Critical Failure!

With the recent release of 4th Edition D&D my poor heart as a Dm has suffered a bit of a break. While reading over the rules of combat I came upon the critical hits section. With much anticipation I scanned through the rest of the rules only to be heartbroken. The critical miss rule is no longer there! What madman would go and remove the critical miss I ask myself. Surely there must be some mistake. Yet no matter how many times I read through the result was the same, my beloved critical miss was now gone. Brutally yanked from the pages by some mean spirited bastard. This would never do.

So I ask all of you, is this a good or a bad thing? I myself am a fan of the critical miss. I am sure my players would say otherwise. They have come to fear and dread seeing that mystical “1″ appear on their dice. At this point they don’t even have to say it when they roll a one. The look of dread that quickly spreads around the table is more than enough for me to begin my evil mastermind laugh. (I’m sure all of you know the laugh) Though they have also learned that when dice go flying out from behind the DM screen that it means one of the bugbears they are currently facing just critically missed and shot the dragon in the face or something else quite catastrophic.