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Critical Failure

• The crafter Crafts the item, but the item is secretly cursed.
• The crafter Crafts the item, but the item permanently drains a portion of the crafter's life force and resists attempts at destroying it, permanently reducing the crafter's Hit Points until they complete a quest to destroy the item once and for all.
• The creation process explodes or otherwise exposes the crafter to significant harm with a long-term effect that demands interesting interplay to remove. There's little point in dealing Hit Point damage during downtime, as it's usually trivial to restore it before adventuring.
• The Crafting process is so flawed that it draws a malevolent intelligence that chooses to complete the item and inhabit it. The intelligence of the item is opposed to the crafter and attempts to secretly thwart them at every turn.
• The item appears perfectly normal and fully functional, but when someone attempts to use it for its intended purpose, it fails. For example, armor might fall off, weapons might break, or a wand might simply emit an acrid, burning odor instead of the desired spell.
• The crafter is cursed by their own failure and takes a penalty to all future Crafting checks until they get a critical success or a casting of remove curse to end the effect.
• The Crafting goes so poorly that it pollutes the nearby environment. This might mean that the workshop needs extensive cleaning to be usable again, or it could be much worse, polluting the local water supply and making those who live nearby seriously ill.