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.

Seems that is more in line with a fumble roll rather than a critical success roll.

Your DM is a dick. In addition to penalizing you out of some sense of schadenfreude, he or she is playing 'story game' by imposing a desired outcome, independent of the rules. Some people dig it when the DM leads them around on a little leash like this, but I find it obnoxious. What is the point of playing if it devolves to you sitting on your hands while the DM presents a lame puppet show?

Generally, I go with a narrative approach to this - If the PC's intention was to have an effect and rolls a critical then the PC gets the effect, if reasonable. So, disabling a shuttle on a critical is fine, knocking out a guard without killing him is fine, shooting out a tyre to stop a car is fine. Having the driver roll to control the car and fumbling is unfortunate but reasonable, if he hadn't done so the car would probably have stopped safely due to the critical. Saying the guard dies or the shuttle blows up because of a good roll would be fine if the intention had not been to disable but to destroy. The GM was probably unreasonable in 2 out of 3 of the OP's cases.

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 going to go against the prevailing opinion in here and say it was a dick move. Not because losing the tyre caused the car to leave the road and crash, but explode?

Was the car carrying nitroglycerin? Was someone inside trying to throw out a lit stick of dynamite but dropped it onto the car's floor during the accident? If neithert, how exactly did it "explode" just from hitting something?

It's a Hollywood car.

1) Bad GM. No cookie.

2) Seems like that may be questionable. As another poster pointed out, real cars don't actually explode from swerving off the road. So unless this was an Action Movie Genre style RPG the explosion was almost certainly over the top. In addition, I'd want to know what difference (if any) the critical hit on the tire made to the effect. If the crash was simply the result of the driver losing control well that's a reasonable possible outcome from a sudden tire blowout. But if the GM used the crit hit on the tire to increase the likelihood of the car exploding then no cookie for that GM.

3) Bad GM. No cookie and no Corellian Whiskey for you.

Quote from: Bren;10235372) Seems like that may be questionable. As another poster pointed out, real cars don't actually explode from swerving off the road. So unless this was an Action Movie Genre style RPG the explosion was almost certainly over the top. In addition, I'd want to know what difference (if any) the critical hit on the tire made to the effect. If the crash was simply the result of the driver losing control well that's a reasonable possible outcome from a sudden tire blowout. But if the GM used the crit hit on the tire to increase the likelihood of the car exploding then no cookie for that GM.

Its Call of Cthulhu. Start wondering why it exploded. Then later wish you had not learned why it exploded. :eek:

Let the dice fall where they may.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1023591Let the dice fall where they may.

So, a critical should cause a good effect not a bad one? This was about the interpretation of a good dice roll ...

Quote from: soltakss;1023628So, a critical should cause a good effect not a bad one? This was about the interpretation of a good dice roll ...

A critical should cause the effect described in the rules. If the rules don't reflect the sort of game you want to play, the DM should make their own house rules.

For example, in reality it is not possible to donk someone on the head to knock him out without a risk of death or disabling injury. Once you start squashing the brain around all sorts of nasty shit can happen. In that case, the situation in #1 is fair and reasonable. But if you want your game world to be more Princess Bride than Ironside, or more A-Team than Hurt Locker, then you need rules for just knocking people out. If the game lacks them, write them up. Typically, some players will like some of the house rules and some won't, so the sensible DM adjusts things over time - you can't make every individual happy with every ruling, you just aim to get a consensus/majority sort of thing, and find players who understand it's about compromise.

This back-and-forth of developing house rules is part of any rpg campaign. BUT - the OP describes a con game. That's a one-off, there's no back-and-forth, there's not enough time. So there's more likely to be a mismatch. If you go to a con game, you must be willing to go with the flow and let the dice fall where they may. At a con game, you must compromise more than with a regular game group. If you go to a con game expecting everything to be exactly the way you want it, you don't understand the purpose of cons: to try something different with different people.

Right. But if someones rolling to KO a target then a crit could well mean they do so without risking injury to the subject. Id have said a crit fumble would have been where you screw up and brain them. Otherwise what is rolling a 1? You behead them? Miss?

Its like. "I am trying to screw this bolt in just right" = rolls a 20 and screws it in right through the bulkhead!.

Quote from: Omega;1023671Right. But if someones rolling to KO a target then a crit could well mean they do so without risking injury to the subject.

I don't know which edition of D&D the OP was playing. AD&D1e had "subdual" damage, so you could have a character who never killed anyone, just beat them until they were curled up in a ball on the ground and crying for their mother; but AD&D1e didn't have criticals, so this isn't obviously an option. I don't recall whether other editions of D&D allow subdual damage, but if they don't, that'd be a reasonable house rule for a DM to offer in the following session if it were part of a campaign.

That's why I said: A critical should cause the effect described in the rules.  If the rules don't reflect the sort of game you want to play, the DM should make their own house rules.

But "I meant to knock him out, and whoops I killed him" is a nice complication for the players to deal with, so I don't see what the drama is, except, "things didn't go my way, boohoo."

I think the key issue here is that it these were con games. In an ongoing campaign, the GM can tailor things to player preferences, but in a con game with half a dozen strangers, it's like we tell my son about his dinner, "you get what you get, and you don't get upset." It sounds like the GMs were trying to have BIG DRAMATIC results. I mean, a car exploding is just more fun and dramatic than getting a flat tyre. Again: it's a con game. In a long campaign you can be subtle, in a one-off you want big explosions and shit.

The OP sounds like a compulsive whinger, with those con game sessions I'll bet he didn't even bring and share snacks.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1023703so I don't see what the drama is, except, "things didn't go my way, boohoo." .

The problem is if you tell somebody "you want to roll high to succeed," and then say "Oh, you succeeded so well you fail," you're an assmunching dickweevil.

For me, much depends on the context and the genre.
 
Pulp / Cinematic means everybody gets knocked unconscious when hit by stuff, like wine bottles and flower vases. So I'm cool with that.
AKA, in 7th Sea or Star Wars, its cool to knock out guards with head bonks. In Warhammer? Head bonks cave in skulls.

Tires blown in high speed chases are probably deadly...especially in the pre-seatbelt, pre-airbag era.

Overall, I balance the Law of Unintended Consequences with the assumptions of PC competence.
AKA, the thief going for the knockout might have less of a chance of mishap than the barbarian.

However, there is also the delicious LoLz factor and its siren song.

All three of the OP's descriptions do sound pretty hysterical.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1023706The problem is if you tell somebody "you want to roll high to succeed," and then say "Oh, you succeeded so well you fail," you're an assmunching dickweevil.

As I noted, in AD&D1e you'd just say you wanted to do subdual damage, and there are no criticals, so this wouldn't be a problem. In some games there's no subdual damage, so a critical success is splattering his brains across the wall; some games allow no other concept of success than "you kill them all! hahaha!"

But if you're playing something other than AD&D1e, you deserve what you get.