I feel critical hits are useful and explain the unexplained in real life to add flavor to the game.

Example: Man in Florida survives 3 lightning strikes in his life. One day while organizing his garage a can rolls off the top shelf, hits him on the head. This gives him a concussion and in 3 hours he dies. ---- I would conclude the can got a critical hit.

Critical hits are things that happen when everything goes right or everything goes wrong in a situation. It is real, it happens, it adds flavor. If we were all invincible, exactly how fun would life be? Try playing any game in God Mode for any length of time. It loses it's luster. It loses it's fun. 

When I meet fellow gamers in real life we rarely end up having conversations about how great our players are. It is usually a comparison fest of who had the most interesting or wild death experience in game. 

But how do we properly implement critical hits and critical misses? Personally I have been playing since 1985 and the 1E rules I remember were pretty decent when tweaked. I look forward to my first first 5E game, but from what I am reading I am pretty comfortable with the current 5E rules.  What say you?

I think it also comes down to how we perceive damage in the game. I have read many times the likes of "oh well, fighters with their many hps can take a stab through the heart and keep fighting". This is simply not true. A stab through the heart will kill a 20th-level fighter as surely as a commoner. The large hp pool of fighters illustrates how long they can roll with the punches and take small cuts and bruises before they become so physically and mentally exhausted that they let their guard down and expose a vital spot to their enemy.

So how crit hits fit into this? Well, I often play them as a result of letting down your guard for a moment, be it because of exhaustion (not implying the condition here) or simply distraction (like when you're being surrounded by enemies who now have advantage on their attack rolls). And if the crit kills you, it becomes that "stab through the heart" kind of blow.

I like the rules we have for crits in 5E. They don't make the crit damage overpowered (except maybe for the sneak attack damage, but then again an assassin is supposed to be able to kill in one unexpected blow). They just make the fights more narrative while instilling that fear of PC death in the players' minds.

Critical hits are a great mechanic for any kind of turn based RPG, be it tabletop or videogame, and even in other genres of videogames too, it adds a lot more risk and suspense to any fight,  you may be against an opponent that seems invincible, but if you get that sweet sweet nat 20 you can still turn the tables on the fight, and since your enemies can do it too, you also have the thought that you might die to a crit, they are not overpowered to the point that it's so annoying to have to rely on them to kill enemies or that at any point in the fight you have a 5% chance of just dying instantly, they just are a nice little reward for being lucky. The enemy might have gotten distracted for a moment, or you suddenly saw an opening in their defenses and struck a vulnerable spot. Yeah, as you said, sometimes everything simply goes right.

Critical misses are also pretty good, though I think they mostly only work in tabletop games because you don't roll dice to attack in videogames, most of them at least. Even if you have a great attacking stat, proficiency, and whatever else you might get, there is still a small chance that you will miss, even if the enemy is really weak, getting that dreadful nat 1, they are not hugely detrimental unless you get several in a fight, but you still have to take into account that even if you're really strong, you might just miss. Maybe you tripped, maybe you hit the enemy with an awkward form and did nothing at all, or maybe you simply got distracted by something in your field of view while you were attacking. Yes, sometimes everything just goes wrong.

Quote from The_WeebUwU >>

Critical hits are a great mechanic for any kind of turn based RPG, be it tabletop or videogame, and even in other genres of videogames too, it adds a lot more risk and suspense to any fight,  you may be against an opponent that seems invincible, but if you get that sweet sweet nat 20 you can still turn the tables on the fight, and since your enemies can do it too, you also have the thought that you might die to a crit, they are not overpowered to the point that it's so annoying to have to rely on them to kill enemies or that at any point in the fight you have a 5% chance of just dying instantly, they just are a nice little reward for being lucky. The enemy might have gotten distracted for a moment, or you suddenly saw an opening in their defenses and struck a vulnerable spot. Yeah, as you said, sometimes everything simply goes right.

Critical misses are also pretty good, though I think they mostly only work in tabletop games because you don't roll dice to attack in videogames, most of them at least. Even if you have a great attacking stat, proficiency, and whatever else you might get, there is still a small chance that you will miss, even if the enemy is really weak, getting that dreadful nat 1, they are not hugely detrimental unless you get several in a fight, but you still have to take into account that even if you're really strong, you might just miss. Maybe you tripped, maybe you hit the enemy with an awkward form and did nothing at all, or maybe you simply got distracted by something in your field of view while you were attacking. Yes, sometimes everything just goes wrong.

 Great post! Every roll shows the random nature of the real world, and things that could just happen. To me, I like that low level creatures can crit low level characters. This idea keeps mages from going to the front line with the fighters, when you know no-one in their right mind would ever do that. (Unless you are playing a character not in their right mind) Now is it possible for a small group of pixies to kill your burly Barbarian with a crit fest? Yes! But that is the life of a barbarian, and why not everyone choses to walk that path.

I am very story driven, and I appreciate nuance. Luck is very real, which is why that feat is so powerful. At the same time, bad luck can strike at any time. Just ask Steve Irwin. Lets go out there and just have fun playing a game we enjoy!