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.
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.
My general guideline is 'Do something fun for the players'.
When an enemy rolls a nat 1, I usually have them graze one of their allies for a few points of damage, the enemy then curses at their friend etc,-- or if it would add to the RP situation, have them drop their weapon, or slip and fall prone. I don't want it to influence combat in any major way, but adding a taste of RP goes a long way to help with engagement.
If my players roll a nat 1, if they're not in any dire straights, I'll have them wack their buddy or RP something funny and inconsequential, like they shoot themselves in the foot, or losing part of their movement.
"You can break the rules once you know how to follow the rules" is good advice.
In this case, I'll add inconsequential, very minor, changes for RP's sake in any combat encounter that is not high stakes. When a situation requires precision and the outcome is consequential, I don't insert arbitrary results.
My rule is the same for players and NPC's if someone rolls a Nat 1 - depending on the range of the attack and IF there is anything that could reasonably have been hit by such a wildly off attack - i make it a RP opportunity. IE if a fighter roles a nat 1 and his buddy is next to him i do hi - low and roll a die if he calls it right the weapon just misses his buddy if he calls it wrong his buddy takes the attack, If its a ranger and there is another PC in the area same thing, That said if a mob roles a nat one I give the players the chance to call hi low and a mob may hit their buddy if it makes sense given the type of attack and spacing. It adds 10 seconds to combat but makes a nat 1 as cringe worthy as a a nat 20 is grin worthy.
Its pretty funny most of my players that roll a nat 1 if there are no friendlies in range are like woooosh dodged a bullet on that one. LOL its a fun mechanic.
I have recently started trying to use it for environmental effects. So someone takes a swing and misses and takes a chunk out of the pillar beside them, which wobbles unsteadily but remains upright. This often leads to a player saying "I push the pillar onto them" or some such, allowing more interesting combat options than "I attack".
I have recently started trying to use it for environmental effects. So someone takes a swing and misses and takes a chunk out of the pillar beside them, which wobbles unsteadily but remains upright. This often leads to a player saying "I push the pillar onto them" or some such, allowing more interesting combat options than "I attack".
I had a DM who started doing this in 3.5 and I stole the idea. I have a random chart to roll on about things falling, or new, I guess tone they’d be emanations forming. I really enjoy it as it forces people to move around a bit more and makes the fights more dynamic.
I'm going RAW here. I just have my players get so weird comedic reaction. (example; My player who just nat 1'd a bow shot, the arrow fires, catches on a little imperfection on the bow and it does a complete 180) I like the bard cuts his belt and his pants fall. That's pure funniness.
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I sort of do all sorts of things, from making the bard's enchanted weapon explode (I had a reason) in his face, to making them launch a fireball into the sky (I had a reason for that too). Essentially doing nothing is always good when a player is about to drop to 0 hp, and the attack needs to always miss, but those are the only guidelines that I play by.
At my table and the groups i play in the roll of a one in combat means the attacker has opened themselves up to a counterattack whether or not the defender can capitalize on it is up to their dice. This exists outside of the normal action rotation, and it is a mechanic that both sides of table get to use.
Penalties on nat 1s also affect some classes (those with Extra Attacks) much more than other classes which can lead to a disparity between characters.
A 5th lvl fighter with two attacks has a 1 in 10 chance of one of those attacks being a nat 1, compared to, say, a rogue or wizard with a 1 in 20 chance. If nat 1s cause some mechanical punishment, the higher the level, the more chance there is of a fighter getting "punished".
To me, this feels weird. Plus some players will get frustrated at getting disproportionally punished.
I will usually screw with people's equipment so I guess I'm in the "break weapons and equipment camp".
While I think their is narrative flavor in this, the primary reason I do this is because it adds verisimilitude to the setting and the world. When my players have been out and about adventuring, when they get back into town, their first thoughts are always on updating, repairing and replacing equipment and they do this from 1st level to 20th level. I do always allow players to repair magic weapons so as to ensure they don't lose a favorite, but anything can get damaged.
It also adds a nice gold sink which lets me hand out more treasure and the players actually feel they need it.
Whoever said that this affects some classes more than others, is correct. Martial classes are far more likely to run into this sort of trouble, but that again, adds to the verisimilitude of the game. The more players believe in the world the better, that always trumps balance and fairness.
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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.
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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.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
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.
My general guideline is 'Do something fun for the players'.
