“Give me an Acrobatcis check to jump.”
“Nat 20 bitches!”
“You burst through the roof of the inn, taking 3d6 bludgeoning damage as you hit your head on a beam.”
If that kind of exchange sounds familiar, then you already know what’s up with today’s comic. Succeeding too well is a weird interaction that, in most cases, comes about from a misapplication of the rules.
“Give me a Perception check.”
“Woot! I critted that sucker!”
“You peer through the veil of reality. You now realize that you’re only a pawn in a game played by incomprehensible beings (usually in their mom’s basement). Take 3d6 existential dread damage.”
That mess seems to arise from a desire to be true to the dice. When high numbers come up, there’s a natural urge to make the effect spectacular (never mind the fact that there’s no such thing as “critting” a skill check in d20 system). That instinct to recognize big numbers as something special can override the more sensible “you succeed as well as you can at the task,” which is why you’ll hear about dudes practicing mind control with Persuasion checks or making Knowledge checks that drive them insane.
Of course, succeeding too well can happen within the bounds of the rules, as Thief so ably demonstrates. You’ve got to make sure to pull your punches on those low level mooks!
What about the rest of you guys though? Have you ever seen an “unlucky crit” or other “you succeed so well you fail” scenario? What happened? Let’s hear it in the comments!
Pulls out 5E drum The 5E knockout rules are incredibly functional, and can prevent scenarios like the above comic.
All 5e melee weapons come equipped with a free Vulcan nerve pinch built into the hilt.
At the cost of being attached to an incomplete system that lacks fully functional crafting or magic item rules, has exceptionally limited player choice in the form of character options, and prefers to simply tell players to reskin existing options instead of creating new and interesting ones.
But yeah, the knockout rules are oversimplified to the point of being fool proof.
https://media.giphy.com/media/E3xXqq617AaFW/giphy.gif
The vitriol is real – I think I took 1d8 acid damage from this comment!
Seriously though it’s interesting to a disapproving view of the same qualities I love about 5e: especially that revalation that a creative gamer can simply reskin existing options instead of wallowing in a mire of rules minutiae to come up with some [euphemism] optimised [/euphemism] build.
In all fairness, I can get pretty snarky at pathfinder too, and even my old loves, 3E and 3.5. It all comes down to what you want in an RPG system.
We’ve had quite the opposite: Our DM (like many others) has tables he rolls on when someone critically fails a weapon attack or spell, and in the case of spells, that has occasionally accidentally rendered some of our problems moot, such as a mass dehydration clearing up the fog and steam in the air. Of course, it also turned a geyser into a volcano, but that’s secondary.
So you’re talking about failing into success? Interesting corollary. Probably worth its own comic.
What charts does your GM use? Are they custom homebrew?
I think they are. Honestly, I never asked. Might just be from some random reddit post.
Of course Thief had the sap. It was in the pocket of convenient holding. The prerequisite for it is a lazy GM.
Or a lazy illustrator. 😛
This is why Wikipedia’s page on non-lethal weapons used to be called “Less Lethal Weapons.” Humans are extremely difficult to disable reliably without death.
That said, this is (effectively) Pathfinder rules, so shouldn’t the sap have done nonlethal damage that, even on a crit, would still merely knock him out? Or is there some rule somewhere where nonlethal damage starts becoming lethal?
Also, typical Thief. The ONLY time she manages to roll high, it screws them over. Reminds me of how my party’s Gunslinger recently scored an epic crit on non-touch AC… on a full-health boss that we were in the middle of retreating from, and who has almost certainly healed it off by now.
Yeah… Today’s joke only works in Pathfinder rules since 5e has the auto-knockout option in place of the d20 nonlethal subsystem. As you may have noticed I’m trying to vary it up and serve both camps in Handbook, which makes it a challenge to write rules-based jokes. Somebody always feels like their preferred system is being ignored in place of the other guy.
