Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Critical miss is missing something?

So far I haven't noticed any difference between miss and critical miss. Is there an actual difference? Should there be? I'm not that familiar with D&D rules but I thought critical misses mean that something negative might happen like you hit your friend instead or maybe you trip and fall.

If it currently means something, it is not at all well explained. If it is yet to be implemented, isn't it going to affect balance and strategy a lot? And if it is meant to act as a regular miss in this game, why the special text?

I haven't seen discussion about this before so bring it on

Critical miss just means you rolled a 1 on your d20, and doesn't have any other consequence. It's just to let you know that you rolled a 1 and would miss regardless of AC or hit bonus.

I don't think that at the moment there is a difference. I think the reason they put the critical miss in is just because it exists in DnD, and they wanted it to be as similar as possible.

This. A roll of a 1 is always a miss, no matter what.
Unlike skill checks where you can actually still manage the check with a roll of a 1 if your modifiers are high enough.
In combat a roll of a 1 is always a miss, no if's or but's.


That means unless you have some reason for your hit to automatically hit, you can actually not have 100% chance to hit with an attack. Even with advantage against a monster with AC of 0 you have a 0,25% chance of missing out right. Without advantage you will only have a 95% chance of hitting any monster regardless of AC and attack modifiers.


So there is a difference between miss and critical miss in that sense.

Makes sense, I'm totally fine if that's how it works. But I think it should be better communicated to the player. Critical hits have a unique animation and you can tell you're hitting hard. Right now it doesn't matter to the player if it's a miss or a critical miss. The outcome is identical. I would like to see it feel/look different, like add a special miss animation where the attacker is extra clumsy so even if the outcome is mechanically identical, there would be a perceivable difference other than text. To add to this, some people have suggested showing the rolls of the attacks on screen similarly to the damage/miss texts could help.

Similarly, it looks weird when misses, even critical misses visually hit but it just says miss. This is particularly true for projectiles and spells that leave surface effects. They still land. A miss should make the projectile go elsewhere.

This all also relates to the AC vs HP debate and how animations, sounds and seeing the rolls could make missing attacks a better experience than it currently is.