DC 10. You roll a natural 1, it modifies to 15. CRITICAL FAILURE
I feel like it’s a bit ridiculous. A professional with expertise doing the worst they possibly can shouldn’t be the same as any random untrained person doing the worst they can.
That is why they ditched critical failures and success in tabletop D&D.
My guess is they kept it in bg3 so there would be a chance of failure on everything including the DC 2 rolls, but to be honest I don’t think that chance of failure really adds anything to the game.
It’s the second shittiest common house rule, assuming you mean that if someone with a +15 bonus rolls a nat 1 on a DC 5 check, they automatically fail (possibly with a worse effect than if someone with a -1 rolled a 2).
On the other hand, there are other ways to have crit fails on skill checks that are much more palatable, like:
having a slightly worse effect when someone rolls a nat 1 and would have failed anyway
having a worse effect when someone’s total is 1 or lower
having a worse effect when rolls are failed by certain thresholds, like by 10 or more (potentially, but not necessarily, only when the roll was a nat 1)
(The worst common house rule, btw, is crit miss tables for additional effects beyond an automatic miss when you roll a 1 on an attack roll.)
If a 1 is not a fail, why do you roll at all ?
I mean if the DC is 5 and you have +15, your DM should just not make you roll (* you pass automatically). So a 1 should always be a fail.
The DM doesn’t necessarily have your modifiers memorized and asking what they are every time slows down play. The DM also likely doesn’t want to share the DC. The easiest fair solution is to always ask for a roll (assuming it’s possible, generically, to succeed or fail) and to then consider passes to be passes. If you only avoid asking for a roll when you know the player will make it, then you’re likely to be biased toward the players whose characters you’re more familiar with.
So a 1 should always be a fail.
RAW this is not the case. From the DMG:
Rolling a 20 or a 1 on an ability check or a saving throw doesn’t normally have any special effect. However, you can choose to take such an exceptional roll into account when adjudicating the outcome. It’s up to you to determine how this manifests in the game.
My experience with having nat 1s being auto fails and is that this results in characters who are “erratically … tragically incompetent” as well as taking away player agency (Nick Brown on rpg.stackechange explained this well). Maybe you and your players like a game like that, but I certainly don’t.
What changes have they made? I’d love to know as I’m always game to allow homebrew etc at my table (so long as I’ve read the material, everyone agrees, and we roll with it from the start of a campaign).
It makes much sense and avoids action spamming I’ve seen at tables that let a potion be used for free. I know Crawford intended potions to be an action since they’re “bottled spells” but it results in players never using them in fights. Also less squishy PCs makes for far for entertaining encounter design (read that as additional peril haha).
“Bottled spells” that don’t recharge on a long rest but instead cost an arm and a leg and heal for a pittance, basically ensuring that in the time that it takes to gulp one down you’ve already taken twice as much damage than what it’ll heal. I guess I get the idea but RAW, the potions are just awful outside of last resort to bring up downed characters (and that’s assuming your GM has no problems making an unconscious character forcibly drink them).
I’m curious as to how quickly BG3 rule changes will start making their way into tabletop house rules and 3rd party supplements.
My guess is pretty quickly, if my own group is any worthwhile measurement.
Yeah. Larian made some really good changes to D&D, then they added crit fails to skill checks
Do you know how many times that has pissed me off? Especially on my rogue where even a 1 would have opened the damn lock.
DC 10. You roll a natural 1, it modifies to 15. CRITICAL FAILURE
I feel like it’s a bit ridiculous. A professional with expertise doing the worst they possibly can shouldn’t be the same as any random untrained person doing the worst they can.
That is why they ditched critical failures and success in tabletop D&D.
My guess is they kept it in bg3 so there would be a chance of failure on everything including the DC 2 rolls, but to be honest I don’t think that chance of failure really adds anything to the game.
Why are you rolling in those cases?
Yeah, as DM I’ve always house ruled that it didn’t make sense for a character to fail at the thing they’re the best at.
Though I have been known to interpret a natural 1 as a crazy external force - like an earthquake - and have them reroll at -10.
Makes it even more fun when they succeed anyway.
[nervous sweating] I’ve always run my game with crit fail skill checks. That’s normal.
Isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
It’s the second shittiest common house rule, assuming you mean that if someone with a +15 bonus rolls a nat 1 on a DC 5 check, they automatically fail (possibly with a worse effect than if someone with a -1 rolled a 2).
On the other hand, there are other ways to have crit fails on skill checks that are much more palatable, like:
(The worst common house rule, btw, is crit miss tables for additional effects beyond an automatic miss when you roll a 1 on an attack roll.)
If a 1 is not a fail, why do you roll at all ? I mean if the DC is 5 and you have +15, your DM should just not make you roll (* you pass automatically). So a 1 should always be a fail.
The DM doesn’t necessarily have your modifiers memorized and asking what they are every time slows down play. The DM also likely doesn’t want to share the DC. The easiest fair solution is to always ask for a roll (assuming it’s possible, generically, to succeed or fail) and to then consider passes to be passes. If you only avoid asking for a roll when you know the player will make it, then you’re likely to be biased toward the players whose characters you’re more familiar with.
RAW this is not the case. From the DMG:
My experience with having nat 1s being auto fails and is that this results in characters who are “erratically … tragically incompetent” as well as taking away player agency (Nick Brown on rpg.stackechange explained this well). Maybe you and your players like a game like that, but I certainly don’t.
If the DM doesn’t know the stat your character has the highest in and uses all the time, they have an awful memory and shouldn’t really DM.
Need to do the Pathfinder crit fails. Crit fail whenever you get 10 less than the DC, or roll a nat 1 and get less than the DC.
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lkod?Critical-Hits-and-Critical-Failures
What changes have they made? I’d love to know as I’m always game to allow homebrew etc at my table (so long as I’ve read the material, everyone agrees, and we roll with it from the start of a campaign).
People on the same turn sharing initiative can go at the same time. Drinking a potion is a bonus action. Those are the ones I’ve incorporated.
It makes much sense and avoids action spamming I’ve seen at tables that let a potion be used for free. I know Crawford intended potions to be an action since they’re “bottled spells” but it results in players never using them in fights. Also less squishy PCs makes for far for entertaining encounter design (read that as additional peril haha).
“Bottled spells” that don’t recharge on a long rest but instead cost an arm and a leg and heal for a pittance, basically ensuring that in the time that it takes to gulp one down you’ve already taken twice as much damage than what it’ll heal. I guess I get the idea but RAW, the potions are just awful outside of last resort to bring up downed characters (and that’s assuming your GM has no problems making an unconscious character forcibly drink them).