Anywho, the rule in question is this: “If a creature’s nonlethal damage is equal to his total maximum hit points (not his current hit points), all further nonlethal damage is treated as lethal damage.” It’s the “beat your enemies to death” rule. If we’re comparing the two systems, it’s a classic case of interesting complexity vs. elegant simplicity. You picks your poison and you makes your choice. 🙂
As for you own encounter with that full-health boss… Oof. That’s rough. That x4 Gunslinger crit is nearly enough to turn the tide by itself, and so you’re left standing there wondering whether it’s worth it to stand and fight. I don’t envy you that decision!
“Somebody always feels their preferred system is being ignored in place of the other guy.’
The solution is simple and elegant: Ignore the other guy.
I love all my readers equally.
Since your wife reads this comic as she illustrates it (and probably checks it for flaws before you publish), I’d rethink that statement if I were you.
Well, the Gunslinger crit brought the boss from full HP to a bit over half. We needed additional ranged firepower to finish it off (which the party didn’t have a lot of), the party was at half health, the CR 10 co-boss who can two-shot 2/3s of the party and three-shot the rest was still coming at us (at full health), there were a bunch of wimpy-but-numerous enemy reinforcements coming in from the north and the plan had been to not engage them there anyways. So not as hard of a decision as you might think.
Nah, it absolutely works in 5e. I’ve had more than a few mishaps with forgetting to declare nonlethal damage before the fateful attack.
This wasn’t a case if unintentional critical success leading to a kill, but in a high level (15th) Pathfinder campaign an enemy NPC rogue with the support mastery tree full attacked (worn greater feint for sneak attack) and took our cleric from full HP to dead (and beyond the help of breath of life, even if it hadn’t been the cleric) in a single round. She repeated this on the monk, and was only stopped by a roll of 5 on her save vs. polymorph any object from my conjuror wizard.
Needless to say it was a very tense fight.
*Sap mastery. It gives you a d6 of sneak attack per level instead of every other level…
Yeesh. It’s a good day to be undead against that build. O_O
With the deadly enchantment, your saps deal lethal damage and only stuff that’s immune to precision damage is safe…
Yeesh. It’s a good day to be an undead ooze against that build. O_O
Also, I don’t think sap master and the deadly enchant play nicely together. Thread on the subject: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uwgp?Sap-Deadly-enchantment-sap-adept-sap-master
It appears you’re quite right. Doesn’t mean I’ll be anything but paranoid about rogues for the near future…
One time I had a pirate’s treasure covered in that permanent glue stuff so that when someone tried to loot it, their hand got stuck. Was supposed to be a way to freak them out cos they kept metagaming about mimics and such but also as a funny thing to the end of serious combat.
Until the guy asked to make an attack roll with his scimitar, I told him that if he crit, he cuts his hand off.
He rolled a natural 20 and started celebrating. I told him he cut his hand off. He got so mad at me, he started shouting and stuff, even though I was allowing the Cleric to heal the wound once the hand was put quickly back on.
He totally got his hand off the chest though. So that’s good I suppose.
That big difference is that it should have been “if he crit FAILS, he cuts his hand off.” Rolling well is supposed to result in good things. It’s one of the fundamental metaphors of dice-as-chance. Start messing with that and you mess with players’ understanding of in-game reality.
I stand by what I said in the moment. I meant crit to mean both. As there was no way that could have gone well at all because it was that permanent glue stuff that only dissolves with a special item.
Did the whole, ‘Do you really wanna do that?’ thing and everything. He still decided to go for it.
Fair warning is fair warning in that case. The mechanical weirdness is still a bit funky to me (you might have allowed him to bust up the top of the chest and so have a piece of wood stuck to his hand for example), but all bets are off when that magical “are you sure?” phrase rolls around.
He did really well at cutting his hand off. Super clean cut. Only a bit of screaming. 😀
I’ve never actually played Legend of the 5 Rings but that was one thing that always stuck in my head from reading through the rules (4th Edition): the dice mechanic handled “suceeding too well” in a satisfying way, just as a natural consequence.
