>>92615899
Just drop the idea of crits and hits then. Just calmly explain that 1 and 20 are numbers like any other and have no special rule bonus or penalty.

depends on the system

>>92615899
Assuming OP is talking about 5e as a base to criticize:
>It seems ridiculous that a peak specimen at the prime of their life who has mastered a skill will critically fail 1 in 20 times
If it seems like a master would have no way to fail (because critical merely means in a way that modifiers cannot adjust the result), then you have half of a reason not to roll. Thankfully critical failure is only a mechanic for attack rolls, not ability checks, and such a master has an adjusted failure rate. Likewise, for attacking, even a master can miss for a number of factors and even a novice can get lucky.

So what system were you baiting about, anon?

>>92615899
Crits only apply to attacks, no amount of natural 20s will make you succeed at a skill check if you don't meet the DC. FFS, at least read the fucking rules you're talking about. That said, skill checks are meant to represent working under duress, and a nat 1 isn't a failure if you meet the DC. For most high level characters they will succeed against a 12 and have a better than 50% success rate against DC 20. Rouges can have a minimum roll of 27 on skills they're experts in, and 21 on skills they're proficient in, which is automatic success against hard(20) DCs.

>>92615899
This is why any even remotely competently written ruleset will tell you not to have players roll if there is no chance of failure.

1%

>>92615899
Well if you're smart you go with imploding dice rather than crit failures, with a rule where a player can attempt The Challenge if they get into the negatives for another roll at +0. Obviously any roll that ends under 0 is treated as increasingly the opposite of what they intended.

>there's 250 million drivers in the US
>for sake of simplicity, let's assume each of them makes 2 drive checks a day (to and from work on workday, or to and from the mall, on weekends)
>that's 183 billion drive checks a year
>there are about 43 thousand fatal crashes a year in the US
>aka 0.0000235% of drive checks are crit fails
this, of course, is a gross oversimplification, not taking into account weather, season, individual skill, quality of roads, time of the day, driver's expereince, age, gender, potential distractions, etc.

>>92615899
That's a 5% chance of failure. It sucks, but things like that do happen in reality. Roll the dice enough, you'll get unlucky. Critical failures only exist in combat, and that could be getting purely unlucky with where they hit. It's a big reason why pretty much every self-defense trainer out there will tell you that if you can avoid getting into a fight, do anything to prevent violence unless it's a last resort.

Dnd players think 5% is a lot for some reason. I can't really think of many games where 5% isn't less, CoC maybe. Personally I enjoy a good 10% critical failure, but I could have it be 15%. I like narrating failure, and it makes for better reactive play.

>>92615899
None. Don't use 'em. They're design traps which either occur too frequently to make sense or too rarely to waste further design consideration on.

>>92615899
I think how reasonable the rate of criticals is depends on how much more effective a "critical" is by comparison to a normal outcome and in relation to the tone/difficulty of the game itself.
To name a hypothetical example on an extreme end, say you have a game where typical attacks deal one wound, and characters can only take ten for injury and twenty for death. But, there's a 1:10 chance to do nothing, and another 1:10 to instantly kill. Isn't that unreasonable? Maybe not in a darker game or a work of horror, but in fantasy where your characters are supposed to feel heroic and exceptional, it's quite unreasonable.
On another extreme, with something that actually exists, take attack rolls with D&D. There aren't critfails (assuming your DM isn't using that guideline), but there's a 1:20 chance (ignoring dis/advantage or features/houseruled guidelines that change the range) for a "critical attack" which, if I remember right, doubles the damage dice you roll. So say you have 2D12 on your weapon, so you roll 4D12 on a critical. Then, you end up with all 1s and only deal 4 damage to the target, who has 200 HP. That doesn't really seem very "critical", does it? Especially in a system whose player characters are supposed to be exceptional.
So yeah, what's reasonable depends more on the effect and tone, than just the probability itself.

>>92616288
This is why I like d100 systems.
1% and 5% both have their places and neither is off the table.

>>92615899
Don't roll for something a character won't reasonably fail and while a 20 would be better than you would normally do a disabled retard still isn't going to do a good job

>>92615899
>What is an actually reasonable rate for critical failure and success?
Just do it like that game with the loli-zombi-cybord: it's decided on final roll value and not the base dice, this way it's dependent from the situation and something you can negate/maximize depending on how much gambly you want to be.

