Situational Crit Fails

Critical hits are an integral part of D&D. Everyone loves rolling a 20. Cries of "twenty!" can be heard around the table, players cheer, and overall it's just a great adrenaline hit. On the other hand, crit fails just aren't fun. Rolling a 1 can be an auto-miss, but having your character drop a weapon or rolling on a crit fumble table just isn't a good time for players, which is why so many tables (my own included) have just done away with critical failures. But what if there were a way to incorporate critical failure in a way that didn't make players feel cheated? I've got an idea, which I have yet to implement, and I'd like to share it with you.

Item-Specific Critical Failure

You can introduce a special magic item to your party which has effects that come into play only on a roll of 1. Everyone loves vicious weapons, which do an extra 7 damage on a critical hit. But what about adding minor drawbacks to a weapon which only take effect on a 1? It's one way to make that magic item you've been hesitant to give the party slightly less good. Think of a vampiric sword which steals hit points from enemies. Maybe on a crit fail, it steals 1d8 hit points from the player wielding it. Or a wand of acid arrow which misfires on a roll of 1, leaking acid from the wand's tip - the wizard takes 1d4 acid damage and has to save or drop it. 

This approach is difficult because so many items such as armor, fireball wands, and helmets don't require rolls. But baking the crit fail into a magic item from the outset can help to set expectations, ensuring that your players don't feel that the rule is unfair. And if designed creatively, it can add a lot of character to a weapon.

Flavoring Crit Fails on Ability Checks

One of the simplest ways to actually make use of those infrequent 1's a player may roll is to rule their effects on skill checks on the fly, without even making any official crit fail policy at the table. If your player rolled a 1 on the climb check, say that the character fell and took 1d6 damage. If the bard rolled a 1 on his persuasion check, she's gone and offended that merchant she was trying to bargain with. A crit fail on a perception check might give a false positive, and have a player think there's a trap where one doesn't exist. Of course, this only works if the DM is rolling those perception checks behind the screen.

In any event, this is a minor thing, and most people wouldn't even consider a 1 on a skill check as a proper critical failure.

Wild Magic for Everybody

Wild mages can be a fun class to play, but how strange is it that normal magic-users never have their own magic go awry in any way? 

Rolling a 1 on a concentration check seems like it would be an incredibly infrequent thing, especially given that at my own table, we forget to roll concentration checks most of the time. But I think it's a fantastic idea that if an arcane caster gets hit, and seriously flubs his concentration, wild magic happens. No spell is lost that otherwise wouldn't be, and given how generous most wild magic tables are to the players, it might actually help.

If you're looking for wild magic more interesting that what's in the PHB, I recommend my own wild magic surge table.

Crit Fails on Saving Throws

Saying that your players take extra damage if they roll a 1 on a save vs a fireball is just no fun. I'm not recommending that you go with that. But as a DM, you can improvise. Rather than extra damage, perhaps the character's pants have caught on fire. Remember that greasy meat you ate at the tavern for lunch? You kept wiping your hands on your pants, and all that grease was pretty flammable. Perhaps the character rolled a 1 on a save against a shatter spell? His ears are ringing, and he's got disadvantage on perception checks for a few hours. Or perhaps the wizard had to save to avoid falling into a pit trap and rolled a 1. His robe got hung up on the trap's hinge and he's now hanging from the side of the pit trap, restrained. There's one that the players will remember. Now he needs an athletics check to shrug out of the robe, but then he'd fall into the pit naked. Tough break. Remember - we're all sitting around the table to have fun, and no-pants, ringing ears, or hung-on-the-wall aren't numeric game penalties - they're just fun stories.

Choose Your Own Fumble

A great way to handle things when a player rolls a 1 on an attack is to ask the player what happened. "Okay, Ragnar rolled a 1. Tell me what happened there. Describe for me how he epically failed that attack." Encourage your player to be creative, funny, and to describe something interesting. If it's good enough, give that player inspiration. Maybe he'll describe smacking himself in the head with the hilt of a weapon, slipping on the blood from that kobold he just killed, or his helmet slipping over his eyes. This involves the player in the storytelling, and that's always a good thing.

Three Mid-Level Magic Items Inspired by Baldur's Gate 3

 

I've been playing through Baldur's Gate 3 for months now, and I'm loving it. In terms of a strictly D&D perspective, I can see it incorporating many mechanics which are only coming into use with the new 2024 Dungeons & Dragons ruleset, such as weapon-specific special attacks brought by weapon mastery. I've also appreciated the new mechanics such as reverberation, bleeding, and arcane synergy. But it's the creative magic items that have inspired me most, and this has made me want to branch out with the types of items available in my own games.

Not long ago, I put together a list of three low-level magic items inspired by Baldur's Gate 3, and now I'd like to share three tier 2 items, significantly more powerful and in my opinion even more interesting.