The core dice mechanic was: roll a number of dice (d10s) equal to stat + skill, add together a number of those dice equal to the stat, compare total to difficulty threshold. (And damage rolls were something like roll Strength plus degrees-of-success-on-the-attack-roll, total together dice based on the weapons damage rating.)
Now, since you wanted your total to always be greater than or equal the threshold I initially assumed that you would just always want to take the highest results. I mean, why wouldn’t you? So roll-and-choose was just roll-and-pick-the-highest, right?
Until I read the section on duelling, which pointed out the potential consequences for accidentally (or “accidentally”) killing your opponent during a duel to first blood. And the when the rules for dueling were outlined they EXPLICITLY pointed out that you didn’t have to always pick the highest numbers. The character rolling more dice didn’t just get bigger numbers; they had more control. Just as a natural consequence of the core mechanic. And that struck me as very cool.
How can we apply this to d20?
Well, with regards to attack rolls and damage rolls… I have no idea.
But for the Jump/Acrobatics issue I could (if I felt forced to by obnoxious DMs declaring “you jump too hard and crash into the opposite wall lolol”) offer a house-rule where a jumping character chooses the distance they go from within a range defined by: d20-result plus Strength mod plus-or-minus skill ranks.
I’ve heard so many positive things about Legend of the 5 Rings. I need to sit in on a session one of these days.
But yeah, I would think that I high roll in d20 system would result in “you succeed as well as you can at the task.” Whether that’s the GM stating that “you succeed at the task” or the player choosing from a range, I think that high numbers ought to mean “desired result” rather than “maximum result.”
I think there’s a question on that of how the player phrases their intention in that example. If the player says “I try to jump as far as possible” then (in PF system) they roll acrobatics and that result is how far forward they jump in feet. If they say “I try to jump across that 10′ gap” then it’s a DC10 acrobatics check, and no matter how high they role they never jump father than intended.
Thinking about it I suppose that just means that with the first option the playing is looking for the maximum result as the desired result.
It’s interesting when subjective intentions and objective numbers butt heads. It may be a matter of GMing style, but I keep telling myself to error on the side of the players on this sort of thing. No one likes getting into those, “Well of course a character of my level wouldn’t hurl herself into the far side of the chasm like I just said I did” arguments, but skewing too closely towards numbers rather than intent can make them that much worse.
Interestingly, TRPGs are a microcosm of death-of-the-author.
“Obviously what the author [read: player] meant was X.”
“No it wasn’t! I meant Y!”
“Your intention cannot be known. You smack into the wall. Take 1d6 Bludgeoning damage.”
So I have a GM who likes to play crits with a card system. AKA when you crit, you draw a card for the appropriate damage type and there’s a special effect.
One time, our party was having a bit of an argument due to the Oracle going crazy. The monk decided she was going to far, so he rolled to hit, trying to knock her unconscious. He rolled a crit. Drew a card.
The card gods decided that in his effort to avoid hurting her, he managed to land one straight on her nose, breaking it, but not knocking her unconscious.
So the party crisis became even worse, as he straight up attacked his fellow party member and broke her nose, with the rest of us yelling/screaming/crying in the background.
Was actually a fun session, despite the crit weirdness.
Yelling/screaming/crying/fun session!
It reads like a D&D Yelp review.
In one game I played, a time dragon (gm) show us a picture of a evil Sorcerer who was using magic to make two country’s go to war, I saw in the picture that there was trees in the background so I ask the gm if i could make a Knowledge (nature) check like any a good int spell caster you have one point in all the Knowledge skills at some point.
The gm went back and forth on the idea before letting me, I hit a nat 20 and a had a good Int that I was able to narrow down the very place he lived like on the tv cop shows.
