Fumbles

[Biggus]

I was reading an old thread about "worst house rules" and one of the first answers was critical fumbles (and no-one disagreed). Most tables I've played at use some variant of the fumble rules, and I've never heard anyone complain. Personally I find they add a bit of extra excitement and sometimes humour to the game. So...are fumbles a widely-hated variant? If so why?

[Asmotherion]

i don't hate it and depending on the tone of the game i might love it.

in gritty realism the possibility of things going terribly wrong in battle should be there.

in an Epic Fantasy game i'd rather not have my character's tombstone read "hit by his own disintergrade spell".

i'd also rather appreciate them in a Horror game; adds to the whole "you should never feel safe" feeling.

[Faily]

I have nothing against fumble-rules, and they've given some very memorable comical scenes in games I've been in.

I just can't be bothered to use them when I GM.

[Psychoalpha]

So...are fumbles a widely-hated variant? If so why?

Probably depends on the game, for a lot of people, but my experience with D20 fantasy is that people mostly dislike them in practice, myself included.

As PCs you roll a lot. Beyond that, specific characters roll more often than others. The Wizard who casts one spell per round has one chance to fumble in most combat rounds, while the fighter or rogue who attacks multiple times has maaaaany more, and while a Fighter is probably making way less skill checks than a Wizard, the Rogue gets to double down on both skill checks and attack rolls more often than not.

With attacks, an automatic miss is already bad enough. It means your action (or that part of your action) was essentially wasted. Adding insult to injury just feels unnecessary. With skill checks, one of the few mercies of the system is that with enough aptitude or training you can achieve a reasonable amount of success even with the worst turn of luck. That is a feature, not a flaw of the system. Adding fumbles to skill checks, and again consider the crazy number of skill checks that will be made over the lifetime of a character, just seems unnecessary. I don't really need 5% of them to be screwups.

If they work for you and yours, more power to you, but for my part seeing a GM who decides to use them is probably indicative of a table experience I'm not going to enjoy so I'll find another game. There's no shortage of hilarious screwups in the games I've played in as-is, just due to mistakes PCs have made, without adding the certainty of a 1 in 20 chance.

[False God]

One of my GMs runs fumbles as follows:
After rolling a Nat 1, roll a d12 to determine direction. 12 is right in front of you, like a clock.
Roll a percentile. Middle numbers (30-70 typically) mean you just miss. High numbers mean you threw your weapon, low numbers mean you dropped it.
There's a chance that if you roll a 12, and a middle number, you still hit your target. So that's kinda neat. A little complicated for me though.

I just roll to confirm. If you confirm a Nat 1 you drop your weapon.

[Xervous]

Almost exclusively I've seen fumbles implemented in a manner that does not give the player any agency over controlling how easily they might fumble at a given task. It is these arbitrary fumble rates that I detest. Contrast this with something like SR4e's fumble system where the chance of fumbling drops off heavily the more competent a character is. Fumbles aren't a desired outcome, they are something a player will want to avoid just as surely as they don't want to end up in the spike pit or end up smothered in lava. If the only answer to "how do I avoid fumbles?" is to roll less often the fumble system is guaranteed to be flawed. Something like a reflex save I'd call out as bull**** alike as it means a bard is less likely to fumble with a halberd than typical warrior is, such values aren't naturally the focus and require a moderate deviation from the normal build decisions in order to mitigate. If there are to be fumbles the functions governing their frequency should take into account numbers that are clearly tied to the competency of the character in question.

[Psychoalpha]

I just roll to confirm. If you confirm a Nat 1 you drop your weapon.

So if a Wizard rolls a Nat 1 on their Disintegrate, do they drop their spell? >_>

[False God]

So if a Wizard rolls a Nat 1 on their Disintegrate, do they drop their spell? >_>

Yes, they "drop" the spell. ie: lose the spell as if they had expended its use/slot and nothing happens.

Though I like to give out more Harry Potter/4E-style "wands" and LOTR-style "staffs" as casting aides, and if they are using that to cast with, they drop that.

[Psychoalpha]

Yes, they "drop" the spell. ie: lose the spell as if they had expended its use/slot and nothing happens.

Right, so... if a fighter rolls a 1, he drops his sword (or whatever), something beyond simply missing like a 1 would normally do.

But if a wizard rolls a 1, he loses his spell as if he'd expended its use/slot and nothing happens... more or less exactly like simply missing like a 1 would normally do.

Sure.


Though I like to give out more Harry Potter/4E-style "wands" and LOTR-style "staffs" as casting aides, and if they are using that to cast with, they drop that.

That'd offer more parity, especially since it's probably just as difficult to confirm touch attacks as other types of... oh wait. ;D

[False God]

Right, so... if a fighter rolls a 1, he drops his sword (or whatever), something beyond simply missing like a 1 would normally do.
If he confirms, yes. A nat 1 is an auto-miss. A confirmed nat 1 is a drop.


But if a wizard rolls a 1, he loses his spell as if he'd expended its use/slot and nothing happens... more or less exactly like simply missing like a 1 would normally do.

Sure.
Assuming you're not running one of the innumerable ways to avoid losing a spell after casting it. The confirmed nat 1 trumps all that.


That'd offer more parity, especially since it's probably just as difficult to confirm touch attacks as other types of... oh wait. ;D
Fighter loot (like swords, shields and stuff) will typically confer higher bonuses and static effects like damage reduction and regeneration and energy immunities. Wizard loot (wands, staffs, robes) will typically confer special effects, rather than large +bonuses. Longer durations, higher damage, alternate damage types and special statuses on crits.

I'm aware wizards don't need any help to hit, especially with touch attacks. Having a fighter with a +6 Sword of Sundering(Gives Imp Sunder while used and does 6*dmg on objects) and a Wizard with a +1 Wand of Gold (When you cast Flesh to Stone, if they fumble their save they become gold instead of mundane stone) is what you'd likely see at my table.

[Lorddenorstrus]

Fumbles over punish the weakest chunk of D&D players, martials. While having no effect on a high end spell caster. Fumbles are idiotic. It's a "homerule" usually in use from people who don't understand how balance works or that martials need a leg up to function not a beheading.

[NNescio]

Quoth Philistine:


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.

I suppose I might consider using fumble rules if full spellcasters had to roll Concentration for every spell they cast ever, and a Natural 1 on that roll had comparable consequences to a Natural 1 on a mundane attack... but really, No. Just no. Not even then.

[Zancloufer]

The biggest two issues with Fumble rules tend to be that, they hurt skill monkeys and beatsticks more than casters and that as your level increase fumbles are MORE likely to ruin your day.

Consider a roll on a 1 has something bad happen when attacking or 1 on a skill check = auto fail.

A level 20 Fighter with 4 attacks will mathematically fail 1/20 attacks, or fumble once every ~30 seconds. A level 1 Fighter will also fumble 1/20 attacks but that only happens once every 2 minutes on average. Essentially a highly trained warrior general will fumble more times/minute than a green behind the ears new recruit.

This also becomes an issue in hitting skill check DCs. Compare a Bard with ~10 Diplomancy and a Bard with 30. They both have to hit a DC 20 to make someone friendly. The bard with 10 Diplomacy will fail 1/2 their checks and the nat 1 doesn't matter because it's a fail normally. However the master Bard with 30 Diplomacy would normally make the check even on a 1 but because of critical fumble rules now fails that roll on occasion.

[Biggus]

specific characters roll more often than others. The Wizard who casts one spell per round has one chance to fumble in most combat rounds, while the fighter or rogue who attacks multiple times has maaaaany more, and while a Fighter is probably making way less skill checks than a Wizard, the Rogue gets to double down on both skill checks and attack rolls more often than not.

This is a fair point. I don't usually use fumbles on skill checks, but it's true that fumbles hit martials harder than casters.



without adding the certainty of a 1 in 20 chance.

The standard rule is that you have to make a DC10 Dex check to avoid fumbling, so it's not a certainty of a 1 in 20 chance. Personally I'm currently using a critical confirmation roll version (if you miss on the second roll, it's a fumble, if you hit it's just a miss).


Fumbles are idiotic. It's a "homerule" usually in use from people who don't understand how balance works or that martials need a leg up to function not a beheading.

There's no need to be rude. Fumbles make the game more fun for me and most of the people I play with, so they're not idiotic for us. If game balance is the top priority for you, fair enough: for us excitement and humour often take precedence. Also, we use other methods to improve balance between classes to it's not a major problem.

[Faily]

There's no need to be rude. Fumbles make the game more fun for me and most of the people I play with, so they're not idiotic for us. If game balance is the top priority for you, fair enough: for us excitement and humour often take precedence. Also, we use other methods to improve balance between classes to it's not a major problem.

This.

Most people are aware of the game balance surrounding fumble rules, but just have more fun with them.

Let people have their fun.

[Karl Aegis]

Man, I got the locked gauntlet, the sovereign glue, some kind of magic weapon and I still have to pass a Dexterity check just to see if my weapon suddenly gets stolen by an imp and lost forever? Why am I even trying to bother with heavy armor at all? Better to just play... nothing. Losing key pieces of loot at random is not fun.

[HeraldOfExius]

In a campaign that I am currently in, I had a character die to a fumble. It wasn't even my fumble, but another player rolled a 1, rolled to confirm it, got a miss, and then rolled on a table of bad stuff that resulted in "triple damage friend." I died from that hit even though I was at full HP (admittedly this was at level 1 where crits are the most swingy). I was using stealth at the time, so the enemies we were fighting didn't even know I was there before I died.

Do we joke about this happening? Of course; it's completely ridiculous, after all. Does that change the fact that getting insta-killed by a party member when there's nothing either of you can do about it is miserable? No.

[Psychoalpha]

There's no need to be rude. Fumbles make the game more fun for me and most of the people I play with, so they're not idiotic for us. If game balance is the top priority for you, fair enough: for us excitement and humour often take precedence. Also, we use other methods to improve balance between classes to it's not a major problem.

I mean... you're arguing that as long as people at a table are having fun, none of the rules they use are idiotic, regardless of how bad they are. Only adding sneak attack to one attack per round regardless of circumstances? Caster Level boosts granting spell level access as if they were levels in the casting class? Mandatory vital strike for all combatants because full attacks make the game take too long? None of these things are idiotic as long as somebody, somewhere, enjoys them?

Going to have to disagree.

As noted, I've never really seen any shortage of excitement and humor at our tables even without fumble rules, so the idea of enforcing extra levels of failure that disproportionately impact those classes who already have the least toys just to introduce some to your game is really pretty sad. :(

[King of Nowhere]

The biggest two issues with Fumble rules tend to be that, they hurt skill monkeys and beatsticks more than casters and that as your level increase fumbles are MORE likely to ruin your day.



Almost exclusively I've seen fumbles implemented in a manner that does not give the player any agency over controlling how easily they might fumble at a given task.



High numbers mean you threw your weapon, low numbers mean you dropped it.
[Have you have seen a competent fighter dropping their weapon without being disarmed??? anyone here tried a bit of swordplay for real?]

those posts outline the major problems with critical fumbles. not much their existance, but they way they are often implemented. the most asinine of those is, of course, the high level fighter dropping the sword every couple rounds.

Fumbles are all ok if they are reasonable. personally, I suggest that a fumble should provoke an attack of opportunity, as in "your attack was too aggressive and left you overexposed". andd they should require confirmation, of course.
such a fumble woouldn't negatively impact a wizard, but it also wouldn't positively impact a wizard when a foe fumbles against him, so that's fair. but it doesn't add anything to the game, so I don't use it.

Anyway, I would want to see a ffumble table before deciding whether to play. with the dumb "drop the weapon" ccase, it's definitely a no (or a "play something else", if my friends are playing and I'm in for the company). but with sensible tables, it wouldn't be a problem.

Seriously, this is just the same situation as the "what's wrong with lawful good" in another thread. there's nothing wrongwith the thing per se, but it's done poorly so often, ppeople are now suspicious a priori.

[Ryton]

One of my issues with Fumbling is that it is often presented as "realistic" (in a game with magic), while it's generally ludicrously unrealistic.

For instance, a quick Google tells me that in 2010, there were an average of~67 swings per game in the MLB. The odds of not fumbling are less than 3.5%. That means we should be seeing professional baseball players drop bats, or hit themselves with a bat, or somehow hit the umpire somewhere between 1-3 time per game. Anyone ever seen that sort of frequency in a live game? Even an amateur one?
In university, I took an archery class. 20 people, 20 arrows per quiver, for an hour, twice a week, for 4 months. Not once over the course of tens of thousands of arrows fired did I see anyone drop their bow while attacking, or accidentally shooting the person next to them, or breaking a bowstring. Not once. In a class of amateurs.

Now if you want gritty randomness, write a bunch of random effects (but static effects, the raging barbarian somehow performing an autocritting full attack on himself is not the same as the wizard autocritting himself once with a quarterstaff, if they're gonna have to damage themselves, keep the numbers static) on some decks of cards, and have every player draw one, once per turn or something. Every player should be subject to the same chances of terribleness equally.

