyway, our DM had a strange knack for rolling the extreme ranges with percentile dice - any percentile dice. Which meant that, every combat, we either got decimated by our amazingly accurate opponents, or our opponents killed themselves without touching us. Like one time an orc managed to slice off the top of his own skull, which then went frisbeeing off into the distance.

One incident which sticks in my mind is when the party entered a room where, unbeknownst to us, several bad guys had laid an ambush. We enter the room, they attack - archer #1 lets go of the wrong end of his bow, gets smacked in the face, falls off his perch. archer #2 breaks his bowstring (we actually had to kill this one ourselves). one swordsman loses his grip on his weapon, sending it point-first into an ally. another stumbles and falls on his sword. yet another swordsman hits himself in the face with his blade, killing himself. Our characters just stood there, watching these guys come out of hiding screaming warcries, only to kill themselves and each other off in an amazing display of ineptitude.

Good times.

Oh, that's a good one. We had something similar happen once in a D&D game, where the bad guys were going to ambush us by rolling something quite large (a boulder, I think) but the 2 rolling it critically messed up, and then critically hit many of their partners. So not only did they manage to injure/kill themselves (one rolled over his foot, the other was described as forgetting to let go and then rolling over the *top* of the boulder to become a stain the next time it came around...) but also take out the majority of the ambush. Instead of a nasty arrow-and-boulder-filled ambush, it was our surprised party watching a group of guys burst from the bushes screaming as a boulder rolled through them, smashing folks hither and yon.

Of course, laughter ensued for some minutes, and as soon as it calmed down our party rogue, in true D&D fashion, said:

"Hey... we still get XP for that, right?"

Which set us off for another 10 minutes of guffaws and giggles.