I like to roll a d4.

4 - Adlib an outcome that is favorable to them, beyond all reason. With my players, sometimes this just means nothing at all happens. In these cases I’ll use anything to make it work out for them, from divine favor, to a key NPC breaking rank “I always loved you guys!”

3 - They achieve what they hoped for, and as many weird (but reasonable) side effects as I can think of also happen.

2 - As little happens as is reasonably possible. Often, with my players, that means just 6d6 fire over a 20ft radius. Often after having whatever they tried misfire first, only to have them try again.

1 - I unpack a nice handful of d12 and roll for blast radius, save DC and damage.

Modified, of course, for the situation.

Specific damage on a 2 or 1 should - like anything they couldn’t reasonably prepare for - be attention grabbing, but unlikely to be lethal. A 2 should as anticlimactic as reasonably possible.

12d1 is the way to go.

In epic scaled games, I work around this with a “reroll at -20”. So the rogue in this case would have had about a 25% chance to recover on a DC10 check.

I also always include an in-game explanation. In this case, I would have made it a huge flashy “boon of insight” from the Paladin’s deity.

Then it’s all the more fun if the rogue actually manages the re-roll. “Dude, I even tricked your god!”

I would also RP right into it. “A voice from on high intones ‘I dunno, seems legit, to me.’”

Similarly if the rogue actually fails:

“A voice from on high intones ‘Seriously, you need to stop falling for this crap. I’m going to send you an amulet of insight or something. What’s your next stop?’”

I’ve had players have this exchange, and then the Paladin decided to ignore the rogue’s critical miss, and just roll with it.

Paladin to the rest of the party “I forget what they said exactly, but it was a very convincing argument!”

Yeah. It gives very strong black mage vibes! (In the best way!)

That’s awesome. Brennan has earned the right to be the DM approves meme.

I love doing this.

“Oh, right, you have that plus-one from that amulet. So twenty-eight. Yeah, that does hit.”

(Monster AC is actually 14, but I’ll let them sweat for a round or two anyway.)

You’ve clearly ridden safer subways than I have.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure a variant of that attack featured prominently in Final Fantasy: Advent Children.

legitimately had someone try to argue to me that Kermit the Frog was more intimidating than King Shark.

They probably owed him money. I feel bad for them. I would not want to be indebted to that ruthless aquatic muppet.

Seems like enough cash on hand to somehow get away with murder.

Good point. And it’s even less on discount Thursdays.

I can imagine it.

I can already hear the compelling argument why their chaotic good cleric should be able to use ‘purify water’ on their own piss to pass the test.

Honestly, I would probably just allow it, but force the party to make a bunch of stealth tests to not get caught passing their pee samples to the cleric.

If I were GM, I would rule that it can technically use swimming through concrete to gain advantage on a sneak attack - but only after completing a DC 20 Will Save against spoiling the surprise by shouting “Jawesome!”.

It is great.

Except they invariably latch onto the one character who is only covered in my GM notes as “try to remember to toss a generic cleric NPC into the tavern on the mountainside if the party needs healed mid-session”.

“Oh, you mean that John McHealsAllott. Yes, he’s still here. No, you’re not able to get him to open up about his past.”

In addition to other great information here about THACO, it’s worth highlighting that it was upside-down.

Lower rolls were better.

This led to magic items giving both pluses and (good) minuses in order to remain consistent in world. Also some curses and ailments gave (bad) pluses to certain rolls.

It was wildly unintuitive.

They might try, but then they’ll learn who holds all the potatoes! /s

Yeah. It’s way more fun to leave their powers intact and send wave sheet wave of eldritch horrors bent on revenge after them.

Since I’m enjoying the different rules shared here, here’s a (from memory) rendition of the Fate RPG rules on encountering lethal amounts of damage.

DM and player discuss and assign an appropriate and interesting condition that moves the game along. That condition may be “dying” or could be something more interesting.

Players and the GM can invoke the new player condition to gain benefits and make other rolls easier or harder. (The core FATE rule.)

Weirdly, this covers a lot of interesting cases really well:

• the GM can invoke “dying” to keep the dying character from monopolizing the remaining combat in un-fun ways, and make it (taking lethal amounts of damage) have an in-game cost.
• the GM can invoke the “dying” condition in other ways to nudge players to find a way to lend aid ( like granting a character “encumbered” while they carry the “dying” character around)
• the “dying” player may be able to invoke “dying” as an “I’m very motivated” bonus if they’re doing something very in-character that matters to their character
• “unconscious”, “prone”, “mostly paralyzed”, can be a useful on-and-off conditions to represent recovery rolls that go badly

For GMs running a game of FATE, I recommend watching the “The Princess Bride”, which milks the “dying” condition for interesting moments, in many delightful ways.

Narrator: It was.

“Then you are truly lost.”