Critical Failures in D&D 4e

[Drayven]

I've been running a d&d 4e campaign and the players and I have come to agree that we miss critical failures. For critical hits I picked up this deck of cards in a clearance bin at the gaming store and I've been using those. if you roll a 20 you draw a card and it has a list of things that happen based on the weapon type and that's gone over pretty well so far. I've been trying to find a critical failure system that I like and I think I've come up with something and was hoping to get some feedback.

Some common complaints I've read in various forums about critical failures are as follows.
1. It's unfair to characters with multiple attacks as they have a higher chance of failing each round.
2. It's not very heroic for a highly trained warrior to go throwing his sword around all the time.

To work around these I've come up with the following system for critical failures.

1. Rolling a 1 is only a critical failure if it's the first die you throw for your attack. This means if you have 4 attacks only the first die can critically fail. Otherwise a 1 is just an automatic miss.

2. If you roll a critical failure 1 you then do a d30 check, roll 3d10 and total them up. If the total is your level or lower you are safe. If the total is greater than your level we move to the crit failure table. This is to represent the character becoming better trained as they level. The higher your level the less likely you are to critically fail.

3. Roll against a chart of bad stuff, probably a d20 type chart.

Thoughts?

[Lekon]

Main thought: Never let the book rules get in the way of fun.

If the house rules work. Go for it. I dig the card system for crits. And if you guys want crit failures, hell, go for it. The system you have so far seems pretty spiffy. probably lots of things you can get from pathfinder guides for crit failure tables, if you need inspiration.

[Cupelix]

Critical failures on attacks still exist on 4E, unless they've been removed by errata. I don't have my books handy, but a quick google search gives me a page that claims it's on page 276 of the PHB.

Also, I'm no math wiz, but I think the whole "more attacks equals more critical misses" is kind of misleading. Each attack still independently has the exact same critical chance, success or failure. You don't have a higher chance of critical failing, you simply will see it more often because you're rolling more. It isn't unfair to players with more attacks. By that argument, I could say that players with more attacks are unfair in comparison to players with fewer attacks, because they have critical successes more often. They do, simply because they roll more often. No matter how you slice it, more rolls is more success and more failures, but not a higher chance of either.

[LongStepMantis]

I've been running a d&d 4e campaign and the players and I have come to agree that we miss critical failures. For critical hits I picked up this deck of cards in a clearance bin at the gaming store and I've been using those. if you roll a 20 you draw a card and it has a list of things that happen based on the weapon type and that's gone over pretty well so far. I've been trying to find a critical failure system that I like and I think I've come up with something and was hoping to get some feedback.

Some common complaints I've read in various forums about critical failures are as follows.
1. It's unfair to characters with multiple attacks as they have a higher chance of failing each round.
2. It's not very heroic for a highly trained warrior to go throwing his sword around all the time.

To work around these I've come up with the following system for critical failures.

1. Rolling a 1 is only a critical failure if it's the first die you throw for your attack. This means if you have 4 attacks only the first die can critically fail. Otherwise a 1 is just an automatic miss.

2. If you roll a critical failure 1 you then do a d30 check, roll 3d10 and total them up. If the total is your level or lower you are safe. If the total is greater than your level we move to the crit failure table. This is to represent the character becoming better trained as they level. The higher your level the less likely you are to critically fail.

3. Roll against a chart of bad stuff, probably a d20 type chart.

Thoughts?

In the group I used to play in, we only used Critical failures outside of combat, for humor and RP effect. It seems to me that using CF for attack rolls tends to piss players off far too much (in my experiences) but they can be fun if someone say, rolls a CF on a diplomacy/persuade/bluff/etc. check and it becomes more of a "they failed so badly it's hilarious" RP moment. Rolling a 1 in combat was just always considered a miss regardless of the target's AC, but without any really negative consequences.

Regardless, keeping the players happy is priority number one. It sounds like your d30 system allows you to prevent CF's more as you level, which makes a lot of sense from a RP perspective.

