Is there any benefit to the game by adding crits on a 12 and fumbles on a roll of 2?

Is there any benefit to the game by adding crits on a 12 and fumbles on a roll of 2?

Is there any benefit to the game by adding crits on a 12 and fumbles on a roll of 2?  My group is coming off of DnDNext and they love crits and fumbles.  Curious how this element would affect game play.  

8 thoughts on “Is there any benefit to the game by adding crits on a 12 and fumbles on a roll of 2?”

  1. Some moves I have seen do this already if you roll a 12 (some extra effect). I don’t think a fumble on a 2 makes sense though because failure here already gives the GM leeway to do a lot of moves. Fumbles make other games more interesting where a miss is just a whiff and breaks up the monotony of hit/miss, hit/miss and I don’t see that much with DW because of the variety of options a GM has on a failure.

  2. There’s nothing stopping you from making as hard a move as you want on a 6-, if you want to save your truly devious stuff for the snake eyes, that’s your choice. A critical hit for box cars is a little trickier. There is nothing in the rules for it, but home brewing some sort of critical success would be easy.

    Take a look at Apocalypse World (the game Dungeon World is based on). That game has a set of ‘advanced moves players can get that emulate high crit actions. Maybe you can use those to base your stuff off of.

  3. You could create custom moves to do this, although the best way to handle it might be to restrict this 12 or 2 behavior to specific moves, such as:

    CRITICAL STRIKE

    When you Hack and Slash and score a 12+, roll two damage dice and use the better value.

    CRITICAL FUMBLE

    When you Hack and Slash and score a 2, choose 1:

    * You drop your weapon

    * Your enemy inflicts maximum damage against you

    * Put yourself in danger and take -1 forward

  4. You’ve already got fumbles on a 6-, basically. 

    And getting a 12+, not just boxcars, basically means a critical hit. Only it takes a bit to get moves to capitalize on that and they’re only certain classes. 

    Generally if you’re making custom or otherwise one-off moves for a location or front, it’s worth considering what happens on a 12+.

  5. 12+ in Apocalypse World gets you “Advanced Move” results, but only if you’ve advanced the character enough to have Advanced Moves. A similar logic works in DW for certain moves, but there’s no reason not to have crits earlier if you want.

    I often vary the “hardness” of my GM moves based on just how low a failed roll is, which gives a bit more “levels of success” granularity. If they roll snake-eyes it can totally be an excuse to make a really hard move, and it’s actually already fair to do so under the rules.

  6. An alternate rule that I’m using in the setting myself and Jacob Zimmerman  are working on is “Miracles on a 12”. The world we’re making is heavily saturated with magic and people can manipulate it, but on a minuscule scale. Basically the magic in the air is charged with energy and needs an excuse to let loose. When a hero rolls a nat 12 they tap into all that stored energy and a miracle happens. This gives the PC a huge boon that manifests itself with one hell of a special effects budget. We don’t have any hard rules for this yet, but this is something we’re doing for our world. In a more generic fantasy game I’d maybe just describe the awesomeness as being an 11.

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