Spot on. When everything goes the party’s way then the game gets really boring. It’s the times we barely made it out alive because something went really wrong that we still talk about. I wish I could up vote this more than once.
One of my favorite rolls was in the Curse of Strahd game I’m running. A sorcerer used gracious form to float the monk across a chasm. Then the sorcerer was hit and had to roll to see if they maintained concentration or if the monk was going to fall 1000 feet. A nat 1
I introduced Favor points, which may be spent to gain extra actions. Each session, a player gets one of these, as well as when they roll a natural 1 on a D20 check and keep it. A regular action costs 10 Favor, a bonus action costs 5, a reaction costs 3, and a free action costs 1. Favor can't be spent on the same action twice in a Round. My players are wild about this rule's addition, but use it sparingly, when they want to be really heroic. :)
Wooow, this is actually a fantastic rule!! It lets them see the bright side of a crit and let look forward to turning their failures into success! The one tweak I would make would set a maximum for how many points they can stack in this way. Something like 10 or 20, or even twice their level
I *one*-hundred percent agree. Instead of rolling more dice for how bad things get though, I just go for “degrees of success/failure” like other systems have. You get better or worse results depending on how far you are from the DC. Let’s say an orc is mocking you in the bar, and you’re trying to intimidate him into leaving you alone. Within 5 of the DC is a normal pass (he scowls “eh, you’re not worth it.”) or fail (he laughs “am I supposed to be impressed?”). 6 through 10 away is an impressive pass (he backs away with his hands up “woah, easy there…”) or fail (he immediately attacks). More than 10 is hilariously good (he pisses his pants and runs) or bad (he raises an eyebrow, then looks you up and down “are you trying to flirt with me?” *OR* several other patrons stand up and draw weapons “what did you just say?” ).
I love this! I've run something similar for DC checks (stolen shamelessly from StarWars TTRPG) using not just the binary fail or succeed, but both can be modified by an advantage or a setback based on how close to the DC they are. A slim success: "You succeed in bluffing your way past the doorman... however, he nods to a guard to just keep an eye on you." Failed by one: "You fail to pick the lock... but you realise the flimsy mechanism is the only thing keeping this door closed."
Always nice to hear that DM's and Players alike recognize good rules that can be adapted. Frankly, I've never heard of the system you mentioned and your adaptation makes a metric ton more sense then "throwing your weapon across the field", or "Shot yourself or ally". I do agree that 1 on the D20 in, though more specifically a "critical failures" need to be more flexible, but so do the tools available to DM's to do so. One could even argue that a mundane check such as glancing around for anything unusual at market while not specifically looking for something, or in any danger what so ever, wouldn't need you to roll, and so harkens back to the ruling of taking 10. Honestly what I like most about this, is that it doesn't alter anything mechanically. Only adds spice or flavour.
I like the 2d6 setback meter. Great idea. I like the creative side of this. Maybe it wasn't a broken string on the bard's lute but perhaps the bard picked the wrong song that just killed the mood or brought back bitter rivalry at the wrong moment. Awesome idea thanks for sharing!
i have always give somekind of calamity on a nat 1(drop weapon, fall down, chop off your own toe for 2hp of damage). At one of the most intense moments of a particular fight one of the players rolls a 1. everyone screams "NO!!!", the player reactively jumps up from the table and in the same motion, slips and hits her head on the table...she was fine, but that was single handedly the best 1 ive ever witnessed.
in my Curse of Strahd game, 2 of my players rolled a 1 on an Insight check to know if Strahd was lying about his story of "how my brother stole my love away and cursed me with his dying breath making me what you see before you now" (I have Strahd invite the PCs early on so that he can learn about them personally and offer them a deal for Ireena), the 3rd player rolled a Nat 20 and saw through the bs and was surprised that the other 2 believed him
I remember one time I rolled insight to see how much health something had, rolled a 1 and was told my character thought it had like 7 million health, then my friend crit it, dealing like 20 damage, leaving it with like 3 health, but my to my character he did almost 7 million damage
I agree but also the same argument can be made for the opposite, too many low rolls make the game boring because nothing works. There was an encounter once where I rolled a nat 20 to track down a thief, but then after I found them I just rolled extremely low for saves checks and attacks and ended up dying after just one day of in game time, which was extremely infuriating, because the character just became known as a joke character who couldnt do anything. So yes, failures keep the game alive, but when I complain about them its almost always because they come in rapid fire at inconvenient times which make it hard to get anything done
I always made the players roll a d100 on a nat 1. 50+ nothing bad happens. Under 50 and it's a critical fail, the lower the roll the worse the fail. Under 25 and they might accidentally hit another player with their attack, nothing pisses a player off more than being dropped to zero by another players crit fail 🤣
I rly don't like this ideas, maybe once or twice when you need to spice things up, but must of the tests, your players just needs a failure, the critical miss more often than not deraill my games!
