CRITICAL SUCCESS AND FAIL ON SKILL CHECKS

>Rolling a nat 20 on a climb check wouldn't really do much
Maybe the player finds such good footing that the rest of the party gets a bonus to their attempts to climb because they can see how he did it

Doesn't really affect the player that got the crit, but its still a cool little fun bonus that keeps rolling a 20 fun

depends on the group

wew

>fun
>>>/reddit/

>confirming criticals
Literally the worst aberration of critical rules that exists.

That's what happens when you play a d20 based game.

>Literally the worst aberration of critical rules that exists.
what if the DM secretly confirms with a D4 behind a screen just to determine how absurd the crit gets to be?

>"I attempt to run on clouds as a level 1 commoner"
>5% chance it will happen

>Critical Success
Yes, an added bonus is always nice on skill checks.

>Critical Failure
No, I am not fond of le epik nat 1 failures that make you hit your own leg with your axe or whatever.

However, I think it's interesting to have a success that yields a negative consequence of some sort, that doesn't negate your success. That's way more interesting.

If your system uses a d20, you're already doing it wrong.
To humor you though, my rules are simple. there are no crits, good or bad. You pass you pass, and you fail you fail. roll 1 but have enough modifiers to do it anyways? you did it. inverse is true too, 20 won't do shit if the task is so hard the math alone doesn't hit the target number.

Only in a minor sense.

>nat 20
>you not only unlock the door, but take it completely apart
>nat 1
>as piece of your lockpick snaps off and blinds one of your eyes
This is dumb

>nat 20
>while unlocking the door, you spot a flicker of candlelight through the keyhole; looking through for a moment, you notice the blurred form of someone standing immediately beyond the door
>nat 1
>you manage to pick the lock but guard on the other side doesn't hears a noise, and turns around to figure out what it is
Acceptable.

>success on a nat 1
Bitch your modifier better be REALLY FUCKING HIGH

> ...other side hears...
Fuck.

>saving throws, a 1 isn't necessarily a failure
actually it explicitly is in saving throws.

see
I made an error.

No, I only modify the description a little if there was natural 1 and failure or natural 20 and success.

Regular success to climb: just pick the right points to go for and climb
Nat20 success to climb: scale the obstacle like a cat, impressing bystanders
Regular failure to climb: realize you don't have a route or enough stamina, back down
Nat1 failure to climb: slip after two seconds, fall down, get ridiculed by the party

And if nat20 isn't enough to beat the DC, it's just that the challenge is beyond one's abilities despite best effort.

>Doesn't know about the concept of "within reason".
Ok.

Crit fail might work, but not in a d20 system, because the chance of crit fail has to decrease as the skill rank increases.
Crit success is total nonsense (I intimidate the avalanche!) in any game. You're going to say "the GM decides if a task is impossible you can't roll", but then if it's possible to meet a difficulty number by rolling a 20 + N, what's the point? You can use exploding dice to fulfill the same purpose of success beyond expectations without making anything auto-success.

>within reason
Show me where OP said those words.

If you show me where he said literally anything will be possible with a nat 20, because as far as I know, he didn't say you'd automatically do literally anything at all.

OP here, I said it right here >in my actual games I tend to consider a crit on a skill check to be "you do the thing you wanted to do within reason"
>So if a player walked up to a king and said "GIVE ME ALL OF YOUR GOLD" and rolled to persuade, on a 20 the king wouldn't just become retarded and give away all of his gold, but maybe he might be entertained and give the player a minute to explain exactly why he thinks he should get some gold before the guards throw him out for being a rude little shit

Its not like it works that way in combat either, just because a player says "I attempt to slice the golem in half with my katana", doesn't mean he actually oneshots the enemy on a 20

This
I mean what the fuck why is this even a thing, just make the crits have a weaker effect if you think it's too powerful. It's the most anticlimactic mechanic ever devised

>"I attempt to slice the golem in half with my katana"
>rolls a 20
"You raise your katana above your head and with expert aim bring it straight down on the skull of the creature, your blade cleaves the monster in twain, both halves of the creature fall to either side for a moment before attempting to stabilize themselves, you are now fighting two halves of the golem"
I'd just reduce the monsters move speed and modifiers by half and restrict its attacks to things it can do with one hand

It's designed to keep PCs from dying too easily.

>It's designed to keep PCs from dying too easily.
You have to admit that it kind of ruins the fun of seeing a natural 20 or 1 show up

How about gaining a "pool" or a re-roll for every crit and loose a re-roll for every failure?

The worst part is it slowing the game down when you have multiple high-threat attacks, especially when it's paired with enemy miss chance.

Yes, but with a modicum of restraint. Rolling a 20 won't make you into the setting's Jesus nor will rolling a 1 cause "hi-larious" hijinks.

In a D20 system I judge the severity of crits by the difficulty or magnitude of the action. If you crit fail on a check to throw an apple at someone, you won't magically break an arm or anything you'll just miss your target horrifically.

Unpredictable things like combat: yes, but only auto-hit/miss respectively, not increased damage/self-damage.

Predictable things like skill checks: no, except if the nat 20/1 would succeed/fail on the check regardless of modifiers, in which case you get an extra awesome/embarrassing narration, to zero mechanical effect.

Objectively superior.