On the way there, the gm had a squirrel come out in to the road in the way of our wagon, With me being the “only” driver in the group, i went with my gut and made to move to miss it, a good call on my part as it turn out it was the pet of a grey render with ranger lv’s and we got adoptive with the wagon by the grey render (it was thinking we was the wagon kids)
Part way there, We was able to beat a few evil outsiders who send to beat us (he knew we was coming due to magic), I landed a good blow on one of them by driving the heavy wagon over it, it took out a horse (we use horses from the mount spell as it cheaper to break them from over use then it is to get one and take care them) but it did hell of a lot of a pain to him that they later gave up and let us go to take the Sorcerer out as they did not want to be killed with us being so deadly (grey render) helped a lot.
with the pain and help of having a grey render with you (it hard to go close to towns with one but it was so helpful in fights) we found the place,the Sorcerer was doing some rituals to give him the edge in the fight where he got a 1 on the last one, he end up being blow out the window right in the party where we made quick work of him.
Now the Big bad had a hidden super magic sword he never got to use so the gm had it hidden in his blood, cue me taking his blood for that spell where you can get spells out of spell caster blood, I tryed to purify it as the Sorcerer magic came from some… not nice places but i did not do so well so i did not want to take the risk (gm roll in secret and said i would of passed) so me and a kobold artificer had the idea of using the blood in reforging the fighter who got taken out at the end of the fight. Turns out this was a great idea as the magic sword became part of his sword, the sword never did like the kobold but me and the sword came to a understanding and the fighter got a cool sword (I would of gotten cool powers if i did take the blood my self but i not mad, it came up being useful later as there was a group who try to pick off the people with powerful magic so they can use them in seal, the sword could hide it being magic).
sadly the game is on hold, maybe never to be played any more with it ending with the fighter who was thinking it be a great idea to put his head in a portal to some other place where it end up making him insane.
Relevant article: https://www.tor.com/2017/07/20/sword-forged-from-the-blood-of-your-enemies/
I’ve seen that kind of thing plenty of times, not that any particular even stands out for me.
What does stand out is that none of it should by rules (or proper etiquette) actually occur. Success should never be a punishment.
Non-lethal damage… well the words are right there. While I understand other systems aren’t as clear cut, D&D 5e is pretty clear that damage is non-lethal when you say it is and nothing gets to change that. Well aside from non-lethal damage that directly leads to environmental lethal damage like knocking someone to 0 hp while they’re flying a few hundred feet off the ground.
How your group handles these things is of course a thing that should be up to the group. If the players find that kind of thing, ok sure then. But I’ve seen far too many GMs decide to do the “you succeed too well thing” far too many times even when it’s clear none of the players are happy they’re doing that and refuse to stop.
Personally I’m also not a fan, at least in D&D, of nat 20s achieving a level of success beyond what should be possible. Or at least not far beyond it. Maybe a nat 20 on something the character is good at achieving something a bit beyond their means is reasonable, like just intuiting some detail they wouldn’t normally be able to guess. But Wis 8 character Nat 20 perception shouldn’t allow them to see invisible creatures from hundreds of feet away or Str 10 characters throwing horses across rivers or all that crazy stuff.
At least in Pathfinder, that’s a common misconception. The nat 20/nat 1 ONLY affects attack rolls and saving throws. Even a peasant with a stick swinging wildly could get lucky and hit a vulnerable spot, and even an elite sniper who’s taken this shot a thousand times can miss, however uncommon it is. For whatever reason, the Big Stupid Fighter brought his A game to that Will save, and even Barbarians get nauseated SOMETIMES. With skills and ability checks, a 1 is just less than 2, and a 20 represents the maximum you can achieve under those circumstances – that Wis 8 character (assuming no skill ranks or modifiers) rolls a 20 on Perception and gets a 19 – decent, but it will almost certainly not beat the +20 to Stealth that invisibility provides. And, while that 19 is the best that character can be at percepting, a Wis 18 character with 2 skill ranks and a class skill bonus can equal that on a 10. Now, there are people who houserule nat 1s/20s into everything, but that’s their choice.
Those rules haven’t changed since 3.0, the problem is there are many dms who are under the impression that it applies to skills as well. I’ve actually had people argue with me that it even makes sense that way for some crazy reason or another.
