Critical Success/Failures - question for the DM's

[Salthorae]

I don't know if this has been covered, i'm sure it has but as i can't search the boards i'll raise it once more...here goes:

Ok, so my friend (and sometime DM) are having a debate right now about critical successes and failures. He, and all the other DM's in my area, say that anytime a roll on a d20 is needed (attacks, skills, spell penetration...and so on), a 20 is always a "critical success". While I agree that in combat it should be that way i.e. "finding that chink in the armor" to hit the opponent in a vital spot, the point of dispute comes in other areas, namely:

1 - Skills: I know that in the DMG there is a variant rule option allowing for the "critical" success/failure of skills, thus doubling effects or what have you (p.35 3.5 DMG), but to me that doesn't really make sense to allow a "critical" success other than the rewarding experience of "wow i rolled a 20, it must mean great extra stuff"

2 - Spell Penetration: why does rolling a 20 mean that you can penetrate the spell resistance of a creature/foe? If I have an SR of 46 say or anything higher than 27 because we were using a 7th level wizard in our debate, there is no way that a 7th level spellcaster's "dumb luck" is going to allow him to penetrate Spell Resistance of 28. He is simply not powerful enough to contend with a foe like that, come back in a level when you MIGHT be able to...if you roll a 20.

Those are my thoughts, to re-iterate, my DM's think that a "20" on any type of roll allows for automatic success, a "critical" success if you will, for ANYTHING, with the reverse being true of a "1".

Thoughts? Ideas? Agree? Disagree?

 

[Antoine]

1. Skills : critical failure on a 1 or success on a 20 always seemed strange to me in a system that allows taking 10 or 20.
Also, do you wan't a acrobat with a, say, +12 climb bonus to fall when climbing a "surface to steep to walk upon" , DC 0 ? I would not. So IMC, I excluded critical success/failure from skill rolls. Experts can rely on their skill.

Another argument would be that when a kobold hits an aware AC 40 16th level fighter, apart from being lucky in initiative, fighting a guy without a pole arm, rolling a natural 20, and being foolhardy enough to try and attack him, he'd still would carve 2 to 4 HP out of a 100 and some total. Let's say almost nothing. If the 16th level fighter misses the kobold, he'll have 3 more chances to split the little fellow in halfs before it even moves anyway. And I don't mind giving anybody a 1/8000 chance for a no-more-than-6-seconds-longer life in this wonderful world.

If you allow a Str 6 gnome 1st level bard to climb ANYTHING 10' high by rolling 20 on his d20, including a slippery metal wall in total darkness, knowing the only risk in he fails is no damage at all, it's allowing more than taking 20 on a climb check, which is not even legal. Unbalancing, and introducing recurrent achievement of impossible tasks just for the sake or rolling a die.

2. For spell resistance, I would never ever allow such thing as critical success or failure. It's just a matter of confronting powers, and the d20 is enough already for randomness.

Saves, on the other hand call for natural 1 or 20 : it mostly enhances the unpredictable character of magic, or of a chain of events. After all, if a 1st level Con 10 mage rolls 20 on a save when drinking a DC 30 poison, is he fighting the poison off or luckily not drinking enough ? (The same applies for the depth of a wound involving injury type poisons, an so on…).
If the attack was decisive enough to affect the characters no matter what, it wouldn't allow a saving throw : for instance, when falling 100 ft. from a flying mount, you don't roll a save, you pray for some magic trick or take 20d6 damage (and then only, if still alive, presumably roll a save for massive damage).
Rolling for a save is inherently admiting a saving/missing chance exists. Hence the natural 1/20 option.

Just my thoughts…

 

[Spatzimaus]

There are specific situations where a 1 is an automatic failure and a 20 is a success. Attack rolls and saving throws are an example of this, with the added rule that critical hits/fumbles are possible.

There are also situations where this doesn't happen. Skill checks, for example, have no auto-success rule. Caster level checks (SR and dispels) also don't.

You're right, your friends are wrong. Now, it's a common house rule to say that a 20 on a skill check automatically succeeds and a 1 always fails (common enough that they put it in the DMG as an optional rule), but that's not how the core game is written.

The rule of thumb I've seen is that if it's called a "check" it doesn't have those automatic successes/failures, and if it's called a "roll" or "throw" it has them.

 

[kreynolds]

Just remember that there's a big difference between a fumble and a critical miss, the former being a variant rule and the latter being part of the core rules.

 

[3d6]

A house-rule that allowed a natural 20 to be an auto-success on a skill check would be idiotic. Every person does not have a 5% chance to walk through a wall of force or across a cloud.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

A house-rule that allowed a natural 20 to be an auto-success on a skill check would be idiotic. Every person does not have a 5% chance to walk through a wall of force or across a cloud.

Indeed. The house rule is generally for those things that are possible, just not probable.

IMC I use the house rule that a natural 1 or natural 20 on a skill check results in an unusual occurrence - for a 1, usually bad for the PCs (although not necessarily the PC making the attempt), for a 20, usually good for the PCs. The rest is up to the DM's [my] imagination, based on the circumstances of the attempt.

I also have the house rule of requiring a "consequence" d20 roll for a natural attack roll of 1. Again, there's no science to it, but if the player rolls low, the consequences of the natural 1 are bad (weapon is broken, dropped, thrown into the lava pit, hits ally etc.), if the roll is high there are no consequences (the PC skillfully recovers from the air swing), and if the consequence roll is a natural 20 then DM's imagination runs free (e.g. your greastword causes a critical on your selected target and every other person within 5' of you, you lose grip of your longsword and it flies across the room, lodging in the gears of the portcullis, thereby assuring your escape from the walls of crushing nastiness, etc.). Certainly makes for fun gaming.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Felix]

Salthorae, I would agree with you that neither skill checks nor caster-level checks have critical successes or failures.

Would agree with you.

Were it not for the fact that you wimped out when it came time to DM, and poor Felix never got a chance to crack his whip once. The only explanation I have formed is that you critically failed on your otherwise considerable Profession: Gamer and Craft: Plot skill rolls.

So, sure, you can crit-fail a skill.

 

[Salthorae]

ooo sore are we?

Were it not for the fact that you wimped out when it came time to DM, and poor Felix never got a chance to crack his whip once. The only explanation I have formed is that you critically failed on your otherwise considerable Profession: Gamer and Craft: Plot skill rolls.
So, sure, you can crit-fail a skill.

So yeah, thanx for the support, and I was thinking...Spring Break?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Our house rule (which is one of the variants mentioned in the DMG):

Natural 20 roll is treated as a base 30 skill check.
Natural 1 is treated as -10.

Thus there aren't any automatic successes or failures, but rolling the extremes does increase the chances that you will succeed or fail. It also gives an incentive to rolling over taking 20, since you can potentially get that "better than 20" skill result -- at the risk or really badly missing your check.

It's worked out quite well in practice. PCs can occasionally accomplish the nearly impossible, but still can't accomplish the truly impossible (which the natural 20 = success allows).

 

[kreynolds]

You know, I always have the intentions of using that variant, but more than half the time, our entire group forgets about it.