[Particle_Man]

I hate fumble rules. I want to play Big Damn Heroes not the Keystone Cops.

[Bavarian itP]

In university, I took an archery class. 20 people, 20 arrows per quiver, for an hour, twice a week, for 4 months. Not once over the course of tens of thousands of arrows fired did I see anyone drop their bow while attacking, or accidentally shooting the person next to them, or breaking a bowstring. Not once. In a class of amateurs.


How many orcs trying to kill you were present during these training exercises?

[Ryton]

How many orcs trying to kill you were present during these training exercises?

Oh, is the presence of orcs a requirement for fumbles?

[Particle_Man]

If you want two way combats look at Olympic fencing matches or the like. Very rare indeed for a fencer to stab themselves or the judge or a random audience member. Or look at the SCA where people swing at each other with Rattan swords. The truth does not come close to matching most fumble rules.

[Psychoalpha]

If you want two way combats look at Olympic fencing matches or the like. Very rare indeed for a fencer to stab themselves or the judge or a random audience member. Or look at the SCA where people swing at each other with Rattan swords. The truth does not come close to matching most fumble rules.

It doesn't come close in really any situation where martial combat is practiced routinely. For most of my early life I was in and out of various martial arts schools (my mom thought it would help me with some self control issues, and she was mostly right), and even experienced children don't fumble like they do with any of these fumble rules.

But hey, at least people are getting their mechanically mandated humor and excitement, I guess.

[Doctor Awkward]

A number of reasons:

1) In 3.5, you roll to confirm a critical hit. No one ever rolls to confirm a critical failure (at least not at any table I have played at). Instead the moment a natural 1 occurs, you immediately begin rolling on whatever chart is present to determine your impending doom. The simple act of rolling a d20 a second time-- and using a miss to "confirm" the critical fumble-- would be a mild improvement, however...

2) Critical fumbles are mathematically awful for the players. On the one possibility of the presence of a table that offers permanent injuries or other penalties for a critical fumble, it is statistically definite that by the end of a campaign a combat character will be so stacked up with penalties it will be rendered all but unplayable. Meanwhile, the vast majority of injuries on NPC's are irrelevant because at the end of combat they will likely be dead.

3) Even without the presence of a permanent injury system, it still places a massive statistical burden on the players. In order for the players to finish the campaign, they have to win every combat. In order for the enemy NPC's to stop the players, they have to win once. Critical fumbles dramatically stack these odds in favor of the enemies the more often combat that occurs.

4) As with many similar combat changes, it greatly hoses martial characters and rarely affects spellcasters. Even if you include supplemental effects for spellcasters that aren't actually an additional punishment for non-spellcasters (for example one noteworthy table I was at for a very short time where a critical fumble on a ranged touch spell caused it to automatically hit a nearby ally instead), spellcasters always have the option to simply stop using spells that require attack rolls. Martial characters don't.

5) Such systems are often grossly imbalanced compared against the critical hit rules already in place in the PHB. A successful critical hit results in multiplying the weapon damage roll by the particular weapon you are using. And that's it. The mathematical advantage gained by this varies greatly depending on the weapon, but at best it generally results in an extra round of successful attack rolls. On the other hand, critical fumble charts often produce a staggering array of effects, the most common of which in my experience is dropping your weapon (costing you a round of attacks in addition to opening you up to free AoO's from the enemy), to damaging or breaking your weapon which potentially removes you from the fight, to causing harm to an ally, or some other permanent effect which could not only remove you from the current fight but future fights as well.


In the many, many years I have played tabletop RPG's I have never once played in a game that used a homebrewed critical fumble chart that was not ultimately detrimental to the game for one reason or another. The one time I played in a system that had a baked in chart, a Thieve's World game, it ended up causing a player to leave the game.*

I have found the concept to be largely contrary to the point of playing an escapism game. And my advice on critical fumble systems begins and ends with "Don't."



*It's a long story, but the short version is that he was an archer that had one of his arms permanently disabled as a result of a critical hit from an enemy. He could no longer wield a bow which rendered his character essentially a liability as he could not participate in combat. The DM had likewise made it clear that there was nothing that existed that could repair this damage. The player was fond of the character and did not want to roll up anything else, and ended up leaving the game the end of the next session after the injury occurred.

[Asmotherion]

Oh, is the presence of orcs a requirement for fumbles?

To give a simple example: in practice i hit the target most of the time and i frequently hit a bullseye.

When playing paintball i have both done and received accidental (as in not intentional) friendly fire.

[King of Nowhere]

To give a simple example: in practice i hit the target most of the time and i frequently hit a bullseye.

When playing paintball i have both done and received accidental (as in not intentional) friendly fire.

on that specific point, having a fumble on a ranged attack (either mundane or magical) hitting someone that's cclose to your intended target, or along the path, is reasonable. I think there are some rules for hitting cover, anyway. and that someone may even be another enemy, so not necesssarily detrimental (and could be the source of "actually, I was aiming for the horse" moments)

But the difference between hitting the bullseye and shooting another person at paitball is simple: when target practicing, thhe target is standing still, you are standing still and taking aim steadily, and there is not much time pressure. if you have to shoot a rrunning target while you yourself are running in another direction, then anything can happen.

[Asmotherion]

on that specific point, having a fumble on a ranged attack (either mundane or magical) hitting someone that's cclose to your intended target, or along the path, is reasonable. I think there are some rules for hitting cover, anyway. and that someone may even be another enemy, so not necesssarily detrimental (and could be the source of "actually, I was aiming for the horse" moments)

But the difference between hitting the bullseye and shooting another person at paitball is simple: when target practicing, thhe target is standing still, you are standing still and taking aim steadily, and there is not much time pressure. if you have to shoot a rrunning target while you yourself are running in another direction, then anything can happen.

Exactly. And add to that the fact that in a combat situation (or simulation) you have to decide between "shoot" or "don't shoot" in the fraction of a seccond. if you overthink it for a moment the enemy has an opportunity to hit you. This pressure is what can cause you to "fumble".

[HeraldOfExius]

Exactly. And add to that the fact that in a combat situation (or simulation) you have to decide between "shoot" or "don't shoot" in the fraction of a seccond. if you overthink it for a moment the enemy has an opportunity to hit you. This pressure is what can cause you to "fumble".

The main issue that I have with this reasoning is that there are already mechanics to account for the difficulty of hitting your intended target, such as cover from other creatures and the penalty for shooting into melee. Yes, it would be more realistic if you could hit somebody other than your intended target rather than being limited to hitting your target or nobody at all, but I find the resulting gameplay of hitting an ally every other encounter less fun.

[Karl Aegis]

If there's a friend don't fire. Friendly fire is 100% avoidable if you're making logical decisions. If you do hit a friendly target you have made a bad decision. Or an Evil(tm) decision. Even demons think twice about hitting a peer.

[Ryton]

To give a simple example: in practice i hit the target most of the time and i frequently hit a bullseye.

When playing paintball i have both done and received accidental (as in not intentional) friendly fire.

Yes, but how many fumble charts account for fighting a stationary target, and how many simply require a 1 to be consulted?

And more specifically to your example, in all the presumably hundred of paintball rounds fired at friends (or strangers, depending on the range) how many times have you dropped your gun? Had all of the balls spontaneously explode in the hopper? Because those are just as likely to be found on a fumble table as friendly fire.

I'm not saying fumbles don't happen. I'm just saying if you want a realistic fumble, a master fencer might overextend and leave a hole in his defense that a similarly master fencer might exploit. He's not going to accidentally cut his own arm off.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Not quite fumbles, but my current table has the current house rule for skill checks: a nat 1 isn't an auto-fail, but imposes a -10 penalty to the role, and a nat 20 isn't an auto-succeed, but grants a +10 bonus to the check.

[NNescio]

Not quite fumbles, but my current table has the current house rule for skill checks: a nat 1 isn't an auto-fail, but imposes a -10 penalty to the role, and a nat 20 isn't an auto-succeed, but grants a +10 bonus to the check.

By default, Nat 20s don't auto-succeed on skill checks anyway.

[Asmotherion]

The main issue that I have with this reasoning is that there are already mechanics to account for the difficulty of hitting your intended target, such as cover from other creatures and the penalty for shooting into melee. Yes, it would be more realistic if you could hit somebody other than your intended target rather than being limited to hitting your target or nobody at all, but I find the resulting gameplay of hitting an ally every other encounter less fun.

Depending on the tone and setting i don't disagree with this either. i however still enjoy the mechanic in a horror/gritty realism game a lot.


Yes, but how many fumble charts account for fighting a stationary target, and how many simply require a 1 to be consulted?

And more specifically to your example, in all the presumably hundred of paintball rounds fired at friends (or strangers, depending on the range) how many times have you dropped your gun? Had all of the balls spontaneously explode in the hopper? Because those are just as likely to be found on a fumble table as friendly fire.

I'm not saying fumbles don't happen. I'm just saying if you want a realistic fumble, a master fencer might overextend and leave a hole in his defense that a similarly master fencer might exploit. He's not going to accidentally cut his own arm off.

You're right. The examples given are far less likely to occure. This is why they'd be represented as a smaller percentage on the d100. For more realism you could add a seccond table referanced to by the initial fumble chart; however this would be overcomplicating things.

[Divine Susuryu]

Since this is the d20 forum, the majority fumble rules are easy to show as bad, especially for skills. After all, they come up 1 in 20 times in that most of them work off rolling a 1.

For attacks, there's already a critical failure state, the automatic miss - that works because all it does is waste a single attack that may not have even hit in the first place. If on top of that you add in additional consequences, you're making attacking more frequently a curse, not a blessing. If a Fighter 20 with his 4 attacks has a higher chance of humiliating or worse hurting himself than a Commoner 1 does, it's a bad rule. Simple as that.

For skills, this ties into the rules for taking 10. In activities like skills, it should be possible to perform consistently and even perform under pressure. That's why taking 10 is a thing, to prevent someone who is knowledgable in a field from randomly not knowing basic facts about that field. If you even use the most basic of critical failure states - failing on a 1 - what you're saying is that in a dangerous situation, even a 20th level 30 STR Barbarian fails at jumping a foot upwards 1 time in 20. I'm hardly a paragon of fitness nor would I be particularly high level, but in a dangerous situation, I absolutely do not have a 1 in 20 chance to fail to jump a foot into the air.

If you're using another probability system, such as d100s, then the issue is lessened but not absent.

[FaerieGodfather]

The use of supplemental, unofficial or-- worst of all-- homebrewed critical fumble rules is an instant dealbreaker for me. Not only are they a complete violation of everything I want from my roleplaying time, but long experience discussing fumble rules has taught me that their presence invariably means that the game will be filled with all kinds of other intolerable stupidity.

The only games in which fumble rules are even theoretically acceptable are games like Paranoia and TOON and other games that are supposed to be ridiculous, slapstick farces... and I generally do not prefer those sorts of games as a rule.


You're right. The examples given are far less likely to occure. This is why they'd be represented as a smaller percentage on the d100. For more realism you could add a seccond table referanced to by the initial fumble chart; however this would be overcomplicating things.

Which of those examples do you think should even occur one time in a hundred after a character rolls a 1 on a d20? Once in every 2,000 attempted attacks?

There's simply no way to make the "realism argument" for critical fumbles even remotely valid.


in gritty realism the possibility of things going terribly wrong in battle should be there.

Other people have already pointed out how comedically unrealistic most fumble rules systems really are and how completely inappropriate they are for maintaining a gritty, serious tone, but I'm just going to share my Rolemaster story.

Now, I grew to love Rolemaster eventually, years later, even if I do still strip out the goddamned fumbles. But a couple of people in one of my old D&D groups, a long time ago, were Rolemaster people and they really went hammer and tongs into convincing me how much better Rolemaster was. (They were playing Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying, for reference, the 3.5 to Rolemaster Standard System's 3.0.)

I'm going to state this up front, that I had a real hard time with the system going in. I didn't have enough time to read and digest the rulebook, and Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying has an especially steep learning curve for people who aren't already well-versed in the ICE way of doing things.

So it took me almost two hours to finish up my character, holding up the rest of the game. I made some kind of lizardman fighter.

In our very first combat, finally, I rolled pretty poorly on my initiative and ended up going last... after a couple of orcs had disarmed me and wrestled me to the ground. This, admittedly, was fun and exciting. But pinned to the ground, I only had one real maneuver available to me... so I attempted use my reptilian nature and bite one of my enemies.

And I rolled a 03 on d%, a critical fumble. I had to roll again and subtract the result from 03.

And I rolled a 97, for a total of -94. Which means... I had to roll again and subtract the result from -94.

The guys from my D&D group are giving me knowing glances. The guy I just met chuckles. I get another pair of d10s out of my bag, and my girlfriend (at the time) blows on them.

00. -194.

The DM loans me his "lucky" dice. 96, total of -290, and just barely forcing another reroll. Everyone is now watching with rapt interest.

99 brings me to -389. On more reroll. 95. I utter the foulest curses I know and go to pick up the dice, but the DM stops me: "You only have to reroll on 96 or higher."

