Cutie Mark Criticals! For the evil and justice?

Cause someone wanted a topic about CMCs, I'll give my opinions to start. Ignore the grammar it's bad I know.

CMCs as we know is a form of 'Super Critical' I guess would be a way to put it. If a 20 lets you do almost anything(within reason obviously) a CMC will let you go above and beyond the realm of awesome. I'm sure you can think of examples in games and without.

However. What if a player is being evil for whatever reason? Mind-control, Player is a dick and gets bored(Like me), is pretending to turn traitor. Would a CMC in say, Brawn to snap someones neck make it work better? Or convincing someone to harm themselves through an epic persuasion check, or even make them angry enough they pop a blood vessel and go BOOM!.

The next question I pose is can CMCs be used to punish a player for evil actions? For example if a character takes over a town and chooses to attack someone for no reason and crits with a CMC in say.. Precision? As a DM should they not be allowed to go. Well, you really had no reason to do that, so. You hit the guy in such a spot, exactly the right way. Boom he's dead/unconscious/crippled forever and now a bunch of people hate you.

Tl;dr
Can CMC's be used for evil and can they be used as punishment? Discuss.

I don't think they should (punishment, that is). A CMC, despite being generalized to one skill, should represent a talent. Ultimately the CMC should be the ultimate success at whatever it is you're trying to do, and shouldn't have any unproductive consequence. For example, the anyeurism incident (isolated) shouldn't have happened like that. He was trying to get info, with a CMC he should get the info, not get the guy so mad that he dies. That's counter-productive, and by definition is not a critical success.

But if they player wants to incapacitate or piss off an NPC, a CMC should let him do that, spectacularly. In that situation, then death may be acceptable, but only as an unforseen reaction.

Basically, if the Player has an objective in mind, a CMC should not hinder that objective in any way, so negative consequences and punishment should not happen. A CMCFailure, on the other hand...

You likely know my answer, but I shall still post it:
A CMC can be harmful.

A cutie mark critical is defined by being a 'spectacular' success. Logically, the results of a CMC would be taking the action to its most extreme and impressive execution. Given the motive behind the mechanic, the PH should probably try to come up with a way it benefits in the long run; or at least tailor the result to something especially amusing to the initiating player (this is what I did with the event that I suspect prompted this thread.) However, actions that would end badly for the group by design may be made even worse by a CMC. That said, a CMC probably should preclude detriment to the individual character who got it.

If we take assume that the reason for every check is, "I want to cause X."
Then a CMC should be answered with, "You cause as much X as possible, and look good doing it."

Actually guys the event that Prompted this thread was Silentbelle(sorry if I messed that up) mentioning they wanted somewhere to discuss CMC stuff. The title was mainly to grab attention. I wanted it to be a general discussion thread on it I just opened it up with questions I thought were interesting, you know, being evil and all.

Also yay... jumping into a specific incident joy.
The aneurysm incident occurred when my player, Silver, ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ozy850JJmsKQq2elSSett-m-pDgI5EGFJM4AFZk9f-8/edit ) have a character sheet and check the FK. Went in with the intention of making someone who had just hit her across the face angry. Which she succeeded on, with a 45 persuasion CMC(The number impresses me cause it's above a 15. Let me have my victories as petty as they are.). The DM then choose to make the NPC get so angry the brain exploded(Aneurysm) and died.(Something I have to admit, I found amusing as heck and fairly legit, I mean not much else can be said to say "You mad bro?" then your brain exploding.)

This I see as a legitimate use of the CMC. Something spectacular happened(That I found epic and I know Silver would be both shocked and amused over, she does study brains after all to an extent... just not the umm actually brain side) that also warned the player, a.k.a me, don't be a dick for dicks sake(Not that I learned anything but I'm thick like that.).

Now that everyone is updated. Lets go back to talking about the use of CMCs for, good, evil and every situation in between.

Well, what I really wanted to discuss is how do you guys go about CMCs in your games. As I had stated before, Athletics, Acrobatics and Arcana (with it's witchcraft) are easy to describe how they work with things like sonic rainbooms, huge magic spells, or otherwise really neat physical actions.

