Natural 20/1 Crit fails and Crit successes, How do you handle them?

[1QD]

So in most of my gaming experiences, rolling a Nat 1 was bad and a natural 20 was like double Dmg or something. In my own system, nat 20's are bad, and nat 1's are good, 30's are death and 00's can cost you a limb. What are your house rules for determining the result of a really good roll?

 

[Umbran]

I run too many different systems to have a single answer to that. I don't usually house rule critical successes or failures - I just use the mechanics the system has, if any.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

I don't, full stop. If the modifiers are so good that snake eyes is a success, then snake eyes is a success (and for a pass/no pass task, don't even roll 'em). There are few things I hate more than critical failures (or successes).

 

[Basic Expert]

In a d20 system, a natural 1 is usually always a fail and a natural 20 is usually always a success; though I skip rolling if I think the end result is a foregone conclusion.

Also, I view dice results as the vagaries of luck, fate or what have you and not indicative of PC skill. So when interpreting or narrating the results: a natural 1 isn't the PC bungling the attempt, it is some unforeseen impediment that derails things; and a natural 20 critical hit is a fluke shot, not a perfectly aimed blow.

 

[Reynard]

I generally avoid making "crits" too big of a deal. I will use the rules for them if they exist, but I try not to extend it to skill rolls in 5E for example.

 

[Piperken]

Most of the time a crit fail/crit success results in a very favorable or very unfavorable occurrence in the fiction.

One time a player used a less than ideal weapon (sword) to punch through a wood wall. They rolled a crit fail; their weapon went through, got stuck past their wrist. They had to spend additional time to extract it safely.

 

[Blue]

Generally, static-chance crit successes and crit failures hurt the PCs more than help them by increasing swinginess. To take D&D for an example, in any given combat it's most likely that the foes will be dead and the party alive. A foe dying a round early due to a crit/fumble is nice, but mechanically is mostly some resources (like HPs or spell slots) saved so it's just a bit less attrition. While if a crit/fumble takes out a PC, that's a bigger deal.

The same doesn't hold as true for systems with variable chance ones, such as PF2 with the +/-10. Nor for ones where there are set effects and they aren't particularly strong.

 

[jian]

I generally don’t like games with critical failures unless you get something for them (like a Plot Point). Critical successes depend on the system - extra damage, an extra action, player narrates the spotlight, whatever.

 

[Blue]

While this had an exceedingly D&D-type game feel in it's title talking about 20s and 1s, it is posted in TTRPGs General so I want to talk about other types of systems.

In a game like Mothership (Alien franchise-inspired SF) or Call of Cthulhu, I like the added swinginess of critical successes and failures, both in combat and out. The characters are intentionally out of their depth, and have a real chance not to survive. So a character failure due to this is just an more epic story to tell, and a huge success just feeds how long they can survive, giving them a win against long odds.

In games where death is not a common stake for overcoming a challenge, I'm okay with critical successes and failures. Since before the written word, we've had storytelling and they have had up and down beats. D&D and many of the games that it inspired put failure into a place where it can cause character death which is unfun for the player. But in stories, character failure is just a different fork of the plot, and should still be fun. So having those in an RPG is just fine, and if some of them are bigger, that's just varied story emerging.

 

[aco175]

In earlier editions of D&D we used this more than we do now. With 5e we have the 20 as a crit success with the double damage and a 1 as a miss but not extra stuff. Skills are not supposed to be this way but somehow we have added a lot into it. If someone has a very high skill check, I might not even have them roll. This might be a ranger with Survival of +10 looking for a plant or tracking a few monsters.