Are crit failures the usual natural 1 or?

Nat 1 and total is less than success, or less than DC-10

So someone with a +14 wouldn't be able to critically fail a DC 15 check, and in fact the rules pretty well state that if your bonus is = the DC-1, there shouldn't even be a check

Effectively, Nat 1 and Nat 20 shift your degree of success by one degree

That sounds better to me. The usual case where even a trained professional surgeon would accidentally amputate the wrong arm once every twenty operations is... well, kinda silly.

So someone attempting a DC 30 task with only a +5 wouldn't be able to succeed, only fail or critically fail

Yeah- that's a lot of what the system tries to help solve. E.g. Administer First Aid is a DC 15 action to either stabilize or stop bleeding; thus, some level 8 cleric with Master in Medicine and 18 Wisdom would never need to make a check - they've got +14 to their roll and thus don't make any check, they just take "success" (there's no critical success for First Aid)

I like critical failures given a totally subjective level of "appropriate failure"

trained pro surgeon might not amputate the wrong arm, but they might screw up in some meaningful way. If it's not something the person should ever fail then there shouldnt be a roll, and if they can fail they can also fail badly

I mean

Yeah, often times the worst-case for critical failure is "unable to do it again today". Administer First Aid admittedly doesn't have that (if you crit fail trying to stabilize some dying person, they become more dying), but also has a static DC that's pretty low once they get to mid-level

@Carcer They quite often leave surgical implements behind

@GreySage that too

pbfcomics.com/comics/transfer-patient

@Carcer That's why you have several people on the team, the chance of them ALL crit failing at the same time is very low

@Carcer Yes, but we're talking about "once in a million" versus "once in every twenty tries" here...

...not to mention we're talking about heroic fantasy, which is a genre where stuff just isn't that random.

I kind of hate the system of critical failures for skill checks. Attack rolls make sense. You think there's an opening in the melee when there isn't really or you screw up the spellcasting so that it fizzles. But skills don't have this kind of thing

@DavidCoffron It's an interesting consequence of unifying rolls. In pathfinder 2e, every roll works the same

Plus, many things don't have any critical failure effects - attacks notably don't have critical failure effects (though some creatures get Reactions with a trigger of "enemy critically fails an attack roll against you" or somesuch)

@Delioth I like that system. Making it a monster trait. I might just steal it for my 5e homebrew monsters

Not even a trait - it's intrinsic to the Reaction (every Reaction or Free Action in pf2e has a "Trigger" listed; some monsters just happen to have Reactions whose trigger is crit-failed attack against them. I think there might be a player ability with a similar trigger?)

Yeah, at the very least Duelist-build (read: one-handed no shield) fighters can get Dueling Riposte, which is a reaction to Strike or Disarm when an enemy critically fails a strike against you

Actually, Two-weapon fighters can also get roughly the same thing a couple levels later, and shield fighters can get a different reaction (reflect a crit-failed touch attack back at whoever crit-failed it)

I feel like crit-fail effects would be too swingy. Like, you can go through a whole combat and not get one, but if you do, then your monster wrecks the PCs.

TWF Rangers too, and rogues can get extra movement when they use a reaction to Dodge and the attacker critically fails or they can redirect a crit failed attack (attacker re-rolls)

They're usually not huge abilities; typical case is effectively an Attack of Opportunity when someone crit fails an attack against them, where the monster would be getting 2-3 attacks on their turn regardless

Has anyone run the 5e module Dead in Thay?