Someone could fairly accuse me of overusing critical failures and successes for jokes in this story, but there's a particular reason this specific one happened.

I really enjoy shields in games, so the idea of a shield bash sending someone flying back into another enemy just makes me happy.

As such, in this moment, Rich is benefitting from my personal wish fulfillment while writing. He doesn't often get to!

Speaking of shields in video games, a word of caution if playing Skyrim: The block perk that slows down time when enemies use power attacks against you is bugged.

There's the potential to get the game stuck in constant slowdown that's tricky to get out of, rendering it virtually unplayable unless you stop blocking.

This can effectively break a character that uses shields, and not in a fun way.