Total of -484. One in 3.2 million chance. We consult the fumble chart, and indeed, I have injured myself... to the tune of an E Critical and another E Critical on the Bite chart.

Got identical results on both critical rolls: Instant decapitation.

In the most realistic combat system in any roleplaying game ever, my character bit his own head off, twice, on his first attack roll.

I've never played a more realistic fantasy battle since.

[RatElemental]

The only fumble rules I've ever seen be mostly functional are the ones from shadowrun 4e, mostly because the more skilled, better equipped and more apt you are for what you're doing the less and exponentially less likely you are to glitch. You can also succeed while simultaneously glitching, and glitches are decided by the GM and supposed to be not disastrous: knocking over an object you were jumping over and falling on a nail you didn't see is an example given.

[NNescio]

=


You're right. The examples given are far less likely to occure. This is why they'd be represented as a smaller percentage on the d100. For more realism you could add a seccond table referanced to by the initial fumble chart; however this would be overcomplicating things.



For skills, this ties into the rules for taking 10. In activities like skills, it should be possible to perform consistently and even perform under pressure. That's why taking 10 is a thing, to prevent someone who is knowledgable in a field from randomly not knowing basic facts about that field. If you even use the most basic of critical failure states - failing on a 1 - what you're saying is that in a dangerous situation, even a 20th level 30 STR Barbarian fails at jumping a foot upwards 1 time in 20. I'm hardly a paragon of fitness nor would I be particularly high level, but in a dangerous situation, I absolutely do not have a 1 in 20 chance to fail to jump a foot into the air.

If you're using another probability system, such as d100s, then the issue is lessened but not absent.


Which of those examples do you think should even occur one time in a hundred after a character rolls a 1 on a d20? Once in every 2,000 attempted attacks?

Obviously the solution is to roll d1000(0)s, FATAL style. It's not too hard; just take 3 or 4 d10s!

(Don't.)

[Kesnit]

If there's a friend don't fire. Friendly fire is 100% avoidable if you're making logical decisions. If you do hit a friendly target you have made a bad decision. Or an Evil(tm) decision. Even demons think twice about hitting a peer.

So you would be OK with the ranged fighter sitting out most combats because there is almost always going to be an ally near an enemy? And the higher level the ranged combatant, the more they should sit out since they would be making more attacks, making it more likely to hit an ally?

[ekarney]

It's been said before, but I'll say it again.

It punishes martials for trying to do the one thing they're good at. I have the mentality of 'punishing' players for bad tactical decisions, the fighter swinging a sword at whatever needs to die, is a pretty sound tactical decision in my books. Arguably the fighter should get a bonus for swinging weapons, possibly in the form of some sort of good base attack bonus.

[HeraldOfExius]

If there's a friend don't fire. Friendly fire is 100% avoidable if you're making logical decisions. If you do hit a friendly target you have made a bad decision. Or an Evil(tm) decision. Even demons think twice about hitting a peer.

Since most fumble rules are applied to melee attacks as well as ranged, does this mean that everybody should just break off into 1v1 duels all the time (or 2v1 with flanking if your ally needs to be in reach to risk getting hit)?


Depending on the tone and setting i don't disagree with this either. i however still enjoy the mechanic in a horror/gritty realism game a lot.

That seems fair enough. I've just had bad experiences with people sticking fumbles into heroic fantasy, which left me rather soured towards fumbles in general.

[GloatingSwine]

the possibility of things going terribly wrong in battle should be there.


It is traditionally the function of the enemies to provide this though.

If you want "gritty realism" you shouldn't want the kind of slapstick that most fumble tables devolve into as people find ever more goonish nonsense to fill them up with.

(Also you don't need fumbles for friendly fire. The best friendly fire rule I ever saw was in the skirmish game Infinity. If you fire into a melee you take a -3 penalty on a D20. If you miss by 3 or less you hit the wrong target.)

[Biggus]

A level 20 Fighter with 4 attacks will mathematically fail 1/20 attacks, or fumble once every ~30 seconds. A level 1 Fighter will also fumble 1/20 attacks but that only happens once every 2 minutes on average. Essentially a highly trained warrior general will fumble more times/minute than a green behind the ears new recruit.


I've been thinking a bit more about this, which as far as I can see is the main mechanical problem with fumbles (most of the other objections seem to come down to "I find they make the game less fun for me" or "they're nearly always badly implemented"). I think it could be largely solved by using a slight variant of the fumble mechanic in the DMG. If instead of always making a DC10 Dex check, you make either a DC10 Str check (for most melee weapons) or a DC10 Dex check (for ranged or finesse weapons) to avoid fumbling. This would mean that martial characters who specialised in either Str or Dex would get less and less likely to fumble on their chosen attack style as they go up levels, with the chance becoming zero if the relevant ability score reaches 28.



1) In 3.5, you roll to confirm a critical hit. No one ever rolls to confirm a critical failure (at least not at any table I have played at). Instead the moment a natural 1 occurs, you immediately begin rolling on whatever chart is present to determine your impending doom. The simple act of rolling a d20 a second time-- and using a miss to "confirm" the critical fumble-- would be a mild improvement, however...

Not only do I always use some kind of confirmation roll as I already noted, in the current version I'm using the penalty for a standard failed confirmation is pretty mild: lose your next attack (if making a full attack) or half of your next move while you steady yourself, or take a -2AC penalty when next attacked if you don't have any actions left to lose this round (if you're not attacked before the start of your next turn, congratulations, you got away with it). I only get the "catastrophe table" (drop weapon, fall over, hit self, hit ally, break weapon) out if they get a natural 1 on the confirmation roll as well as the original attack roll.

[Karl Aegis]

So you would be OK with the ranged fighter sitting out most combats because there is almost always going to be an ally near an enemy? And the higher level the ranged combatant, the more they should sit out since they would be making more attacks, making it more likely to hit an ally?

There is almost always going to be an enemy without an ally near them. There's only a limited number of spaces between the player characters and monsters, so if all those spaces are filled with allies all of you have made bad decisions.

[Voidstar01]

Not only do I always use some kind of confirmation roll as I already noted, in the current version I'm using the penalty for a standard failed confirmation is pretty mild: lose your next attack (if making a full attack) or half of your next move while you steady yourself, or take a -2AC penalty when next attacked if you don't have any actions left to lose this round (if you're not attacked before the start of your next turn, congratulations, you got away with it). I only get the "catastrophe table" (drop weapon, fall over, hit self, hit ally, break weapon) out if they get a natural 1 on the confirmation roll as well as the original attack roll.

That still punishes martials way harder than it punishes casters:
Without fumble:
level 20 wizard rolls a 1: spell misses
level 20 fighter rolls a 1: attack misses

With fumble rule, no confirm:
Level 20 wizard gets an AC penalty: the miss chance they have from any number of the spells that do that don't care, their AC was uselessly low anyway, and they shouldn't be anywhere near enough to melee combat for an enemy using a single move action to endanger them.
Level 20 fighter gets an AC penalty: is now significantly more likely to die because any number of enemies can move in to kill them since they're at the front lines.

Lost movement:
Wizard: less likely to need to move, since they have ranged spells, if they absolutely need to move 30ft right away, can use any number of teleportation spells they can get.
Fighter: unless you're an archer, sucks to be you I guess.

Lost attack:
Wizard: never takes full attacks
fighter: functions at half effectiveness this turn since lost attack + the auto miss equals 2/4 attacks doing no damage

Crit fail with a confirm:
Drops weapon:
Fighter: looses 6 attacks worth of damage and opens themselves to opportunity attacks.
Wizard: lol wut weapon

hits someone else:
Fighter: someone else takes some damage
Wizard: someone else now needs to save or die, or any number of other nasty things (exhaustion, sickened, panicked etc.)

This gets slightly better with the introduction of caster implements, but it's still 2 lost spells vs. 6 lost attacks. add in the fact the martial characters are still more likely to induce a fumble, and that wizards can just use AoEs to never risk it and you have a supremlyy unbalanced system.

[Voidstar01]

There is almost always going to be an enemy without an ally near them. There's only a limited number of spaces between the player characters and monsters, so if all those spaces are filled with allies all of you have made bad decisions.

having played an archer, I can confirm that's not true. Encounters rarely outnumber you more than 7:1, which is the amount it would need to be for each square next to your allies to be full.

of course you could get in an archer battle, but in that case it's better to let your melee rush the archer, since archery provokes AoO in melee combat.

[Telonius]

Fumbles are for bad guys, and mook bad guys at that. When I DM, Random Orc #12 might roll a fumble on a 1, and have some hilarious catastrophe happen to him. That doesn't happen to PCs or main bad guys.

[Adiart]

When I DM, Random Orc #12 might roll a fumble on a 1, and have some hilarious catastrophe happen to him. That doesn't happen to PCs or main bad guys.
I find this idea quite interesting, but I fear it happening too often (as is the case in a d20 system) might make the opposition look absurdly incompetent, which is not always a good thing in more serious campaigns.

[Quertus]

Fumbles are for bad guys, and mook bad guys at that. When I DM, Random Orc #12 might roll a fumble on a 1, and have some hilarious catastrophe happen to him. That doesn't happen to PCs or main bad guys.

Fumble Resistance (feat): allows you to make <insert check here> to avoid fumbles. Does not work against provoked fumbles

Fumble Immunity (feat, requires Fumble Resistance): you no longer roll for normal fumbles, and allows <roll> (as Fumble Resistance) against provoked fumbles.

Humiliating Critical (feat, requires Improved Critical): whenever you would score a critical hit - even against foes normally immune to critical hits - you may force the foe to roll on the critical fumble table instead. If your weapon has more than a x2 crit, they roll an additional fumble for every multiplier of your weapons crit above x2.

Obnoxious Target (feat, requires Dodge): wherever the target of your Dodge bonus attacks you, they must make <roll> or suffer a fumble. This counts as provoking a fumble.

Provoke Fumble (spell, Sorcerer/Wizard 2, Chaos 1, Luck 1, Hexblade 1): target must make a Reflex save, or their next attack within 1 round/level provokes a fumble.

[Crake]

Not quite fumbles, but my current table has the current house rule for skill checks: a nat 1 isn't an auto-fail, but imposes a -10 penalty to the role, and a nat 20 isn't an auto-succeed, but grants a +10 bonus to the check.

This is actually an official variant..... For checks that auto succeed/fail on a 20/1 (which does not apply to skill checks). I had a DM that ran this for skill checks, and it was universally loathed by everyone at the table. It gave rise to the joke about olympic swimmers drowning in swimming pools, because even with +14 to swim, rolling a 1 results in you sinking under the water.

More often than not, this poorly concieved houserule is actually detrimental as opposed to helpful. Since most people will stick to attempting skills they're at least moderately trained in, it's rare that people will attempt something that would require a natural 20 to succeed, with or without the +10 modifier, thus, in most circumstances, the +10 modifier will never actually be useful, since you will succeed on something less than 20 anyway, and scoring above the DC doesn't do much. On the flipside however, it is quite possible to have a modifier so high that it will succeed even on a 1, however with this rule, you need a whopping +10 more to achieve that. Thus, more often than not, the +10 goes unused, while the -10 acts as an annoying hindrance.

Don't be this guy's DM. If you're going to use that variant, use it where it's supposed to be used: attack rolls and saves.


I find this idea quite interesting, but I fear it happening too often (as is the case in a d20 system) might make the opposition look absurdly incompetent, which is not always a good thing in more serious campaigns.

To be fair, mooks are different from minions. Orc #12 may not necessarily apply, but kobold or imp #12 could make more sense.

[Drackstin]

For my games i run both fumble and crit charts, it adds a sense of mystery to the game and lot of comedy. the charts is only rolled on combat because skills can't fumble or crit, you just did really good or bad.

as for combat, my PC love it when they crit a enemy and kill it in one shot, slicing off legs or arms, crushing skulls or just plain decapitating someone. but they know this comes at a cost, because fumbles can happen, and you can end up killing yourself or allies. but you need to look at it this way, you have a 5% chance to roll a fumble, some classes can even reroll, and if you do fumble, the first 40% (my charts are both percentile out of 100 and only the top 70% are really bad) don't really do anything, trip and fall, reflex save to not, or drop your weapon reflex save to not. but if they kill a fellow player they know they messed up, but they like that about the game, stuff happens in real life that can be very bad, now lets say your always doing dangerous stuff, that amplifies it. this makes the game exciting.

[Voidstar01]

For my games i run both fumble and crit charts, it adds a sense of mystery to the game and lot of comedy. the charts is only rolled on combat because skills can't fumble or crit, you just did really good or bad.

as for combat, my PC love it when they crit a enemy and kill it in one shot, slicing off legs or arms, crushing skulls or just plain decapitating someone. but they know this comes at a cost, because fumbles can happen, and you can end up killing yourself or allies. but you need to look at it this way, you have a 5% chance to roll a fumble, some classes can even reroll, and if you do fumble, the first 40% (my charts are both percentile out of 100 and only the top 70% are really bad) don't really do anything, trip and fall, reflex save to not, or drop your weapon reflex save to not. but if they kill a fellow player they know they messed up, but they like that about the game, stuff happens in real life that can be very bad, now lets say your always doing dangerous stuff, that amplifies it. this makes the game exciting.

