I’m always a fan of “best possible outcome” for 20, and “worst possible outcome that doesn’t immediately kill anyone” for nat1.

If you’re 2ft tall and trying to destroy an iron wall and roll a 20, you successfully scrape some iron off the wall. It doesn’t just collapse spontaneously. If you roll a 0 1, your attack bounces off and your weapon breaks. Luckily it didn’t rebound and hit you.

It makes things more believable, however rule of cool is obviously above that. So if you can do a flip off a cliff onto the back of a dragon and convince it to attack the tarrasque for you before it eats you, and roll a 20 for all that, you better believe that dragon now considers you it’s deity, and will die in a ball of flames, acid, ice, etc, in your name while flying headfirst down the tarrasque’s throat. The tarrasque obviously dies from this, since it’s so epic.

I guess it really depends on the stakes.

How do you roll a zero

Edit: if thats O’Brien im guessing a transporter problem

Everyone always says “make it believable” but I dunno. There’s just something about seeing my players get hyped when I allow the super stupid thing they’re going for and they actually get that 20.

I’ll take that fun “I’m actually a God” moment every time if I can.

My three wishes: Absolute control over all matter, time, and space.

Don’t you use a 21 sided die?

That’s the thing: if you manage to roll a zero EVERYTHING goes wrong, all the worst outcomes happen, and the DM makes you go home.

You rolled a 1.

I’ll grant you time and space.

*leaves*

Congratulations, you’ve fucked the universe in and out of the game!

Ad a DM, its what I’d do. “Sorry bud youre cursed apparently”

Use my dice.

At the “get out of Dodge” part of an Avernus campaign, the party had to split up to solve a puzzle to get to the top of a chained floating island. Everyone had their own last stand encounter (they knew it was coming and got to prepare). The Monk in the party just noped out and ran up a kilometer long chain watching all the mobs chasing him slowly fall away and die behind him as they chased him. Even without a nat 20 his dex was higher than a blazed giraffe.

The second lamest person in that party rode a nightmare to the top, after driving his hell machine off a cliff to get more air, he dipped, summoned his nightmare, and watched the miniboss plummet into hell lava with his death tractor. I made him roll for that shit after he announced what he wanted to do and he hit a nat 20. I didn’t argue rules with the dice, it was too cool. He had crippled the things wings so it couldn’t fly off. Absolute dick move on his part. All of it hilarious.

-1 Charisma has given me a few zeros.

Absolutely love it.

For ages I’ve had an itch to do a higher level campaign (or maybe adapting Godbound) where the Great Modron March inadvertently unleashes the chaos of Avernus upon other planes.

Figured a “great escape from lava” section would actually be my start.

Yeah but not natural 0s

I used to have one. It had three different faces with 7 sides each. It was from some math game, but the faces were a triangle, a square, and a circle. No idea how you would use it, but it acted as a fancy D3.

As per Sir Terry Pratchett, a Million-to-one chance succeeds nine times out of ten.

It depends on the type of game you’re running and its an expectation that should be set from the beginning (as is “whether a 20 is a critical skill check at all”)

My games tend to be more grounded, so when I have run critical skill checks, they are a success with a reasonable bonus. A critical persuasion check might have the guard believe your phony story but also accidentally let slip some useful info as you’re passing through the gates because he’s let his guard down.

But in a game where the vibe is more out there and power fantasy-y, heck yeah, let your 20s rewrite reality!

You know, quantum resonance in the Heisenberg compensators. Sometimes the dice spit out an impossible number.

Don’t even get me started on the time we rolled a natural negative

Using Gygax’s special dice for 2.5E?

The annoying one is when you roll a nat 20 on initiative, and that just gives you an initiative score of 34 (+3 Dex mod, +4 Improved Initiative, +7 Epic Improved Initiative,) and somehow the monk still goes first.

Admittedly my wizard wasn’t gonna leave much in the way of cleanup once she took her turn.