I was hoping someone would bring this up! This is absolutely fascinating to me, because it’s all about who has the authority in the situation. In 5e, the player has the authority to say what happens when they swing with the intent to incapacitate. In d20 you can announce the same intention, but you may wind up hitting ’em too hard by accident. In that case, the rules and the dice have the authority to say what happens in the game world. In this instance 5e skews more towards treating players like authors who can consciously shape a narrative beat, while d20 treats them like game players who might overshoot their target, same as a golfer or a curler.
I’m pretty sure if you asked a golfer if putting too much force into a swing was swinging “too well” they would precede to hit you with a golf club exactly as hard as they need to in order to make you stop saying very stupid things.
Doing things well by necessity includes grasping the concept of finesse. Even tasks of brute force. You don’t “perfectly” pick up a sack full of valuables by doing so so fast and hard that you chuck it into space. You don’t throw baseballs so hard you don’t care where they’re going. And you don’t climb so well that you climb fifty feet above where the wall ends and wind up standing around on a low hanging cloud.
That’s what all that “succeed too well” nonsense amounts to. And it’s fairly obvious if you so much as tried the concept out on every single skill with your very first idea for each one.
Applying that to combat, you’re not doing your job well at all when you attempt to knock someone out cold or incapacitate them and use five times as much force as you could have conceivably believed you needed for the task and slam their head down into their pelvis.
That said, there is some logic that it’s actually quite hard to knock people out without serious risk of killing them. But that logic has no place in D&D where your PCs can get KOed, make multiple death saves (or whatever mechanic you’re using), and get back up and go right back to fighting several times in the same fight. Because applying just that one very specific bit of realism is absurd if you’re going to ignore every other bit of realism that also directly relates to the issue. And of course you can’t apply any of those things without breaking almost all roleplaying games. So in my opinion 5e is taking the right approach. If we’re going to be narrative but fair about things, we should do that consistently and not randomly pick and choose exceptions to that style without rhyme or reason.
I think that the golf metaphor is more apt than you’re giving it credit for. If you’re driving for distance and overshoot the target, it’s still an impressive swing. It’s a similarly impressive swing if you accidentally decapitate your prisoner.
Combat is the most complex part of the game, so treating it differently than a skills system is less arbitrary than it seems. If you’ve ever tried a game with complex “social combat,” then you know it’s like forcing your players to learn a second combat system. That’s a big ask, and part of the reason that skills are more vaguely defined than their combat counterpart.
Here’s a slightly more interesting counterpoint: The nonlethal subsystem sees additional value in its added depth. Check out the sap adept feat or the ablative barrier spell:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/sap-adept-combat/
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/ablative-barrier/
The concept of nonlethal damage allows for these things to exist, generating new builds and strategies. I’m not certain that I disagree about 5e having a better overall approach. However, I do think that it’s less clear cut than you’re making out. It’s what I mean when I talk about interesting complexity vs. elegant simplicity. 5e solves the problem of knocking out enemies for capture. The d20 option offers new design space.
In my roadtrip game (of which I’ve spoken about on occasion), on one of our first encounters we were defeated and held prisoner in the cellar of a bar owned by the villain and his mooks.
We woke up bound and tied to posts. I made the Strength check to break free, but my allies did not. This made a noise loud enough to be heard in the bar above. They sent a guy down to the cellar to check on us.
I found my trusty club and hid. The mook saw I was gone, but before he could call out, I whacked him from behind. I was Barb1/Druid1, and I hsf cast Shillelagh on the club. On my surprise round, I raged and whacked the guy in the head with my mighty cudgel.
I crit, and dealt 4d6+20 (Raging Strength Mod +6, Two-handed made it +9, crit made it x2). I rolled above average, dealing over 34 damage. The strike decapitated the mook, his head smacking the opposite wall with a loud thud. The cellar door was still open, and the villain and his other lackeys heard the sound.