Please tell me you at least have players roll to hit against their ally's AC when they're going to hit them? Nothing sounds more suck-tacular than dying because your friends great axe somehow phased through your greatshield, +5 fullplate, and +5 defending shortspear to decapitate you

[Jay R]

The crucial insight is that special critical hits should give more than critical fumbles take away. When that doesn't happen, then all the bad things people are describing can happen.


1) In 3.5, you roll to confirm a critical hit. No one ever rolls to confirm a critical failure (at least not at any table I have played at).

Every time I've used special crits and fumbles, at many tables from 1976 to the present, the crits and fumbles have been confirmed the same way


2) Critical fumbles are mathematically awful for the players. On the one possibility of the presence of a table that offers permanent injuries or other penalties for a critical fumble, it is statistically definite that by the end of a campaign a combat character will be so stacked up with penalties it will be rendered all but unplayable. Meanwhile, the vast majority of injuries on NPC's are irrelevant because at the end of combat they will likely be dead.

Most of the critical fumbles from the chart in The Dragon #39 are saving throws to avoid a minor annoyance -- "lose grip on weapon; roll dexterity or less on d20 or no attack next round". That means that often, nothing happens - just an additional moment of tension. If not, then the minor annoyance occurs. Many of the rest are a small amount of damage. None of them are permanent damage.

I agree with you that critical hits should give more than critical fumbles take away. Any rule that fails to do that is a bad rule. But that doesn't mean fumble rules are bad. It means that THAT fumble rule is bad.


3) Even without the presence of a permanent injury system, it still places a massive statistical burden on the players. In order for the players to finish the campaign, they have to win every combat. In order for the enemy NPC's to stop the players, they have to win once. Critical fumbles dramatically stack these odds in favor of the enemies the more often combat that occurs.

I agree with you that special critical hits should give more than critical fumbles take away. That doesn't say that fumbles are bad. It just tells you how to design fumbles that aren't wrong.



4) As with many similar combat changes, it greatly hoses martial characters and rarely affects spellcasters. Even if you include supplemental effects for spellcasters that aren't actually an additional punishment for non-spellcasters (for example one noteworthy table I was at for a very short time where a critical fumble on a ranged touch spell caused it to automatically hit a nearby ally instead), spellcasters always have the option to simply stop using spells that require attack rolls. Martial characters don't.

This is instantly fixed by ensuring that special critical hits give more that critical fumbles take away.

As with all other home-brewed rules, home-brewed fumble charts should be carefully designed to make the game fun for the players. If your DM isn't doing that with his fumble rules, then the problem isn't fumble rules; the problem is a DM who isn't making sure that his home-brewed rules are making the game more fun for the players.


5) Such systems are often grossly imbalanced compared against the critical hit rules already in place in the PHB. A successful critical hit results in multiplying the weapon damage roll by the particular weapon you are using. And that's it. The mathematical advantage gained by this varies greatly depending on the weapon, but at best it generally results in an extra round of successful attack rolls. On the other hand, critical fumble charts often produce a staggering array of effects, the most common of which in my experience is dropping your weapon (costing you a round of attacks in addition to opening you up to free AoO's from the enemy), to damaging or breaking your weapon which potentially removes you from the fight, to causing harm to an ally, or some other permanent effect which could not only remove you from the current fight but future fights as well.

I agree with you that stupid fumble charts are stupid. The answer is fumble charts that aren't stupid, not getting rid of fumble charts.

Using the special critical hit and fumble charts from The Dragon #39 has never cost my PC the fight. Mostly it just complicates the fight. And once it unambiguously won us the fight. [The DM later told us that he wasn't going to have the BBEG kill us, but my lucky strike prevented him from delivering his big speech.]


In the many, many years I have played tabletop RPG's I have never once played in a game that used a homebrewed critical fumble chart that was not ultimately detrimental to the game for one reason or another.

Then those are bad tables. That doesn't prove that all fumble tables are bad.


I have found the concept to be largely contrary to the point of playing an escapism game. And my advice on critical fumble systems begins and ends with "Don't."

If I had your experiences, I would probably agree with you. But I have used reasonable special critical hit and fumble tables, and have had great times.

[Netbrian]

Oh, is the presence of orcs a requirement for fumbles?

Yep. The PCs blow when orcs are near.

[Doctor Awkward]

If I had your experiences, I would probably agree with you. But I have used reasonable special critical hit and fumble tables, and have had great times.

Just curious, but why is your anecdotal evidence any more valid than mine?

And regardless of how much fun you might have (accidentally) had the math is not on the side of the players when critical fumbles are in play. Over the course of the campaign they will statistically harm the PC's far more than they harm the enemies.

[NNescio]

This is actually an official variant..... For checks that auto succeed/fail on a 20/1 (which does not apply to skill checks). I had a DM that ran this for skill checks, and it was universally loathed by everyone at the table. It gave rise to the joke about olympic swimmers drowning in swimming pools, because even with +14 to swim, rolling a 1 results in you sinking under the water.

Should have taken 10.

(Though yes, I agree. It's poorly conceived. Even with judicious use of Take 10, in combat this still leads to [master acrobats] faceplanting on any floors that are not smoothed out to professional standards [flagstone, rough hewn floor, slight slopes, etc.], and failing really obvious Listen checks like someone speaking right next to you. )

[Drackstin]

Please tell me you at least have players roll to hit against their ally's AC when they're going to hit them? Nothing sounds more suck-tacular than dying because your friends great axe somehow phased through your greatshield, +5 fullplate, and +5 defending shortspear to decapitate you

Yes they do have to see if they hit their adjacent ally, but most of my players crit fish so they end up criting and dealing a lot of damage. by the time a player would have all those items, some of my players have a 15-20 crit and about +30 or more to hit.

[Sereg]

I like fumbles because of my philosophy of "conflict is chaos" and the idea that it's fun to unexpectedly have things go badly sometimes.

There are two problems:

1. People often like to play as powerful people and don't like being forced to have their characters make stupid mistakes. This is a taste issue. Personally, I consider that part of the fun.

2. It widens the gap between melee and casters. Though this is fixable. Firstly, you can only fumble on the first roll of a round (high BAB doesn't screw you over) and secondly, you always have to roll to cast a spell (a fumble causes you to lose the spell AND zap yourself for damage scaling by spell level). That means casters can't avoid the consequences of fumbles.

[Jay R]

Just curious, but why is your anecdotal evidence any more valid than mine?

All the anecdotal evidence is equally good. My logic is more valid than yours because it is supported by all the anecdotal evidence, not just some of it.

You wrote, "No one ever rolls to confirm a critical failure (at least not at any table I have played at)."

This anecdotal evidence is perfectly good to describe your tables. But my anecdotal evidence shows that it cannot be generalized to all other tables. Hence my conclusion, "If I had your experiences, I would probably agree with you. But I have used reasonable special critical hit and fumble tables, and have had great times."

On the subject of whether fumble tables can ever work in a game, your anecdotal evidence shows that what you did worked badly. My anecdotal evidence shows that what I do works well.

My conclusion that it can work well or badly depending on implementation is supported by your anecdotal evidence as much as by mine. Your conclusion that it is always bad is disproven by mine.


And regardless of how much fun you might have (accidentally) had the math is not on the side of the players when critical fumbles are in play. Over the course of the campaign they will statistically harm the PC's far more than they harm the enemies.

First of all, so what? Living dangerously is the point of an adventure game. The way for a PC to avoid harm is to stay home. But nobody wants to play Hovels and Housework.

I have said it several times in my post. I will now say it so directly that you cannot deny that I have said it. I play with special critical hits and critical fumbles. I agree with you that adding critical fumbles without special critical hits is a net tactical loss for the PCs.

But that's not what I'm defending. I'm defending a system in which [I]special critical hits add more than critical fumbles take away. By the exact same logic that you are using, this is a net gain for the PCs, and especially a net gain for the martial characters.



The tables I use are from [I]The Dragon #39. More than half of the fumble results are a DEX roll to prevent a fall, dropped weapon, lost action, or the like. This is not a huge penalty even when you fail the roll. Many of the others are an automatic penalty of the same basic level. Actually doing damage to oneself or an ally is pretty rare (16% of fumbles, which are only 5% of all misses), and never overwhelming. Meanwhile, the additional crit damage from the special crit table is quite helpful.

In over 40 years, I've only had two PCs die, and neither of them came from a critical fumble.

I've certainly lost fights -- fleeing, being captured, etc. But I would have a lot less fun in a game I could never lose, so I reject your notion that making it possible for PCs to lose encounters makes all the fun "accidental".

A good fumble table should add the occasional extra moment of suspense, and occasional setbacks to overcome.

"Accidentally"? Accidents don't last over forty years.

Have fun your way, and that's great. But please recognize that there is not only one way, and that disagreeing with you does not make my fun accidental.

Have your fun, purposely using what you have made work, and I will have mine, purposely using what my DMs and I have made work.

[Crake]

Should have taken 10.

(Though yes, I agree. It's poorly conceived. Even with judicious use of Take 10, in combat this still leads to [master acrobats] faceplanting on any floors that are not smoothed out to professional standards [flagstone, rough hewn floor, slight slopes, etc.], and failing really obvious Listen checks like someone speaking right next to you. )

Yeah, the take 10 rules do exist, but in something like an olympic competition, you're probably not taking 10, right? :smalltongue:

[HeraldOfExius]

In over 40 years, I've only had two PCs die, and neither of them came from a critical fumble.

I'm envious. In the past year I've had a character die to somebody else's fumble, and then his replacement lost an arm to an enemy's crit. I'm not sure where the GM got the tables from, but they skew way too heavily towards being highly debilitating.


I've certainly lost fights -- fleeing, being captured, etc. But I would have a lot less fun in a game I could never lose, so I reject your notion that making it possible for PCs to lose encounters makes all the fun "accidental".

The issue I have with losing because of your team's fumbles or your enemies' crits is that there is no player agency involved beyond the decision to play the game. If the game is one where you might just randomly die, then that's fine. If not, then fumbles/special crits need to be balanced accordingly. It sounds like you have played using reasonable tables for these, while I have not.


But that's not what I'm defending. I'm defending a system in which special critical hits add more than critical fumbles take away. By the exact same logic that you are using, this is a net gain for the PCs, and especially a net gain for the martial characters.

In the campaign that I described above, we have only gotten special crits on generic mooks. In contrast, my character's arm was severed by a minion in a boss fight, and another PC's arm was broken in a random encounter. Again, this is just that the effects on the tables used at my table are particularly bad, but being able to get special effects on crits isn't particularly good for martials or the party because they tend to get attacked more than any individual NPC.

I recognize that, as with most categories of house rules, this all comes down to implementation. If you have had fumbles implemented well, then by all means keep using them. Maybe some day the good implementations will become common enough to drown out the bad ones. To add further to my anecdotal account, the campaign in which my bad experiences with fumbles occurred was using confirmation on fumbles, which was the compromise I came to with the GM at the start. He was originally going to have any 1 be a fumble. With enough gradual improvements, I might be more willing to see fumbles in a positive light.

[Doctor Awkward]

First of all, so what? Living dangerously is the point of an adventure game. The way for a PC to avoid harm is to stay home.

The operative word there is "game."
RPG's are cooperative storytelling games. The rules should facilitate the story and maximize the fun.

D&D is not a reality simulator and the obscene risk of the thief accidentally stabbing himself in the head each round is neither a good story nor good fun for the player on the receiving end of it.

There is plenty of dramatic risk within the rules already, and critical fumble tables, on the whole bring nothing but misery to the experience.

You might have many fond memories of other players tripping over their own feet at critical moments that cost them their life, but that player probably does not.

[Jay R]

The operative word there is "game."
RPG's are cooperative storytelling games.

This is certainly one of several approaches to the game. In fact, the rules for 3.5e say that it is "part acting, part storytelling, part social interaction, part war game, and part dice rolling. Reducing those five elements to only the second one is grossly simplistic, and is putting your personal taste over decades of other people's tastes and desires.

Play it only as a cooperative storytelling game -- that's great! I hope you have fun with it. But don't tell other people that they are wrong when they play it for all of what it can be. My tastes matter to me as much as your tastes matter to you.


The rules should facilitate the story and maximize the fun.

Your are presuming your conclusion is true in order to prove it. The rules should facilitate every aspect that people come to the game for, not just the story. And they should maximize the fun for the players in that specific game, which are allowed to be different from Doctor Awkward's ideas of fun.

In fact, I previously wrote, "As with all other home-brewed rules, home-brewed fumble charts should be carefully designed to make the game fun for the players. If your DM isn't doing that with his fumble rules, then the problem isn't fumble rules; the problem is a DM who isn't making sure that his home-brewed rules are making the game more fun for the players."

You just can't get from my position to believing I don't think the rules should make the game more fun.


