More Fumble Table Thoughts! What if a fumble was an automatic hit, but...?

[Segev]

We've all probably participated in more than one fumble table thread, where the wisest amongst us laid out exactly why the right way to handle them is: don't. In fact, I am personally quite fond of the maxim that, if you can arm 100 peasants with basic weapons and have them beat on straw dummies for 10 minutes while rolling to hit and using your fumble tables, and you don't have any of them dead or permanently maimed, you can use your fumble table. Hint: almost invariably, this won't happen.

However, what if the fumble table was actually something that allows the player, at his option, to choose to turn an auto-miss into a fumble by rolling on it? All results on the fumble table read, "You hit, but..."

e.g.

1) You hit, but your weapon becomes lodged in or is caught by your target. Your lose your dexterity bonus to AC unless you let go of your weapon, until you succeed on a DC 15 Strength check as a standard action. If you attacked with a natural weapon, well, you can't release it, so...good luck pulling loose!
2) You hit, but allow the enemy an attack of opportunity.
3) You hit, but a bad step twists your ankle. For the remainder of the combat, reduce your movement by half.
4) If there are multiple enemy creatures in reach of your weapon, you hit one that you weren't aiming at. Otherwise, you still miss.


I don't have a lot of examples off the top of my head, but the idea struck me and I thought I'd share it for vetting. Obviously, it has to be such that those 100 peasants aren't going to wind up dead and with dozens of broken weapons after 10 minutes of practice.

[Max_Killjoy]

Other repeatedly-observed problems that "fumbles" have to avoid:

* Fumbles are just as common a result and/or just as severe a result no matter how skilled the character is in the thing being rolled for.

* Fumbles get more common or take away more successful rolls the more skilled the character is.

[Honest Tiefling]

If you are using a system with Inspiration or Luck or whatever points, I'd offer the chance to turn a Fumble into Awesome by burning a point. For instance, you attack the orc and your weapon is stuck, but you managed to brutalize the corpse so badly in retrieving your weapon the other orcs are really considering their stance on attacking you and the party.

Not everyone enjoys fumbles, so this gives an out to those players without taking the fun away from others. Or the fumble system could be opt-in, with some sort of incentive to take it.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you are using a system with Inspiration or Luck or whatever points, I'd offer the chance to turn a Fumble into Awesome by burning a point. For instance, you attack the orc and your weapon is stuck, but you managed to brutalize the corpse so badly in retrieving your weapon the other orcs are really considering their stance on attacking you and the party.

Not everyone enjoys fumbles, so this gives an out to those players without taking the fun away from others. Or the fumble system could be opt-in, with some sort of incentive to take it.

Maybe accept a fumble, gain a point... negate a fumble, spend a point?

Along with other ways to gain and spend points, even.

[Honest Tiefling]

Maybe accept a fumble, gain a point... negate a fumble, spend a point?

Along with other ways to gain and spend points, even.

Opt-in at the moment. I like this, because then the player decides if a skill roll is really vital to their concept and if they want to take the DM-decided fumbles or not. It might do well to reduce player frustration at failing at their most important skills for their concept, such as the Rogue who has horrible dice luck and botches everything (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/trapsmith).

[Steel Mirror]

That's a really cool idea! I do think it should be opt-in, but the incentive to take it seems pretty obvious to me: you turn a certain miss into a certain hit. No need to bribe the player with any metacurrency, I should think.

If I were using this at my table, I wouldn't necessarily even roll the particular effect up on a chart, I'd just offer the player a fumble effect off the top of my head based on the situation, and leave it to them to take it or not. A chart might be useful as a reference, but I'd probably offer very different "hit, but..." effects to a player who fumbled a rapier attack in a duel atop a zeppelin vs a player who fumbled throwing a vial of alchemist fire at a swarm of scarabs overrunning his buddies' defensive position.

I think I'm going to steal this idea for the next game I run, and see how it goes.

[Khedrac]

Since this thread sits in in "General Roleplaying" forum I think it is worth pointing out: "Fumbles work best in systems designed to have them".

