Mitigating Attack Critical Failures?

[pwykersotz]

After doing a lot of reading on this subject, I've come up with very little. How many ways are there to re-roll, discard, or otherwise mitigate a critical failure on an attack roll?

My interest in this has been rekindled due to a new game where I will be playing a Barbarian with some brutal critical failure rules. Fortunately the GM, while sadistic in crit fails, is also highly experienced and runs a great game, so hitting him with a book is out of the question. :smallwink:

If it helps, my level 1 Barbarian is highly optimized, both Feral and Half-Minotaur with buyoff in his future. He has a +34 Str without raging and wields a Large Heavy Minotaur Greathammer. I haven't actually started playing yet, so build changes are a possibility.

What I've found so far:

Luck Feats
Limited Wish or similar to auto-succeed

That is all. Does anyone have suggestions?

[Know(Nothing)]

Go on an adventure to the Court of Thieves(Comp. Scoundrel, p. 144), get a luck charm, take some luck feats, get Better Lucky Than Good. I can't tell you how many times that came up right at the most crucial time.

Going from potential fumble to crit will make everyone including the DM jump around the room screaming. Especially with a Minotaur Greathammer. A crit with those things does so much damage it vaporizes people.

[Andezzar]

My interest in this has been rekindled due to a new game where I will be playing a Barbarian with some brutal critical failure rules. Fortunately the GM, while sadistic in crit fails, is also highly experienced and runs a great game, so hitting him with a book is out of the question. :smallwink:Don't hit him with a book, calmly explain to him how critical failures on attack rolls make no sense. With that rule more experienced fighters are more likely to make a critical failure than noobs.

[eggynack]

My best advice is to avoid being a big hulking barbarian. You should really try to be a class that doesn't face critical failures all the time, like a caster. You've basically put yourself front and center to be screwed by this rule, and depending on how the fumble operates, being a barbarian might be suicidal. The kinda critical failures where you hit yourself, for example, have a good chance at just killing you, because of how hard you hit. Similarly, the kind where you drop your weapon could also just kill you out of nowhere, because you end up spending two rounds standing right next to the enemy. It's just bad news. It looks like you're not much of a fan of these rules, so bypassing them completely is a reasonable option.

[Studoku]

There are two ways of dealing with critical fumble rules.

The first is to play a wizard or some kind of spellcaster. Avoid touch attacks and ensure you never make an attack roll.

The second is to play a twf monk named Fumbles McGee, based around getting as many attacks as possible. Don't worry about hitting or actually doing anything- just get into combat and let the fumble table do the work. Remember to carry plenty of spare weapons.

I'll also leave this gem from the last fumble thread I saw:

Critical Fumble Rule:
If at any time a DM shall propose using a "critical failure" or "fumble" table of any sort in a 3.X game, the players are to beat the DM with folding chairs until each of them has accidentally struck himself with his chair at least once, while keeping a count of the number of strikes made before this happens. Then, the average rate of such "fumbles" as generated by a table full of nerds swinging improvised weapons will establish the maximum probability of a "fumble" within the game mechanics for a level 1 Commoner (note that this already will probably require rolling multiple Natural 1's in succession to confirm a fumble), with the probability dropping by at least an order of magnitude per point of BAB of the attacking character. Thus a full-BAB character at level 20 might have to roll 20+ Natural 1's in a row to before you even bother glancing at the Fumble Table.

[Pickford]

There are two ways of dealing with critical fumble rules.

The first is to play a wizard or some kind of spellcaster. Avoid touch attacks and ensure you never make an attack roll.

The second is to play a twf monk named Fumbles McGee, based around getting as many attacks as possible. Don't worry about hitting or actually doing anything- just get into combat and let the fumble table do the work. Remember to carry plenty of spare weapons.

I'll also leave this gem from the last fumble thread I saw:

Clearly Philistine isn't one.

[pwykersotz]

Go on an adventure to the Court of Thieves(Comp. Scoundrel, p. 144), get a luck charm, take some luck feats, get Better Lucky Than Good. I can't tell you how many times that came up right at the most crucial time.

Going from potential fumble to crit will make everyone including the DM jump around the room screaming. Especially with a Minotaur Greathammer. A crit with those things does so much damage it vaporizes people.

Thanks for the luck charm, that's a solid one, and the luck feat is definitely already high on my list.

As for the other suggestions, I actually love these campaigns, and while I disagree with the GM, I'm not interested in changing how he rules in these situations nor in playing a different character. I'm excited to play a Barbarian, even with the crit fail rules. I'm just looking for as much rules-based mitigation as I can get. Besides, even if the harsh crit fails weren't a thing, I'd still want to see if I could turn around an auto-miss. :smallbiggrin:

[pwykersotz]

Any other suggestions?

[Know(Nothing)]

Really more of a DM call, but my tables love Hero Points (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/hero-points) from PF, which can, among other things, let you reroll anything and take the second result. Seriously, so much fun as a player, and as a DM hero points let me lean harder on my players as far as challenges.

I believe JaronK was recently talking about how if you follow the rules exactly, you end up with some absolutely brutal encounters that require your players to run. Hero Points are a great way to let the players worm their way out of situations that turn out to be too tough, even if they can't tell how tough they will be until it's almost too late.

[Chronos]

The problem is that, because there isn't actually any such thing as critical fumbles in the rules, there also isn't anything in the rules for preventing them.

[pwykersotz]

The problem is that, because there isn't actually any such thing as critical fumbles in the rules, there also isn't anything in the rules for preventing them.

Technically true, but there are such things as auto-misses on a natural one. I'm looking for ways around that.

Oh, I realized another...the Aura of Perfect Order. Not available to me, but it's a good one.

[Emperor Tippy]

When I feel like playing with critical fumble rules I do the following:

1) A natural 1 threatens a critical miss just like a natural 20 threatens a critical hit. Just like you have to confirm a critical hit you also have to confirm a critical fumble, this is done by rolling again and failing to roll high enough to hit the target.
2) In the event you roll a confirmed critical miss, every creature that threatens your square gets to make an attack of opportunity against you that does not count against the attackers normal AoO limit for the round.
3) Casting a spell requires that you roll 1d20+Caster Level against a DC of 10+ Spell level, failure to beat the DC results in the spell failing to cast but the spell is not expended. On a natural 1 on this check you roll again; a successful roll means that the spell fails to cast as normal, the spell slot isn't expended, and nothing else but on a failed roll the spell is expended and backfires. If the spell has a range greater than personal and does not have the (harmless) tag then the caster becomes the target of the spell, if the spell has a range of personal and/or the harmless tag then instead of its normal effect it deals (spell level) d6 + caster level points of damage to the caster.