So, this came up in a Con game recently.

When you're trying to do something and you roll extremely well (e.g. a critical) do you consider it a bad GM move to penalise the player in some way?
Examples:
1) Trying to knock out a guard in D&D so that you can interrogate him later - roll to hit - a 20! - double damage! And the guard is dead. Not unconscious, but dead.
2) Shooting out a tyre in car chase in Cthulhu so that you can catch the fleeing occupant - roll an 01 - a crit! Tyre blows out, car goes off the road and explodes, killing the driver.
3) Trying to cripple a shuttle full of stormtroopers in Star Wars, roll a double crit, blow the ship up when you were only trying to disable the engines.


I reckon 1 is d*ck move - I literally could not roll better and yet I failed at my reasonable attempt.

2 is ok but only because the GM fumbled the driver's drive auto roll after the blowout.

I was fine with 3 despite my character having a thing about not killing anyone (ex-mandalorian trooper who had reformed and sworn not to kill again). This was because the "failure" was personal (my character had broken his vow), but the mission was successful - keep the stormtroopers away from the rebel base. However, one of my fellow players brought it up because if it had happened to his character, he would not have been happy.

So what do people reckon? Always a bad move, sometimes ok, or nothing wrong at all?

Quote from: spon;10230302) Shooting out a tyre in car chase in Cthulhu so that you can catch the fleeing occupant - roll an 01 - a crit! Tyre blows out, car goes off the road and explodes, killing the driver.

I'm unclear on this one. What did the crit do? You were trying to shoot out a tire, and you shot out the tire. The driver failed to keep the car under control (a separate roll). Where did the existence of rolling an '01' instead of an '05, but still a hit,' come into play?

From a realism standpoint, that the driver is now in charge of a suddenly uncontrollable car is a known factor of shooting a tires/tyres. That's one of the reasons (along with the fact that it's a lot harder to do than tv/movies would have you believe) that police officers don't do so to stop drivers--and instead use those strips which take out all four simultaneously.

For the other two, I generally say that a crit, if I allow one at all, is for being particularly successful at what you are trying to do. So rolling a crit on trying to knock someone out means you knock them out really successfully (quickly, quietly, what-have-you). If there should be a range of results where you accidentally kill them, that should somehow factor into the 'failure' portion of the die roll.

For me this is entirely system-dependent.

In a game with measured success levels, then higher = better, almost always.

But in a game with flat 'crit' and maybe 'fumble' numbers, I see it differently. I'm fine with a 20 followed by high damage roll kill the guy they were trying to capture. They could/should have used a lower damage technique. Likewise I've seen a 1 fumble shoot the ceiling, cause a collapse, and the falling debris take out the guy they were trying to shoot! So, swings & roundabouts. In both my examples though the d20 roll was NOT THE FINAL ROLL - it set things up for further rolls with the unforeseen result.

Seems a bit off there in at least the KO example. Then again in Shadowrun I accidentally killed a target by doing way too well with a stun glove hit.

Id have ruled that the target was now very KOed and will not awaken for a good while. Or if the PC was trying to do it as quietly as possible then definitely no one noticed due to how well the PC pulled it off.

With the car tyre Id say that crit or no the car could have lost control and gone off.

With the engine shot I'd have ruled that the shot was so well placed that either the ship can be repaired easily or that the damage is not easily notable from observation. Depending on what the PC was trying to accomplish.

I prefer not to penalize someone for doing well on a delicate maneuver. But sometimes there will be after effects and/or complications that could careen out of control.

2 is OK, yeah. The other two are not fair at all, IMHO. You're trying to disable the engines and roll really well: that means you managed to hit the precise spot you wanted to and you get what you want. The same with the guard! Otherwise you end up with these 4 leves of success: Fumble, Failure, Success and Critical Fumble. Rolling too well turns into some sort of "wild die" situation where anything goes.

Quote from: spon;1023030So, this came up in a Con game recently.

When you're trying to do something and you roll extremely well (e.g. a critical) do you consider it a bad GM move to penalise the player in some way?
Examples:
1) Trying to knock out a guard in D&D so that you can interrogate him later - roll to hit - a 20! - double damage! And the guard is dead. Not unconscious, but dead.
2) Shooting out a tyre in car chase in Cthulhu so that you can catch the fleeing occupant - roll an 01 - a crit! Tyre blows out, car goes off the road and explodes, killing the driver.
3) Trying to cripple a shuttle full of stormtroopers in Star Wars, roll a double crit, blow the ship up when you were only trying to disable the engines.


I reckon 1 is d*ck move - I literally could not roll better and yet I failed at my reasonable attempt.

2 is ok but only because the GM fumbled the driver's drive auto roll after the blowout.

I was fine with 3 despite my character having a thing about not killing anyone (ex-mandalorian trooper who had reformed and sworn not to kill again). This was because the "failure" was personal (my character had broken his vow), but the mission was successful - keep the stormtroopers away from the rebel base. However, one of my fellow players brought it up because if it had happened to his character, he would not have been happy.

So what do people reckon? Always a bad move, sometimes ok, or nothing wrong at all?

