Some tables like to go a little or very three stooges on the combat, allowing for every blow to get a 5% chance of some yuk yuks. Sometimes the jokes a dark humored dice dictated fumble table. Others the players take a spotlight (like literally pulling focus from the goal of the combat) and getting into a storytelling constest over the worst epic fail.
That's all fine. But to say those antics "balance" the nat 1 against the 20's crit? Nah. 1s are misses that, especially at higher levels and a modest amount of magic items, in a lot of cases would have been hits. So it's already something that's not supposed to happen. The additional dice of the 20's crit I'd say actually balances for the 1's sabotage of what should have happened.
Weapon drops requiring movements (and AOOs against the recovery) or switching to likely inferior or ineffective secondary weapons, weapon breaks, self injury. These are all actually excessive consequences, which are fine for brutal and slapstick games (the sort of playstyles that always has players blowing themsleves up with grenades in modern or post modern, so to speak, settings).
Only time I ever penalize a nat 1 is when a ranged or reach attack is made requring the attack to go through a "square" (I don't really use grids but basically the player has an ally in line of sight) occupied by an ally. In those cases, the player has to roll again against the ally's AC .... I guess you could say it's a meta invocation of one of the cardinal rules of range discipline.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Curious that people are selling "your weapon breaks" or specifically "your bowstring snaps" as a MINOR inconvenience.
That's major! Especially for ranged characters, who are pretty unlikely to be carrying around spare bows with them in my experience. Inflicting that on a fighter/ranger/rogue (assuming) completely invalidates their character for the entire fight - if not longer!
Curious that people are selling "your weapon breaks" or specifically "your bowstring snaps" as a MINOR inconvenience.
That's major! Especially for ranged characters, who are pretty unlikely to be carrying around spare bows with them in my experience. Inflicting that on a fighter/ranger/rogue (assuming) completely invalidates their character for the entire fight - if not longer!
Depends on the game and the DM.
Bow string breaks. Take a round restring it. Sword goes flying? Take the disengage action to go pick it up. At most it's a turn of combat missed which while it sucks isn't the end of the world.
Now, if you play in a game that does maximum inventory management and has combats that are so tightly balanced that a single round of missed actions is the difference between a TPK and survival? Yeah... that's gonna hurt more.
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Curious that people are selling "your weapon breaks" or specifically "your bowstring snaps" as a MINOR inconvenience.
That's major! Especially for ranged characters, who are pretty unlikely to be carrying around spare bows with them in my experience. Inflicting that on a fighter/ranger/rogue (assuming) completely invalidates their character for the entire fight - if not longer!
Depends on the game and the DM.
Bow string breaks. Take a round restring it. Sword goes flying? Take the disengage action to go pick it up. At most it's a turn of combat missed which while it sucks isn't the end of the world.
Now, if you play in a game that does maximum inventory management and has combats that are so tightly balanced that a single round of missed actions is the difference between a TPK and survival? Yeah... that's gonna hurt more.
Also depends on the level, I only used a gray ooze (it corrodes metal) on my low level party because they were literraly right next to an armory.
Usually though, if you have a lower level PC break their weapon of choice in the middle of a dungeon, it certainly is not a minor inconveinance.
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The majority of discussion seems to revolve around how crtical hits aren't good enough for critical fails to need to do any more.
Perhaps it would work to say that any critical fail on an attack has the following simple effect:
Off Balance:
the next attack you make has disadvantage, or
the next attack against you has advantage
This effect ends at the start of your next turn, or when eitherof the above effects are used.
as soon as one is used up, then the effect is gone. So if you make more attacks, you can likely recover fro ma nat-1 by making another attack at disadvantage. At lower levels, the effect is more punishing as with only one attack, that nat-1 is probably going to get you hit. Also at higher levels, players have ways to get advantage, especially when flanking, so the effects reduce.
"A high level character is better able to deal with the consequences" is a logical error: you're suggesting that there should be added consequences for rolling a 1, but also that those consequences won't be important. So... they either are, or they aren't. Either you want there to be consequences, or you don't.