D&D is not a reality simulator and the obscene risk of the thief accidentally stabbing himself in the head each round is neither a good story nor good fun for the player on the receiving end of it.

I have already written, "I agree that fumble tables with instant kills are horrible. I don't do that, and I'm not defending that."

Please reply to my actual position, rather than pretending I'm defending something I have explicitly said I'm not defending. That doesn't further your point in any useful way.


There is plenty of dramatic risk within the rules already, and critical fumble tables, on the whole bring nothing but misery to the experience.

I have already written "A good fumble table should add complications and suspense, not random death." The rules I've seen in use have added suspense and fun, for all the players, and not misery. I agree with you that rules that bring misery are a bad thing.

Please stop pretending I've made an over-simplistic support for all fumble rules, when I have explicitly and clearly said many fumble rules are bad.


You might have many fond memories of other players tripping over their own feet at critical moments that cost them their life, but that player probably does not.

Please quote the line I wrote about my fond memories of other players tripping over their own feet at critical moments that cost them their life, or admit that you made it up on no evidence.

Your accusation is false, and everybody who reads my posts fairly and honestly knows that it's false. Describing the tables my group uses, I wrote, ""Actually doing damage to oneself or an ally is pretty rare (16% of fumbles, which are only 5% of all misses), and never overwhelming." There is no way to read that and conclude that I have fond memories of other players tripping over their own feet at critical moments that cost them their life. That's an unfair and untrue accusation.

Furthermore, it doesn't even help your position. Everybody reading this can see that what you are attacking doesn't match what I've written. Your falsehoods and mistakes are starting to become a far bigger part of what you're presenting than your actual original points.

In case you're wondering, I do have fond memories of fumbles. They include:

Drawing a back-up weapon and fighting my way back to my primary weapon
Slipping and falling, then rolling into the bay to avoid my enemy
Using Mage Hand to return my ally's blade to him.
Backing into a defensive corner when a twisted ankle meant I couldn't run.
Engaging my ally's foe when my ally tripped,
And many others
Fumbles should represent challenges to be overcome, not devastation


Please back up, start over, and if you want to disagree with my position, then disagree with the points I've made, rather than making something up and attacking that.

My position can be boiled down to this.


1. Fumbles that insta-kill, or insta-cripple, are bad rules. Not because they are fumbles, but because they are bad.
2. Good fumble rules add complications and challenges to the fight; they don't overwhelm it.
3. To the extent that extra fumbles are added, extra critical successes should be added as well.
4. Good examples of fumbles include


Roll DEX to avoid falling or dropping a weapon.
An occasional dropped weapon
A minor foot slip that loses an attack
Shields entangled; neither fighter nor opponent attacks next round.
Shield strap breaks; shield is only half effective for the rest of the fight.
Helm slips; roll dexterity or less to fix, hit probability -6 until fixed
Very rare damage to self, and never overwhelming damage.

5. The presence or absence of fumble rules should be based on the tastes and preferences of the people at that table, not anybody else.

If you want to disagree with that, feel free. But please stop acting like I wrote things I did not write, and support things I did not support.

And specifically, I repeat: Please quote the line I wrote about my fond memories of other players tripping over their own feet at critical moments that cost them their life, or admit that you made it up on no evidence.

[RatElemental]

3. To the extent that extra fumbles are added, extra critical successes should be added as well.


I have to ask, are players subject to getting hit with these extra special crits if their opponents roll lucky?

[Jay R]

I have to ask, are players subject to getting hit with these extra special crits if their opponents roll lucky?

Yes, the game is fair. The same rules apply to everyone.

[Voidstar01]

Yes, the game is fair. The same rules apply to everyone.
unless you're a caster, because they can decide they just don't want to make attack rolls on a given turn by casting any of the many save or die, save or suck, or AoE spells.

[RatElemental]

Yes, the game is fair. The same rules apply to everyone.

Then there is a point you have failed to address that I've seen others making: The martials are going to get hit by crits a lot more than any given enemy is going to be. The scales have still been tipped against the players, and depending on how severe the special crits are compared to normal crits you may still have the same problem that bad fumble tables usually have.

[Biggus]

Level 20 wizard gets an AC penalty: the miss chance they have from any number of the spells that do that don't care, their AC was uselessly low anyway, and they shouldn't be anywhere near enough to melee combat for an enemy using a single move action to endanger them.

If your Wizard never has to face melee combat, your DM is going easy on you. There are any number of ways for opponents to get past the front lines and attack the casters. No danger, no challenge: no challenge, no XP.



Lost movement:
Wizard: less likely to need to move, since they have ranged spells, if they absolutely need to move 30ft right away, can use any number of teleportation spells they can get.
Fighter: unless you're an archer, sucks to be you I guess.

Unless the Wizard's failed attack was itself a swift action, the teleport spell would need to be castable as a swift action which means that only very high-level Wizards can do that, unless they've spent a lot of feats on metamagic reduction or have a very expensive metamagic Quicken rod.

Also, by the time Wizard can get teleportation spells Fighters can get items which give tactical teleportation.



Crit fail with a confirm:
Drops weapon:
Fighter: looses 6 attacks worth of damage and opens themselves to opportunity attacks.
Wizard: lol wut weapon

If you get a result which isn't relevant to you, it's rerolled, obviously.



add in the fact the martial characters are still more likely to induce a fumble, and that wizards can just use AoEs to never risk it and you have a supremlyy unbalanced system.

Are you seriously suggesting that something which gives a small penalty maybe 1 time in 50 and a large penalty 1 time in 400 is having a significant effect on game balance?


Fumble Resistance (feat): allows you to make <insert check here> to avoid fumbles. Does not work against provoked fumbles

Fumble Immunity (feat, requires Fumble Resistance): you no longer roll for normal fumbles, and allows <roll> (as Fumble Resistance) against provoked fumbles.


I do actually allow feats similar to these two.



1. People often like to play as powerful people and don't like being forced to have their characters make stupid mistakes. This is a taste issue. Personally, I consider that part of the fun.


I think this is one of the fundamental misunderstandings that's happening in this thread: some (although by no means all) of the players who are in the former camp find it impossible to understand how your character disastrously failing can be part of the fun, and therefore see anything which makes that more likely to happen as objectively bad game design, rather than a matter of taste.



You might have many fond memories of other players tripping over their own feet at critical moments that cost them their life, but that player probably does not.

Well...that's where you're wrong. I've had two characters who had the most spectacularly bad luck, to the point of being almost farcical, and while I won't deny that I sometimes got genuinely frustrated playing them, everyone including me remembers them with great amusement. In fact, they are far more memorable, and have provided far more entertainment over the years, than characters who were successful but unexceptional.

[Voidstar01]

If your Wizard never has to face melee combat, your DM is going easy on you. There are any number of ways for opponents to get past the front lines and attack the casters. No danger, no challenge: no challenge, no XP.



Unless the Wizard's failed attack was itself a swift action, the teleport spell would need to be castable as a swift action which means that only very high-level Wizards can do that, unless they've spent a lot of feats on metamagic reduction or have a very expensive metamagic Quicken rod.

Also, by the time Wizard can get teleportation spells Fighters can get items which give tactical teleportation.



If you get a result which isn't relevant to you, it's rerolled, obviously.



Are you seriously suggesting that something which gives a small penalty maybe 1 time in 50 and a large penalty 1 time in 400 is having a significant effect on game balance?



1. The point wasn't that you'll never face melee combat, a wizard doesn't have a competitive AC unless their specifically building for it, having a 21 become 19 and getting hit sucks more because your actively putting effort into your AC, having a 16 become a 14 sucks less because you were fully prepared to get hit before the drop, and you didn't mention the miss chance, or spells like luminous armor that give melee attackers -5 on attack rolls, y'know bypassing AC completely. and wizards will be less melee combat than martials, letting them get away it more.

2. Again you fail to mention the fact that spell casters need to move less than martials, than can make all kinds attacks without moving, and unlike archers they aren't subject to range increments, and they can of course just choose to use a spell with a longer range. Yes a martial could spend money on tactical teleportation, so could a caster, and unlike martial a caster doesn't have to decide between that and an item of starmantle, or a better weapon/armor/shield.

3. You never mentioned that, common sense isn't as common as you seem to think it is, I had game were people needed to roll for flaws and wizards just got a free feat if they rolled non-combatant.

4. No i'm suggesting it's poorly balanced, regardless of impact. And again martials will trigger it more than casters, a level 20 fighter making 4 attacks per round risks rolling a 1 every single attack. a level 20 wizard can cast four spells (twinned and quickened twinned) without ever risking that a 1 by casting save or dies/save or sucks. The system kicks martial well they're already down, and gives the already way stronger caster a slap on the wrist.

Also crit fails being triggered by a nat 1 is just kinda dumb, it scales backwards, the better (read: higher level) fighter you are the more likely you are to crit fail.

If I wanted to make a balanced crit fail system, i'd say slightly different tables for casters and martials (you can only use 1 metamagic next turn, you take damage equal to the failed spells level, your spell's save DCs are 1 or 2 lower next turn, etc.) and crit fails would either trigger differently (it's 1 AM don't expect any revelatory insights, i'd probably look at other TTRPGs for inspiration) or be limited to once a turn so you at least don't get worse with using a sword as you gain levels.

And your experiences are not universal I have a 5e character who has literally failed every single perception/search/insight check she's ever made, the party thinks it's funny, depending on how many rolls I've had to make that session, it makes me want to stop playing. Or that time I cut my friend's character's leg off, that just made me feel like a ****.

[Particle_Man]

I think that there could be well-implemented fumble rules. I also think that 99.9% of fumble rules out there are very poorly implemented fumble rules. So if someone says "my game has fumble rules" I am 99.9% likely to assume that this will make the game worse not better.

Personally, I like 5e's optional "near miss" rules: If you miss by 1 or 2 you can say "I hit anyway" but the DM gets to have some bad consequence happen to you after you hit.
The reason I like this is that it is up to the player - if they want to avoid bad consequences, they can just accept that they missed the relevant attack roll, saving throw or ability (skill) check. Heck I even implemented a similar "near kill" rule for those times you reduce an enemy to 1 or 2 hp and want it to be 0 for the Kewl factor.

Maybe if fumble rules were similarly player-optional - for example, they roll a 1, and *at their option* could reroll to try to hit the opponent, but if they miss this time there are consequences, I would like them more, since I could then just opt out. Mind you, this still doesn't deal with the "you hit your buddy" problem. Maybe if these "near miss/kill" consequences would only affect that player?

I remember playing a pathfinder cleric with the law domain purely to allow a fellow fighter type to regularly hit/save etc. by "taking 11" and so never fumble (even if they never critically hit either). I was literally giving up my standard action to do this in combat. That is how much I hate fumble rules in general, and fumble rules in that game in particular.

[Quertus]

So, fumble rules affect tone. Much the same way, in fact, that Bounded Accuracy affects tone. Because Bounded Accuracy says that, if you have a question about thermonuclear astrophysics, you're more likely to get a good answer asking a dozen uneducated murderhobos than by asking Tony Stark.

I played a game with fumble rules that produced an enjoyable, memorable moment - a good story, IMO. One PC got lots of attacks, and was facing down an orc invasion beside the town hero. He started with a long sword & a short sword. Every round, he dropped a weapon. So, round 2, he attacked with a short sword & a dagger. Round 3, it was 2 daggers. Eventually, a small pile of daggers at his feet, he was reduced to attacking with a pointy stick & a rock. Because said fumble-prone PC proved so resourceful, my character (hiding nearby) never intervened, and eventually realized that this attack - which made so little sense for orcish tactics - was just a distraction.

Do fumbles generally make the game worse? IME, yeah. But, even though they usually aren't in practice, they *can* be written such that, occasionally, they actually add to the fun. Or do so more often, if you enjoy a more swingy game.

Do fumbles disproportionally hurt the PCs? Honestly, I don't care. Do *permanent injuries* hurt the PCs, especially if no healing magic to fix them exists in the setting? Yeah, that's a problem. Do fumbles - especially permanent injuries - disproportionately hurt tanks? Yes. Yes they do. So, tanks should be the unquestioned rockstar characters in "balanced" systems with such fumbles.

[Jay R]

Then there is a point you have failed to address that I've seen others making: The martials are going to get hit by crits a lot more than any given enemy is going to be. The scales have still been tipped against the players, and depending on how severe the special crits are compared to normal crits you may still have the same problem that bad fumble tables usually have.

First of all, we don't use insta-kills.

Other than that, your point is true. So what? This argument has nothing to do with crits, and applies to all sword damage equally. By that argument, changing longswords from 1d8 to 1d10 would also be bad for the martials.

Yes, if swords become more deadly, then people who are hit with swords are hurt more. But also people who wield swords do more damage.

You really seem to be trying to conclude that making weapons more deadly is bad for the people carrying the weapons.

If you really believe that, then fix it completely -- make all weapons useless.

But if you aren't willing to help the martials by making all weapons worthless, then you have recognized that making weapons more deadly actually helps the people with weapons.

[RatElemental]

First of all, we don't use insta-kills.