Some people would hold that all fumbles are bad, and they are entitled to their opinion, but I think they should agree that some fumble systems are worse than others.

Cases in point from worst to best/least bad:
D&D + roll 1 and it is a fumble - generally regarded as terrible, but also depressingly common.
D&D + roll 1 and chance of fumble - mitigates a lot of the problems but still generally only liked by DMs.
RoleMaster roll low enough (open ended D100 system) and you fumble. Fumbles ranged from minor to lethal - they were usually a good laugh but did disrail play when characters died at inopportune times (though crits were a bigger problem on that front).
RuneQuest - fumble chance was 5% of your miss chance, so the better you were the less you fumbled. Fumbles copuld be nasty, butthe system was usually thought to be OK.

As for weapons getting stuck in opponents - that was the effect of a "Special" result (think lesser critical) in RuneQuest when using impaling weapons. They could also get stuck in shields (special hit, successful parry), which if you then released your weapon usually made the shield too unwieldy to parry with. So not a fumble, but still a viable combat result.

[Pelle]

However, what if the fumble table was actually something that allows the player, at his option, to choose to turn an auto-miss into a fumble by rolling on it? All results on the fumble table read, "You hit, but..."


Handling it this way has been suggested before, and I like it. If you don't want your highly skilled warrior to fumble more often than a peasant, just don't choose the fumble option, problem solved. I can understand that people don't like the disassociated nature of it, though.

To remedy that, you can maybe choose the type of fumble before the choice to opt in is made. I.e. "You fumble a bit (rolled 1), but you can still make the hit if you leave yourself undefended (AoO). Do you want to recover or go through?", or "you fumble a bit (rolled 1), but you can still make the hit, though that means you have to overextend your foot and twist your ankle (reduce movement). Do you want to recover or go through?"

[Anonymouswizard]

* Fumbles get more common or take away more successful rolls the more skilled the character is.

Yeah, this is the big problem with fumbles/critical failures in D&D. Warriors mainly scale by gaining more attacks, so those 100 peasants will survive longer against the straw dummies than 100 trained knights.


I actually do like the idea of 'success for opt-in bad stuff', but think it should really just be a general rule. Call it, say, succeeding at a cost. It doesn't work that well in combat, but otherwise it's fine as a general 'you didn't hit the DC, do you want to fail or do you want a problem to arise?'

FWIW I'd almost always pick the problem, just because it's more interesting than the 'me too' gameplay that I tend to see.

[Cluedrew]

Since this thread sits in in "General Roleplaying" forum I think it is worth pointing out: "Fumbles work best in systems designed to have them".Another good point. Powered by the Apocalypse has three results. The bottom is in some regards as fumble.

For a moment let us break results into four groups: fumble (negative outcome), miss (neutral), hit (positive) and critical (very positive*). D&D is a binary resolution system, that uses miss and hit as its outcomes. However on top of that they grafted fumble and critical and I say graft, it neither quite meshes with the standard system. Powered by the Apocalypse uses three: fumble (called miss), hit and critical. And it works great if you treat it like that, ever roll does something, good or bad. I do see some complaints of the system, most of them seem to mistake the hit as a miss, because weak hits have both and good aspects to them they seem to think the weight of the two is the same. And in every Apocalypse World system I have played that has not been true.

* Yeah, sort of just hit, but the two are separated in enough rule sets that I will separate them as well to respect convention.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Definitely agreed that "opt-in" fumbles are the best way of handling things, especially for group that's mixed on the question*.



*Heck, I'm anti-fumble enough that I'd give up my chance to crit in exchange for not having to deal with that ****

[Jay R]

In fact, I am personally quite fond of the maxim that, if you can arm 100 peasants with basic weapons and have them beat on straw dummies for 10 minutes while rolling to hit and using your fumble tables, and you don't have any of them dead or permanently maimed, you can use your fumble table.

If you would even use a fumble table when there is no enemy to jostle you or upset your plan, then you don't understand how chaotic fighting is, or what a fumble represents.