When an enemy rolls a nat 1, I usually have them graze one of their allies for a few points of damage, the enemy then curses at their friend etc,-- or if it would add to the RP situation, have them drop their weapon, or slip and fall prone. I don't want it to influence combat in any major way, but adding a taste of RP goes a long way to help with engagement.
If my players roll a nat 1, if they're not in any dire straights, I'll have them wack their buddy or RP something funny and inconsequential, like they shoot themselves in the foot, or losing part of their movement.
"You can break the rules once you know how to follow the rules" is good advice.
In this case, I'll add inconsequential, very minor, changes for RP's sake in any combat encounter that is not high stakes. When a situation requires precision and the outcome is consequential, I don't insert arbitrary results.
With this, they have lots of fun.
My rule is the same for players and NPC's if someone rolls a Nat 1 - depending on the range of the attack and IF there is anything that could reasonably have been hit by such a wildly off attack - i make it a RP opportunity. IE if a fighter roles a nat 1 and his buddy is next to him i do hi - low and roll a die if he calls it right the weapon just misses his buddy if he calls it wrong his buddy takes the attack, If its a ranger and there is another PC in the area same thing, That said if a mob roles a nat one I give the players the chance to call hi low and a mob may hit their buddy if it makes sense given the type of attack and spacing. It adds 10 seconds to combat but makes a nat 1 as cringe worthy as a a nat 20 is grin worthy.
Its pretty funny most of my players that roll a nat 1 if there are no friendlies in range are like woooosh dodged a bullet on that one. LOL its a fun mechanic.
That's just my house rule YMMV.
-
I have recently started trying to use it for environmental effects. So someone takes a swing and misses and takes a chunk out of the pillar beside them, which wobbles unsteadily but remains upright. This often leads to a player saying "I push the pillar onto them" or some such, allowing more interesting combat options than "I attack".
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I had a DM who started doing this in 3.5 and I stole the idea. I have a random chart to roll on about things falling, or new, I guess tone they’d be emanations forming. I really enjoy it as it forces people to move around a bit more and makes the fights more dynamic.
I'm going RAW here. I just have my players get so weird comedic reaction. (example; My player who just nat 1'd a bow shot, the arrow fires, catches on a little imperfection on the bow and it does a complete 180) I like the bard cuts his belt and his pants fall. That's pure funniness.
In the words of the great philosopher, Unicorse, "Aaaannnnd why should I care??"
Best quote from a book ever: "If you love with your eyes, death is forever. If you love with your heart, there is no such thing as parting."- Jonah Cook, Ascendant, Songs of Chaos by Michael R. Miller. Highly recommend
I sort of do all sorts of things, from making the bard's enchanted weapon explode (I had a reason) in his face, to making them launch a fireball into the sky (I had a reason for that too). Essentially doing nothing is always good when a player is about to drop to 0 hp, and the attack needs to always miss, but those are the only guidelines that I play by.
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At my table and the groups i play in the roll of a one in combat means the attacker has opened themselves up to a counterattack whether or not the defender can capitalize on it is up to their dice. This exists outside of the normal action rotation, and it is a mechanic that both sides of table get to use.
Penalties on nat 1s also affect some classes (those with Extra Attacks) much more than other classes which can lead to a disparity between characters.
A 5th lvl fighter with two attacks has a 1 in 10 chance of one of those attacks being a nat 1, compared to, say, a rogue or wizard with a 1 in 20 chance. If nat 1s cause some mechanical punishment, the higher the level, the more chance there is of a fighter getting "punished".
To me, this feels weird. Plus some players will get frustrated at getting disproportionally punished.
I will usually screw with people's equipment so I guess I'm in the "break weapons and equipment camp".
While I think their is narrative flavor in this, the primary reason I do this is because it adds verisimilitude to the setting and the world. When my players have been out and about adventuring, when they get back into town, their first thoughts are always on updating, repairing and replacing equipment and they do this from 1st level to 20th level. I do always allow players to repair magic weapons so as to ensure they don't lose a favorite, but anything can get damaged.
It also adds a nice gold sink which lets me hand out more treasure and the players actually feel they need it.
Whoever said that this affects some classes more than others, is correct. Martial classes are far more likely to run into this sort of trouble, but that again, adds to the verisimilitude of the game. The more players believe in the world the better, that always trumps balance and fairness.