Other than that, your point is true. So what? This argument has nothing to do with crits, and applies to all sword damage equally. By that argument, changing longswords from 1d8 to 1d10 would also be bad for the martials.

Yes, if swords become more deadly, then people who are hit with swords are hurt more. But also people who wield swords do more damage.

You really seem to be trying to conclude that making weapons more deadly is bad for the people carrying the weapons.

If you really believe that, then fix it completely -- make all weapons useless.

But if you aren't willing to help the martials by making all weapons worthless, then you have recognized that making weapons more deadly actually helps the people with weapons.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't build straw effigies of me. I don't know your fumble and crit rules so I'm forced to speak in generalities, and generally 'special crits' end up being things like lopping off arms, hands, heads and the like. And if your crit table did include those then the problem with fumble rules that do that still exists, just pushed a step back.

If you could detail your fumble/crit rules for us, for all I know everyone against fumble rules in this thread would look at them and say "Wow, actually good fumble rules, who'da thunk it?" But you have not done so.

[Lorddenorstrus]

Then there is a point you have failed to address that I've seen others making: The martials are going to get hit by crits a lot more than any given enemy is going to be. The scales have still been tipped against the players, and depending on how severe the special crits are compared to normal crits you may still have the same problem that bad fumble tables usually have.

That's the entire point that makes fumbles bad. They negatively impact the players, specifically the martials more than anyone. People who can't comprehend that are the same people who think Monks are great. Balance isn't relative, martials suck ass and Spellcasters are gods. Stop making dumb af rules that gimp the weaker classes more. Like seriously. You're punishing people for using weapons by even having fumbles exist. The solution is to not use weapons. A DM tells me they use fumbles my response is "Oh so I can't play my tier 3 fun character, ok enjoy god wizard in your game."

[Sereg]

That's the entire point that makes fumbles bad. They negatively impact the players, specifically the martials more than anyone. People who can't comprehend that are the same people who think Monks are great. Balance isn't relative, martials suck ass and Spellcasters are gods. Stop making dumb af rules that gimp the weaker classes more. Like seriously. You're punishing people for using weapons by even having fumbles exist. The solution is to not use weapons. A DM tells me they use fumbles my response is "Oh so I can't play my tier 3 fun character, ok enjoy god wizard in your game."

Again, good fumble rules need to force casters to roll for a possible fumble for every spell they cast, with a fumble causing a lost spell and to take damage (of double what fumbling a spell of a single level lower would). In addition, possible fumbles should be restricted to the first roll of an attack sequence.

As such, fumbles do not have to inherently widen the gap between casters and martials.

[Aotrs Commander]

The use of supplemental, unofficial or-- worst of all-- homebrewed critical fumble rules is an instant dealbreaker for me. Not only are they a complete violation of everything I want from my roleplaying time, but long experience discussing fumble rules has taught me that their presence invariably means that the game will be filled with all kinds of other intolerable stupidity.

The only games in which fumble rules are even theoretically acceptable are games like Paranoia and TOON and other games that are supposed to be ridiculous, slapstick farces... and I generally do not prefer those sorts of games as a rule.



Which of those examples do you think should even occur one time in a hundred after a character rolls a 1 on a d20? Once in every 2,000 attempted attacks?

There's simply no way to make the "realism argument" for critical fumbles even remotely valid.



Other people have already pointed out how comedically unrealistic most fumble rules systems really are and how completely inappropriate they are for maintaining a gritty, serious tone, but I'm just going to share my Rolemaster story.

Now, I grew to love Rolemaster eventually, years later, even if I do still strip out the goddamned fumbles. But a couple of people in one of my old D&D groups, a long time ago, were Rolemaster people and they really went hammer and tongs into convincing me how much better Rolemaster was. (They were playing Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying, for reference, the 3.5 to Rolemaster Standard System's 3.0.)

I'm going to state this up front, that I had a real hard time with the system going in. I didn't have enough time to read and digest the rulebook, and Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying has an especially steep learning curve for people who aren't already well-versed in the ICE way of doing things.

So it took me almost two hours to finish up my character, holding up the rest of the game. I made some kind of lizardman fighter.

In our very first combat, finally, I rolled pretty poorly on my initiative and ended up going last... after a couple of orcs had disarmed me and wrestled me to the ground. This, admittedly, was fun and exciting. But pinned to the ground, I only had one real maneuver available to me... so I attempted use my reptilian nature and bite one of my enemies.

And I rolled a 03 on d%, a critical fumble. I had to roll again and subtract the result from 03.

And I rolled a 97, for a total of -94. Which means... I had to roll again and subtract the result from -94.

The guys from my D&D group are giving me knowing glances. The guy I just met chuckles. I get another pair of d10s out of my bag, and my girlfriend (at the time) blows on them.

00. -194.

The DM loans me his "lucky" dice. 96, total of -290, and just barely forcing another reroll. Everyone is now watching with rapt interest.

99 brings me to -389. On more reroll. 95. I utter the foulest curses I know and go to pick up the dice, but the DM stops me: "You only have to reroll on 96 or higher."

Total of -484. One in 3.2 million chance. We consult the fumble chart, and indeed, I have injured myself... to the tune of an E Critical and another E Critical on the Bite chart.

Got identical results on both critical rolls: Instant decapitation.

In the most realistic combat system in any roleplaying game ever, my character bit his own head off, twice, on his first attack roll.

I've never played a more realistic fantasy battle since.

Good old Rolemaster, my second system of choice after 3.x (them both being basically the only systems I run.)

The fun we've had, such as the famous Battle of The Fumbles, or that time like the entire party fumbled one after another until the last character despairingly rolled open-ended! Or the time that guy got too excited in combat and shot a skeleton at point-blank range with his shot gun and hit the guy otherside. (I mean, I could go on, I have thirty years of RM to draw on...)

See, that's the thing with fumbles, I find. Criticals are a dime-a-dozen, and you usually forget them after the fact, but fumbles will make you laugh for years and years afterwards. (Yes, even when it happens to you.) Wouldn't ever not use fumbles, myself.



I did try porting the RM-style fumble tables over to AD&D (that's how long ago that was) for a bit, but decided that no, DM discretion is better with fumbles for 3.x.

(I do stipulate fumbles can only happen on your first attack in a round, and I do role for severity, and most of the time it's just "it misses badly." It might get as bad as "you hit your mate/slash yourself," but never "you instantly die;" especially as with DM discretion, you wouldn't get "you hit yourself" if you were low enough you might actually kill yourself. The monsters get not such protection, though...)

(We also use 1 is -10 and 20 is 30 on skill check.)



(Actually, the folk on Role with Me and Unexpectables seeme to very like their fumbles, so either it's an official rule in 5E (I wouldn't know), or I'm in good company.)

[Karl Aegis]

Good old Rolemaster, my second system of choice after 3.x (them both being basically the only systems I run.)

The fun we've had, such as the famous Battle of The Fumbles, or that time like the entire party fumbled one after another until the last character despairingly rolled open-ended! Or the time that guy got too excited in combat and shot a skeleton at point-blank range with his shot gun and hit the guy otherside. (I mean, I could go on, I have thirty years of RM to draw on...)

See, that's the thing with fumbles, I find. Criticals are a dime-a-dozen, and you usually forget them after the fact, but fumbles will make you laugh for years and years afterwards. (Yes, even when it happens to you.) Wouldn't ever not use fumbles, myself.



I did try porting the RM-style fumble tables over to AD&D (that's how long ago that was) for a bit, but decided that no, DM discretion is better with fumbles for 3.x.

(I do stipulate fumbles can only happen on your first attack in a round, and I do role for severity, and most of the time it's just "it misses badly." It might get as bad as "you hit your mate/slash yourself," but never "you instantly die;" especially as with DM discretion, you wouldn't get "you hit yourself" if you were low enough you might actually kill yourself. The monsters get not such protection, though...)

(We also use 1 is -10 and 20 is 30 on skill check.)



(Actually, the folk on Role with Me and Unexpectables seeme to very like their fumbles, so either it's an official rule in 5E (I wouldn't know), or I'm in good company.)

In 5e you jump on a stump and fight defensively so enemies get disadvantage on attacks against you. When they roll 2d20 and take the lower die and you have 20 AC your enemy is pretty much guaranteed to kill themselves without you having to roll anything. That's Adamantite Half-Plate (For immunity to critical hits), +1 Shield and 14 Dexterity. It's an awful edition to have fumbles in.

[FaerieGodfather]

See, that's the thing with fumbles, I find. Criticals are a dime-a-dozen, and you usually forget them after the fact, but fumbles will make you laugh for years and years afterwards. (Yes, even when it happens to you.) Wouldn't ever not use fumbles, myself.

Well, like I said. If you want the game to be a farce, fumble rules are fine for that-- it's just literally the exact opposite of what I want from any game, ever.

[Quertus]

In 5e you jump on a stump and fight defensively so enemies get disadvantage on attacks against you. When they roll 2d20 and take the lower die and you have 20 AC your enemy is pretty much guaranteed to kill themselves without you having to roll anything. That's Adamantite Half-Plate (For immunity to critical hits), +1 Shield and 14 Dexterity. It's an awful edition to have fumbles in.

That sounds awesome. If only that character had some way to draw aggro, it would the best tank I've ever heard of, in any system.

[Particle_Man]

(Actually, the folk on Role with Me and Unexpectables seeme to very like their fumbles, so either it's an official rule in 5E (I wouldn't know), or I'm in good company.)

Fumbles are an optional rule in 5e. Actually, I don't think there is any edition of D&D or AD&D or OD&D where fumbles were anything but an optional rule for martial combat and saving throws. The closest I can think of is the widely prevalent "you auto-miss/fail on a natural 1", or the 2nd ed Psionics rules where you can, IIRC, accidentally disintigrate yourself, (perhaps also the Table of Depressing Fates for a Psionic character out of psionic points that is targetted by a psionic attack in 1st ed. AD&D. Let's just say it ain't pretty, especially since you can be hit by 10 such attacks every round).

[Aotrs Commander]

It's an awful edition to have fumbles in.

Doesn't seem to bother the aforementioned groups any, all I can say.

(I can only listen to their games with jealousy, knowing the level of roleplaying therein is simply beyond what I (or my group) could ever manage; which, I suppose is what you get when the majority of the players are voice-actors of some level.)


Fumbles are an optional rule in 5e. Actually, I don't think there is any edition of D&D or AD&D or OD&D where fumbles were anything but an optional rule for martial combat and saving throws. The closest I can think of is the widely prevalent "you auto-miss/fail on a natural 1", or the 2nd ed Psionics rules where you can, IIRC, accidentally disintigrate yourself, (perhaps also the Table of Depressing Fates for a Psionic character out of psionic points that is targetted by a psionic attack in 1st ed. AD&D. Let's just say it ain't pretty, especially since you can be hit by 10 such attacks every round).

Ah, there we go, there are some offical, if optional rules, then.

A game using (player) AD&D psionics would be enough for me to consider a hard pass to, given they are the second most arse-backward, nonsensical, poorly written set of rules I have ever had the misfortune of reading, and I'm including "reading That One Review of FATAL" as the first one.




Well, like I said. If you want the game to be a farce, fumble rules are fine for that-- it's just literally the exact opposite of what I want from any game, ever.

*double shrug* Something super-serious is not something I want out of a game (or, for that matter, any other entertainment media, actually), so I suspect we are simply at irreconciably opposite ends.

[Karl Aegis]

That sounds awesome. If only that character had some way to draw aggro, it would the best tank I've ever heard of, in any system.

A 2 level Paladin dip gets you Medium Armor proficiency, smite, and 1st level spells, including a spell which pulls aggro: Compelled Duel.

[Doctor Awkward]

The closest I can think of is the widely prevalent "you auto-miss/fail on a natural 1", or the 2nd ed Psionics rules where you can, IIRC, accidentally disintigrate yourself,

That was't an optional rule. That was part of the psionic power.

Pisonics in AD&D were manifested by making power checks which were a roll-under mechanic on a d20. Each power had a "Power Score" which was one of your modified attributes which you had to roll in order to make the power work. In the case of disintegrate the Power Score it was your Wisdom - 4. So if your Wisdom was, say 14, your power check to manifest it was a 10 or less on a d20.

If you succeeded, the target has to make a Save vs. Death at a -5 or die. If you rolled a natural 20 on the power check, you manifested the power on yourself, only you got a +5 to your save.

Almost every psionic power worked like this. For example, a natural 20 on metamorphosis forced you to Save vs. Paralyzation, and if you failed you were stuck in your new form permanently. With expansion, you cut your size in half. Time/Space Anchor (essentially a psionic version of dimensional anchor that prevents others from teleporting you against your will) caused you to be rooted in place for 1d6 rounds while penalizing your AC by 5. Though there were some powers that didn't have any additional negative effects on a 20 besides failing.

[The Insanity]

Doesn't seem to bother the aforementioned groups any, all I can say.
That's because they're entertainers first, players second. Of course they're going to use fumble rules to make the games more interesting to watch.