If you roll "drop weapon" on a fumble table, that isn't the action of just your fingers, but could include the fact that your target has moved, his shield has hit your sword, or his parry twisted it. If you trip, it could be at least partially caused by the enemy's shield or movement. A lost action just means that your sword is momentarily caught behind his shield. The point is that you are not entirely in control of your actions when somebody else is attempting to mess them up.

I agree that lethal fumbles should be close to non-existent, but bad things happen when fighting real opponents that don't happen when practicing with straw dummies.

[Max_Killjoy]

Definitely agreed that "opt-in" fumbles are the best way of handling things, especially for group that's mixed on the question*.


*Heck, I'm anti-fumble enough that I'd give up my chance to crit in exchange for not having to deal with that ****



Same here. (See also, metacurrency... I've actually opted entirely out of the metacurrency "economy" of a system.)

This has actually caused an knock-down drag-out "discussion" on the forums for a particular system, because it's built around the assumption of getting as many "criticals" as possible but also driving "the narrative" forward with "complication results".

[Grod_The_Giant]

I agree that lethal fumbles should be close to non-existent, but bad things happen when fighting real opponents that don't happen when practicing with straw dummies.
Agreed; they're called "getting attacked." There's no need to add on a second layer of "they exploit your mistake and hurt you."

[Segev]

That's a really cool idea! I do think it should be opt-in, but the incentive to take it seems pretty obvious to me: you turn a certain miss into a certain hit. No need to bribe the player with any metacurrency, I should think.

If I were using this at my table, I wouldn't necessarily even roll the particular effect up on a chart, I'd just offer the player a fumble effect off the top of my head based on the situation, and leave it to them to take it or not. A chart might be useful as a reference, but I'd probably offer very different "hit, but..." effects to a player who fumbled a rapier attack in a duel atop a zeppelin vs a player who fumbled throwing a vial of alchemist fire at a swarm of scarabs overrunning his buddies' defensive position.

I think I'm going to steal this idea for the next game I run, and see how it goes.I'd love to hear about how it goes, if/when you get to run with it for a little while.


Yeah, this is the big problem with fumbles/critical failures in D&D. Warriors mainly scale by gaining more attacks, so those 100 peasants will survive longer against the straw dummies than 100 trained knights.


I actually do like the idea of 'success for opt-in bad stuff', but think it should really just be a general rule. Call it, say, succeeding at a cost. It doesn't work that well in combat, but otherwise it's fine as a general 'you didn't hit the DC, do you want to fail or do you want a problem to arise?'

FWIW I'd almost always pick the problem, just because it's more interesting than the 'me too' gameplay that I tend to see.
I agree, having it more likely you'll fumble if you're "better" is always bad design.

D&D 3.5 doesn't have "fumble" rules. This is actually one reason I put this in general roleplay, because while my easiest example leans on the Playgrounder Fallacy, it is a truism adaptable to any game.

For the record, d20 has attack rolls and saves automatically fail on a 1 (and automatically succeed on a 20) on the die. It does not have critical failure rules, just a 5% auto-failure. This means that having 10 attacks/round doesn't make you more likely to "fumble," just that you always, no matter how many attacks you have, have a chance to miss.

The main reason I suggest that these opt-in "you hit, but..." fumble rules be only on the "normal" fumble chance, rather than any time you miss, is so that you don't have "you hit, but..." become just the norm in combat. If you've got a 30% chance to hit without these rules, these rules make you have a 35% chance to hit if you are willing to accept, on that extra 5%, a "bad thing" happening along with the hit.

I like the suggestion of checking what the "bad thing" will be - whether the DM makes it up or it's rolled on a table - before the choice is made.

Turning it into "you succeed, but..." for things that don't already have an auto-fail condition (e.g. skills in d20) would require deciding whether you want this to be a slim chance or a way to just make things automatically succeed. If you're going to make it allow ANY roll to turn into a success, it probably needs worse penalties.

[oxybe]

Agreed; they're called "getting attacked." There's no need to add on a second layer of "they exploit your mistake and hurt you."