It was a desperate escape involving igniting a barrel of oil and chucking it up into the bar while waiting for the fire to die down. Then we realized that we were below the fire. Of the party of three, I carried my mount out, and the Half-orc sorcerer carried out the Kobold monk, and as we burst through the glass windows to make our hasty getaway, we all dropped to 3 hp or less.
When I got the kill, I got an action hero line, quoting DADTUCS with “Batter’s up faggot!” If you haven’t seen that video on youtube, it’s worth a watch, though it’s a shame they never did more with it (and that line is the most vulgar, I’m fairly certain).
Were you just trying to knock the dude out with nonlethal, or was it your intention to pull a Bandobras Took and invent the game of golf?
I mean, I expected to do 2d6+10, which is reasonable damage to kill a minion at level 2. It’s a maximum of 22 damage, with an assumption of 17.
But in this case, I guess I was trying to invent Jai-Alai.
One quick YouTube later, and I still have no idea how the game of Jai-Alai is played. :/
Back in the day…
I was gm in a campaign wherein the PC monk attacked a biker orc backed up against a tree using his Flying Drunken Monkey technique. He rolled a nat 20 and was salivating at the prospect of the tremendous damage he would do. I intervened in the narrative and had the monk succeed so well that the biker orc (seeing the devastating foot coming toward his face) wet his black leather armor and fainted. The orc slipped to the ground unconscious, and the monk’s flying foot went completely through the tree behind him.
I thought it was a beautiful tableau. Th player was not amused and to this day does not forgive me for that description of success.
Exactly! When players roll well, they want that to mean, “The thing I intended to happen actually happens.” I think that if you’re going to give them an interesting extra, it ought to be something in their favor. Maybe a second biker orc faints or gains the shaken condition when he sees his buddy explode.
Not quite the same scenario, but recently for interferring with a wizard the party hired who was using some big ritual for a simple dispelling. I rhoight he was trying to summon something. My party knocked me out and tied me up. Critical success on tying me up. Cut to later when the wizard’s demon he just called has killed a party member and almost killed the other two. They could not untie me with how well they tied me before.
lol. That’s pretty amusing, and does seem like a fair cop. I’m guessing they eventually decided to just cut the ropes…?
What system were you using for ropes and tying?
The last “I told you so” is sweetest just before death’s embrace…
Played a game of DnD that was retarded and basicly amounted to a parody of a swat team with my warforged defender being on point.
About to “breech and clear” a room we think has the bandits that holds our target that is one room further according to our intel. The Goal : I kick down the door, the wizard blast the whole room, we save the day.
Roll the dice to kick down the door and…massive success, it violently flies off its hinges and smashes into the wall behind. Our info was wrong however, there was only one (very small) room and a now smooshed hostage.
The bandits heard the ruckus and we ended up kicking theire ass. The lord didnt questioned us too much when we told him his son had been tortured to death by the bandit but was now avenged.
The campaign may or may not have turned into a kingdom war after that. Who wouldve thought that poor quality door-hinges could cause a mass conflict 😉
Well hey, wars have been fought for less: https://theibtaurisblog.com/2014/11/11/was-fashion-responsible-for-the-outbreak-of-the-first-world-war/
That one seems more like the GM messing with you guys than anything though. I mean sure, the hostage might have taken damage, but he dies outright? Plus, who gave you your “bad info” in the first place? I guess it works as comedy, so… you did say it was a parody game. If that’s the style then I suppose it’s kosher. If that mess happened to me in a standard game though? I’d throw a door at the GM. By which I mean I’d sit there frowning and quietly resentful.
Nah, it was totally meant to be a completly retarded game. I’d almost describe it as a medieval version of the Naked Gun trilogy
I… OK, now I want someone to run this for me.
Not exactly a case of “Critical success” on the dice rolls, but an amusing out of character example. I play a Changeling in WoD whose whole story is “I was prey for the Horned Hunter for 28 years in Arcadia and I managed to loophole the hunt to be fair.” Said character is incredibly good at not being tracked, as you would expect from such a background. Numerous times it has caused issues where my allies have been unable to help me because they can’t roll to find me with the -14 penalty.