>>92617373
Reasonable response/10

>>92615899
> It seems ridiculous that a peak specimen at the prime of their life who has mastered a skill will critically fail 1 in 20 times.
There is no such thing as a “critical failure” in D&D. Rolling a 1 on a saving throw or a skill check just means you did slightly worse than you would have if you’d rolled a 2. Rolling a 1 on an attack roll just means you miss even if your modifiers say you should have hit.

Nothing more.

>>92615899
babby's first discovery that rules for "roleplaying" are arbitrary nonsense. just spin your own shit and stop expecting everything to be spoonfed to you. oh wow, your character is very skilled, they cannot critically fail at this task, tada.

>>92617107
>Retard faggot thinks 5% isn't a lot
Can't relate to DnD, but 5% is a fuckload in d100. Hell, 3% is a fuckload
Have you tried not being a mathlet?

>>92615899
>It seems ridiculous that a peak specimen at the prime of their life who has mastered a skill will critically fail 1 in 20 times.
If you have to confirm critical hits, you have to confirm critical fails.

>>92626134
The people who think 5% isn't a lot have never played Fire Emblem with single-RN or XCOM.

>>92615899
I did tests, a long while ago. It seems that we roll around 20 times per game sessions, for a game of around 4h
(Obviously it varies depending on the system).
So, assuming a D20, it would mean that you would get around one crit success and one crit failure per session. This is a good rate.
I don't play D20 games, but when designing my games I like to pick a similar probability for "crits", for example:
Two nat 6 on two D6 (1/36 chance).

>>92627514
>similar probability
1/36 is just over half as often as 1/20.

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>>92628350
Fact checking this reminds me of one reason why 2D6 really pisses my Cheerios.

>>92627462
somewhat unrelated but that reminds me of how I just tried playing battle for wesnoth again recently and was once again turned off by how ridiculously swingy the rng is with how fragile the units are

>>92615899

This is a bait thread, but I'll bite it anyways.

When you call for a dice roll, that means that there is a chance that the action will go your way, and a chance it won't. If it's clear that the action can only go one way, don't call for a dice roll.

As >>92615924 said, you don't need to have them indicate criticals. For that matter if the peak specimen at the prime of their life who mastered the skill rolls a "1" on such a roll, they don't suddenly become incompetent at it. They may have misjudged the distance because they assumed it would go the way it went many times before. It may still have been a blunder. Or maybe the task at hand was more complicated that previously thought and will cost precious time to see it to fruition.

Likewise the disabled retard novitiate doesn't suddenly become an expert at the skill if a "20" was rolled. It may have been a simple fluke, or something else. Maybe the situation really was braindead and it looked complicated due to overthinking.

A lot of the issues being pointed out is a user issue.

>>92628429
Do you dislike recurring decimal places?

>>92615899
>It seems ridiculous that a peak specimen at the prime of their life who has mastered a skill will critically fail 1 in 20 times.

This isn't a thing, though. The only part of the game where you have an automatic 5% chance of failure is attacks and saving throws, and even the most expert fighter misses sometimes so it works fine. There are no crits in skills.

>>92628429
Fact cheking what you fucking retard? Turning a fraction into a decimal?

>>92615899
>What is an actually reasonable rate for critical failure and success?
1 in 20 or higher.

>It seems ridiculous that a peak specimen at the prime of their life who has mastered a skill will critically fail 1 in 20 times
Maybe in real life. But you forget that this is a game and in order for crits to matter as a mechanic, they need to happen fairly often and impact the game fairly hard when they do happen. If you set the chance of crit failure to, let's say, 1%, it will effectively not exist since in a given game session on average no one will roll one.

>>92615899
How often do sports players have something you would consider a critical failure?
You would be lucky to see one in an 80 minute game, across 26 players (+ subs)

Exactly 1 in every 216 rolls. No more, no less

>>92629589
When concerning dice rolls, yes. Give me probabilities in increments of 5%; even 10% or 1%, even 20% or 25% increments are better than 2.7_forever%.

>>92629787
Disgusting.

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>>92627514
>I did tests, a long while ago. It seems that we roll around 20 times per game sessions, for a game of around 4h
>(Obviously it varies depending on the system).
>So, assuming a D20, it would mean that you would get around one crit success and one crit failure per session. This is a good rate.