Then, I hate to say it - Your narrative needs work - specifically your hooks. If your hooks aren't catching, you need better bait. How do you get better hooks? Read books-lots of them. Rip ideas literally out of things, and use them. If you do rip ideas, though, don't do it excessively; use it as a boost-a step ladder. Players going off track isn't a bad thing, and you don't need to throw away the content you do have. Simply lay it out in a different manner so they eventually come into contact with them. Critical Failures are good for the reasons he mentioned, and it introduces player thought and reaction to your world-mould it, so to speak, into something more. A big problem with derailing crit fails is that they are not tempered or, more accurately, are too extreme. Extreme is the default setting for many DM's. 5E specifically resolved this to an extent where Skill Checks cannot be Critical. It also took away some of the fun, though, and a lot of the jank. Many people still force it in and get the result you seem to have.
@@devonsmith9519 don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's all bad, i see the opportunity in making those calls into hooks, but when you make it a rule (or in my case when you make this with som specifc players) you create the espectations that every single crit failure would trigger some shit of similar proportion.
Spot on. When everything goes the party’s way then the game gets really boring. It’s the times we barely made it out alive because something went really wrong that we still talk about. I wish I could up vote this more than once.
One of my favorite rolls was in the Curse of Strahd game I’m running. A sorcerer used gracious form to float the monk across a chasm. Then the sorcerer was hit and had to roll to see if they maintained concentration or if the monk was going to fall 1000 feet.
A nat 1
I introduced Favor points, which may be spent to gain extra actions. Each session, a player gets one of these, as well as when they roll a natural 1 on a D20 check and keep it. A regular action costs 10 Favor, a bonus action costs 5, a reaction costs 3, and a free action costs 1.
Favor can't be spent on the same action twice in a Round. My players are wild about this rule's addition, but use it sparingly, when they want to be really heroic. :)
Wooow, this is actually a fantastic rule!! It lets them see the bright side of a crit and let look forward to turning their failures into success! The one tweak I would make would set a maximum for how many points they can stack in this way. Something like 10 or 20, or even twice their level
I *one*-hundred percent agree. Instead of rolling more dice for how bad things get though, I just go for “degrees of success/failure” like other systems have. You get better or worse results depending on how far you are from the DC.
Let’s say an orc is mocking you in the bar, and you’re trying to intimidate him into leaving you alone. Within 5 of the DC is a normal pass (he scowls “eh, you’re not worth it.”) or fail (he laughs “am I supposed to be impressed?”). 6 through 10 away is an impressive pass (he backs away with his hands up “woah, easy there…”) or fail (he immediately attacks). More than 10 is hilariously good (he pisses his pants and runs) or bad (he raises an eyebrow, then looks you up and down “are you trying to flirt with me?” *OR* several other patrons stand up and draw weapons “what did you just say?” ).
I love this! I've run something similar for DC checks (stolen shamelessly from StarWars TTRPG) using not just the binary fail or succeed, but both can be modified by an advantage or a setback based on how close to the DC they are.
A slim success: "You succeed in bluffing your way past the doorman... however, he nods to a guard to just keep an eye on you."
Failed by one: "You fail to pick the lock... but you realise the flimsy mechanism is the only thing keeping this door closed."
1 has definitely made some very memorable games for me. Our gaming group still talk about them and it’s been years.
*laughs in halfling*
Always nice to hear that DM's and Players alike recognize good rules that can be adapted.