The Scimitar of Reflex is the first of these three magic items. For the most part, it functions exactly like a normal +1 scimitar would. However, whenever you make an attack of opportunity, you get advantage. Every time. It will likely come up less often than you'd like, but it's nice to have.

But the deceptively simple rule of getting advantage on attacks you make as a reaction goes a bit further. When you ready an action, such as an attack, that attack is made as a reaction. And this attack would also get advantage with the Scimitar of Reflex.

It also make certain other feats seem even better, such as Sentinel, which grants reaction attacks in a wider range of situations than would normally be the case. Other feats such as Mage Slayer and Orcish Fury also grant reaction attacks, and these work well with the Scimitar of Reflex as well.

The second mid-tier item we have on reserve is Minchi's Opal Earring. This earring serves a similar yet lesser function to the old school Ring of Wizardry. While the earring won't double the number of spell slots you have, it allows you to use an action to recover a first or second spell slot which you've already spent for the day. And what wizard is going to say no to an extra acid arrow or invisibility spell? The only issue is that your wizard needs to have his ear pierced.

Lastly, my favorite of today's items, and one which will at first seem a bit overpowered. The Longtruncheon of Grit. This magical greatclub grants temporary hit points every time it strikes a foe. This allows your character to survive far longer, as any incoming damage is subtracted from the temporary hit points first. Keep in mind, however, that temporary hit points do not stack. If you have two, and you get four more, then you now have only four.

In effect, this has the same effect as a first level Heroism spell. What makes it so strong is the fact that nobody need concentrate on the spell, and that it's always in effect.

This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that whomever is using the weapon might otherwise be using a martial weapon or a shield.

I hope you're able to find a use for these three homebrew magic items. Baldur's Gate 3 has inspired me to create even more, and so I'll be working on a third and final article with three more higher level items. Stay tuned!

A DM's Guide to Adjudicating Illusions

 

I recall first encountering Dungeons and Dragons' illusionist class back in the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook. Back then, if you were an arcane caster, you were either a "Magic User", or an Illusionist. But while it's an intriguing notion to role-play a slick Mysterio-like weaver of illusion who hides behind shadows and makes his opponents question reality, putting that into practice in actual game at the table can present some challenges.

Most illusion magic in Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have concrete rules, and that leads to ambiguity and frustration. What if the player makes an illusory dragon to scare off the orc warband? How convincing is that illusory wall of fire that's slowly advancing on the carrion crawler? Does the evil priest believe that the PCs were able to convince all those cavaliers to join the party, or are they just an illusion?

So this is the question: As a dungeon master, how do you rule when your players use illusion magic? Exactly how should your NPCs react? 

Illusion vs Phantasm

Before I get to the nitty gritty on illusions, I've got to address something I hadn't realized before recently. Perhaps you already knew this, but I only just found out that in 5th edition, the level 2 spell Phantasmal Force doesn't work at all the way it had in previous editions. Rather that simply being a basic illusion spell, Phantasmal Force is only visible to a single target - it exists only in that target's mind, and anyone else simply doesn't see it. Because of this, the target "rationalizes any illogical outcomes from interacting with it", which means that if there's something that doesn't quite make sense, unlike with an illusion spell, the most that the target will do is spend an action taking the Study action (2024 rules) to examine the phantasm with an investigation check. According to the spell description, the phantasm can even do real (psychic) damage! Very different from an illusion in fifth edition.

The Nitty Gritty on Illusions

With Phantasmal Force out of the way, the remaining spells that we're going to focus on are the cantrip Minor Illusion, the first level spell Silent Image, the 3rd level spell Major Image, and the 6th level spell Programmed Illusion.

Minor Illusion is unique in a few ways. It's the only illusion that doesn't require concentration, it's the only illusion that has no verbal component, and it's a cantrip, which makes it infinitely re-castable. These three things make it surprisingly powerful as an illusion.

However, as this is only a cantrip, there are quite a few limitations. Firstly, it only creates a completely silent image which fits within a 5-foot cube, or else a sound. Secondly, although this isn't explicitly laid out in the spell description, I would rule that because the spell has no concentration and the caster can simply set it and forget it, the behavior of the illusion for the length of its one-minute life is decided at the time of casting. The illusion cannot react to any external stimuli, by which I mean you could not create a beetle which flees when a creature approaches. If that beetle is set to flee at the 45-second mark, then it does so regardless of any goings on in the real world. This is the trade-off with a spell that doesn't require concentration.

Silent Image, as a first-level spell, has a number of benefits over Minor Illusion. Aside from bypassing the aforementioned limitations of a spell without concentration, it can cover three times the area, or up to a 15-foot cube. Secondly, you can take an action to move the illusion anywhere within its 60-foot range. Lastly, it lasts for up to ten minutes.

Major Image is a huge improvement on Silent Image. In addition to including both sound and visual components, the area is expanded to a 20-foot cube and a 120-foot range. But most importantly, it includes both temperature and smell. Your illusory wall of fire can actually feel hot, although it can't do damage. Your otyugh illusion can smell like a sewer.