They already did! It's called "the attack hits and deals damage as per the monster manual entry"! Oddly enough that is covered under the standard combat rules and not the fumble ones, as though the consequences of trying to impale a hobgoblin swordsman with your spear is that he would try to slash you with his sword in return!

Weird.

[Jama7301]

Yeah, this is the big problem with fumbles/critical failures in D&D. Warriors mainly scale by gaining more attacks, so those 100 peasants will survive longer against the straw dummies than 100 trained knights.


I wonder if there's a way to balance this, with something like, (if you miss on more than 55% of your attacks this turn, and [some math that scales the number needed] of the misses was a 1, you suffer some effect at the end of your last attack".

Imprecise? Sure.

Inelegant? You bet.

But I wonder if something like this could lead to a more satisfactory solution to a fumble table.

[Jay R]

Agreed; they're called "getting attacked." There's no need to add on a second layer of "they exploit your mistake and hurt you."

Things happen in a fight that none of the fighters planned, and which the opponent doesn't exploit.

In SCA combat, I've had a shield strap break, a foot slip, my sword get knocked out by a shield, my elbow armor catch on my belt, and many other minor fumbles. I've lost a shot because my eyes shut when I sneezed once. I've had a competent ally accidentally strike me during a melee.

These kinds of things do in fact happen. The biggest problem is using the word "fumble", which makes it look like it's the fighter's fault, rather than a natural result of a chaotic situation. I've seen the best fighter in the kingdom have a helm strap break in combat. Yes, "fumbles", in the sense of unplanned annoyances, occur no matter how experienced you are.

[Anonymouswizard]

I wonder if there's a way to balance this, with something like, (if you miss on more than 55% of your attacks this turn, and [some math that scales the number needed] of the misses was a 1, you suffer some effect at the end of your last attack".

Imprecise? Sure.

Inelegant? You bet.

But I wonder if something like this could lead to a more satisfactory solution to a fumble table.

Honestly? Bad Things if you roll a natural one on all your attacks in a round is probably fine.

I don't really care because I don't run D&D anymore. In fact, the next game I plan to run is Fantasy AGE and I'll be using a rule that tripples generate Stunts on failed rolls, meaning that the worst roll possible actually gives characters a very minor boost. I see no reason to punish players beyond failure.

Outside of combat I'll be making heavy use of 'failing forward' when characters fail their rolls, and a momentum pool that allows players to bump up near misses into successes, but that's completely different to fumbles.

[Cluedrew]

Actually, is there any systems that do two or more levels of failure. I have seen a couple that do multiple levels of success really well, but none the other way. None that I can think of at least.

The most interesting one I can think of is Shadowrun's glitch system, which can introduce a negative complication on either a failure or success and gets less likely as you get better at the task. However I have never played that game, so I don't know how well it works. As for indirect experience I cannot recall any particular praise or distain for it in the conversations I have heard about Shadowrun.

[Kadzar]

Mechanically, there's probably nothing wrong with this idea. It sounds a lot like how I've heard crit fails worked in 4e Dark Sun, only with more fumble results besides weapons breaking. (Actually, looking it up, it turns out having your weapon break actually granted you an immediate re-roll, rather than an automatic hit. I don't know whether or not you want to implement this.)

Anyway, if this thread is about how fumble rules can be done well in general, I feel it's worth mentioning how Talislanta does it (in basically all editions, since the core mechanic doesn't really change). In it, you only get a fumble result if you roll lower than a 1, which is possible because, instead of DC's or TN's, all actions involve rolling adding together all bonuses you have and subtracting the defensive or difficulty level of your target, combining that with a d20 roll and comparing the result with the action table. So you get the result that you'll only really fumble if you're totally inept and facing some sort of difficulty or if you're facing something totally out of your element. Though it can get to a point where it's completely impossible for you to fumble, depending on your skill and what you're going up against, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your tastes.

[Jama7301]

Honestly? Bad Things if you roll a natural one on all your attacks in a round is probably fine.