I want my players to think ahead and plan for things going wrong. For those plans to be meaningful there needs to be chances for things to go wrong. Is a consequence not a consequence if one prepared for it ahead of time? My players know that there's always a chance they can roll bad and something will happen. They get to use their agency to mitigate the 'pain' of the consequences. The player that takes the time to plan ahead and carry a spare weapon should have the opportunity to be rewarded for that thoughtfulness by running into a situation where they need to have a back-up weapon.
Curious that people are selling "your weapon breaks" or specifically "your bowstring snaps" as a MINOR inconvenience.
That's major! Especially for ranged characters, who are pretty unlikely to be carrying around spare bows with them in my experience. Inflicting that on a fighter/ranger/rogue (assuming) completely invalidates their character for the entire fight - if not longer!
Players should be challenged to find creative ways to solve problems, even in combat. If their bowstring breaks are they really just going to give up and sit out the rest of combat? They can figure out other ways to contribute. A little bit of pressure to make the player think outside of the box becomes an opportunity to make moments that stand out in combat.
Critical fails are a mechanism for making combat dynamic and challenging the players in unexpected ways. I've gotten memorable story-telling beats out of using them. A natural one causes a reaction (in a good way!) from the whole table that a simple miss wouldn't.
I think something that some folks aren't considering, or mentioning, is what kind of fight the players are in, or how much impact is it going to have. If my players are in a big fight against true threat foes and not a random group of wandering orcs or goblins, depending on where they're going, a natural one side effect, for me, might be to rotate your position around the foe as you overextend and he dodges unexpectedly. If you're hewing through a goblin shouting party, you may end up overextending, tripping over the nimble little bugger and winding up prone. They are "memorable moments" on the story, provided by the dice. I never use them to penalize or genuinely hinder the players, nor do I have bad side effects occur in "boss" fights (unless they are flattening it, which they sometimes do!)
On the flip side, I have a time or 2, allowed a crit by my player to kill a creature, when flat, factual numbers would have left it at 5-7 HP. Little perk of getting the killshot for a crit, much like 2 days ago, when you went headlong over a kobold in that cavern and got a mouthful of cave dust. A comedian once said "Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue."
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Some guys I’ve played with did the ‘Pants Falling Down’ sort of stuff, while making crits do extra stuff, I usually play it by the PHB- style. “ It completely misses” rules, but I know for a fact there’s a whole lotta stuff in the DMG for 1’s and 20’s, Lingering Injuries etc.
Of course I’m not saying they literally do nothing, but many types of characters are good at one thing and don’t have much else going for them. If this happens in combat one of a 5-session dungeon it’s gonna be a rocky road.
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I just say: "You miss." I find fighters and other martials get nat 1's a lot and punishing them for it can be quite frustrating.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Some tables like to go a little or very three stooges on the combat, allowing for every blow to get a 5% chance of some yuk yuks. Sometimes the jokes a dark humored dice dictated fumble table. Others the players take a spotlight (like literally pulling focus from the goal of the combat) and getting into a storytelling constest over the worst epic fail.
That's all fine. But to say those antics "balance" the nat 1 against the 20's crit? Nah. 1s are misses that, especially at higher levels and a modest amount of magic items, in a lot of cases would have been hits. So it's already something that's not supposed to happen. The additional dice of the 20's crit I'd say actually balances for the 1's sabotage of what should have happened.
Weapon drops requiring movements (and AOOs against the recovery) or switching to likely inferior or ineffective secondary weapons, weapon breaks, self injury. These are all actually excessive consequences, which are fine for brutal and slapstick games (the sort of playstyles that always has players blowing themsleves up with grenades in modern or post modern, so to speak, settings).
Only time I ever penalize a nat 1 is when a ranged or reach attack is made requring the attack to go through a "square" (I don't really use grids but basically the player has an ally in line of sight) occupied by an ally. In those cases, the player has to roll again against the ally's AC .... I guess you could say it's a meta invocation of one of the cardinal rules of range discipline.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Curious that people are selling "your weapon breaks" or specifically "your bowstring snaps" as a MINOR inconvenience.
