In role-playing games, a term used to describe an attack gone horribly wrong, usually due to nothing more than an unlucky dice roll.

The exact effects of the critical miss are often determined making a second dice roll and looking up the result on a critical miss table. Depending on how unlucky you are, and how sadistic the game designers were, you may end up hitting a nearby ally, dropping or jamming your weapon, or even cutting your own head off!

In most gaming systems, the risk of suffering a critical fumble is reduced as you advance in skill.

Also known as fumble, critical miss, and critical failure.