There are no "critical failures" in L5R (like a "1" in D&D, or a despair in Genesys/StarWars),

A lot of my best memories in pen&paper rpg over the last 25 years have been about those "critical failures". They can make for awesome moments.

-do you think critical failures make for good roleplaying and memories ?
-how would you implement them in this system ?

Good question! I had not considered that...

Epic failures do make for some fun memories (in hindsight at least). I would not consider them essential to good role playing but they can add a nice twist. On the downside, they require more work (rolling on yet another table, or scratching your head trying to find what on earth would qualify as a Despair...). This may halt the flow of the action sometimes...

In this system, the main difficulty lies in the fact that it’s roll and keep, and you only have to keep one die (unless you can’t, due to being compromised etc). So whatever result we tie those critical failures to, players will usually have the option to dodge them. One example is the spiritual backlash on Invocations - not a failure usually, but more akin to “spellcasting mishap/chaos surge” and similar things in other system. It is usually a deliberate choice to trigger it.

Some avenues that come to mind:

- When Compromised, only roll dice with Strife result, causing you not to be able to keep anything. This does sound like a f-up...

- on any roll, roll only blank results. Quite possible if you’re forced into a weak ring with no skill rank; very unlikely when you start rolling 4+ dice

- similar but not quite: when you KEEP only dice with blank results. This is a slightly more extended case of the one above: basically happens if you roll blanks and Strife results only and absolutely do not want to keep the Strife.

As for the consequences of those, I’m not sure. I would keep them mostly narrative (Genesys style), but on a roll where failure shortfall matters, you could add one or two to the shortfall as well?

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

There are no "critical failures" in L5R (like a "1" in D&D, or a despair in Genesys/StarWars),

Except in invocations. Where keeping 3+ strife is a negative side effect.

Taking it outside that context was amusing, but more effort than I found worthwhile to come up with relevant side effects.

a flat-out fumble? pretty impractical in the dice mechanics. Perhaps all kept dice are blank? (most likely when compromised, but I've seen it happen when not.)

I'll admit, other than the switch to numerical range bands (Descriptive ones was so easy to teach!), the lack of Triumph/Despair is kind of a downer after SWRPG/Genesys. Crazy high explosions are the triumph equivalent, I guess. Keeping all blanks does sound like a fun house rule, the natural 1 equivalent.

The more I think about it, the more I tend towards wrapping this up like this:

If, after making a check, you end up keeping no dice at all (e.g. if Compromised or under a similar effect) or keeping only blank results, you demonstrate a rare level of ineptitude and utterly fail at the task. Find an appropriate narrative description of what such a monumental fumble entails 😛

Would you think that keeping no success at all could be considered a critical failure?

With each dice having about 50% chance of success, rolling 3 dice puts you at about 12% chance of critical failure, 4 dice at 6% and so on.

Critical failures could be more narrative than anything else too.

It would make it less tempting to try to roll just to get opportunities though (which is a thing). So if you don't want a critical failure you can't just decide to fail and only keep opportunities.

I'll toy around with the blank faces, but we are probably looking at extemely rare chance of occurance.

I think that would make the early game a bit too wonky. It’s not uncommon early on to be stuck with rolling only 2 Ring dice (certainly tended to happen a lot in the topaz championship) - that takes the odds of not rolling any success to 25%!

I’m fine with keeping this a rare occurrence. And one that is more likely when compromised. Never liked the linear distribution of D20 systems, where you always have a flat 5% chance to totally mess up the simplest task even if you’re a grand master.

Also, I don’t have any issue with failing to fish for opportunities: that seems to be implicitly intended in the game design.

If you want to make this a bit more frequent, maybe say that if the roll is a failure and half or more of the rolled dice were blanks, then it’s a fumble. It’s a bit more complex to track, but will increase the odds of it happening.

More generally, you can usually tell if a roll is particularly poor. Free form players could interpret this on the fly, I suppose. Say, I confidently roll my main attack with 5k3 and end up with 2 blanks and 3 Strife/opp ; I will probably roleplay this as me tripping on a tree root and making a fool of myself 😛

I think Critical Failures in this system are "you gain five-bazillion Strife and still fail" with the Compromised/Unmasking deal that mostly likely follows being the consequence.

