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Table Keeper · Long Island Dungeon Master
A d6 of what a natural 20 buys when there is nothing to crit, and a d20 for the exact thing when you need it right now.
At a glance: any party · any level · no stat blocks · roll the d6 for the shape of the gift, the d20 for the object itself.
A player rolls a natural 20 on a Persuasion check. The table looks up. Somebody hits the table with their hand.
Then you say "great, he agrees," which is what you were going to say for a 14, and the moment dies in your hands.
Nothing is broken there. A crit is an attack-roll thing, and outside of that a 20 is a 20 plus your modifier. But nobody at your table is thinking about the rules when that die stops moving. They heard the sound it made and they are waiting for the world to answer it, and when it does not answer they stop looking up. I have been running games for 30+ years and I lost that sound at my table for a good decade of them.
So here are six things to hand them instead, and twenty specific gifts for the nights you cannot think of one.
Say it inside two seconds, out loud, before anybody picks up another die.
A gift that arrives three minutes later is bookkeeping. A gift that arrives while the die is still rattling is the thing they tell other people about.
And it goes on top. The 20 already succeeded, so nothing below is a trade, a condition, or a "yes, but." You are not deciding whether they get what they rolled for. You are deciding what else comes with it.
Open DM Tools. Both tables roll from the table roller, so the answer is one tap away while the die is still on the table.
Roll it or pick it. Each one is a shape, and any of the six fits any check your table just passed.
| d6 | What the 20 buys |
|---|---|
| 1 | They keep the way in. The success was a door, and now the door stays open. The guard who waved them past will wave them past again, the window they got open stays unlatched, the back room has a standing invitation. Say it as a permission they own: "That works, and Corvin will do it again if you come back." |
| 2 | They learn one thing nobody asked about. Answer the check, then hand over one adjacent fact for free, and make it a fact that costs somebody else something. They asked whether the ledger balances. It balances, and the same hand wrote three of the signatures in it. |
| 3 | It costs nothing it was going to cost. Refund the price before you charge it. No time passes, no noise carries, nothing is used up, nobody gets hurt on the way. The lock opens on the first pick, the pick is not bent, and the hall is still empty when they look up. |
| 4 | Somebody is in it with them now. The success recruits a person. A witness who liked what they saw, a guard who will look the other way exactly twice, a rival who has decided to be on the winning side. Name them on the spot and give them one physical detail, and do not stat them. |
| 5 | The player says what it looked like. Hand the authorship across the table. "You did it. Tell me how." Whatever they say is true from that moment, including the half of it you would never have thought of, and you write it down and use it four sessions later. This one is free and it is the one they remember. |
| 6 | It is loud, and somebody writes it down. The world logs it. The story is being told in a common room by morning, the name reaches the wrong ears inside a week, and a stranger three towns over uses it as a greeting. A 20 that moves the party's reputation costs you nothing tonight and pays for a month. |
Roll this when you have the shape and you want the object. Four bands of five, sorted by what the gift is made of. None of these takes the success back, and none of them needs a new rule.
| d20 | What it hands them |
|---|---|
| 1 | The name. They come away with somebody's actual name. The man who ordered it, the woman who signed for it, or the thing the locals will not say out loud after dark. |
| 2 | The number. An exact figure lands in their hands. How many, how much, how far, how long until. A table will act on a number and only nod at a warning. |
| 3 | The lie, located. They cannot tell you what the truth is, but they know exactly which sentence was false, and they know it while the speaker is still standing in front of them. |
| 4 | The hour it is unattended. Not that the thing is guarded. The specific hour that it is not, who is supposed to cover that hour, and how long the gap runs. |
| 5 | The second way in. Whatever they were working on has another entrance, and they now know where it starts. It is worse than the front. It works. |
| d20 | What it hands them |
|---|---|
| 6 | No time. Whatever clock you were about to advance does not move. Say that part out loud, because a clock that fails to tick is invisible unless somebody names it. |
| 7 | Nothing heard it. No wandering roll, no reinforcements, no light coming up the stair. The thing they had braced for simply does not arrive, and they get to notice that. |
| 8 | Nothing spent. The torch, the charge, the spell slot, the rope, the last of the good wine they were going to bribe somebody with. All of it is still on the sheet. |
| 9 | Clean. Nobody took a scratch and nothing got ruined. That matters more than it sounds: they can walk into the next room looking like people who belong in it. |
| 10 | It works twice. Whatever they just did will work one more time if they do it the same way. Tell them so, then watch them build an hour of planning on top of it. |
| d20 | What it hands them |
|---|---|
| 11 | A witness who liked it. Somebody saw, and is impressed rather than alarmed. They will tell one other person about it, and you get to decide later who that was. |
| 12 | The one whose job was stopping them. The person paid to prevent this decides not to, silently, for reasons of their own. They do not explain themselves and they do not hang around. |
| 13 | A debt going the right way. Somebody in the scene owes the party now and knows it. A small debt, one favour deep, and they will choose the moment to pay it. |
| 14 | A rival, upgraded. The person working against them watched that and respects it. They are not friendly. They will now come to the table instead of coming through the window. |
| 15 | Somebody follows them out. A person leaves with them. A kid with no reason to stay, a servant with nothing left inside, or a dog that has made up its mind. Not a follower. A problem with a face. |
| d20 | What it hands them |
|---|---|
| 16 | The story arrives before they do. By tomorrow night somebody in the next town tells it back to them, wrong in one flattering detail. Let them correct it or let them enjoy it. |
| 17 | A price changes. One merchant or innkeeper or fixer hears about it and adjusts. Something they need got cheaper, or something they wanted is being held behind a counter for them. |
| 18 | An invitation from a stranger. A letter turns up from somebody they have never met, addressed to whoever did that thing, at that place, on that night. |
| 19 | A name gets attached. One of them gets called something for the first time. Put it in an NPC's mouth, use it twice, and never explain where it came from. |
| 20 | The wrong person hears. All of the above, and one more thing. It reached somebody who now has to do something about it. Not tonight. It is moving. |
Compatible with fifth edition and with most things that are not. Portions derived from the System Reference Document 5.1, © Wizards of the Coast LLC, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-4.0). Six Things to Do With a Nat 20 That Is Not a Crit is original content © Long Island Dungeon Master, free to use at your table and in your own work under CC BY 4.0.
Print this page, or copy the six lines onto an index card and put it under your screen.
When a 20 lands and there is nothing to crit, pick a line and say it out loud before anybody picks up another die.
If you want the object instead of the shape, roll a d20.
Three things that are never the answer. Making them roll again. Taking the success back with a complication. Waiting until after the session to think of something good.
Nothing here touches a stat block, a DC, or a die other than the one that just came up 20. Any game with a d20 in it works as written. Any game without one works the moment you decide what counts as a rare, loud, everybody-looks-up roll on your dice, and hand out the same six things when it happens.
If your system already pays out on an exceptional success, use these as the payout rather than as a bonus on top of it.
Auto-built from every data-dc, data-hp, stat block, preset clock and pre-loaded combatant in this file. Prints on its own sheet.
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