That'd also give a neat little bump to Two Weapon Fighting. If you're normally failing on a single 1, attacking twice, even at lower to hit chances, moves your odds of fumbling from 1-in-20 to 1-in-400.

[calam]

for some reason I can't shake the feeling that that sort of fumble rules would make fumbling desirable in some situations (I think it would in GURPS?)

I think that this would partially fix the biggest problem I have with fumbles, that they tend to ruin a serious mood. If you try to put the deathblow on a villain and accidentally throw your sword away it can be really silly. I mean can you imagine if in Star Wars 6 if Luke stopped attacking Vader because he accidentally throws the lightsaber behind him?
Now because these key points tend to be when someone would instantly killed anyway it won't be as mood breaking, the villain charging down an impaling a character, leaving behind the lance is a lot more evocative than the same villain's horse slipping on a banana peel mid charge so he has to get back up and beat the person to death.

[Lord Torath]

Things happen in a fight that none of the fighters planned, and which the opponent doesn't exploit.

In SCA combat, I've had a shield strap break, a foot slip, my sword get knocked out by a shield, my elbow armor catch on my belt, and many other minor fumbles. I've lost a shot because my eyes shut when I sneezed once. I've had a competent ally accidentally strike me during a melee.

These kinds of things do in fact happen. The biggest problem is using the word "fumble", which makes it look like it's the fighter's fault, rather than a natural result of a chaotic situation. I've seen the best fighter in the kingdom have a helm strap break in combat. Yes, "fumbles", in the sense of unplanned annoyances, occur no matter how experienced you are.So would it help if we call them "Mishaps" instead of "Fumbles"?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Things happen in a fight that none of the fighters planned, and which the opponent doesn't exploit.

In SCA combat, I've had a shield strap break, a foot slip, my sword get knocked out by a shield, my elbow armor catch on my belt, and many other minor fumbles. I've lost a shot because my eyes shut when I sneezed once. I've had a competent ally accidentally strike me during a melee.

These kinds of things do in fact happen. The biggest problem is using the word "fumble", which makes it look like it's the fighter's fault, rather than a natural result of a chaotic situation. I've seen the best fighter in the kingdom have a helm strap break in combat. Yes, "fumbles", in the sense of unplanned annoyances, occur no matter how experienced you are.
The thing is, for anything other than a lethal attack actually dealing meat-damage*, that's what the "damage" already is-- that sort of minor fumble that doesn't cause serious harm but makes you more likely to ultimately lose. Even if you are losing meat-points, it's easy to fold that sort of thing into the descriptions of why you miss, or why the opponent hits you-- your arrow goes wide because you sneeze at the last second, or you miss a parry because you snag your belt with your armor. For most systems, there's no need to add in this sort of secondary-failure state.


*As opposed to depleting some sort of abstract plot-armor, like Stress in Fate, initiative in Exalted 3e, or how HP are often used in D&D.

[FreddyNoNose]

Handling it this way has been suggested before, and I like it. If you don't want your highly skilled warrior to fumble more often than a peasant, just don't choose the fumble option, problem solved. I can understand that people don't like the disassociated nature of it, though.

To remedy that, you can maybe choose the type of fumble before the choice to opt in is made. I.e. "You fumble a bit (rolled 1), but you can still make the hit if you leave yourself undefended (AoO). Do you want to recover or go through?", or "you fumble a bit (rolled 1), but you can still make the hit, though that means you have to overextend your foot and twist your ankle (reduce movement). Do you want to recover or go through?"
If you are talking about peasant fighting a peasant and a character fighting a peasant the fumbles that's ok. But characters are going into much more powerful situations and which counter-balances their skill gain and it ends out even in the end.

But players being players, they feel it is wrong for their characters to fumble and make mistakes unless it is part of the story they agree to.

I am more of mind of: A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast taken with equal thanks.

I do run backup rolls.

[Jay R]

So would it help if we call them "Mishaps" instead of "Fumbles"?

Somewhat, yes. But both are included. To some extent, the problem is trying to define "weird unplanned things that can happen in a chaotic environment and change your immediate options" into a single category anyway.