>>92615899

The Law of Large Numbers states that it will take you about 200 rolls even to begin to notice a 5% difference.

Pic related.

>>92631700
>>92627514
unless you're using crystal dice cut casino-style then all of your dice will have a significant bias towards two of the faces

>>92630488
Honestly just stop thinking in base 10. It's very freeing.
>Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fractions

>>92615899
Why do you assume they should exist?

>>92628429
Why did you need to convert it to check? You can clearly see that 36 is a little less than twice 20.

>>92632475
i both some chink d6 dice and they just won't give you a 1
i only use them for counters now

>>92615899
Video game babies like you will never understand. Power levels are literally not real. You cannot actually be so confident and capable of something that you never make a mistake ever in your life, that's impossible. Pure fantasy.

>>92635705
You don't understand what's being discussed. Critical failure is separate and distinct from normal failure and there is no reason to include it in a system.

>>92617107
>Dnd players think 5% is a lot for some reason.
5% is a lot in the specific context of critical failures. The question wasn't "should a natty 20 be a success and a 1 be a failure?" The question is more about whether a game shoul be designed in such a way that both an amateur and a professional have an equal chance of a catastrophic failure with disastrous consequences (an oddly common interpretation of the notion of a natural 1 in d20 games).
Frankly I think it comes down to the context of how often you roll. Maybe professionals shouldn't have to roll for tasks that, for them, are humdrum every day shit while beginners should. Maybe your level 20 fighter shouldn't have to roll to kill a goblin at all. Maybe he should just be able to do it.

>>92615899
>It seems ridiculous that a peak specimen at the prime of their life who has mastered a skill will critically fail 1 in 20 times. Conversely that a disabled retard novitiate will succeed miraculously 1 in 20 times.
Mythras (a D100, roll under, system) has a brilliant way to get around this:
To get a critical success, or failure, you need to get the max number on the D100 AND under/over 1/10th of the level of the relevant skill on the D10.
So, a character with a climbing skill of 10 (a low level) would get a crit success on a result of 001 or less (so, just a 2% chance), while a character with a skill of 50 would crit on a 005 or less, (a 6% chance).
Therefore: the higher your level, the higher your chance of crit success and the lower your chance of crit failure.

An easy way to get the same-ish effect on any system is to "confirm" the critis: If you roll the max number on the dice, you roll again. If you roll high enough to succeed again, it's a crit success.

>>92631700
I... don't get the point you are making

>>92617107
Every 20 actions your character dies. It is a lot.

>>92637861
How would you feel if you didn't have breakfast this morning?

retard

>>92615899
>What is an actually reasonable rate for critical failure and success?
Exactly ranging from 0.3 scaling to 9.3% due to progressive increase in proficiency/talent for critical successes, the reverse for fumbles.

No crits and no fumbles.

>>92639990

But I did have breakfast this morning

shadowrun, as always, has a better dice system for this than anyone else.
As you get an additional d6 for each skill or attribute or bonus you have in something, the chances of you getting a critical amount of 1s for a critical failure becomes lower the better you are.

If shadowrun wasn't run by idiots and edited by nobody, I swear, it would be a fucking juggernaut.

>>92644003
enjoy your dead game with no players kek

>>92644489
>implying games can be dead

>>92615899
You're supposed to role to confirm, and which is why there's various items and whatnot in 3.5 that lets you decrease the threshold for confirmations. I wanna say Warblades even have a class feature for it. Normally as per the rules, it's 1/400. People ignoring the put forth rules. Like how combat rounds last six seconds but people talk more than that, or that meta players talk to each other in combat despite these being an item of that.

>>92615899
5% rates are way too often to have something outlandish and night defining happen
If it were like triple zeroes on d10s and everyone holds their breath and looks at the dm full of fear or hope for some shit that will matter forever, that's cool in lots of games

>>92615899
The one mechanical thing I liked about champion fighter was the 15% crit chance.

>>92645224
they can and yours is.

>>92645344
Weapons and feats improve your threat range. Confirmation is always your normal attack bonus against AC.

>>92615899
This is why only attack rolls crit. Criticals on skill checks have always either been a house rule or a variant rule.

People like you will sulk about crit fails even if the odds are 0.000000001% so there's no point in asking.

