Repost: The Tyranny of the Critical Hit

(This post originally appeared July 18, 2018. I am in the middle of moving, so I’m sharing old posts that I love.) 

Few things in a game session annoy me more than a player rolling a 20 to automatically succeed at a check that they had no business succeeding at. (Before we get into it, I understand that the rules themselves don’t say you succeed automatically on a 20, but most tables still play it this way, and it’s expected at many tables.) This, of course, isn’t just attached to the D20 system, as I’ve seen it in every game system.

In our Star Trek campaign, our group’s diplomat kept trying to stop combats in the middle of the fight by rolling to negotiate to get the enemy to stop fighting. At one point he succeeded dispite the difficulty, meaning I now had to try to explain why the Romulans were putting down their weapons dispite greatly outnumbering and outgunning the heroes, on a ship that was steadily breaking apart around them.

But back to the D20 system: Whether or not the task is impossible, it succeeds on a 20, without fail. That’s a 5% chance of success on literally any check out there. This can lead to situations where the players create untenable situations completely outside the realm of credulity. How can one fix this?

• Follow the rules! A 20 is only an auto-success on attack rolls and saving throws, meaning, almost exclusively in combat, where a character’s HP is on the line. Fine, not a problem. This right here is going to fix a lot of situations, but not all…
  • In the Star Wars Genysis (FFG) system, your difficulty caps out at 5, though you can always increase the difficulty by swapping out Difficulty for Challenge dice. Sometimes, however, you think you’ve stacked the deck enough in your favor, when every negative die comes up blank.
• Make it really tricky. If you’re still playing where a 20 is an auto-success, make the difficulty so high as to make it so it could only succeed on a 20, then give disadvantage.
  • In the case of Star Wars, flip some dark side points to make it particularly difficult. Make all the dice red!
• Say no. Some tasks are impossible. Tell the player it’s not an option. In the same way a 1st level character isn’t going to jump a 60 foot chasm no matter how well they roll, a wookiee doctor isn’t going to succeed in grafting a Trandoshan’s arm onto a Twi’Lek lekku no matter how well they roll (it happened). This is what I need to work on, as I don’t like disappointing my friends, but sometimes, you just need to say no.

There’s some advice. What do you do in these situations? What should you do? Lemme know what you think.