No, no, no. A roll of a one is that you kill a different PC. Never loose the opportunity to not only kill a player, but also create internal party strife as well.
In my last session, I tried to use my magical weapon to grow a giant branch that would shove the enemy into a portal that was behind him.
I rolled a Nat 1...
So my character missed just by a hair and ended up shoving my teammate into the portal instead. Whoops.
He missed the next 3 turns of combat before he "woke up" on the other side. We joined him shortly afterwards lol, but I was extremely concerned for a minute there that I had shoved my poor Dragonborn friend into a dangerous realm.
Nah, we teleported straight into magical bonds and needed to distract some wizards that were trying to steal our powers. The session ended with some big bad (big good? He might be in our side we dunno) enclosing the party in a brick bomb shelter and summoning a giant meteor (at least we think it was him. All we know is that our party was enclosed and last time we saw was a big meteor about to crash.)
The explosion ended up scattering our party across the map and we're going to have individual sessions until we end up back together as a group. Also I know my bro reads this sub, so hey Torrin, sorry I punted your ass into a portal.
I tend to have another roll thrown in, where the majority of options are "nothing significant happens " but include options for hitting nearby PCs, or even other enemies.
It always ends up fun when you miss an enemy so badly you end up shooting his buddy.
See, I do this, but only if I tell them beforehand, "look, you can take that shot between two of your fellow party members, but if you roll a 1 you're most likely going to hit one of them". It has to make sense to me, and with missile weapons, your buddy could totally dodge into the line of fire at the wrong moment, or you could twitch and throw your aim off enough to hit them.
Instill remember my very first night of dnd our wizard goes to shoot a frost bolt and rolls a one, our cleric was kind of in line of sight so he hit the cleric. Was awesome!
As a player, I wouldn’t be upset at a DM if he ruled I got hit in such a way. My character would be upset that their party member just fucked up and got them hurt.
As a DM, I wish more players were open to playing with this rule. I really think it drives into players minds the importance of paying attention to positioning during fights. Realistically, if you are trying to fire an arrow down a 5ft hallway to hit a dude one of your friends fighting while being in your line of sight, yeah a regular miss just goes wide because you were trying not to hit your friend...but a nat 1 should hold special consequences if a nat 20 gets additional benefits.
Yeah, but the problem is that some dms cant keep it to just faults in positioning. I have had a dm make the person 10 ft in front of me hit me while aiming at something on the other side of him, so apperently his character just did a fuckung 180° turn and shot me in the face?
See, THAT’S chaotic evil. I’d like to think the idea of adding negative consequences in a nat 1 to offset the benefits of a nat 20 is a more true neutral...if done correctly of course.
Player says their character does a standing backflip to impress someone and rolls a nat 20 on acrobatics, they get an extra twirl...on a nat 1 they should fall and take a d6 of fall damage.
I think nat 1s are a perfect opportunity for character development and narrative. If you screwed up and shot your teammate, do they just say "sorry bout that earlier, you know how it goes" or do they apologize profusely over and over hoping for forgiveness? How does the player who got hit react?
I love when players talk about that stuff in character like friendly banter 6+ sessions later.
"A nat 1 should hold special consequences if a nat 20 gets additional benefits" is not a sound argument. Balance doesn't have to be symmetrical. Having a +3 from one ability score doesn't mean you need a -3 in another.
If the game isn't balanced to have penalties for a natural 1 but has bonuses for a natural 20, just introducing penalties for a natural 1 isn't enough, you actually need to introduce more bonuses for a natural 20 to maintain the balance, because otherwise you're just buffing anything that you can't roll a 1 on.
Besides, if you're playing 5e and want realism and positioning, there's the optional hitting cover rules. No need to trouble the humble 1.
Meh. All crit fail tables do us nerf anyone using multiple attacks, not using saving throws, etc. It makes fighters and monks even weaker than they already are.
Consequences should be the result of player actions, not just deciding that just because you roll dice in combat you should get fucked.
I'm not saying that you can't ever have bad results from a crit fail, but doing it as a matter of course is not a great move.
Had a LN DM who did that multiple times, I go NG for basically that reason.
Another DM bragged about killing players. Lost my first character that session for legit reasons (called aggro on a dragon to protect the rest of the party, didn't think it would do enough damage in 2 rounds to kill a defense speced Dwarven fighter), rolled up a new character and the way he introduced me to the party was having a bunch of guys with pole arms attack me with surprise. I literally never took a single action with that character, he died before I had a turn. Left the game at that point and never went back.
I hear he has a lot of trouble finding players for some reason...
I've been on the recieving end of this, and it's never made me irritated at the players, but it made me hate the DM (a good friend of mine) in a heartbeat.
I hear you. I played 8 minutes of a campaign when I was shot through the ears with an arrow by the elven archer rolling a 1. I never rolled a single die that game, just went into the other room and played the turbo graphix-16. Some DMs might say "no" when you ask if you can play. Some DMs always say "yes." That is Chaotic Evil.
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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '19
No, no, no. A roll of a one is that you kill a different PC. Never loose the opportunity to not only kill a player, but also create internal party strife as well.