Natural 20's & 1's?

[Maximilia]

If someone rolls three natural ones in a row in combat we all point and laugh.

Poor Roller

Us

Yes, it has happened.

By contrast, a ranger in one of our games who rolled terribly for the most part, got two natural 20's on his twin strike, just at a time when we really needed it.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Critical fumble house rules are terrible. They favor only sadistic DMs and low level characters.

 

[Chris Knapp]

Critical fumble house rules are terrible. They favor only sadistic DMs and low level characters.

Amen! To me (and my group) D&D is about heroic fantasy. Its bad enough when you miss, but to make me stab my buddy or accidentally toss my weapon across the map? That's not very heroic. I'm not trying to play clumsy, real-world me. I'm Torro! Human fighter and ass-kicker who may miss, but is competent enough to hold on to his axe!

If I want that kind of "realism?" I play something else.

 

[JohnSnow]

I play it as written and generally don't use critical fumble rules.

However, IF a natural 1 is a miss (as it almost always is), I make the flavor decision to describe it as a "wildly inaccurate miss." You don't hit your buddy, or drop your weapon, but your opponent might batter off the swing with ludicrous ease, or make fun of your ineptitude. I have noticed, however, that when (for example) a kobold minion does that, the players suddenly get VERRRYYY interested in killing him.

In other words, in my games, it's just a flavor thing. it's possible to add spice to combat without changing the rules.

 

[Lordhawkins9]

The only house rule I use is that minions do double damage on a natural 20.

Seems like this can only work against the PC's. After all, when a PC crits a minion, they don't get anything extra...dead is dead.

 

[Mapache]

Critical fumble house rules are terrible. They favor only sadistic DMs and low level characters.

Plus, they hurt multi-attackers disproportionately. Consider an Invoker with Hand of Radiance and a typical six-or-seven-round higher-level fight. On average, the Invoker will roll a natural 1 for every encounter.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I have an old d6 that I like to use for when someone rolls a natural 20 in combat. It allows for 6 different scenarios (beheading, cut off limb, 2x damage, disarm/break weapon, dazed, and torso). The beheading will kill automatically, the cut off limb will kill the monster/creature/npc over a few rounds bleeding out and the rest do double damage.

I allow a player to use this d6 instead of just doing "double damage" on their 20. I feel it gives more flavor to the game.

1's are always a miss and I use a table that I found from someone here on EnWorld to allow them to "save" on it if used in combat. Such it's rolling another d20 and there are really bad things that happen with another 1 and with a 20 it's something very minor that happens.

20's in skill challenges are cool too, I just make it more cinematic for the players.. 1's are always a fail and depending on what it is, it can be a bad thing.

 

[Goonalan]

Playing out the finale of P1, can't remember whether it was the final encounter, or the one before but our Rogue rolled 4 Crits in 5 rolls, admittedly he crits 18-20 with his daggermaster but it was '20', '20', '19', '17', '20'.

That more or less wrapped that up...

Cheers Goonalan

 

[the Jester]

Well, on a critical hit I have a "colorful critical hit system" that adds some maiming and mutilation to a crit, based on the proportion of your hit points before the hit that are left after the hit. This means that you only take lethal critical effects (brain pierced, cut in two, decapitated, etc) if the crit actually kills you, and only nasty incapacitating crits if the crit incapacitates you (knocks you to 0 or below).

Some groups like fumbles, some don't. Mine has been begging me to redo and reinstitute my fumble chart for most of a year now; I just need to work out how to figure the severity. (I used a similar system for fumbles to that I use for crits, and for about 15 years, there's been a challenge- the first time anyone, pc or not, gets the "spontaneous human combustion" fumble, Craig is going to buy a keg of beer for all of us.)

 

[P1NBACK]

Personally, I feel that crits in 4E are kind of whack and flavorless. Max damage? I can get that without rolling a 20...

I saw an idea recently, I think on Story Games, about each class getting a cool "crit" ability, like the fighter being able to mark an additional creature or something. I like that.

Unfortunately, crits are a design space that the designers of 4E missed out on imho.