>>92650095
Yeah, because they're awful design and they shouldn't be in any game.

>>92636887
>I... don't get the point you are making

He's pointing out, correctly, that it doesn't fucking matter at all, because during a normal game you roll dice so few times, that you literally won't see any difference between a 5% crit chance and a 0.5% or 10% crit chance. You simply cannot notice the difference in the results with that few tests.

This whole thread is a waste of time wanking over a theoretical game design thing that simply doesn't matter in a real game played on a real table.

>>92655045
Crybaby.

>>92656146
retard.

This thread is kinda stuck in the d20 mindset, so I'll focus on that and point out one possibility: nat 1s and 20s don't denote success-states at all, but rather special modifiers.

For instance, Pathfinder 2e's rules simply state that a natural 1 reduces your degree of success by 1, and a nat 20 increases your degree of success by 1. There are four degrees of success: critical failure (<DC-10), failure (<DC), success (>DC), and critical success (>DC+10). This means that, if you roll a nat 1 to pick a lock, but your modifier is so big that your total is still a success, you instead just get a regular (non-critical) failure. Similarly, if you get a nat 20 on your attack roll, but your modifier is so pitiful that it'd still be a failure, you instead only get a normal hit.

I find it's a good rule that stops "NATTY 20 NATTY 20" memes (because you can still get critical failures/successes by just having small/big modifiers in general), and also means you're far less concerned about ludicrous crit fishing. If you exceed the DC on a 5 or higher, why worry about whether you get a 20? A 15 already nets you a critical success on its own. The fact that you can know when crit-fishing is worthwhile (30%) and when it's a pipe dream (5%) keeps tactical options grounded and predictable.

>>92615899
5% (1/20) happens more often than you think.
2.7% (1/36) is much better, which happens when you use 2d6 and look for two of the same number.

Boxcars for crits and snake eyes for crit fails is good, you just shy of halve the usual rate of these things happening.

why should critical failures or successes exist?

>>92657053
It more accurately reflects reality by introducing a wider range of possible outcomes, it increases mechanical depth when implemented well, and it is/can be fun.

A lot of emphasis on that 'implemented well' caveat, note.

>>92615976
why, the master system anon.

>>92657143
none of these design goals require or imply crit fail / success

>>92657329
>introducing a wider range of possible outcomes
Adding criticals changes the possible outcomes from 2 to 4. That is a wider range.
>increases mechanical depth
More outcomes = more complexity
>it is/can be fun
Empirically verifiable.

Remember, 'critical failures and successes' doesn't necessarily mean that le natty 20 means you lop off the target's head and spill blood into the eyes of another enemy so they fall over screaming, and it also doesn't mean that le natty 1 means you sheath your sword, stride up to the enemy leader, and offer them your head. If you think 'critical results' are purely about doing stupid things because dice (to the exclusion of modifiers), you're buying into a strawman meme. As an example, I'd argue that bestial failures in in VtM v5 are just critical failures by any other name.

As before:
>when implemented well

>>92657389
Alright, maybe I should try speaking more slowly.
I did not say "critical results cannot provide for the design goals you presented".
I said "these design goals do not require or imply the inclusion of critical results in a system".
Do you understand the difference between these statements?

>>92650095
>>92656146
Putting up with retarded shit because you're afraid of being seen to complain isn't being based, it's being a bitch. If someone jacks off into your cup and you drink it while pretending nothing is wrong, and at no point did you either try to stop them or get something else to drink, you're a sissy cuck, not a stoic GigaChad.

>>92657389
Answer me.

>>92615899
I think nat 1 = fail and nat 20 = success is fine, however, it ONLY works if the GM is smart and doesn’t force the PCs to roll for something that either A. their characters can reasonably do or B. is actually impossible

A 5% failure rate is actually pretty high. If you drive every day, and you had a 5% chance of crashing every day then the odds of you crashing at least once a year is over 99%. Most of us will not crash our car once a year even though there are plenty of risks while driving

So basically it works if the GM does not request for an excessive number of rolls and they only ask for a roll they think even an expert may fail in. Or alternatively they ask for something they think the PCs genuinely have a chance at succeeding in even if it’s very small. Otherwise either say “no that’s impossible” or let the PCs do it without rolling

Success based dice pools are superior.

