Quote from: Dave R;999984In the place of always on crit fails though, I admit to using fail on a 1 for environmental hazards.  Fighting in mud/on a ledge/in a china shop, 1 triggers the obvious negative consequence.  When I remember to I just tell the players up front rather than having it be a mystery.

That's what I had in mind with "complications"-- something in the environment goes wrong.  I like your examples of a ledge/mud.

After thinking it over, I need to revise the odds a third time, they are still too high.

Quote from: RPGPundit;999682You have to be very careful with critical failures. First, they need to be much milder than critical hits. Second, they need to run on some kind of spectrum-of-effect, where you have a large number of possibilities that are very very minor, and a tiny amount that could be really bad.

Crit fails have to reflect the situation they occure in. A crit fail while trying to bake a birthday cake might result in possible kitchennfire or food poisoning, but one while working with high explosives can be far worse.

Quote from: Schwartzwald;1000298Crit fails have to reflect the situation they occure in. A crit fail while trying to bake a birthday cake might result in possible kitchennfire or food poisoning, but one while working with high explosives can be far worse.

I think it's also important to have some grasp of statistics. I love critical effects when they're given appropriate chances of occurring, but how many cake-lightings result in a kitchen fire?

Seems to me that would require several confirmation check failures. First-level crit fail cake lighting would be like you tip over one of the candles into the icing, you singe your fingers causing mild embarrassment and brief distraction, or you annoy some people because it takes you a long while to get them all lit, or you let them burn for too long or have to replace a few candles or something. Especially if you're using a crude d20 system that takes no factors into account and just declares a crit fail on any "natural 1".

Similarly, crit fails for explosive yet can be much more dangerous, but what is the life expectancy in terms of number of explosive uses for people with the training of the current character in the current conditions? The chance of blowing himself up should be proportional.

Similar for mountain climbers. Test your rules and take a hard climb that experienced climbers routinely survive, or better yet, what the accidental death rate there is, and try to model and test the odds for your rules, before having your players hit it and saying whoever rolls a 1 falls.

Quote from: Schwartzwald;1000298Crit fails have to reflect the situation they occure in. A crit fail while trying to bake a birthday cake might result in possible kitchennfire or food poisoning, but one while working with high explosives can be far worse.

That's a good example of why I don't care for "critical failures." Unless you're playing an utterly incompetent  buffoon, your chances of making a mistake that would lead to such outcomes should be nil. The only circumstance where I'd go for that would be someone attempting something nearly impossible in the first place and having it blow up in his face.

Quote from: Skarg;1000666I think it's also important to have some grasp of statistics. I love critical effects when they're given appropriate chances of occurring, but how many cake-lightings result in a kitchen fire?

Seems to me that would require several confirmation check failures. First-level crit fail cake lighting would be like you tip over one of the candles into the icing, you singe your fingers causing mild embarrassment and brief distraction, or you annoy some people because it takes you a long while to get them all lit, or you let them burn for too long or have to replace a few candles or something. Especially if you're using a crude d20 system that takes no factors into account and just declares a crit fail on any "natural 1".

Similarly, crit fails for explosive yet can be much more dangerous, but what is the life expectancy in terms of number of explosive uses for people with the training of the current character in the current conditions? The chance of blowing himself up should be proportional.

Similar for mountain climbers. Test your rules and take a hard climb that experienced climbers routinely survive, or better yet, what the accidental death rate there is, and try to model and test the odds for your rules, before having your players hit it and saying whoever rolls a 1 falls.

I think there is also often a tendency to make crit fails be spectacular fails to add excitement rather than more mundane setbacks. Guns jam occasionally (far less often than depicted in most games), but they very rarely have catastrophic failures without a whole chain of failures (poor maintenance, wrong or overloaded ammo etc). Even jams and misfires tend to be due to a mechanical issue that will repeat until repaired (dirty gun, damaged firing pin, bad magazine, worn spring etc) not occur just one time and be good to go.

Taking your mountain climber example, in the real world climbers have safety practices to reduce the effects of a mistake or equipment failure, belay lines, multiple anchor points etc. A critical failure typically involves a fall of a few feet, maybe some scrapes and bruises a particularly bad one might result in a sprained or broken limb. Climbing fatalities generally involve multiple errors, bad equipment, lack of, or improper use of safety gear. They are rarely just a "bad climbing roll".

I suppose it makes it might be seen as less interesting, but really a crit fail while climbing could be handled as you slip, but your safety line catches you. Roll 1d6-2 damage to see how bad it hurt, or maybe they tied the knot wrong / damaged their anchor etc. It appears nothing happened and if they make it to the top without another crit fail no problem. But if they roll another crit fail... not good.  

The real problem with crit fails and to some extent crit successes is I think they are often included to increase the drama or something. It works fine to have stuff like that happen in fiction because the reader / watcher doesn't know what will happen, but the writer does. RPGs generally work differently than fiction.

Yep.

I like using tiers of confirmation checks or other rolls or tables to determine what actually happens, as well as taking into account the involved character's skill and circumstances.

A climber without much skill, training, experience, equipment, or in bad conditions may be in much more danger than a skilled person with equipment taking their time in good conditions. If even the best case had  a 5% chance of falling, there would be very few experienced climbers of high cliffs.

So if you want to use d20 for climbing, ok, but a 1 should just mean the 5% low-end of possible things, which you then need to break down once you get it, and not be tempted by "oh it'll be more fun if he falls to his death" unless you really want that level of chaos. So, roll again to see what sort of thing is going wrong, and then assess the chances of the character being able to do something about that. In a skilled climb with equipment and backup contingencies, the safeguards should all be separate chances. First one is probably you lose hold of something. Second might be do you manage to stop yourself. Third might be whatever you put to keep you from falling. Fourth might be whether someone or something else that is arranged to have a chance to stop you. Each one could have different effects.

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The wrong way to use " critical" rolls...in my view.

One thing I should say is I hate critical on a d20 system. The lowest you get is a 5% chance. That's pretty common actually . in any significant combat involving several people a critical should occur. First crit success wins/first crit fail loses, that's a lousey system. Unless you make a crit so minor it has very limited effect. At which point why bother?

Now let's look at percentile systems. You can have crits occor on various levels. A barely skilled schmuck might crit on a 00 only. A real expert might crit on 95+ or better.

Also crit fails should be more variable. A barely trained noon should have a much larger crit fail chance than a crit success chance. As his skill goes up these ratios should change.

Chaosium had an outstanding critical system, maybe the best. Gurps had one that was pretty decent too.

A crit should be rare, and not occur in most combats. When it does tho, it should be significant.

I should mention hackstastic had a horrible critical system. I played it once, and in rolled a critical hit that had absolutely no effect on the game at all. Next turn the NPC rolled a critical hit. I was killed.

As I said, I played hackstastic once.