But what about things like History, Perception or Endurance? What are your ways of describing the CMCs for such checks to make them feel as epic as the others? It makes me feel like I shouldn't pick history as my CMC, just from a Gameist perspective, because it's hard to make it feel as awesome as a CMC on athletics. I'd like to hear how others have handled CMCs in their games, or how you CMCs as players have played out.

well for something like Perception, a CMC would just allow you to I assume go Sherlock Holmes level of seeing stuff.
"Oh that guard has a cat and three kids and a blonde wife cause he sits a certain way" kinda thing.

History, hmmm, Maybe remember the exact name date+extra information that isn't written down and you just tell the player they were smart enough to piece it together? You don't have to make extra information just make the players feel good.

Endurance? You take no damage+stop whatever it was that hit you/harmed you in it's tracks I guess? That's hard.

The one CMC I've seen is actually a perception crit, and it was quite interesting. There was the sherlock level details, but there was a second aspect to it. The pony's brain put the details together subconsciously, and was sort of guided to unobtrusive locked closet where their broth kept all his brain-washing cult gear. I don't know if she would've found out otherwise, but it was pretty sweet.

For a history check, if your overarching plot has any basis in previous events, then I'd have a CMC produce a myth or a story in exactly the appropriate form: No funky wording (the spark will unite the elements), no badly recorded legends, exactly what happened and why. This should work for most history checks (appraising ancient items, translating old manuscripts, remembering ancient history).

I'm curious: where do people set benchmarks for street-smarts? I would put a CMC at finding/knowing the location of a building, as well as details on how to enter and who owns it, and maybe some convenient details about open windows or a flat roof or something.

Well in your case, regarding the CMC, you got a spectacular/awesome/crazy success (which I believe should every CMC be, in some form), and the result of it, whilst kinda "bad" morally, was something you kinda did approve of since it was funny as heck, and you probably wouldn't suffer much from it. Most of us found it funny as well, being absurd, so it did it's job in amusing us.

I say: If you're intentionally trying to screw the game, DM or other players over, the CMC has the right to screw YOU over. The same can apply to a regular critical as well, really. The CMC just makes it more amplified. If you're playing in character or otherwise not trying to do something really dickish (on purpose), the CMC should be in your favor, or at the very least, be something really amusing to yourself or others.

Hayate made the "make the pony angry" attempt with humor in mind, and thanks to a CMC, he sure as heck got humor (the dark/gallows kind) as a result. If he had tried it to be a dick (e.g. to harass other players or to burn down an orphanage, out of character, or to get the group in trouble without suffering consequences himself), he'd probably still succeed, and suffer SEVERE consequences as a result, or have an extra side effect that's detrimental (That random NPC you murdered with a knife from 500 feet away for no reason? He's the member of the mafia, and now you've got a price on your head from several crime families).

Long story short:
-Intent of action and player expectation/motivation should be a factor in what the results of the CMC are. A player doing bad or unwise things for fun / minor goofyness shouldn't be penalized for a CMC, nor should a player acting out of lack of knowledge. A player being malicious to the setting, backstabbing the others, or ruining the fun of others has every right to have a CMC end spectacularly bad. After all, the perception "awesomeness" of a CMC isn't limited to the one doing it, it's something the whole group experiences.

-CMC's should always be one or more of the following: Awesome, amazing, jaw-dropping, shocking, insane/crazy, logic/physics/magic defying, fun, funny, noteworthy.

edit: In regards to CMC usage of certain skills, yeah, I'm a bit wondering about "endurance" CMCs.

Now in most settings, I imagine a endurance CMC would be your character essentially turning into a implacable man, utterly unhindered/unharmed by something that most would be broken and bleeding from, or being able to subject your body to insane punishment and stress for a unreasonably long time, but that's pretty much the extent I can think of for the skill. The problem with it is that it's really rarely (and very situationally) used, since it's not a physical action you can get on demand (like athletics or acrobatics), it's more something that the DM triggers from a situation (e.g. a desert trek).

History, streetwise and perception I imagine would be getting an absurd amount of knowledge from something, including trivial/funny knowledge that should not be known from a glance (e.g. the guard is anxious to leave his post due to his marriage anniversary coming up in 2 hours and he has yet to buy his wife the perfect gift, which can easily be deduced to be a yellow-red dandelion, which just so happens to be something you've noticed growing in a nearby flowerbed).