Now, as long as both the players and the monsters/NPCs share the rules you choose, everything should remain balanced. My 2 cents.

I do have to say I find the notion of not using CF's being more "fair" for multiple attacks kind of...wrongish. Can they still CS those rolls? Because if so that gives far too much of an advantage to someone using multiple weak attacks in that they can get lots of CS's but only potentially one failure.

[Drayven]

Critical failures on attacks still exist on 4E, unless they've been removed by errata. I don't have my books handy, but a quick google search gives me a page that claims it's on page 276 of the PHB.

Also, I'm no math wiz, but I think the whole "more attacks equals more critical misses" is kind of misleading. Each attack still independently has the exact same critical chance, success or failure. You don't have a higher chance of critical failing, you simply will see it more often because you're rolling more. It isn't unfair to players with more attacks. By that argument, I could say that players with more attacks are unfair in comparison to players with fewer attacks, because they have critical successes more often. They do, simply because they roll more often. No matter how you slice it, more rolls is more success and more failures, but not a higher chance of either.

If you roll 4 dice you have a better chance of getting a 1 then if you're just rolling 1 die. I believe it would be 5% chance when throwing one die and about 18% if you're throwing 4. Each die rolls independently but it does mean you're more likely to get a failure each round than someone rolling only 1 attack die.

And yes the point about crit hits applying to all rolls when crit fails only apply to the first one. I'll have to think on that.

[Drayven]

One other idea might just be to make so if you roll a 1 you roll like 2d10 and add your level and we use that against a table. The table would be built so that the higher the number the less harmful the effect is. So like if I was level 5 and I rolled a 5 I would check number 10 on the chart, since it's a lower number it's gonna be something bad. But if I'm level 30 and I roll a 5 it's less bad because it's higher on the table.

[n3rdXcore]

I don't think that players who get multiple attacks should have less of a chance to crit fail. You get to make more attacks than other players, and therefore will likely do more damage, but along with that comes the risk of maybe crit failing more often.

[Karak]

I will suggest something...that you most likely will not like and a good number of people do not but...have you thought of removing some of the dice and the card from the equation.

Freethinking a critical failure can be done judicially, and with a good amount of realism especially if your a dm that does a good amount of description. Rolling, then rolling, then reading from a card seems a bit much.

This is just my opinion. But you seem on top of things, you have thought it through, why not just make something up on the fly as a card or a boxed sentence never takes everything into account and certainly can't take every type of attack into account.

I also think that the critical hit and critical failure should either be matched(both can happen at the same rate) or removed.

I guess I am reading this in some way were an attack happens, lets say your just stabbing someone, but you critfail and after failing another roll you read a card that could have all these description that just don't make sense. But if you made them up you could come up with thousands of variations.

Anyway you really do seem to have a pretty good handle on it and are working through it so I think whatever you decide will be best. Things can always be changed.

We handle critical hits as a simple one off but we use poker decks, not dice and the critical are specific face cards that have been left in. After running some math we found a good average number of face cards to leave in the deck to account for critical successes and failure.
Once someone fails I already know what they were trying to do so the critfail is weaved into the narrative.

I don't know, maybe I need to see these cards, but even with a hundred choices I can't see how they wouldn't be repetitive or restrictive.

[Panthera]

This thread isn't about 4e's myriad design disasters? Aww.

[Drayven]

I think you guys are right about every dice roll being subject to a failure. Someone swinging 4 attacks in one round is more likely to make a mistake than someone making 1 calculated attack.

I thought about the idea of just making up the critical failure effects on the fly but my concern with that was simply that I always try to find ways to make things seem impartial so no one can claim i'm punishing them unfairly. I could perhaps save a dice roll and just have it be a simple thing where like 7 or less something really bad happens, 8-14 something bad happens but nothing severe, 15-20 you got lucky and nothing happens. Then I could just make up something on the fly based on the severity. I guess I could always just do the roll myself.