The thing is, for anything other than a lethal attack actually dealing meat-damage*, that's what the "damage" already is-- that sort of minor fumble that doesn't cause serious harm but makes you more likely to ultimately lose. Even if you are losing meat-points, it's easy to fold that sort of thing into the descriptions of why you miss, or why the opponent hits you-- your arrow goes wide because you sneeze at the last second, or you miss a parry because you snag your belt with your armor. For most systems, there's no need to add in this sort of secondary-failure state.

That's an interesting idea, and there's nothing to stop you from assuming the simulation is sufficiently abstract to cover those things, but that's abstracting away the fun and excitement of being in those situations and making tactical choices. Consider the following:

You drop your weapon. In the next turn, you need to try to recover it or draw another. And your weapon is now on the ground; somebody else might recover it or kick it away.
Your bowstring snaps. You either spend lose a few rounds getting out a replacement, or you draw your melee weapon and jump in.
Your shield strap breaks, and can't be fixed in combat. Either drop it and fight without a shield, or continue with a large minus to your defense, and a small one to your attack (from distraction).
You slip and fall. Your teammates need to try to cover you or distract the foes nearest you until you can stand up, roll away, or attack from the ground.

Each of these possibilities changes the immediate tactical situation. So there are interesting new tactics and choices, which disappear if you claim that's what hit points and misses represent.

Certainly, you can abstract these interesting situations and choices out of the game. But if you're willing to do that, why not just go the next step? Roll one die to see who wins the encounter. Or just roll a single die for the campaign, to see if your characters meet, survive encounters, gain experience, grow in abilities, become great heroes, complete the quest, defeat the BBEG, and save the world.

If you aren't willing to do that because you would lose the fun and excitement of watching a situation unfold and making decisions along the way, then you will understand (even if you don't agree) why I don't want to lose the fun and excitement of a more complex series of situations and decisions.

[John Campbell]

Things happen in a fight that none of the fighters planned, and which the opponent doesn't exploit.

In SCA combat, I've had a shield strap break, a foot slip, my sword get knocked out by a shield, my elbow armor catch on my belt, and many other minor fumbles. I've lost a shot because my eyes shut when I sneezed once. I've had a competent ally accidentally strike me during a melee.

These kinds of things do in fact happen. The biggest problem is using the word "fumble", which makes it look like it's the fighter's fault, rather than a natural result of a chaotic situation. I've seen the best fighter in the kingdom have a helm strap break in combat. Yes, "fumbles", in the sense of unplanned annoyances, occur no matter how experienced you are.

Two problems I've seen with D&D fumble systems.

First is that DMs are generally horribly bad about making actually interesting things happen with them, rather than just screwing the PC in uncreative and implausible ways.

The other is that they're too common. Even if they're natural 1 and then confirm fumble, even if they're two natural 1s in a row, they're too common.

I've lost my weapon in combat. I've tripped over tree stumps and dead people and uneven ground. One time I tripped over a branch, crashed into an enemy spear, and bowled her over, too. I've had my sweat-slick gauntlet fly off as I reached for my seax to knife someone who had my polearm tied up. I've gotten my elbow armor or my knee armor hooked on my opponent's. I've been hit by a shot that I had blocked, because it broke the top off my shield. I've gotten my weapon wedged in an opponent's armor and been unable to extract it. I broke a greatsword over someone. I've burst armor straps. I've straight-up murdered a friendly because I lost track of who was on which side.

But I've been fighting in the SCA for 23 years, made I don't know how many thousands of "attack rolls" in that time, and except for tripping and breaking armor straps, these are all things that have happened once, maybe twice.