Weirdly, that kind of syncs up with the idea of the indestructible fighter vs. mind control. If Superman is suddenly working for the bad guys, you’ve got to have a way to take him down. Superman’s player succeeded at making an effective build, but it’s no bueno when that build winds up causing a TPK. Same deal on a slightly smaller scale when you’re bleeding out and cannot be found. Neat example!
I’ve had that problem. I play a goblin rogue in a high level game. Between racial bonuses, size bonuses, Hide in Plain Sight, and good ol’ fashioned maxed out skill ranks and a good dex, I have to make plans with the team before stealth, not after. The inquisitor can see people’s souls, but he can’t see me. The running joke is that if our rebellion had failed, I could have just stayed in town and never be seen again.
Fairly minor example, considering it was during a “hooray you random people saved our town” celebration instead of fraught combat or intrigue, but it’s what I got.
One time, our ranger decided to surreptitiously rifle through our rogue’s pack while she was still wearing it (Sleight of Hand vs. Perception, she won and noticed him). Our rogue declared an intent to punch the ranger, so I had her make an attack roll based off of her (low) strength.
Nat 20. To make matters worse (or better, depending on your opinion), I believe she said something to the effect of “Don’t worry, I have like zero strength” immediately before said roll.
I ruled that she nailed our ranger right in the ‘nards (those being at primo punching height for a halfling) — not particularly problematic, but he was still at disadvantage for doing basically anything for a while.
I like that kind of “added bonus” on especially dramatic die rolls. Nicely ruled!
Declaring non-lethal on your attacks and using a non-lethal weapon is valuable in Pathfinder. It is a -4 to attack (or restricted to the Sap), but its better than accidentally killing someone important because you didn’t want to restrain yourself. Missed out on a Prestige Point because Ms. Lady Fighter didn’t want to take a -4 to her attack. At least she didn’t accidentally kill him or we would have been given a huge penalty on our chronicle (he survived with 1 HP to dying – legit Con modifier dead).
If you’re low level, you can still “oops, it’s dead” your opponent with nonlethal. It’s harder to do of courwes, but raging power attacking two-handed greatsword wielding barbarians aren’t great at taking goblin prisoners.
Didn’t have that situation in any games yet, mostly because I and the GMs I play with when I don’t run a game, play by rules as Intended and assume that our characters are competent.
In 5e, you can choose if you want to do non-lethal damage on a melee attack that would down an opponent, the “non lethal” part applying even if you do as much damage as they have HP past 0, because that is what the devs intended when they wrote those rules.
If you have a DM who causes bad things to happen on a critical SUCCESS, you have a DM in dire need of slapping.
Nat20 = BEST POSSIBLE(emphasis, possible) OUTCOME THAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING. Hell, I would even say that if you are trying to not kill a guy with only 1HP, and you crit for 175 damage on a ranged attack, then you damn well didn’t kill that guy regardless of what the rules say.
“Hell, I would even say that if you are trying to not kill a guy with only 1HP, and you crit for 175 damage on a ranged attack, then you damn well didn’t kill that guy regardless of what the rules say.” Not sure I would go quite that far, but I definitely agree with your sentiment here. I’d be much more inclined to use the “succeed so well it backfires” approach on a critical FAILURE instead of a crit success.
Situation: The party is on an iceberg with a frost giant fortress built on top that they need to infiltrate. The new party member who introduced himself by killing a guy after he surrendered went and did a stupid plan that got him killed.
Player plan: Two players playing an ettin walk in, do a stupid plan that leaves us in a decent position for a fight, and then fight our way in. Better than spending another hour or two trying to figure out a way to sneak in.
Character plan: The ettins enter the mead hall, pretend to be there on normal giant business, and…well, the rest of the plan doesn’t really matter, does it?
Result: Natural 20. DM declares disadvantage. Natural 20. The party loses its tank and one of its casters. The rest of the party spends a couple hours trying to figure out a way to sneak in.