>doesn't slow down the game
>doesn't penalize characters who make more rolls like fighting men
>affects the fiction in a flavorful way
>doesn't exacerbate the inherent swinginess of the d20

>actually it explicitly is in saving throws.

Only the case in 3rd edition. In every other edition, it's not.

Yes, there is literally no argument against it.

Agreed although it's a matter of taste if 5% is too much.

OP didn't inquire about RAW.

A bald assertion bla bla bla
Give me something else.

Because the risk is higher than the reward in that situation in real life, user, from my simulationist POV.

It shows the weakness of the lacking granularity of the d20. It becomes completely hilarious though when the same neckbeards who decry confirming crits in D&D call the granularity of the d100 unnecessary.

>No, I am not fond of le epik nat 1 failures that make you hit your own leg with your axe or whatever.
That's not a problem of Critical Failure rules but a problem of GM's interpreting the CF rules unskillfully. See

>It shows the weakness of the lacking granularity of the d20. It becomes completely hilarious though when the same neckbeards who decry confirming crits in D&D call the granularity of the d100 unnecessary.
Wait what? I think you have a typo in there. 'to decry' means 'to condemn'

You find it acceptable to pick a lock on a 1? Not criticizing just genuinely find that to be strange.

I think he's either just giving an unlikely example, or using what's called "fail forward"

No. Crits on skills are faggotry of the highest caliber.

Personally, no.

But user, what describes on his "critical failure" is exactly what I described as a success with consequence.

If you roll a 1, you FAIL to pick the lock AND the other side hears you. That's failing forward. Succeeding with consequences isn't failing forward.

I'm pretty close to this. When you're doing something you're not really trained for, or doing something with a lot of outside randomness it's ok to add a little something extra.
>So Joe the Wizard and Bob the Barbarian both rolled a nat 1 to search the public library? Ok, Joe, you just fail. Bob, you get kicked out because you didn't realize that books are supposed to go back on specific shelves.

>>nat 20
>>you not only unlock the door, but take it completely apart
>this is dumb

I just did something like recently in a campaign where a PC tried to rip some wooden planks off a boarded up window on an old abandoned house, but he rolled a D20 so I said "In a freak burst of retard strength you grab the board and pull, however the house is clearly more damaged than you anticipated as you pull the entire window frame out of the wall"

Did I get too goofy with it, or would you consider that an acceptable way to handle a nat20 on something like that? Ultimately its just fluff, but I don't want to go too far with this stuff

>In a freak burst of retard strength
This might be a little much for description. But I'm just nitpicking since it sounds like you really have the right idea.

Sounds right to me.
They condem confirming crits as ridiculous then say percentile is too granular.

I only said that because he's playing a Slaad wizard, and earlier he tried to figure out what happened to a cart that wasn't where it used to be, but rolled a 1 so I said he was convinced it was magically whisked away by an otherworldly force, so his character was already being snickered at by the other characters for being dumb since they figured out the cart was actually dragged into the woods but he wouldn't believe it

We've had it in our games, and I personally wasn't a fan. We discussed it as a group and agreed to remove it, as auto-failing something 5% of the time, even if it's your job or something, was kind of retarded.

As a DM i will let a nat 20 slide if my players have been RPing well and its within reason.

So yeah, a high level theif just picked the lock to the kings treasure horde on that nat 20 even though he needed to roll a 21 (on a 20 sided die).

But no your drunk lvl 1 fighter who just rolled a nat 20 did not lay the smack down on the captain of the guards that got called on you because a member of your group was seen trying to pawn some of the kings treasure.

>why do fleshy things always want to hurt golem 6b?
>gurl never tried to hurt golem 6b

From my experience it creates a lot of tension.
Rare but strong crits are far more entertaining than more common but weak crits.

not him but id say thats fine, since it could reasonably happen

someone trying to pick a lock isnt going to stick the pick in the lock, do their thing, and suddenly the door falls apart

If you'd like to not use confirms, either stop using D20 or nerf criticals.
But from my experience, players prefer confirms to nerfed criticals.

I can understand if some people do like 5%, although personally I think it's too high and confirms, based on DC not another 20, is a great way to scale the difficulty of crits to the difficulty of the task.

>lockpick success gives you a perception result

No.

It adds too much fun spice to the game to not include.
>No fun allowed
Just use 2d10 so it's only a 1% chance for either, and get a good DM who can balance out results for the mood.

Nat 20 during a really hype fight, and the players have been working hard
>"Your arrow drives itself into a gap in the dragon's scales, lodging into the dragon's heart and killing it."
Nat 20 during a normal encounter
>"You catch the knight off guard, and your weapon pierces into his shoulder. Your attack does the max damage for your dice."
Snake eyes during normal escapades
>"One of the rungs you were trying to pull yourself up with breaks off, roll agility."
Snake eyes during retarded escapades
>"The rope breaks and you fall into the abyss never to be seen again...WHY DID YOU KEEP TRYING TO CLIMB DOWN THE FUCKING WELL!!"

>20 You pick the lock with ease and silence much faster than you or anyone predicted

>1 you fumble around with the lock and break your pick in the attempt. This of course causes some noise that can be heard nearby with a DC 14 listen

I like the whole yes and, yes, yes but, no but, no, no and style of skill checks. I have nothing more to add.

Not on a single D20 roll. A 5% chance for a completely untrained rube to succeed and for a highly trained professional to catastrophically fail is way too high.

If your table likes it, yes. If not, no.