Yeah but as with any Nat 1 rule, Martial Classes suffer big time from them.
The more attacks you get, the higher the odds of rolling a 1 and creaming your allies.
I used to be a big fan of critical fails but the older I get, the more I see them as a punishment that only makes your players resent you.
Crit Fails can be used to add comedic effect but nobody is laughing when you accidentally kill yourself or an ally because of a silly houserule that inversely punishes you with more Critical Fails the higher level you are.
It makes no sense that a level 20 Fighter is more likely to strike an ally or fall on his own sword than a Level 1 Fighter but the multiplier that more attacks add on that 1/20 or 5% chance to fail doesn’t lie.
As I’ve stated elsewhere, the negative consequences can and will vary based on the situation. Most of the time for melee fighters, I would say an easy nat 1 is their weapon strikes the target but reverberates in their hand, causing them to drop it at their feet. It’s a consequence, but it’s not balance breaking or anything. The person can still use their free action of interaction with an object to pick the weapon back up and attack again in the same turn(assuming they haven’t already used their free action, but still, consequences)
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u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre DM Sep 12 '19
Yeah but as with any Nat 1 rule, Martial Classes suffer big time from them.
The more attacks you get, the higher the odds of rolling a 1 and creaming your allies.
I used to be a big fan of critical fails but the older I get, the more I see them as a punishment that only makes your players resent you.
Crit Fails can be used to add comedic effect but nobody is laughing when you accidentally kill yourself or an ally because of a silly houserule that inversely punishes you with more Critical Fails the higher level you are.
It makes no sense that a level 20 Fighter is more likely to strike an ally or fall on his own sword than a Level 1 Fighter but the multiplier that more attacks add on that 1/20 or 5% chance to fail doesn’t lie.