That's major! Especially for ranged characters, who are pretty unlikely to be carrying around spare bows with them in my experience. Inflicting that on a fighter/ranger/rogue (assuming) completely invalidates their character for the entire fight - if not longer!
Depends on the game and the DM.
Bow string breaks. Take a round restring it. Sword goes flying? Take the disengage action to go pick it up. At most it's a turn of combat missed which while it sucks isn't the end of the world.
Now, if you play in a game that does maximum inventory management and has combats that are so tightly balanced that a single round of missed actions is the difference between a TPK and survival? Yeah... that's gonna hurt more.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
* Sundays 7pm EDT: Ravenloft 1921 / Alt. Tuesdays 5pm EDT: CoHost of Happy Hour at the Old Timer Tavern
* Wednesdays 7pm EDT: The Convergence - Homebrew 5E / Saturdays 8am EDT: The Bitter Victory - Pirate Homebrew 5E
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Join the table at: Start Playing Games
Also depends on the level, I only used a gray ooze (it corrodes metal) on my low level party because they were literraly right next to an armory.
Usually though, if you have a lower level PC break their weapon of choice in the middle of a dungeon, it certainly is not a minor inconveinance.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.The majority of discussion seems to revolve around how crtical hits aren't good enough for critical fails to need to do any more.
Perhaps it would work to say that any critical fail on an attack has the following simple effect:
Off Balance:
as soon as one is used up, then the effect is gone. So if you make more attacks, you can likely recover fro ma nat-1 by making another attack at disadvantage. At lower levels, the effect is more punishing as with only one attack, that nat-1 is probably going to get you hit. Also at higher levels, players have ways to get advantage, especially when flanking, so the effects reduce.
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I'm in the RAW camp here. Character misses, no averse consequences.
I want my players to think ahead and plan for things going wrong. For those plans to be meaningful there needs to be chances for things to go wrong. Is a consequence not a consequence if one prepared for it ahead of time?
My players know that there's always a chance they can roll bad and something will happen. They get to use their agency to mitigate the 'pain' of the consequences. The player that takes the time to plan ahead and carry a spare weapon should have the opportunity to be rewarded for that thoughtfulness by running into a situation where they need to have a back-up weapon.
Players should be challenged to find creative ways to solve problems, even in combat. If their bowstring breaks are they really just going to give up and sit out the rest of combat? They can figure out other ways to contribute. A little bit of pressure to make the player think outside of the box becomes an opportunity to make moments that stand out in combat.
Critical fails are a mechanism for making combat dynamic and challenging the players in unexpected ways. I've gotten memorable story-telling beats out of using them. A natural one causes a reaction (in a good way!) from the whole table that a simple miss wouldn't.
I think something that some folks aren't considering, or mentioning, is what kind of fight the players are in, or how much impact is it going to have. If my players are in a big fight against true threat foes and not a random group of wandering orcs or goblins, depending on where they're going, a natural one side effect, for me, might be to rotate your position around the foe as you overextend and he dodges unexpectedly. If you're hewing through a goblin shouting party, you may end up overextending, tripping over the nimble little bugger and winding up prone. They are "memorable moments" on the story, provided by the dice. I never use them to penalize or genuinely hinder the players, nor do I have bad side effects occur in "boss" fights (unless they are flattening it, which they sometimes do!)
On the flip side, I have a time or 2, allowed a crit by my player to kill a creature, when flat, factual numbers would have left it at 5-7 HP. Little perk of getting the killshot for a crit, much like 2 days ago, when you went headlong over a kobold in that cavern and got a mouthful of cave dust. A comedian once said "Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue."
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Some guys I’ve played with did the ‘Pants Falling Down’ sort of stuff, while making crits do extra stuff, I usually play it by the PHB- style. “ It completely misses” rules, but I know for a fact there’s a whole lotta stuff in the DMG for 1’s and 20’s, Lingering Injuries etc.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
Of course I’m not saying they literally do nothing, but many types of characters are good at one thing and don’t have much else going for them. If this happens in combat one of a 5-session dungeon it’s gonna be a rocky road.