[Particle_Man]

To clarify, I know that AD&D psionics had those problems with using the powers and that this wasn’t an optional rule (although I don’t think they were actual called fumbles they functioned as such), but it was specific to psionic characters whereas “fumbles” named as such were an optional rule that in theory would apply to anyone making an attack roll.

Ironically this is the only non-optional fumble rule I could think of and it specifically penalizes psionic characters rather than martial ones. Makes me wonder more about a psionics but no magic game which had no fumble rules other than that baked into the psionic rules.

[javcs]

I don't do fumble rules. At least, not for PCs.

I have at times done special critical hits and called shots. There are potentially permanent effects ... but I use such rules only in settings where the ability to recover from those effects is present and readily accessible. Ie, in a science fiction setting, you can potentially lose a hand, but a cybernetic hand isn't going to be too hard to come by (and depending on setting, the medical technology to regrow your hand might exist); in a fantasy setting, there's healing magic that allows regrowth of lost body parts. However, you're more likely to suffer something like a broken bone, imposing a penalty on using the limb that got hit until getting medical treatment and/or healing magic, as per setting norms, or a one round/until end-of-next-turn penalty.
And there's always a roll to resist these effects, usually an easy fortitude or reflex.
And while PCs can always activate special crits against their enemies, the average NPC won't be able to score special crits against PCs.



At the beginning of this, I said I don't do fumbles for PCs. However, sometimes, I have done fumbles for NPCs, requiring a kind of confirmation roll. More accurately, on a natural 1, I'd roll again, if the second roll was good enough for a hit, it was just a standard miss (natural 20/crit threat would reroll the original attack roll), if the second roll was a miss, inflict minor penalty on the monster, if the second roll was another natural 1, I'd run the confirmation process again, and on another confirmation the penalty would grow ... and so on and so on.
There was one occasion where the dice gods really hated this monster - 144 natural ones in a row (and, yes I did switch d20s), and at that point I just said **** it, it killed itself.

[RatElemental]

At the beginning of this, I said I don't do fumbles for PCs. However, sometimes, I have done fumbles for NPCs, requiring a kind of confirmation roll. More accurately, on a natural 1, I'd roll again, if the second roll was good enough for a hit, it was just a standard miss (natural 20/crit threat would reroll the original attack roll), if the second roll was a miss, inflict minor penalty on the monster, if the second roll was another natural 1, I'd run the confirmation process again, and on another confirmation the penalty would grow ... and so on and so on.
There was one occasion where the dice gods really hated this monster - 144 natural ones in a row (and, yes I did switch d20s), and at that point I just said **** it, it killed itself.

I overheard a GM talking once about fumble rules they planned to use. As an example, they used balance. At the first one, you just fall over. If you get a one on the confirmation, you fall over and land poorly, twisting your ankle. If you roll a one to confirm that you fall on your weapon and take some damage. If you roll one on that you hit something vital and die. If you rolled a one on that you instead trip and fall out of reality, ceasing to exist body and soul.

I'm sure they'd have had a field day with that monster.

[farothel]

One option to make them less likely is to have a fumble confirmed like a critical. Roll again (all the same modifiers) and if it's a miss again (or a 1) only then it's a fumble. To use the example with the bard with 30 diplomacy as mentioned above, that gives a fumble not 1 in 20, but 1 in 400, which is something I can live with. And that way fumbles logically happen more often on lower level characters (for the bard with 10 in diplomacy, a 1 in 40 chance).

[Quertus]

There was one occasion where the dice gods really hated this monster - 144 natural ones in a row (and, yes I did switch d20s), and at that point I just said **** it, it killed itself.

Do… do you realize the odds of this roll? Are there even numbers to express this?

[zlefin]

Do… do you realize the odds of this roll? Are there even numbers to express this?

should be about 1 in 1e+187 (in base ten), assuming there weren't typoes involved.

[Aotrs Commander]

should be about 1 in 1e+187 (in base ten), assuming there weren't typoes involved.

I would tenatively assume it was a typo and they meant 14, if for no other reason than I can't imagine a monster ever making 144 rolls period, let alone that number of ones in a row. (14 is still bloody impressive, mind.)

[Allanimal]

I would tenatively assume it was a typo and they meant 14, if for no other reason than I can't imagine a monster ever making 144 rolls period, let alone that number of ones in a row. (14 is still bloody impressive, mind.)

I can’t imagine rolling 144 times, Even 14 is too many.
Combat is already real time consuming, adding all these extra rolls just makes it worse. If i was using fumbles, I’d call the monster done after 3 consecutive natural ones, and move on.

[Gnaeus]

Again, good fumble rules need to force casters to roll for a possible fumble for every spell they cast, with a fumble causing a lost spell and to take damage (of double what fumbling a spell of a single level lower would). In addition, possible fumbles should be restricted to the first roll of an attack sequence.

As such, fumbles do not have to inherently widen the gap between casters and martials.

That doesn’t actually stop a 3.5 caster, it just changes the way they optimize. You shift away from spells cast in combat and towards long term spells. I don’t care if I fumble animate dead. I just get a heal and cast it again. I won’t cast cures. I will cast persistent mass lesser vigor. Haste and slow get replaced with keen edge and greater magic weapon. I don’t care if I can fumble, I’m never going to do it in combat.

[javcs]

Do… do you realize the odds of this roll? Are there even numbers to express this?
Yes. Appallingly low.
And, no, the dice were clean.


To be fair, I normally wouldn't give that many iterations of the the process to anything. However ... after I'd done a few, it was like ... "c'mon, it can't keep getting nat 1s", and then it was the sheer improbability of it all keeping me going.

[Aotrs Commander]

Total of -484. One in 3.2 million chance. We consult the fumble chart, and indeed, I have injured myself... to the tune of an E Critical and another E Critical on the Bite chart.

Got identical results on both critical rolls: Instant decapitation.

In the most realistic combat system in any roleplaying game ever, my character bit his own head off, twice, on his first attack roll.

I've never played a more realistic fantasy battle since.

I was about to reply to Gnaeus and humorously point out in Rolemaster, you can't avoid fumbles1 and casters are actually slightly more likely to kill themselves with a really bad fumble with an attack spell than the fighter with his sword - and then something randomly clicked and struck me.

You literally cannot do that in Rolemaster RAW in any edition.

It's mechaically impossible.

They done you, my friend, they done you.

I REALLY should have caught that, but this is the only day this week my free time has not been 100% PF to 3.A conversions and my brain is clear-thinking.

Attack rolls are open-ended HIGH, in RM1, RM2, RMC, RMSS and RMFRP. NOT flat open-ended like static or moving maneuvers - you only roll and add if you roll 96+. If you roll in your fumble range, you roll a D100 on the appropriate table, and the ABSOLUTE WORST you can do to yourself in FRP (assuming you DM didn't use the "animal" fumble and used the one-handed weapon fumble), where you get an (unspecified, but implication of slash, krush or puncture) D critical. The ONLY time you get that is if you fumble and roll a natural 100. If you'd tolled a 97 on your fumble and your GM was feeling mean enough to make you use the one-handed table (and not matial arts striking or animal, which are more forgiving and frankly, more appropriate), you'd merely have been stunned no parry for three rounds - which Is Bad, but hardly decapitating yourself. I don't know what your GM was doing, but he wasn't using the FRP critical and fumble tables, he was clearly using his own (very very bad ones) or had NO IDEA about the basic rules. How in the merry HELL he gave you what is functionally a J critical I cannot fathom.

(Unless there's some VERY atypical optional rules in some of RMFRP's sourcebooks I don't own - which doesn't seem likely, with a look across all RSS/FRP's product lines, which were btu a fraction of RM2's.)

Secondly, and this should have tipped me off, and I'm sorry it didn't the first time - you can't chop off anyone's head in Rolemaster, much less your own - the Slash criticals have just never had that result, bizarre though it is - you'd have though E 100 would be decapitation, but no, it's a groin-shot.

I THINK you might be able decaptiate something with one specifical critical result on the super-large table, or MAYBE on the Raking criticals (if your DM was strangely using SpaceMaster 2 critical tables and treating your bite as a fracking lightsabre), but I'd have to pour through every edition's copy of Arms Law and SpaceMaster that I have (so at least five books) plus probably Arms Companion to try and find it.

Long and the short of it, you CAN theorhetically kill yourself with a fumble in RM, but it requires a fumble followed by a natural 100 followed by about 86+ on the D critical (but ONLY if you are using a one-handed weapon, a thrown weapon or are mounted - if you're using a two hander the best you can do is do your groin (50% you're out for two rounds with pain, 50% foe out two rounds laughing2. Also, fumble on every natural weapon tanle I can find is 01-02 (admittedly I don't have the creature attack tables for FRP); so either you are remembering wrong or the DM had no idea about the rules and/or was bovine-excrementing you on your fumble-range.

In short, your RM GM did you, either through ignorance or slap-shod houserules.



1Unless you're Morgroth, as according to Lords of Middle-Earth, the Iron Crown had a legendary ability to make you not be able to fumble...!

2A result I know well, since I cribbed it word-for-word during that short phase I tried using RM-style fumble tables in AD&D or early 3.0, I forget which).

[NNescio]

should be about 1 in 1e+187 (in base ten), assuming there weren't typoes involved.

To put this into perspective, one has a higher chance of winning 20 lottery jackpots in a row. With a couple lightning strikes thrown in for good measure.

Individual atoms have a higher chance of quantum tunneling through a brick wall.

One can set the entire population of humans that have ever lived (~107 billion people) to do nothing but roll d20s for the entire age of the universe (~13.8 billion years, or a 'mere' 4.36 x 10^17 seconds), and this outcome is still certain to almost never occur. This is not hyperbole.

(And if it does somehow happen, any χ2 test or any other statistical test with a predetermined significance level that is practically zero [pick any vanishingly small value of α you like with a bunch of arbitrary zeroes after the decimal point] will conclude that the dice are loaded.)

Yes, I'm afraid I'm calling bullcrap on this one. I have an easier time believing that, well, somebody just managed to spontaneously cast Raise Dead in real life by following the PHB. That claim would be far more credible.

[Gnaeus]

I was about to reply to Gnaeus and humorously point out in Rolemaster, you can't avoid fumbles1 and casters are actually slightly more likely to kill themselves with a really bad fumble with an attack spell than the fighter with his sword - and then something randomly clicked and struck me.

In Rolemaster eating the crit will give you exp so low level fumbles in non dangerous circumstances are to be welcomed. I was in a game once where someone Bilboed up a tree to get a better view. He got exp. so then we all started climbing trees to get exp. Then someone fell and ate a low crit and got a bunch of exp. Then we started throwing ourselves from trees. It was hilarity for all until someone maimed himself. Then it was hilarity for most.

Seriously though, Rolemaster is a good example of how crits change play. it’s fairly easy to be killed by a weak opponent with bad luck. So in a serious Rolemaster game you avoid combat whenever possible, and go out of your way to make it as one sided as possible. Those 3 orcs aren’t an attrition encounter. They are a life or death threat. D&D is a game designed around repeat combat. 3-5 fights a day. Kick open the door. Kill. Loot. repeat. Rolemaster isn’t bad, but it’s bad for D&D.

[FaerieGodfather]

In short, your RM GM did you, either through ignorance or slap-shod houserules.

That's good to know. It took me years to warm up to Rolemaster after that, but I did warm up to it and never noticed the discrepancies you pointed out.

I will point out that the Attack Chart I was using was explicitly Bite, not 1HS... but it doesn't change the fact that the outcome I got was impossible.

When it comes down to brass tacks, I prefer HARP... but even then, I still remove its single-axis crit charts in favor of the hit dice variant.

[Aotrs Commander]

In Rolemaster eating the crit will give you exp so low level fumbles in non dangerous circumstances are to be welcomed. I was in a game once where someone Bilboed up a tree to get a better view. He got exp. so then we all started climbing trees to get exp. Then someone fell and ate a low crit and got a bunch of exp. Then we started throwing ourselves from trees. It was hilarity for all until someone maimed himself. Then it was hilarity for most.

Seriously though, Rolemaster is a good example of how crits change play. it’s fairly easy to be killed by a weak opponent with bad luck. So in a serious Rolemaster game you avoid combat whenever possible, and go out of your way to make it as one sided as possible. Those 3 orcs aren’t an attrition encounter. They are a life or death threat. D&D is a game designed around repeat combat. 3-5 fights a day. Kick open the door. Kill. Loot. repeat. Rolemaster isn’t bad, but it’s bad for D&D.

Heck, it's basically impossible to have a decent boss-fight in RM for that reason (or, more practially, play without some form of Fate points or bare minimum GM fudging if you want to keep the characters...)

I use RM/SM for entirely different things now. I am retiring the party we've been running day quest for since the mid-90s in about three weeks (because, ironically, they're so overpowered (and numerous, the whole party plus hangers-on is, like 15 characters in the instance that they all show up an once!), I can't challenge them in combat). The party that will be taking over is explictly designed to be exploration - it's the Aotrs magical space Liches do Stargate-SG-1. As I have a noted tendancy to write very explore-y quests for the previous adventuring party, retiring them for a party that's actually designed from the ground up for that makes for a much better job, I think.

