Our group uses the old ICE Rolemaster Critical tables as an added flavor extra - and extra layer of possible lethality! 
- for crit resolution. We found the extra damage unsatisfying. It kind of made rolling a crit "Meh" instead of "Yay!" The players have yet to encounter a foe getting one of the insta-kill crits (if you've ever played Rolemaster you know what I mean), though they've scored them on foes. So the added layer of danger makes for more exciting play.
We also adopted the Fumble crits from the same source. It seemed to us that, if rolling a 20 was a cause for shouts of "Awright!", rolling a 1 should be equally momentous, a cause for "Awcrap." It should be more than a mere "you fail." The reasoning was, if there's a consequence for rolling a statistically improbable yet positive result, there should be a consequence for a negative result that is as statistically improbable. As there is no reasonable fumble equivalent to the extra damage specified by 5e RAW for crits, and we'd decided to use the Rolemaster tables for crits, it was simple to opt for the same source for fumbles. Besides, the flavor text from the RM system is just funny.
I used to just make it up. It would always something unfortunate, like you drop your sword, or break a bowstring, or something like that. It got more insteresting if you were attacking into melee with a ranged weapon; ask the Fighter about how many times the Rogue threw a dagger into her back (our Rogue is the single poorest die roller I've met in 30 years of RPGing. Seriously. She was borrowing my dice; now those dice are hers. I don't want them contaminating my dice bag.) But it was starting to get repetitive and boring.
Anyway, now you know the context for this question: What do you do at your table? I'm curious as to A. does anybody else have fun with fumbles? and if the answer to A. is "yes," how you have fun with them.
GO.
No. Rolling a 1 and automatically missing is punishment enough. We don't use critical fumbles at our table.
One thing I thought MIGHT be okay to import from 13th Age is their rule where a natural 1 is not only an automatic miss, but it also prevents you from doing ANY damage with the attack, even if it would do damage on a miss. Not sure how many DOAM attacks there are in 5e though; I know that's controversial. But for the time being, we play RAW.
Another rule I thought was fun was the 4e Dark Sun rule where if you rolled a natural 1, you had the choice to reroll the attack, but if you choose to do that your weapon automatically breaks after the attack. Mainly because player choice = good. It really works best when you don't have magical weapons or at least when you have the ability to repair your magic weapon with the use of a ritual or somesuch. I never actually had anyone choose to use that option in play, though.
We were playing a 4e campaign for about two years when one day we had a new player join us. The first thing he did was hand me a critical fumble table. Not only did I not want to use it, but it was really poorly written too - some of the options made no sense. I pretty much told him no way and threw the sheet away later. Nowadays, however, I wouldn't shut someone down like that immediately. If I were DMing and anyone in my group insisted on having critical fumbles, I would allow each player, including the DM, to opt in or opt out, but no critical fumble could directly affect another player who opted out (no accidentally chopping your friends' heads off unless they opted in). There's no rule that says everyone at the same table has to use the same crit fumble rules. So that way if they really, really want to be able to trip and drop their weapon or stab themselves, they can feel free to do that, but no one else will be forced to participate in their antics.
I could go into the reasons on why critical fumbles are bad in D&D, but that's been covered to death already since about the year 1980. Google it and find out.
I've used them in the past, but in general people like bonuses more than they like penalties (even when they apply to enemies as well); and along the same design principles that races have bonus stats instead of penalties I'm going to avoid using them with this edition.
If you do use them, I recommend having them happening less than 1/20 times (IE: Confirm your fumble 3.5 style); and the 'Hackmaster' crit-tables and fumble-tables are a good place to start (albeit complicated)
I posted something similar to this on Reddit a few days ago when the subject came up.
Critical fumbles make me feel like one of the three stooges instead of a steely-eyed winged angel of death. When I gain levels I get increased skill, attacks, proficiency....and chances for critical fumbles.
Critical Fumbles suck. This is a fact, I measured it with a suck-o-meter and it was pegged at maximum suckiness.
RedSiegfried wrote:
I haven't used fumbles in 5E yet, but in the past I have used a simple system where I had players roll a d6 after a natural "1". If they got a second "1" then it was a fumble or weapon break. Less than a 1% chance that way - which resolves the primary issue most people have with fumbling - a 5% chance is too often. If you want it to be even more rare use a d8, d10 or another d20. Simple and fast. Personally I think weapon fumbles fall into the "fail forward" category and can make things more interesting.
I treat fumbles in one of two ways, depending on the circumstances.
- If in melee, rolling a 1 not only means an automatic miss, but also your opponent(s) within reach get one immediate free attack against you. I like this because it makes a fumble dangerous, but not neccessarily crippling.