And that last one there were a lot of extenuating circumstances on. It was at fighter practice, so it was uniformly people I knew, not my friends vs. a bunch of strangers (or, say, freakish monsters from the literal pits of Hell), and we'd been doing six-man melees without any team markings, just remembering who was on which team. And we kept shuffling people around to even up teams as people stepped in or out, so I was pretty much just keeping track of who was on which side by whether they were facing me and guarding against me, which mostly worked as long as the lines stayed intact and the fights stayed reasonably orderly. But then we had one of those fights where, on contact, the lines just blew up into a chaotic mess of one-on-ones, two-on-ones. I killed the guy who'd engaged me, and then there was this girl in front of me, facing me, with sword and shield up. My hindbrain registered her as a target, I snuffed her without a thought, and as I was turning away to look for my next target, I realized that she had been on my team that fight.

And I've been shooting bows for more than 30 years, and I've broken a bowstring once. And that wasn't random happenstance; it was a flaw in the bow, a sharp edge on the nock that eventually sawed through the string with use. I filed it down and it hasn't bothered since.

So when one attack in twenty, or even 1:400, I drop my sword, or break my bowstring, or somehow confuse an elf with a dire wolf and accidentally kill the wrong one, it gets really old and really dumb.

So treating it not as opportunity to screw the PC, but as "something interesting happens" sounds like a good plan.

[Knaight]

I've lost my weapon in combat. I've tripped over tree stumps and dead people and uneven ground. One time I tripped over a branch, crashed into an enemy spear, and bowled her over, too. I've had my sweat-slick gauntlet fly off as I reached for my seax to knife someone who had my polearm tied up. I've gotten my elbow armor or my knee armor hooked on my opponent's. I've been hit by a shot that I had blocked, because it broke the top off my shield. I've gotten my weapon wedged in an opponent's armor and been unable to extract it. I broke a greatsword over someone. I've burst armor straps. I've straight-up murdered a friendly because I lost track of who was on which side.

But I've been fighting in the SCA for 23 years, made I don't know how many thousands of "attack rolls" in that time, and except for tripping and breaking armor straps, these are all things that have happened once, maybe twice.

More minor ones happen a lot more frequently though. I was fighting just the other day, on a hill with a light dusting (maybe an inch and a half) of snow. Over the course of that, just in fights I was involved in several people ended up getting hit because the snow overextended their shots (I got in a hit to the back I had no business getting because a rotating step just sort of continued for a while), there were two cases of weapons getting knocked out of people's hands during normal fighting plus a few deliberate disarms (mostly involving me hooking other people's axes with the end of a two handed spear and doing a whirling throw), and a couple of cases of friendlies getting hit*, a bow string breaking, and various other events that could be classed as fumbles. It was an unusually high density of them, and a pretty huge proportion can be blamed on snow and cold, but that's still a fair few fumbles. This was across a few hours of fighting with about 20 fighters total, which in D&D terms is up to 36,000 attack rolls, but those hours weren't constant pressed fighting for everyone all the time, and that 1/400 figure doesn't sound that bad.

Plus, at least we had decent lighting and nobody was fighting with actual severe injuries. Heck, we didn't even have anyone fighting with a broken finger last Sunday.

*This is a constant issue, but the group also will pretty often have fights involving 20 people where people are constantly switching teams, so this particular one extrapolates very poorly.

[martixy]

Check my sig.

P.S. Since the time I wrote them, we've been playing and all my players have individually opted to use them. They've worked out marvellously.

[gkathellar]

3) You hit, but a bad step twists your ankle. For the remainder of the combat, reduce your movement by half.

"Wait, aren't we flying? I thought we were flying."
"... you take a bad ... wingbeat ... and twist your flight feathers?"
"I'm using Overland Flight."
"Shut up."

[Lord Torath]

3) You hit, but a bad step twists your ankle. For the remainder of the combat, reduce your movement by half."Wait, aren't we flying? I thought we were flying."
"... you take a bad ... wingbeat ... and twist your flight feathers?"
"I'm using Overland Flight."
"Shut up."Ah, yes. The ubiquitous problem with crit/fumble tables: results that don't make sense for the current situation. I'd say follow the rules for 2E Wild Surges in that case: ignore it. If a door suddenly changes sex, can you even tell? What happens to a Purple Worm that has its feet enlarged? Nothing. Will you even notice if bubbles fly out of a boulder's mouth when it tries to speak?