What's a 20 worth?

So how do you like to see critical successes treated games? (Natural 20s, 100s, etc)

Do you just treat them at face value? Are they automatic successes? Do they require confirmation? Do they come with bonuses? Do they warp reality in their master's favor?

As an unrepentant silly GM, I oscillate between the last two camps. I once restarted a campaign because the party rolled triple 20s on initiative, judge me for that how you will. Still, I'm curious how everybody else treats critical successes. I mean, do folk still roll to confirm? Isn't that like the worst thing in the world? To roll a crit and then have it snatched away from you because your second roll was rubbish? What about critical result tables? Always seemed easier to make stuff up on the fly.

But yeah, what's your preference Veeky Forums?

I like the +/-10 idea for nat20s and nat1s. Not AUTOMATIC success or failure, but certainly of value.

Criticals require confirmation, though, and I avoid critical fumble tables.

Why did you restart the campaign, user?

If it's a combat roll, I have them confirm.

If it's a skill check roll, they get the best feasible outcome plus a small bonus.

The maximum result on the dice means that circumstance as favoured the character as much as it possibly could have. It won't obviously warp reality, but it doesn't really need to.

A maximum roll should always succeed, because if you let the PC roll then there should be a chance of success. If the player has rolled something without checking it with you first, it's invalid and can be ignored. If you ask a player to roll for something without there being any chance for them to succeed, you're just a shit GM.

Depends on how common criticals are and what's the tone of the campaign. If the chance of a critical is 1/10 or thereabouts, it probably shouldn't be anything special. If it's 1/100, then that should be something noticeable like automatically bypassing armor on an attack roll(assuming armor reduces damage) and bonus damage. Reality warping stuff is best left for silly games.

>Isn't that like the worst thing in the world?
That's the stupidest thing I've read today.

>Players want to do thing
>They can't make it by just the roll, but if they used resources (spells, bard shit etc.) they could
>Roll, get the maximum but don't spend any resources and fail

Are you now a shit GM?

Yep. A roll is only worthwhile if there's a meaningful consequence to both success and failure. If they can't succeed at all without using those resources, then before they do so they shouldn't be asked to roll.

>A maximum roll should always succeed, because if you let the PC roll then the roll should affect what happens
FTFY. Success/failure doesn't have to be binary.

I prefer having edge/fate/luck/whatever points to blow on major rolls. Dice shouldn't force absolutely everything, to my mind.
And as GM, I reserve the right to fudge and ignore my own rolls for the sake of drama, enjoyment of the game, or simply not causing a TPK because of a mistake I made.

One of the players joked about the party's triple 20s meaning that their combined initiative would let them take action before the campaign began. I just ran with that and let them pull a Groundhog Day. They started back off at lv 1, but they were able to use their prior knowledge to fix all their past mistakes, speedrun a few quests and frame one of the campaign's major villains for a crime he hadn't even thought of yet.

I'm not sure how that's actually connected to what's being discussed?

I have what we call my nat20 hat, which is a wizard hat from a halloween costume. When a player rolles a 20 I will slyly glance around the table and watch smiles creep across everyone's face. Then I slap on the hat and we all hoot and holler
>ooooohhhhhhhhhhhh
>nat hat nat hat nat hat!!
At that point you might as well go ahead and rev up reddit, because you know it's gonna be post worthy!

I bet you have one guy at your table who doesn't participate.
Someone who hates your mascot Teehee Maccaroni.

Natural 1 is an auto-failure, Natural 20 is an auto success. It's going to be something that leans spectacular in either direction, but not so much that it defies logical plausibility. All a matter of context.

I like gurps
Bell curved 3d6, so crits are worthwhile. And the game revolves around that. No player thought needed either

Hate to admit it, but you got me with 'rev up reddit'.
Heh/10

What if the roll affects what the failure would be?

a nat 20 for me is best possible outcome. That doesn't mean success

you quickly realize the lock is too advanced for you.

You hack into the security system without tripping any security systems, still need a roll to see if you can do XYZ from this computer

You jump off the roof trying to fly but quickly remembering you're an idiot and that's impossible you tuck and roll taking half falling damage.

> they were able to use their prior knowledge to fix all their past mistakes, speedrun a few quests and frame one of the campaign's major villains for a crime he hadn't even thought of yet.
That sounds both awesome and hilarious.

Confirmation rolls for criticals are one of the most retarded things that came out of 3.5, an unnecessary step of complexity introduced to pare down the increased benefits of criticals in relation to previous editions.
Extra powerful and wacky criticals and fumbles, and especially fumble tables, are a surefire sign that the group and/or the DM is shit, and literally nothing of value is gained from them.
For games that have binary results from rolls, a critical should have a small benefit at most. Auto-hitting and a bonus to damage, the +10, or exploding dice in non-d20 systems are fine, but anything more than that is unnecessary and often damaging to the game. In games where rolls have degrees of success, you don't even need to add anything.

Nothing, it's a fumble.

If you weren't fucking illiterate and actually read the rules, you'd realize that natural 20=Success doesn't apply to everything.

My nat hat says otherwise.

>I fudge rolls
Why are you rolling at all then? If you ignore what comes up, why even bother? I also don't really see a difference in edge/fate/luck/whatever points vs. dice rolls. It's just a mechanic either way, and not something you are struggling any harder for. In fact, points are a resource, so they are more common than max rolls for important instances.

Not him, but fudging is usually to cut down the amount of variance not eliminate it completely.

>What is nat 20 worth
What the system says it is worth, unless I think something else serves the tone better.
>Auto success
If I, as GM, am asking them to roll, then yes. If they rolled to do something meme-y, then fuck that.
>Crit confirmation
To be fair, it is an automatic hit in systems with AC; confirming is to see if it did bonus damage.

I dislike confirming, because it deflates an otherwise notable, if common, event. What I like instead is a critical effect table, including bonus damage dice, sundering, weapon effect (doubling or tripling), an earned Fate point, disarming the enemy, putting the enemy on their back, etc.

>Fumbles
It's a fumble, not a "chop off your buddie's hand". Losing a turn to switching weapons or retrieving a dropped weapon is fine.

>Nat 1 critical fail
Hate that stupid meme houserule. 5% is way too high to get auto-punched in the dick no matter your skill level.

>How do you like to see critical success treated?
Crits should be rare and notable. If they are too common, e.g. d20, then they lose a lot of their value.

I also like GURPS critical system. Crits are normally rare (~1.5%), so auto failure and success are fine. Chance of critical success increases with skill, and at a high enough skill cuts chance of critical failure in half.

>If it's a combat roll, I have them confirm.
d20 lacks granularity