- Out of hand-to-hand combat, rolling a 1 will render your tools/weapon useless until some time has been spent in fixing them. For example, a bowstring might snap, a lockpick breaks off inside the lock and jams it, a magic wand is dropped in some kind of crap and needs to be thoroughly cleaned, and so forth. Essentially, the result should prevent the fumbler from being able to try again until some reasonable time has passed.
I once used quite complex (and lethal) critical/fumble tables, but they brought everything to a halt whenever a result had to be determined, and in the end I didn't think they added particularly to the fun of the game — especially when PCs started losing hands and legs and what-not.
I've seen the recommendation that players roll to confirm fumbles like you used to confirm crits. That would reduce occurence.
I think I'll poll the group again. Nobody's complained yet, and they seem to be enjoying the results. I'm kind of afraid to tell them about concerns which they haven't raised, if you understand me.
I really like your approach, FitzMojoBob. That's something which worries me, too - game flow. Although I've been making a nice show of pulling out the RM book for both crits and fumbles, complete with Dum dum DUUUUUUUM noises. The act of pulling out another book arrests play until the crit/fumble is resolved.
Keep 'em coming! I'm learning stuff and am fascinated.
Bob
FitzMojoBob wrote:
A random halfling: "I don't get it."
If fumbles work for you then go for it, but personally speaking I think they don't add anything other than making your characters look incompetent and further punishing weapon-users more than spellcasters.
To be honest, I don't actually like critical hits very much either.
I use an old 3e crit/fumble table that I've converted. They both require a confirm roll and both can have potentially devastating effects. My table loves it, but its obviously not for everybody.
I never liked fumbles. I'm glad they are gone.
I'm not familiar with Rolemaster crit tables... or fumble tables for that matter. So I can't say how "balanced" they are. That said, if you wish to impliment extra features like that, this would be my suggestion:
For crits, confirm them... roll a second d20. Anything that's a succesful hit on the 2nd roll gets the extra feature of the crit table in-place of the normal crit rules. IF the 2nd roll would not hit, treat it like a normal RAW crit. (Unless you want to be evil and say a Nat 1 after a Nat 20 cancels the crit.... but still remains a "hit").
For Nat 1 fumbles, do the same thing. If the 2nd roll still misses the target, then a fumble table comes into play, if the 2nd roll hits, it's just a normal miss. (And if you use the option to have a follow-up 1 cancel a Nat 20 crit, then a Nat 20 follow-up to a Nat 1 should make the attack a normal hit.)
Just my 2 copper.
Thanks, guys. It appears the concensus is "No fumbles." I have to say those of you against them have made a pretty compelling case. I'll talk it over with my players next session and see what they think.
Thanks again!
Bob
I like fumbles because they add some drama. Think about Han Solo on the Death Star. "We're all fine here now, how are are you?" That's a Deception fumble! A fumble signals a dramatic failure of some sort, not just a boring old failure. Great roleplayers might improv that on their own, but staring that 1 in the face often prompts more than "Oh, I don't know" or "They find your words unpersusasive."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYAbFqkvzQA
Monsters make way more attacks than PCs so this turns out to help the PCs for the same reason crits tend to hurt them more than they help. It also adds a wild card to a combat to have something change it up unexpectedly, such as having a favorite weapon out of combat, which forces you go go to something else or get some help from your allies. However, it certainly adds complexity, so I'd think carefully about using it. In 3.5 I used Action Points. One way to get people to fumble was that I bribed them by giving an AP if you chose to fumble. Otherwise no fumble occurred, a 1 was just an auto-miss.
While I have a soft spot in my heart for ChartMaster, and the descriptions are indeed hilarious, I just can't bring myself to use something that requries a complicated chart. I've tried various mechanisms, including one with player choice, over the years, but the easiest is something like this.
If you roll a 1, the attack automatically misses. In addition, make a Dex Save vs DC 10. If you save, no further effect occurs. If you fail, roll a D6:
- Weapon dropped at your feet. Recovering can be part of an action, but it provokes an AoO from any adjacent enemy.
- Your attack leaves you seriously out of place. Your attacks suffer disadvantage until the end of your next turn.
- Overextend: You grant advantage until the start of your next turn.
- Damage an adjacent ally (if possible) or self: Roll damage as normal but apply it to the real target.
- Weapon damaged: Bowstring breaks, you notch your sword blade, the pommel comes loose, etc. Attacks made with this weapon are at disadvantage until it is repaired (ordinarily out of combat, but the Mending spell might become a lot more popular).
- Weapon out of combat. You drop it in a place that is essentially inaccessible until combat is over (though again, Mage Hand might become a lot more popular).
The DM should adjudicate these results as necessary. For instance, a monk attacking with open hand can't have effect 1. The DM could simply rule that this effect does not apply or reroll. Similarly, the monk rolling 6 might end up doing damage to self instead, by punching a wall. A DM who's pretty good can make up interesting failure effects as well. You can pretty easily just throw advantage to enemies until start of next turn or disadvantage to self (or an ally) until end of next turn if you don't even want to cope with the chart.