Your examples sound like the typical sloppy GM mistake of rolling without first thinking about what the roll will mean, and applying whatever interpretation first comes to mind (or that they prefer or that seems "more fun" or "more ironic"). Particularly annoying are GMs who think any high or low roll is license to make whatever zany result they feel like happening (especially if it torments the players).

I'd say the result should depend on what the roll is supposed to be about, and whether/how the skill of the character is taken into account or not.

In the games I play, and when I GM (even if I am inventing a mechanic on the spot to resolve some unusual situation), these things are (or should be) considered in advance, or else it creates an ambiguous situation.

When trying to subdue and not kill someone, the GM should know (either because there are well-thought-out, playtested printed rules which say so, or because he thought it through enough in advance) what the results of good or bad crits should be.

If a game system gives increased chances of a  crit for people with higher skill, and the person is trying NOT to kill, then the crit should probably NOT mean they accidentally do lethal damage, because then the more skilled people will be more likely to accidentally kill people when trying not to, which is backwards. Or at least, the _extra_ part of the crit range for skill probably shouldn't mean that. On the other hand, if the game system doesn't adjust the chances of crits for skill, then it might not matter as long as the GM fairly assesses the odds and chooses which roll will mean what before he rolls.

Sometimes when trying to do something like this where there is a usual mechanic for doing something, but you're trying to do it in an unusual way, I will make a competence roll once to see how successful they are at doing the unusual part, and then use the result of that to modify the usual roll or its effects. i.e. first roll to see how well you limit your attack to something non-lethal. If you succeed, then your attack is targeting a safe-ish location and/or is using safe-ish force - roll again to see whether that attack succeeds or not - a crit on the second roll would mean something like the target doesn't see if coming or it's very accurate. But if the first roll to see how well you limit your attack is a failure, then roll a normal full-strength attack, and a crit there would be a normally deadly crit.

Critical success. Not critical destruction.

I think it in terms of a "Critical Advantage" whereby the excellent roll results in something even more advantageous than a regular success. By this metric, when trying to knock out the guard, it's a superior knock-out that doesn't leave a mark and may intimidate the guard into giving away more information during interrogation.

I go along with 2; it was the driver's failure, and the driver's consequence.

3 was poorly thought through.  Unless that chain of events was in the rules, in which case the player should have been informed first.

1 was an out and out dickmunch move.

20 means YOU SUCCEED AS WELL AS IS POSSIBLE, not YOU ENTER WILE E. COYOTE MODE.

I think if you get a crit then it should benefit you more, not less. So for example I would have done something like

1. It's a whisper quiet knock out
2.  tyre blows out and veers into nearby fire hydrant, stopping it quickly but not causing much damage. Guy inside is unhurt.
3. engines are completely shot and cant be repaired, have to be replaced.

Quote from: Psikerlord;10231513. engines are completely shot and cant be repaired, have to be replaced.

Only if that was the intended effect. Otherwise you shoot it so well that it is completely disabled, but when you want to start it up again (to use it to land on Endor next to the shield generator), fixing it is a breeze.

In the webcomic Schlock Mercenary, the mercs ran up against a bounty hunter with a super-intelligent IA super-suit who disabled all of them without firing a shot, and it went something like:
'he disabled all our weapons.'
'how'd he do that?'
'he locked the guns' safeties into the 'engaged' position.'
'our guns don't have safeties.'
'they do now.'
'damn he's good.'

Quote from: spon;1023030So, this came up in a Con game recently.
1) Trying to knock out a guard in D&D so that you can interrogate him later - roll to hit - a 20! - double damage! And the guard is dead. Not unconscious, but dead.

Sometimes you mean to slice the guy just badly enough that he drops out of the fight, but you hit an artery. Shit happens.

If the GM folds the intention into a single roll without being careful not to erase the possibility of some of the original types of possible outcomes, then the intention can have unintended and/or un-understood effects of limiting what's possible.

So if a normal attack can result in:

crit hit: lots of deadly damage
hit: some damage
miss: no damage
crit fail: flub your weapon somehow

And you want to add "hit in just the 'right' way/amount" as the intended desired result, but you don't want to add a roll (or add categories to the one roll or somehow increase the number of types of effect) then you may end up removing one of the other possible results, possibly without meaning to or realizing it.

e.g. a GM might think to make a subdue attack with a usually-deadly weapon:

crit hit: neatly subdue the target
hit: some damage
miss: no damage
crit fail: accidentally crit hit your target

... possibly without realizing that he just made it so he removed the chance of flubbing the attack, and replaced it with another result that takes out an opponent. Trying to be careful not to hurt your foe becomes accidentally a better way to attack people. He may only figure it out after he notices that for a long time the players have been using all subdual attacks even when they just want to kill their foes, and were just executing those who surrendered without torturing them.

No, a good GM adapts and moves on.  The ability to improvise is crucial for the role.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1023237Sometimes you mean to slice the guy just badly enough that he drops out of the fight, but you hit an artery. Shit happens.

I don't think anyone is disputing that. It's whether one should ever have shit happen because you rolled too well.