As for the cards, this is what I've been playing with http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/p/paizoPublishingLLC/gameMastery/itemPacks/v5748btpy872f some things don't translate like DEX damage but what I do in that case is just make up something like instead of dex damage you have broken his foot and his movement speed is reduced to 2 or whatever.

[Karak]

I think you guys are right about every dice roll being subject to a failure. Someone swinging 4 attacks in one round is more likely to make a mistake than someone making 1 calculated attack.

I thought about the idea of just making up the critical failure effects on the fly but my concern with that was simply that I always try to find ways to make things seem impartial so no one can claim I'm punishing them unfairly. I could perhaps save a dice roll and just have it be a simple thing where like 7 or less something really bad happens, 8-14 something bad happens but nothing severe, 15-20 you got lucky and nothing happens. Then I could just make up something on the fly based on the severity. I guess I could always just do the roll myself.

As for the cards, this is what I've been playing with http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/p/paizoPublishingLLC/gameMastery/itemPacks/v5748btpy872f some things don't translate like DEX damage but what I do in that case is just make up something like instead of dex damage you have broken his foot and his movement speed is reduced to 2 or whatever.
Copy that. I think once you figure out how to balance out the chances of a crit fail and crit success you will be fine then. I will check out those cards.

I TOTALLY understand the impartial aspects so I get what your saying for sure. But I mean, tons of things in the game have to do with your judgment that are far larger than just a crit success or failure. I don't know, maybe just ask them what they think about it. Or hell just do it. I am not sure what your group dynamic is. We will try anything once or twice in mine. Also you seem to have done a good deal of work. If you explained that to them and said that you felt that you deciding the crits would better fit the group, I think they may understand you put a lot of work into trying to find a working system. Also if they are worried about impartial versus weighted decisions on their part, start small with the crit failure and success. Our crits are based on the face card and its suit. If the color comes up its a minor crit, if it is the suit that fits their class and the color that fits their class than its a higher crit. But I don't think ours are as "ballz to the wallz" as those are, at least when we started. That way they felt safe as the impact wasn't massive them the longer we played and leveled up the more they became impactful. Sort of like leveling up your crit:)

Also yes if you are going to have a roll high for not so bad, low for bad effects, you could just collect a good number of them and have them behind your screen too. Over time you could then try freeforming them or have so many that you have more than enough for the game and can just keep it flowing.

Sorry I am such a fanatic with keeping the game really flowing and not breaking it with any rolls that aren't really needed. That's the only reason I suggested it. I have played games with some DM's where its basically a videogame with a roll for almost everything. By that point its almost not worth playing to me. Your not anywhere near that, I am just saying, people like that are out there.

Keep it up, try it out and post back here.

EDIT:
So I looked at the cards. Lets say you ended up picking "stinger" but you didn't have a poisoned blade. Would you just ignore that choice, or what? Those seem like ok starts but incredibly roll driven with very little in the way of..."what is actually occurring". Do you ignore the stats(at least at first) and describe the narrative part? Like what occured to incur double damage?

Also what would you do if someone attacked someone with a stick and got double damage which seems incredibly high? Sorry if I am asking stupid questions, I just haven't seen those so I am trying to understand their use.

[Drayven]

I usually play each situation by ear and figure something out if the situation doesn't fit like for example the poisoned blade scenario. As far as the stick thing goes, the stick has a damage rating so double damage is just double the stick damage. I assume you jabbed them in the eye or something along those lines. Don't under estimate the power of a sharpened stick!

[nnanji]

It seems like you and your players agree that critical failures are fun, so more power to you, but in my experience critical successes are more fun than critical failures. Maybe it was that Warhammer campaign where a Snotling bit off my leg in the first encounter.

In our group we used scaling critical successes both for and against characters, but for critical failures we used a flat penalty. To whit, if you rolled a 1, you rolled another d20 to confirm. If it was your level or less, no foul, if greater than then you dropped your weapon and/or fell prone. We felt that was enough, because you already felt like crap for rolling a 1, and losing the extra actions to recover was plenty bad.

