Critical Miss

:B348: Any roll of 10 greater than your effective skill is a critical failure
A Critical Miss is a Critical Failure on an attack roll.
It can happen when rolling a 17 or 18 on an attack (or by failing by 10 or more, which can include a 13 to 16 for those with skill of 3 to 6 ... RANGED ATTACKS EXCEPTED) or if a successful attack roll is opposed by an Active Defense which rolls a Critical Success.
In 4e there is a Critical Miss Table on B446 applying to critical fails on weapon hits/parries and an Unarmed Critical Miss Table on B447 applying to unarmed hits/parries.
3e's GURPS Martial Arts had TWO different UCMTs: "Striking and Parrying" on 68 and "Grappling, Locks and Throws" on 69.
Presumably they all just use the same table now in 4e. The problem of automatic knockouts was never fixed and it should just be thrust to skull or something.
==Quotes==
Douglas Cole in 2013 http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=1608845&postcount=4
I'd go with "yes, the step is mandatory and it makes you lose your grapple." There's a box in Technical Grappling called something like "Impossible Positions" that basically says 'if you can't imagine a grapple existing from a given position, you gotta let go.'
So yep, he loses his grapple and goes a step beyond.
Category:Rules