A squad of space racists is about to shoot on the peach militia with their space AKs, They do their skill roll and 2 of them roll big fat 1's.
If this was -your- game, how would you treat the critfail? Do they shoot comrades in the back, does their gun jam or explode in their arms... or does the hand of god come down and obliterate them for no reason other than for being scrubs?
My preferred method is a little gamey, I keep what I call a "fail die" around, it's just a modified D6 that has 1 red side, 2 yellow sides and 3 green sides, with 1 green side marked off with a dot
Usually what I do is upon a crifail rolling, I roll the fail die to determine their fate
If it lands on the green side with the dot, it's considered to be a crit success.. to a crit fail, and nothing happens, the dimwit gets off unscathed.
if it lands on one of the other greens. something unfortunate happens, but it is not lethal. at best the fig falls over or something, at worst he drops or breaks his weapon.
if it lands on yellow. I immediately roll another skill die. depending on what makes more sense, if there are enemies in range, a yellow roll will grant a free counter attack from any 1 unit that's directley engaged with it or has direct line of sight. if it makes more sense for a weapon misfire or friendly fire, that will happen instead. if the skill roll is successful, then it goes into damage mode, and the minifig could die from this after another roll
if it lands on the red, this is the worst case scenario, same as yellow, except i treat it as instant and immediate damage. again towards either the guy who failed, or if it makes more sense, a comrade. whatever the case, a die is rolled immediately and it is treated like a normal attack. a free counter attack by an enemy that could kill him right then and there for being such a scrub. other things could happen too like grenades being dropped at one's foot, vehicles swerving out of control and mowing down friendlies, if you roll a 1 and a red. you done fucked up.
the reason I roll a die is because determining the consequence of a critfail is entirely subjective. and I like things to be somewhat fair, because one player's idea of a criftail on a rifle attack is to have the guy fall on his face and stab himself with the rifle, another's idea is to simply have his gun blow up in his hands while surviving..
what's your method for doing critfails?