Oraibi wrote:
Okay, in re: Sword-swinging types being more likely to fumble at higher levels. I talked to some honest-to-Gawd statisticians about this, and it turns out my hunch was right.
The premise that fumbles are bad because it unfairly penalizes those who make more attacks is statistically both right and wrong. It's correct in that having more attacks means that there are more opportunities to fumble. It is incorrect when it assumes that more fumbles are likely based on an increased number of opportunities. The nature of the d20 roll is truly random - each roll has a 5% chance of coming up 1 - and the amount of times a die is rolled has no bearing on the likelihood of a given result appearing.
Anyway, I'll assess the feelings of my players and get back to you. I think, even if they decide to keep the fumble system, that I'll streamline it in one of the ways listed here. Consulting the ChartMaster (snicker) table, while entertaining at first, is likely to become a brake on speed as well as boring once the novelty wears off.
Thanks again, everyone! :D
Bob
Gungolphus wrote:
Gungolphus wrote:
crimfan07 wrote:
While the chance of scoring a 1 on any one roll is indeed 5%, the chance of scoring at least one fumble in a round goes up the more attacks you make.
Let's say you make two attacks. On any given attack you have a 5% chance of rolling a 1 (or 0.05 probability). Tracking four outcomes, and using the fact that independent probabilities multiply, you have:
- roll a 1 on first attack, no 1 on second attack, which has probability 0.95*0.95 = 0.9025.
- no 1 on first attack, 1 on second attack, which has probability 0.95*0.05 = 0.0475
- roll a 1 on first attack, no 1 on second attack, which has probabiity also 0.0475
- roll a 1 on both attacks, which has probability 0.05*0.05 = 0.0025
(obviously these probabilities could change if the first attack fumble has consequences for the second attack such as imposing disadvantage.)
However, if you total them up, the chance of getting at least one fumble on two attacks is the number I gave previously. This scales up. So it's a problem. Having a confirm for fumbling helps, but does not totally eliminate the problem.
One way to fix it to some degree is to have the consequences only affect the next roll.
Gungolphus wrote:
CaptainPicard wrote:
I used to implement events like 'notched sword' or 'wobbly mace handle' on a natural 1, where magic weapons got a save. This meant a -1 to attack and damage until such time as the character could repair the weapon (using a whetstone, etc). With 5th Edition, I don't think I would use -1 to attack, the 'bounded accuracy' is just too tight. A -1 penalty to subsequent damage, however, may still work. I have yet to run a 5e campaign. Again, the player could take time to fix weapons. Weapons like a bow would become noticably weaker...In the past, my ranger player would carry extra bow strings and restring his bow during downtime. I tried bowstring snaps, but that was too disabling, if realistic.
For spells that used an attack, I had similar consequences for a natural 1, but they were spell-dependent and never completely dibilitating...nothing that would cause them to miss a round of action. A Ray of Enfeeblement, for example, might be mis-cast and provide the target with a one round temp bonus to hit. Then again, I also house-ruled (before there were feats) that crit Magical attacks existed as well.
A friend and fellow DM also house-ruled critical/fumble outcomes for skill checks. These can be really fun, but take work on the part of the DM who must be quick witted to create such outcomes in context of the skill roll. I'm not that quick-witted, lol.
I use a system wherein you have to confirm the fumble, and the confirmation roll uses your attack bonus. By mid level, characters are competent enough that they probably won't fumble, while low level characters will fumble much more, as will high level characters that use weapons they aren't proficient with.
If your players think it's cool, go for it.
It's only really their opinions that really matter, since they're the ones you're running the game for.
Otherwise, rolling a 1 is generally a big enough penalty as it is.
If I was to do it, I would actually be tempted to bounce it into the player's hands.
"If you roll a 1 then you can decide something amusingly negative to happen to your character, if you want".
I then agree or if I disagree it's just a faliure.
I'm happy to apply it to monsters, but some people don't like the "Players have Narrative Advantage" style of design.
Illithidbix wrote:
If you must have fumbles, I reckon keep it narrative and in keeping with your play style (i.e. humorous or serious). If mechanics are needed, how about keep it 5e style: something like impose Disadvantage on your next attack roll, ability check or saving throw, whichever comes first.
FitzMojoBob wrote:
And let's not forget that the potential of rolling a 1 also goes up if you have disadvantage on an attack let alone multiple attacks...
We have been using the Pathfinder critical fumble and critical hit cards. It takes a bit of quick conversion to turn some of them into 5E mechanics - but overall they seem to have livened up the crits ...
(We also keep track of the expended cards to see just how many of each we rolled during the session - we had (as I recall) 10 crit hits and 4 crit fumbles last week...)
Carl
We also use a 3E deck for fumble and adjust accordingly but its a lot of fun sometimes