#critical fumble

[allofthegeekythingshere]

A defense of the critical success/failure on skill checks house rule:

*clears throat* If they can't even succeed on a natural 20 THEN THEY SHOULDN'T GET TO ROLL IN THE FIRST PLACE! If it is beyond their ability to do, then state that. Do not let them roll if there is a 100% chance of failure. The whole point of using dice is to account for tbe element of chance. If the chance of accomplishing something is 0% then there is nothing to roll for. Don't be a dick. If success is impossible, they don't get to roll.

Personally, I also favour the house rule because it adds flavour. I don't make critical fumbles take hit points (unless what they're doing inherently has that as a risk, i.e. attempting to scale a sheer cliff), I just make them a little inconvenient and amusing (for instance, one of my players attempted to quick mount their riding dog and rolled a one, so instead they slipped and faceplanted in the mud). Critical successes I make a bit better than regular successes- something about it makes it more awesome than a normal success would be. Maybe that roast tastes so good today that it's practically exotic- good enough perhaps to give everyone who ate it a +1 morale buff for the day, or at least the next few hours, maybe you bluff the enemy guard so well that your party members who are in on the lie catch themselves believing it too for a moment, etc. You don't get to break the laws of physics with it (the common example I see a lot is flapping your arms up and down and attempting to fly- in this case they just simply wouldn't be allowed to roll because it isn't possible), but you do get to be a little extraordinary.

Come on, guys. It's a fantasy game. We wouldn't be playing if we were looking for 100% realism. Magic and psionics exist, gods are provably real, dragons rule the skies, and powerful liches command legions of undead. There are charms that can allow you to manipulate time, boots that allow you to teleport, djinn that can appear as large humanoids or assume a gaseous form, and devils straight from the abyss. Wildly different species can interbreed (dragons and humans, for example), and there are giant, living, acidic, jello cubes of death in the world. All of this and more is true and people want to squawk about R E A L I S M? Please. So what if one of your players discovers a previously unknown and unused affinity for the violin? So what if the rogue who's never touched a cook pot before finds that they make a top notch porridge? So what if the fighter who's never touched a lock pick before gets lucky jimmying a lock with a pin? So what if the barbarian leaps slightly unrealistically high and grapples the wyvern midair? So what? We're here to have fun. You don't have to break immersion to add a little bit of spontaneous awesome to the game. It's okay if it's somewhat unrealistic...that's the whole point, isn't it? If we were looking for realism, we'd be playing something more like "Suburbs and SUVs," not "Dungeons and Dragons."

Anyway, I seem to have gotten away with myself now. This wasn't intended to be NEARLY this long, but here we are I suppose. If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading. If you prefer something else, cool, you do you. These are just my thoughts on it.

[gwensy]

ok i got my frappe. i accidentally ordered a large, forgot to ask for soy milk & pronounced my own name wrong

[grimgrimble]

[dndstories]

Another run-in with the Thieves Guild

Keep in mind this is the first location, of my first session of this game I’m DMing, with most of my players having this be there first ever game. Ok.

The party are sitting in a tavern due to various different reasons, and are basically forced into a job by a mutual friend of theirs. While sitting, getting to know each other, a rock with a note attached crashes through the window onto their table. The note basically calls out our rogue, who had roughed up various thieves guild members. Our wizard then picked up the note and wrote “ask us later” on it and threw it back out. The party were laughing really hard until the wizard rolled a one on a Dex saving throw and took a flask of alchemist fire to the face, with permanent superficial burn damage. At the start of the campaign.

[dndstories]

A very (un)noble death

Me and my party of about four were all relatively new to trpg games. The DM had set up a castle in the sky for us to clear, with a cult leader on the roof. However, one very rash player was the newest, in fact, it was his first session. He thought death was a trivial ordeal, like in video games, so he made risky plays, which ended up being his downfall. We were still just into the castle, may even have been first floor, but we ran into a room with two kobolds and a fire pit by a window. The ranger and monk (myself) took out the first kobold, but when the new players turn came around, he attempted to tackle the kobold into the fire pit. He succeeded, almost too much. He was down to two HP (because of third degree burns) and said “I stop drop and roll!” He rolled a nat one with a negative modifier. He rolled out the window.

[dndstories]

It was our party’s first real session, and everyone was still settling into their characters… Which is to say, we had multiple people interested in looting anything they could see. Including looking for goodies in every nook and cranny of a kitchen in a kobold-infested dungeon.

While our Tiefling Rogue more sensibly searched a cabinet, the Half-Elf Warlock decided to check out something else…

Warlock: I open the oven and take a look inside. DM: The oven? Seriously? Paladin: Yeah, stick your head in there! Warlock: Yes! I’m checking the oven. DM: Roll Wisdom. Warlock: … I’m going to regret this, aren’t I. *fumbles it* DM: The oven was lit. You take three points of fire damage.

[dndstories]

So the very first time I played D&D (which was by myself as a rouge save for the DM) the DM had me standing outside of a large castle. I told him I would walk into the castle in which he instructed me to roll a D20 to check the front door. I rolled a 1 and then proceeded to knock the door down by accidentally tripping into it. Thus began the misadventures of Shawn the accident prone rouge.

[dndstories]

Clear!

My party of 6 was fighting a boss that consisted of about 150 peasants and a king melded together by their own flesh. It was so huge that it had the party completely encompassed in a ring. The ONLY thing that this boss was weak to was holy, which meant that the only one in our party who could do any real damage was our squishy invoker. My angel can damn a creature, but I have to put my hands on the target’s face, and I have to be extremely angry. Our party was being badly beaten, one of us was unconscious, and we had barely made a scratch on the boss, seeing as it had 1,000 health. I decided it was time to use my damn. I let the holy wrath of months of fighting armies of demons and darkness, of losing thousands of lives in a war, and of seeing my friends beaten half to death flow through me. My hands and eyes glowed with holy fury. I rolled to place my hands on the foreheads of the nearest two heads of the boss, and got a 1. The creatures reached out and grabbed my arms, twisting them completely around and out of their sockets. I passed out from the pain. Our warden minotaur, who is always saving our butts, comes to my rescue. He chops off the arms of the creatures, freeing me. He didn’t stop there though. He takes my unconscious body, the  arms of the creatures still holding on to mine, and runs up to the King, who is the nerve center. He places my still glowing hands on the king’s face, dealing 800 damage and ending the entire fight. We have dubbed this move the defibrillator.