Frankly, I've never heard of the system you mentioned and your adaptation makes a metric ton more sense then "throwing your weapon across the field", or "Shot yourself or ally".
I do agree that 1 on the D20 in, though more specifically a "critical failures" need to be more flexible, but so do the tools available to DM's to do so.
One could even argue that a mundane check such as glancing around for anything unusual at market while not specifically looking for something, or in any danger what so ever, wouldn't need you to roll, and so harkens back to the ruling of taking 10.
Honestly what I like most about this, is that it doesn't alter anything mechanically. Only adds spice or flavour.
I like the 2d6 setback meter. Great idea. I like the creative side of this. Maybe it wasn't a broken string on the bard's lute but perhaps the bard picked the wrong song that just killed the mood or brought back bitter rivalry at the wrong moment. Awesome idea thanks for sharing!
This may be my favorite video; you just validated me as a storyteller; thank you!!
i have always give somekind of calamity on a nat 1(drop weapon, fall down, chop off your own toe for 2hp of damage). At one of the most intense moments of a particular fight one of the players rolls a 1. everyone screams "NO!!!", the player reactively jumps up from the table and in the same motion, slips and hits her head on the table...she was fine, but that was single handedly the best 1 ive ever witnessed.
Wait, your son what 😂
Racing small cars! I didn't come up with the name.
in my Curse of Strahd game, 2 of my players rolled a 1 on an Insight check to know if Strahd was lying about his story of "how my brother stole my love away and cursed me with his dying breath making me what you see before you now" (I have Strahd invite the PCs early on so that he can learn about them personally and offer them a deal for Ireena), the 3rd player rolled a Nat 20 and saw through the bs and was surprised that the other 2 believed him
I remember one time I rolled insight to see how much health something had, rolled a 1 and was told my character thought it had like 7 million health, then my friend crit it, dealing like 20 damage, leaving it with like 3 health, but my to my character he did almost 7 million damage
I'd argue that 8 is also a good one,
As it often is the cause for roll that almost did (not) succeed.
1 is best for rolling initiative in whom attacks first for the player characters who roll it!
I agree but also the same argument can be made for the opposite, too many low rolls make the game boring because nothing works. There was an encounter once where I rolled a nat 20 to track down a thief, but then after I found them I just rolled extremely low for saves checks and attacks and ended up dying after just one day of in game time, which was extremely infuriating, because the character just became known as a joke character who couldnt do anything. So yes, failures keep the game alive, but when I complain about them its almost always because they come in rapid fire at inconvenient times which make it hard to get anything done
Ahhh I love this!! ♥
You can do it both sides of success. Although you don’t need a second roll. How far off the dc they were decided how well they did or didn’t do it.
I always made the players roll a d100 on a nat 1. 50+ nothing bad happens. Under 50 and it's a critical fail, the lower the roll the worse the fail. Under 25 and they might accidentally hit another player with their attack, nothing pisses a player off more than being dropped to zero by another players crit fail 🤣
I rly don't like this ideas, maybe once or twice when you need to spice things up, but must of the tests, your players just needs a failure, the critical miss more often than not deraill my games!
Then, I hate to say it - Your narrative needs work - specifically your hooks. If your hooks aren't catching, you need better bait. How do you get better hooks? Read books-lots of them. Rip ideas literally out of things, and use them.
If you do rip ideas, though, don't do it excessively; use it as a boost-a step ladder.
Players going off track isn't a bad thing, and you don't need to throw away the content you do have. Simply lay it out in a different manner so they eventually come into contact with them.
Critical Failures are good for the reasons he mentioned, and it introduces player thought and reaction to your world-mould it, so to speak, into something more.
A big problem with derailing crit fails is that they are not tempered or, more accurately, are too extreme. Extreme is the default setting for many DM's.
5E specifically resolved this to an extent where Skill Checks cannot be Critical. It also took away some of the fun, though, and a lot of the jank. Many people still force it in and get the result you seem to have.
@@devonsmith9519 don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's all bad, i see the opportunity in making those calls into hooks, but when you make it a rule (or in my case when you make this with som specifc players) you create the espectations that every single crit failure would trigger some shit of similar proportion.