Critical Hits & Fails

The house rules below were designed to work for Pathfinder 1e but can be used as inspiration any DnD 3.5 or 5e game as well. The point behind these rules is to add drama to the game by making both sides of rolling low and high more impactful to the story.

Critical hits

If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, roll again. if that attack is above the attacker's AC then the attack is considered to be a critical damage roll.

Calculate the maximum damage your attack can do

Roll the damage roll as you'd normally do

Add your maximum damage to your damage roll.

Mythic Criticals

If you have any level of any mythic tier you can spend mythic points to multiply the damage of your attack up to your mythic tier's level. For example a 1st tier mythic character can spend 1 mythic poiwer to multiply the attack by 2, while a 2nd tier mythic character can multiply this by 3 and so on.

Critical Fails

If at any point during an attack roll a player rolls a natural 1 on the dice the roll is automatically considered a failure. In addition to that, the player needs to roll a 1d10 and check the table below for the effect the failure had.

1d10	Effect
1	The attack fails, nothing else happens
2	Disarmed, the weapon slips and it is thrown 10 feet away
3	Broken, the weapon gains the broken condition
4	Stuck, the weapon lodges it self to a nearby surface, requires STR check to dislodge
5	Falling Prone
6	Property Damage, 1d4+1 of your items are destroyed
7	Own goal! You deal the damage of the attack to yourself
8	Friendly Fire! The attack damages a nearby ally
9	Concussed, you gain the Unconscious condition
10	Ultimate failure, Roll thrice, all effects occur

Mythic Luck

If you possess any mythic tier you can use mythic power points up to the level of your tier to negate from the 1d10 roll result. For example a roll of 6 (Property Damage) can become a roll of 4 (Stuck) if you spend 2 mythic power points