Streetsmarts I imagine to be info that anyone who lives in a city/village/community for a extended period would know, stuff that thieves, swindlers, unsavory or savvy or generally cunning characters would know (e.g. that the bar waters its drinks, that the merchants are willing to haggle twice, that most of the ponies keep their keys hidden under pots near the doors, that the tax collector makes "surprise visits" on the 13th of the month...). Generally, the kind of littler hidden tricks and stuff a character simply "learns" to make his life easier.

So for instance, a CMC streetsmarts for finding a bar could have you locate a bar where a bunch of college fratboys are having a party and are paying all the tabs.

sunbeam wrote:The one CMC I've seen is actually a perception crit, and it was quite interesting. There was the sherlock level details, but there was a second aspect to it. The pony's brain put the details together subconsciously, and was sort of guided to unobtrusive locked closet where their broth kept all his brain-washing cult gear. I don't know if she would've found out otherwise, but it was pretty sweet.

That wasn't even my favorite one. Another was essentially listening in on a convo, and then hearing EVERYTHING in the cavern system they were in.

Also: If they do something evil (Like say terrorize somepony) They should spectacularly terrorize them. My party once had 92 to scare, and another 92 to heal somepony (Somewhere around there. Two different parties) and those made the guy forever scared of the party member, and fix almost permanent brain damage. A CMC? would be slightly /stronger/ than that and permanently fix the guy, and make the guy terrified to even BE near the party member.
Ideas for CMCs.
Stunts or Arcobatics: Equivilant of a sonic Boom, or some amazing feats of athletics and agility.
Endurance: Being able to shake away all of the pain or weather on you
Mechanics: Fiddling with something and making it superior than before.
Stealth: Partial INVISIBILITY.
Heal: Heal something back to full health, even if the damage was lethal.
History: Some relavent data in full and complete understandable language.
Arcana: Some massive magical effect.
Perception: All Sherlock holmes, or seeing something that wouldn't normally be seen
Persuasion: Convincing somepony 100% to follow your way.
Streetsmarts: Easily learn all of the data on a town, even the seedy underbelly.

Now the real question would be is giving players X-ray vision a fair idea for a perception CMC...
"I roll to see through that Mares dress!"
"Are you serious...?"
"Yes!" *roll* "CMC!"
"...fine. You see her without any clothes, or skin for that matter. Congrats, your character just developed one shot x-ray vision. Still having fun?"
"I hate you."

Hayatecooper wrote:
"...fine. You see her without any clothes, or skin for that matter. Congrats, your character just developed one shot x-ray vision. Still having fun?"

"Heck yeah! Once I figure out how to duplicate this, I'll be able to spy all over the place!"

Mechanically I was treating CMCs as a +20 bonus (like you rolled a 40 instead of a 20) and add a perk to the player depending on the epic-ness of the situation. Such as if you got a CMC on an endurance check in conjunction a daily/magic-point power, such as Yeehaw! then you'd get a refund, or perhaps get a free use of such a power in the next 5 minutes. Or after making a CMC persuasion speech before the whole village, pulling a bunch of feuding ponies into a peace agreement, afterward, all the ponies that heard the speech will regard the speaker in a better light and the player will get a permenant +2 when interacting with those characters. And other similar rewards.

But if someone just triggers their cutiemark critical on a whimsical check, such as a mechanics check to make coffee, then I'd treat it as a 'natural 40' and leave it at that.

That's an interesting way of looking at it.
And a good way I guess of stopping people trying to CMC on stupid things, coffee, hugs, sleep

Hayatecooper wrote:Endurance? You take no damage+stop whatever it was that hit you/harmed you in it's tracks I guess? That's hard.

I had something similar happen in a wargame once.

We were playing around with Charge rules, you see. The basic idea was (by default) each unit had a certain die level for attacking right? Well, for every 5 inches that it moved in a straight line, it added an additional die. Simple, way OP.

So, my buddy had this Jeep he'd built, and charged one of my Orcish grunts (we were play testing, we didn't care what we used) and got quite a bit of momentum built up. Something like 4D10 I think. Now, this Orc had a base armor of 1D6... BUT, because of a long standing house-rule, he pulled off the equivalent of a CMC (which is substantially less likely, as it involves rolling repeated 6's until you get the higher roll).

The In-Character result? He essentially picked the Jeep up by the bumper, while it was still trying to run him over, and broke it in two, just through sheer manliness.

That orc got a promotion and a Name (Og the Immovable. It's a rule that Names must be as cliche as possible.)