Contextually, tripping and faceplanting is something that happens frequently in armed melee, even to professional killers, so the frequency of critical failures were more believable that way, as opposed to: I know I am a trained professional, but something happened and the next thing I knew I stabbed myself in the eye.

[BigJonno]

It seems like you and your players agree that critical failures are fun, so more power to you, but in my experience critical successes are more fun than critical failures. Maybe it was that Warhammer campaign where a Snotling bit off my leg in the first encounter.

WHFRP criticals are the best. Nothing is more entertaining than kicking a heavily armoured guy in the leg, snapping the bone and driving it into his artery, causing instantaneous death from shock and blood loss.

[Karak]

WHFRP criticals are the best. Nothing is more entertaining than kicking a heavily armoured guy in the leg, snapping the bone and driving it into his artery, causing instantaneous death from shock and blood loss.

Actually this is exactly what I was going for. This is also what started me. Was WHFRP and than I found even that to be stupidly lacking in combination with some situations. But I kept the logic that narrative is ALL that matters. I could give a fuck about the rules or rolls, its the story that matters so all of mine are freeform so I can describe it as viscerally and utterly as possible.

[BigJonno]

Actually this is exactly what I was going for. This is also what started me. Was WHFRP and than I found even that to be stupidly lacking in combination with some situations. But I kept the logic that narrative is ALL that matters. I could give a fuck about the rules or rolls, its the story that matters so all of mine are freeform so I can describe it as viscerally and utterly as possible.

I'm a big fan of narrative combat. Tell me what you want to do, roll the dice and then, depending on the results, describe what happens.

[Karak]

I'm a big fan of narrative combat. Tell me what you want to do, roll the dice and then, depending on the results, describe what happens.

100% for me as well. That's why we went to cards and away from dice. It works super well to help that kind of combat and also the normal narrative both at the same time. I love that kind of thing. No numbers just all explanation. But then again I never tell players how many hitpoints enemies have and instead give clues as to what they look like/act like, so that the characters can sort of guess on their own. But it also makes a bad guy who rages, or bluffs can make them think he is far better off that he appears. Its awesome.

[Drayven]

Hmmm maybe I'll have to pick up the WHFRP book, been meaning to add it to the collection. Or I could just use the HackMaster chart, I remember that being just plain evil.

[BigJonno]

The HackMaster one is incredibly detailed, but probably too complex to be of use in practice; pretty much like the rest of the game. I'm not sure how easy it is to pick up WHFRP 1st edition these days. That's the one you'll want for the funky crits.

[Panthera]

The old Rolemaster or MERP charts would work great.

[Karak]

The HackMaster one is incredibly detailed, but probably too complex to be of use in practice; pretty much like the rest of the game. I'm not sure how easy it is to pick up WHFRP 1st edition these days. That's the one you'll want for the funky crits.

2nd gen has it too.
At least I think I am using the second gen. Or maybe its the first reprint of the second gen:)

Either way its not worth buying the book for.


Here is a link for ones based somewhat on the same thing. I don't like them as much as they have a roll for each one, but the explanations are good. Mixed with your weapon ones, I think you could take all this data and do it freestyle using both as a template.

http://www.windsofchaos.com/?page_id=19

[Drayven]

Any chance you have a link for the fumble chart?

[Karak]

Any chance you have a link for the fumble chart?

http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/generators/index.php?pageId=6&pageType=2

Here is an online version of the crit roller, though I wouldn't personally touch it with a 20 foot pole you could use it for sure to get prepared to free play it.

Fumble charts I can't find in my links I will keep looking.

[Karak]

Ok here are some random ones, most with WFRP roots

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-16448%2520%253C/index.php?t-57526.html

[RandoM51]

I had a sheepdog fumble its teeth once.

[Scull]

For me rolling a critical hit a la 3.5 also works for critical failures. Roll a natural 20 to threaten, then roll again to confirm, or roll a natural 1 and roll again to confirm a fumble, but in this instance you only fumble in the confirmation roll is a miss.