Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I have played games where the DM punishes for Nat 1s and only punishes the players. I have on multiple occasions hit my friends and then knocked them unconscious because my barbarian deals serious damage. Then the guard rolls a 1 and nothing bad happens other than a miss. Nat 1s are Nat1s and you can do with them what you like, but punihing players for luck of the dice is not my idea of an ideal game.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
I have a similar table, but if I roll a Nat 1, I will also end up rolling on it. Also, my table is mostly stumbles and dropping weapons.
Heyo! You can call me Link. Here’s a bit about me:
Roomba Knight, Architect of the Cataclysm, Foxy Lunar Archpriest. Dubbed The Fluffy Bowman by Golden. He/Him
Theatre Kid, Ravenclaw, bookworm, DM, Lego fanatic, mythology nerd, pedantic about spelling. I also love foxes, cats, otters, and red pandas!
I love K-pop Demon Hunters and Korean Mythology. If you want to ask me about something, send me a PM!
I try to keep the peace and be neutral most of the time…
I add narrative effects to nat 1s but nothing more. Critical fumbles just make the martial/caster divide that much wider, since spellcasters rarely make attack rolls, especially at high levels.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
That’s true…
Heyo! You can call me Link. Here’s a bit about me:
Roomba Knight, Architect of the Cataclysm, Foxy Lunar Archpriest. Dubbed The Fluffy Bowman by Golden. He/Him
Theatre Kid, Ravenclaw, bookworm, DM, Lego fanatic, mythology nerd, pedantic about spelling. I also love foxes, cats, otters, and red pandas!
I love K-pop Demon Hunters and Korean Mythology. If you want to ask me about something, send me a PM!
I try to keep the peace and be neutral most of the time…
D&D has never had official crit fails beyond the auto-miss to the best of my knowledge. Nor, back in the old days, were there crit hits. (I think those came in in 3e.)
They were a popular house rule in various forms, and I suspect that the desire for them was the initial driver for
ChartRole Master and its infamous crit tables.Critical hits definitely existed before 3rd Edition.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'm curious as to where they were established.
Not sure, but I remember them being in official books in 2nd Edition. Third Edition had its own weird crit rules that were a lot more than just rolling a nat 20 and proved to be problematic because of how many monsters were immune, so crit builds ended up being underpowered.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Dragon Magazine, issue 39, published in 1980 by TSR, the owners of dnd at the time.
Maybe not "official" official, but if wotc published a crit miss article.today it would at least be semi official.
It's possible. I only checked the PHB, but there were a lot of books for 2e. Maybe something like the Complete Fighter's Handbook.
Dragon was very much not official. They'd publish all sorts of stuff by all sorts of authors.
Now, some of it became official, most notably the forgotten realms and a bunch of stuff that got republished in unearthed arcana, but crit hits/misses were not one of those.
(As a complete aside, the number of different ways my computer has tried to autocorrect "crit" in this thread is impressive.)
Dragon Magazine was always official. The difference was that content published in it was also always optional.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.