And if you elect to spend a 4th-level spell slot, the illusion becomes permanent! Ruling an illusion's behavior after its caster is no longer concentrating can be a tricky DM call, but rather than ruling that it become a semi-sentient entity of its own, I'd rule that its post-concentration behavior remains in line with whatever it had done during the period when its caster was focused on it.

The ability for a 7th-level caster to create a permanent illusion opens up some insane possibilities. Your wizard could conceal his hideout's entrance with the permanent illusion of a waterfall or a raging fire. Your party can set camp for the night and leave a pack of dire wolves pacing back and forth at the edge of camp, glaring menacingly out into the dark forest. The possibilities are endless, and this is what makes illusionists so interesting.

Lastly, Programmed Illusion. If a permanent Major Image opens possibilities, then the 6th-level spell Programmed Illusion opens a whole universe of them. Programmed Illusion is permanent, but begins completely inert, only activating when a specific trigger occurs. After activated, the illusion carries out a scripted performance that can last for up to five minutes, then goes dormant for ten minutes, after which it can be activated again.

A scripted illusion can seem boring, and certainly the first thing that comes to mind is leaving some kind of message in place to warn or inform anyone who comes by. But creative players can easily surprise the DM with an angry wyvern that emerges from its lair only when the lair is approached, or a section of cave which threatens to collapse when anyone comes by.

Reward Creativity

If illusion magic comes up as a possible point of contention, rather than allowing things to devolve into bickering during a session, make a temporary ruling and have a talk with the player(s) after the session ends. 

This offline discussion can help you to set guidelines and expectations. A player should understand that creativity is at the heart of illusion magic, and that if they're using the same tricks all the time, they won't continue to work - either because the affected NPCs catch on, or simply because the DM is getting tired of the same tedious routine. It may be a bit meta - perhaps it's true that the same trick would work over and over if it's pulled on different people every time - but in a game, that simply isn't interesting and isn't fun. If the illusionist comes up with something fresh and clever, then not only should it work, you might want to grant inspiration as a reward.

Potential Uses

In general, there are a few key ways in which I can imagine illusions being implemented. By far the most often used will be to trick someone. In fact, this is generally the only way anyone will ever use an illusion spell. After all, it's intangible. If you're not using it to deceive someone, what the heck is it even for?

Another way I've read of illusions being used by players is to conceal. There are players who will use a minor illusion to create a small wall or box to hide behind, thereby blocking vision and gaining concealment from any ranged attacks. This character would be heavily obscured, and thus attackers would have disadvantage. I would allow this. Any attacker who spends a single action to examine that illusion can make a save and then see right through it, completely negating its advantage. Ducking around a corner is a much better option for your illusionist.

What about a player who wants to create an illusory monster? Be it a dragon or a pack of wolves, you can handle this the same way. Interaction with the illusion instantly reveals it for what it is, so your illusionist can never have the illusionary creature(s) make a successful attack against an enemy - they'd have to ensure that the illusion misses every time. More than that, any successful attack by an enemy against the illusion would also reveal what it is. So what is even the illusion's armor class? I'd house rule this. Assuming that the illusion is being actively controlled by a concentrating caster, they could theoretically make the AC be anything they want. But if a creature suddenly dodges a skillful spear thrust by zipping back too quickly to be natural, the attacker is going to realize that the illusion is fake. It's going to look like bad CG. So I'd rule that the illusionist could make his illusion's armor class as good as his spell save DC - if he has his illusion dodge anything that hits a higher armor class, then the attacker will get another save to see through the illusion each time.

I've also read online about players who want to create an illusory box around their foe to effectively blind that foe. But with this and any other similar applications, I'd consider the following two lines, both from the spell description, although they're not in the same paragraph.

Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, since things can pass through it.

If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the illusion becomes faint to the creature.

My read on this is that when a creature touches the illusion, they immediately know that it's an illusion. And if they know it's an illusion, they can then see through it, and the illusion no longer blocks sight. The way I'd rule this for a character who put an enemy into an illusionary box is that the creature can't see through it for the first few seconds, i.e. the time before its next turn. This allows any characters engaged with that enemy to back off without suffering attacks of opportunity. But on the enemy's turn, the first thing it's going to do is poke at that illusionary box with a weapon, and this instantly reveals that box as an illusion, allowing the enemy to see right through it.

A player might argue that he could attack the boxed enemy with advantage, but keep in mind that any attackers can't see the attacker inside that box either. Like much of illusion magic, this quickly gets nitpicky as players try to box just the enemy's head or some such other nonsense. You should work with your players to find a path that allows them to use their illusion to have fun and be effective without allowing cantrips to become game-breakingly powerful or having every battle be approached the same way.

Closing Thoughts

The players and the DM should really have an understanding about what kind of illusions are acceptable at the table, and which repetitive shenanigans are just going to cause grief. A ten-minute offline discussion before the game session can go a long way and is certain to be better than surprising the DM midway through the session.