Critical failure

A critical failure, critical miss, or fumble (as well as other names, see below) is a failure that not only does not accomplish the goals of the character performing the action, but has an additional negative effect for that character. It is a type of degree of success, an approximate inverse of the critical success.

In roll-over systems that use a d20 for the resolution of actions, such as Dungeons & Dragons critical failures may occur on a roll of 1.

Critical failure is almost never part of the official rules of a role-playing game, but it has been a very common house rule since in the early days of the hobby, especially in Dungeons & Dragons, which popularised the idea of a critical failure occurring on a result of natural 1 on a d20 (the worst possible roll in D&D's roll-over resolution mechanic). In fact, the official rules in Dungeons & Dragons have only ever been that a roll of 1 is an automatic failure with no additional negative impact (which itself is no longer the case in 5th edition), but optional rules for critical failures have existed since at least Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition (in Dragon magazine initially, and in the Dungeon Master's Guide for subsequent editions).

Terminology

Critical failures also have other names, including:

• critical miss - generally a critical failure during an attack action
• fumble
• botch - e.g. in games by White Wolf Publishing
• bust - e.g. in Deadlands
• flub - e.g. in Cartoon Action Hour
• Infernal Intervention - in In Nomine
• mishap - e.g. in Talislanta

Examples of critical failure in games

• In Cypher System games, a roll of 1 on a d20 will lead to a "GM intrusion". The GM can offer intrusions to players at other times as well, but in those cases it always gives the player an experience point.
• Rolemaster is notorious for its critical failure/fumble tables, including the possibility to trip on an invisible turtle, harm yourself, and pull a groin.

Examples of critical failure in popular culture

Critical failures are a long-standing source of humour in the role-playing hobby. This is partly because of their relative frequency in D20 System games (5% of all actions are likely to end in critical failures), and also partly because critical failures were often misused and treated with absurdity by typically young gaming groups. A common example is of a character who rolls a critical miss when making a weapon attack against an enemy, and who therefore injures themself or another member of their own party with their own weapon.

This has led to numerous jokes, game tales (such as Sameo), memes, merchandise, and references. For example, the film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (about a group playing D&D 3rd edition) includes two instances of players getting critical failures (referred to in the movie as "fumbles"), both of which happen after the players insist on rolling even though the DM says it is unnecessary. In the latter case, a character accidentally kills himself after trying to attack an inanimate object. In episode 4, season 3 of the television show Community (entitled "Remedial Chaos Theory"), the worst of seven parallel timelines occurs as the result of rolling a 1 on a d6 toss, which could be interpreted as a critical fail result.

The first novel in Robert Bevans' humorous Caverns and Creatures series is called Critical Failures.

External links

• Critical Failure at TVTropes.org
• Critical Successes and Critical Failures from 1 to 20 in D&D by Benjamin T. Awesome at Nerdarchy