>>92615899
Drop crits and crit failures and implement degrees of success and failure.

>>92657612
This. For example, this dude>>92616446
You don't roll for going to and from work. You roll if someone swerves, or suddenly breaks, or your oil gets fucked or you need to do a cool drift to impress your friend, or drive at exactly 1 mph under the speed limit in front of a cop. And the consequences isn't necessarily instant death, though it can be. Failure could just determine the severity of the fine, or cost to repair your car for doing something dumb

>>92615899
1. Criticals don't apply to skills.
2. If you play in a better designed edition criticals have to be confirmed anyways even when they apply, so its a lot less than 5%.

>>92632475
>he isn't using a random number generator that does math on the current number of milliseconds when you roll to generate perfectly fair dice rolls.
NGMI.

>>92647732
NTA but "what is dead may never die".
A good completed game will always be better than hoping the unfinished game eventually gets good and never gets ruined.
It's like TV shows. If you don't watch them as they air there's no bullshit of "they fucking cancelled it" or "all the good writers left and he numpties who replaced them ruined everything". You can get a no spoilers review in advance from someone you generally agree with, and enjoy he completed series.

The last decent Shadowrun was 4th.
I suppose I play GURPS and its still getting new stuff, but I'm mostly just using stuff from like decade ago or more and pay little attention to the new stuff.

>>92663304
dead game

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>>92657164

>>92647732
If your tabletop game isn't at least old enough to drink in Quebec, it's basically guaranteed to be trash in gameplay, unless its a slight revision of an older game (like Mythras), or maybe if its German (DSA). We've been on a downward trend in tabletop game design quality for a long time. If good, older game lines didn't exist, I'd be sticking to videogames.

>>92663419
dead game

>>92615899
>He didn't read the rulebooks
>He thinks a Nat 1 always fails and Nat 20 always succeeds
Lol
Lmao even

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>>92663419

>GURPS

Praise Be!

>>92663450
All the good TTRPGs are 'dead'. The 'live' ones are shit games for brainlets afraid of reading the rulebook and simple math, who throw tantrums if they can lose.

Dead Games or Shit Games. Those are your choices.

>>92664622
If they were good, they would be popular. Simple as.

>>92615899
Easy solution - when you drop 1 or 20, take your D6 and roll with it - you need to have 1-3 for Crit Failures and 4-6 for Crit Success. Now your chances are much smaller.

Before you scream about "filthy homebrews", it's your game, you choose to use it or not

Dark Eye has a system where you roll 3d20 for skill checks. If 2 of them are 1, its a crit, if 2 of them are 20 it's a fumble.

For attacks, you roll 1d20. If you roll a 1 you have to roll again. If the second roll was a success, it's a crit. If the second roll isn't succesful, the attack is just a regular hit. Defence rolls have to be confirmed in a similar manner.

>>92657522
>A natural one? Well then, your sword glances off the guardsman's armour and clatters to the floor as you lose your grip
>Noooooo GM you're cucking me you may as well be jizzing in my lemonade ooh eee ahh ahh

>>92636690
>an oddly common interpretation of the notion of a natural 1 in d20 games

The weird thing is that I don't think that this is *actually* a rule in any d20 games. From what I can tell, 3.0,3.5,4e,Pathfinder and 5e all treat nat 1's the same way: in combat, it's an auto miss no matter the modifier, and for skill rolls it's just a bad roll.

The only "d20" game I can think of that has true fumbles is DCC, and it still only effects combat.

>>92668971
Mobile gacha games are 'popular'. They're still shit. 18+ year old games are unlikely to still hold the player base they had years ago. They don't become less fun over time, just old.

>>92668971
I want games with good reviews by people who like their genre, not games with a bigger player base.

And no, 5e is not a game in the same genre as GURPS. 'Tabletop RPG' has 5+ genres.

>>92663419
based

>>92626134
>>92627462
Those games have borked as fuck numbers, though. That 5% only applies to combat failures. Look up the stats on how many bullets an average soldier needs to use before they actually hit someone with it. Your DM is an asshole if 5% doesn't just mean a miss, but you blowing yourself up or something.

>>92621975
Death saves.

>>92677926
Capeshit that has no place in the hobby.

>>92680757
>dying from shock only happens in capeshit
What?

>>92615899
Which game specifically?

Do crits even work on skillchecks?