6 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I think Critical Failures in this system are "you gain five-bazillion Strife and still fail" with the Compromised/Unmasking deal that mostly likely follows being the consequence.

Indeed one way to look at it! But again, with the roll & keep system being what it is, I see this only happening in two cases:

1- a hidden TN that turns out to be far above the player’s expectation, otherwise if you have a failing roll in front of you, you’ll probably keep less dice than you can and as little Stife as possible.

2- a very high TN that you rely on explosive successes to reach. Your initial roll gives you a few explosions (and these often go with Strife), but you’re still short one or two successes to make the TN... you keep those dice, roll the explosions and get nothing more! That’s a failure, with potentially a good amount of Strife.

But in both cases, I see those more as close calls with a nasty side effect than as monumental blunders...

1 hour ago, Franwax said:

I think that would make the early game a bit too wonky. It’s not uncommon early on to be stuck with rolling only 2 Ring dice (certainly tended to happen a lot in the topaz championship) - that takes the odds of not rolling any success to 25%!

I’m fine with keeping this a rare occurrence. And one that is more likely when compromised. Never liked the linear distribution of D20 systems, where you always have a flat 5% chance to totally mess up the simplest task even if you’re a grand master.

Also, I don’t have any issue with failing to fish for opportunities: that seems to be implicitly intended in the game design.

If you want to make this a bit more frequent, maybe say that if the roll is a failure and half or more of the rolled dice were blanks, then it’s a fumble. It’s a bit more complex to track, but will increase the odds of it happening.

More generally, you can usually tell if a roll is particularly poor. Free form players could interpret this on the fly, I suppose. Say, I confidently roll my main attack with 5k3 and end up with 2 blanks and 3 Strife/opp ; I will probably roleplay this as me tripping on a tree root and making a fool of myself 😛

agree with everything.
and yes, it is (at least for me) much more about "tripping on a tree root and making a fool of myself" than tables with negative/harsh effects of critical failures.
it's really more about the "****, I really failed that one!" the system just don't give those moments to you.

if; the initial roll doesn't show any successes/explosion when you are at the "keep dice" stage. would count as a big failure? sure.. with 2 dice and no skill you have 25% of chance, but that is.. understandable ? do you really want me to try horseback riding ? lol
and this method makes the "intentional failure" still a legit way of playing.

13 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

it's really more about the "****, I really failed that one!" the system just don't give those moments to you.

To be acutely honest here, the system doesn't really offer extreme results either way. You can't screw up majorly but you can't overshoot that much either. With Opportunities, even straight failure is a kind of fringe result, and the same applies to Successes, Strife, and straight success.

22 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

To be acutely honest here, the system doesn't really offer extreme results either way. You can't screw up majorly but you can't overshoot that much either. With Opportunities, even straight failure is a kind of fringe result, and the same applies to Successes, Strife, and straight success.

you can decide to get a lot of extra successes. in theory, limitless.
if you overshoot the TN by a lot of successes, I think that warrants an epic narrative moment.

What if when rolling only blank results the player was given the choice to either simply fail without further consequence, or "fumble" in a narrative way but would gain a void point?

I like the idea of rerolling the check but maybe skill dice results could cancel ring die strife; remaining strife would be taken as either fatigue and/or strife. Characters providing assistance could help absorb the "fumble" too.

Alternatively, what if the stance was inverted for the round or before resolution? Just a few non-exhaustive examples: Earth stance could mean one less opportunity needed to take a critical hit, Fire could double strife with only the standard benefit, Air could be ham fisted blunt and lower TN to get hit, water could require an extra move to recover (thrown weapon or being prone). Void would have no effect, other than maybe taking strife.

I think if a Disadvantage comes up ... and the rerolled dice cause you to fail, I think you should also get something akin to a critical failure (but hey ... also a Void point!). This does not have to be determined by a table just, as Avatar says, a narrative moment.

For example Hida "Lucky" Nobuyuki has taken the Clumsiness disadvantage (pg 118) and gets into a chase across the rooftops of the City of Lies. He makes a Fitness (Fire) check to jump leap over an obstacle and his disadvantage comes up. The rerolls take him from success to failure! Poor Nobi-san! In addition to the usual consequences for not succeeding, he trips through a window and maybe crashes through a screen door. Someone living on the other side is not amused! Not all of Nobuyuki's luck is good...