Heck, I discovered that the party actually NEEDS formely much-maligned skills like Structural Engineering and Metal Evaluation and stuff because part of the exploring is going "what's that made of?" RM is, I think, better in many ways than D&D at that sort of thing, where the nuance actually is important.




That's good to know. It took me years to warm up to Rolemaster after that, but I did warm up to it and never noticed the discrepancies you pointed out.

I will point out that the Attack Chart I was using was explicitly Bite, not 1HS... but it doesn't change the fact that the outcome I got was impossible.

The attack table, yes, but there's no fumble table for Bite specifially. FRP has one-handed, two-handed, pole-arm, mounted, thrown, bow, animal (which is one RM2 didn't), MA strikes, MA sweeps& throws and brawling fumble tables. None of them are exactly "character with a natural weapon;" best fit would be in MY estimation would be either animal with some tweaking of the wording since it assumes animal intelligence or MA strikes or brawling, with one-hand at the outside.

[Sereg]

That doesn’t actually stop a 3.5 caster, it just changes the way they optimize. You shift away from spells cast in combat and towards long term spells. I don’t care if I fumble animate dead. I just get a heal and cast it again. I won’t cast cures. I will cast persistent mass lesser vigor. Haste and slow get replaced with keen edge and greater magic weapon. I don’t care if I can fumble, I’m never going to do it in combat.
I didn't realize stopping a caster completely was the goal here? I just said it didn't have to inherently widen the gap between melee and casters. The fact that casters have to change tactics means it did restrict them.

That said, you have a point about it still being a very small inconvenience. So here's one I initially thought was too defeating:

It damages their primary casting stat, bypassing immunities, and the damage cannot be magically healed.

[NNescio]

The attack table, yes, but there's no fumble table for Bite specifially. FRP has one-handed, two-handed, pole-arm, mounted, thrown, bow, animal (which is one RM2 didn't), MA strikes, MA sweeps& throws and brawling fumble tables. None of them are exactly "character with a natural weapon;" best fit would be in MY estimation would be either animal with some tweaking of the wording since it assumes animal intelligence or MA strikes or brawling, with one-hand at the outside.

Didn't one of the RMCs have a fumble table (or rather, "column") for bite attacks? IIRC it was RMC VI or something.

[MeimuHakurei]

I didn't realize stopping a caster completely was the goal here? I just said it didn't have to inherently widen the gap between melee and casters. The fact that casters have to change tactics means it did restrict them.

That said, you have a point about it still being a very small inconvenience. So here's one I initially thought was too defeating:

It damages their primary casting stat, bypassing immunities, and the damage cannot be magically healed.

The casters who prepare armies outside of combat, use only long-term persisted buffs and generally keep away from dungeons personally are the ones that need a greater limiter than those trying to actively fight the enemies. Throwing webs, glitterdusts or even fireballs doesn't need a significant limitation.

[Aotrs Commander]

Didn't one of the RMCs have a fumble table (or rather, "column") for bite attacks? IIRC it was RMC VI or something.

*looks*

*looks twice, and harder at RoCoVI*

Oh, yeah! So long since I've had an animal fumble, I'd forgotten about that one. So, yes, in RM2, the worst (100) result on a Bite fumble is "Baite and swallow tongue! +15 hits, stunned 6 rounds, +3 hits/round.") Which is bad, but it's not even stun no parry, so is arguably better than the 97 on one-handed fumble...

[Gnaeus]

I didn't realize stopping a caster completely was the goal here? I just said it didn't have to inherently widen the gap between melee and casters. The fact that casters have to change tactics means it did restrict them.

That said, you have a point about it still being a very small inconvenience. So here's one I initially thought was too defeating:

It damages their primary casting stat, bypassing immunities, and the damage cannot be magically healed.

It restricts them to another strategy that works just as well. It is still widening the gap between muggles (who are fumbling when it matters) and casters (who aren’t).

Yes, you could make fumbles that matter to a wizard. Like, if you roll a 1 on a spell your head explodes and you die. The unhealable unbypassable ability damage may be that. It’s going to be really hard to find that line between “wizard plays like a decker with pet drones” and “casters become non-functional because using your class abilities is self defeating.” Seems like a pretty miserable game to me but you do you.

[RedMage125]

My personal House Rule on fumbles is as follows:

1. A "Nat 1" on a d20 indicates a possibility of a Fumble. The player then makes a "confirmation roll" (just liek confirming a critical threat), using the same bonus as the roll that triggered it.

2. A "hit" on this confirmation roll means it's just a regular miss, no Fumble.

3. A "miss" on the confirmation roll means now there is a Fumble.

CAVEAT: Creatures using Natural Attacks do not Fumble. Tthis also applies to Monks fighting unarmed.

Fumble possibilities include:

Drop Weapon
Trip and Fall Prone
Turn Is Over Now (no further iterative attacks)
Provoke Attack of Opportunity
Weapon Malfuntion (Bowstring breaks, Crossbow jams, etc)*
Mistarget the Attack (target a different creature in range of the attack, possibly an ally)

*Note that Magic Bows' strings are strengthened, and will not break from use like this. Which made my players very happy. Until one was standing in a beholder's Antimagic Cone, trying to shoot it, and rolled a Fumble :smallbiggrin:.

[Sereg]

Fair enough, though I never claimed that the purpose of fumbles was balance. Just that they did not have to penalise martials more for rolling more.

(I have other ways for martial characters to deal with casters raising armies, using persistent buffs etc. But that's off topic, so I didn't mention it.)

(Also, I confess to liking the trope that using magic is inherently a risk)

[RatElemental]

(Also, I confess to liking the trope that using magic is inherently a risk)

Difference in outlook I suppose. I like playing casters. I don't like being punished for playing something I like. Wouldn't want to play an elder scroll's game that would sometimes delete your character when you tried to use a core mechanic of the game either.

[Sereg]

Difference in outlook I suppose. I like playing casters. I don't like being punished for playing something I like. Wouldn't want to play an elder scroll's game that would sometimes delete your character when you tried to use a core mechanic of the game either.

I like playing casters too! But I feel that it feels more special if you have to sacrifice something for that.

That said, yeah, difference in outlook.

[Zanos]

I didn't read the thread so I'll just drop the couple of reasons I don't like typical fumble rules.

1. I consider my characters, generally, to be capable. I might be a stick in the mud, but I don't find it in theme for competent heroes to be comically dropping their swords/spells somewhat randomly in combat. I actually prefer to describe failures on the part of the PCs to be the competence of their enemies rather than some sort of ridiculous failure(you missed vs he dodged)
2. The implementation is usually focused on 1 on a d20, which is too frequent. I actually already think the 1/20 spread is too flat and prefer a 3d6.
3. The implementation usually is punitive on characters who roll dice more, which is generally martials making a lot of attacks, which is already one of the weakest archetypes.
4. The implementation usually causes more fumbles as characters improve in skill and strength, rather than less. A high level character making, say, seven attacks per turn, has a ~31% chance of at least a single 1 every turn.
5. Casters can sidestep most fumble rules by simply not using spells that have attack rolls, which are usually some of the best spells anyway, and are comparatively impacted very little.
6. NPCs are inherently more disposable than PCs. It is not a big deal if an NPCs critical fumble leads to a death, but it is if it happens to a PC. Introducing swingy mechanics inherently disfavors the PCs long term, even if they occasionally benefit from them.
7. I am unlucky.

Most of these besides 1 and 7 can be mitigated with good design, but I have never actually seen a set of fumble rules that weren't more trouble than they were worth.


I like playing casters too! But I feel that it feels more special if you have to sacrifice something for that.

That said, yeah, difference in outlook.
Mechanics that can represent magic having a cost that aren't 'roll on this table to not kill yourself/the party/the universe' do exist. I agree that 3.5 magic can seem rote sometimes but I've played systems like the 40k RPG where you have to randomly roll on the warp tables and it is pretty miserable.

[Sereg]

Mechanics that can represent magic having a cost that aren't 'roll on this table to not kill yourself/the party/the universe' do exist. I agree that 3.5 magic can seem rote sometimes but I've played systems like the 40k RPG where you have to randomly roll on the warp tables and it is pretty miserable.

This is true. I prefer fumbles to be an inconvenience instead of a death sentence. And I do use other mechanics to represent that as well. (For example, I make casters get progressively weaker as they use more magic)

Of course, the big difference is in my difference in opinion on your first point. I like to represent that everyone makes horrible blunders, no matter how capable they are and I like the fact that something unexpectedly bad can happen at any time.

[Aotrs Commander]

This is true. I prefer fumbles to be an inconvenience instead of a death sentence.

On this, I absolutely concur. Fumbles that can kill you are Bad Fumbles.

(I feel I should note in passing, that in my three decades of playing with fumbles in one system of another, no-one has ever died from one in the games I either run or have played in. Okay, maybe the odd monster that was nearly dead which killed itself, but that doesn't count.)

[HighWater]

Ah yes, fumbles!

When I first started playing D&D 3.5 it was under a DM who started out playing 2nd Edition under a few quirky DMs who enforced critical fumbles.
Although fumbles can lead to funny situations, they were unaware that a natural 1 doesn't exist for skills, nor were the inherent balance issues apparent.

That DM now plays in my campaign and I find that the reflex runs deep: players get confused and expect critical fumble rules. After a few sessions of saying "no I don't do fumble rules because of balance reasons x and y", I decided to come at it from a different angle.

Player agency!

So, whoever rolls a 1, gets to choose:
- they can roll to "confirm", where a 1-5 natural leads to actual fumble and a 16-20 leads to fumbling success (think: "your weapon slips from your grip and impales enemy X, roll for damage")
- they can not roll to confirm and it's treated as the automatic miss it is

That way, players who actually want fumbling rules can do it any time they would come up if they were in play, while players who don't generally like the mechanic can choose to use it in the hopes of striking a fumbling success at the moment it matters most. Or just never take that chance at all.

Either way, the choice is theirs.

[Quertus]

That way, players who actually want fumbling rules can do it any time they would come up if they were in play, while players who don't generally like the mechanic can choose to use it in the hopes of striking a fumbling success at the moment it matters most. Or just never take that chance at all.

Fumbles, as an optional gamble. Bloody brilliant.

[RatElemental]

I like playing casters too! But I feel that it feels more special if you have to sacrifice something for that.

That said, yeah, difference in outlook.

How do fumble rules require you to sacrifice anything? If you're a caster, you're still a caster, it's just sometimes the fumble rules make you stop being a caster. (Going by the irreversible damage to casting stat suggestion)

If that particular rule was in play, I would leave the table immediately. I play a caster to play a caster, not play a caster until I get too much brain damage and am no longer capable of casting spells.

[Voidstar01]

If that particular rule was in play, I would leave the table immediately. I play a caster to play a caster, not play a caster until I get too much brain damage and am no longer capable of casting spells.

If i'm not mistaken he said it can't be healed magically. It should still heal the mundane way, and considering a good portion of the best spell are save or die/suck and involve no chance to fumble, i'd think casters would still be playable.

[HighWater]

Fumbles, as an optional gamble. Bloody brilliant.

Thanks, I liked it too!

It even incorporates that "Realistic screw-up" component that proponents of fumbles use occasionally: the optional fumbles don't tend to see action unless the character is under serious stress. It also preserves the option to push for heroism under bad luck.

An table-example that springs to mind was when the Cleric of Pelor was rushing to the aid of a party member that unwisely split the party. He managed to (barely) get inside range to let off a Searing Light spell to try to kill the menacing enemy. A natural 1 was rolled... optional critical fumble was invoked => success!
Narrative: The cleric, rushing to save his beleaguered colleague from almost certain death, loses his footing as his oil slicked boots slip on the metal floor. With a shout of divine determination, he spins on his axis whilst falling and unleashes his Searing Light spell on the enemy, slaying it.

[Sereg]

How do fumble rules require you to sacrifice anything? If you're a caster, you're still a caster, it's just sometimes the fumble rules make you stop being a caster. (Going by the irreversible damage to casting stat suggestion)

If that particular rule was in play, I would leave the table immediately. I play a caster to play a caster, not play a caster until I get too much brain damage and am no longer capable of casting spells.

Standard rules still have you run out of spells. This just means that it might sometimes be faster than expected.

(And the sacrifice is the chance of brain damage)

(Again though this is rather minor compared to other changes I have made)

[RatElemental]

Standard rules still have you run out of spells. This just means that it might sometimes be faster than expected.

(And the sacrifice is the chance of brain damage)

(Again though this is rather minor compared to other changes I have made)

If you take too much damage to your casting stat and dip below 10, you can't cast spells anymore until it heals, one point at a time over days assuming the condition doesn't stipulate a longer rest period/incurableness. That is what I was referring to when I said they make you stop being a caster.


If i'm not mistaken he said it can't be healed magically. It should still heal the mundane way, and considering a good portion of the best spell are save or die/suck and involve no chance to fumble, i'd think casters would still be playable.

I was responding to a hypothetical rule that added a fumble chance to all spells.