Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Shadowfax7 Feb 24, 2009 19:56:06	My group has always had a fumble rule and likes to play with them. I am attempting to devise one for a 4e campaign, but need feedback: P.E.A.C.H. CRITICAL FUMBLES A natural attack roll of 1 on a d20 is a critical fumble if the total attack roll is low enough to miss the target’s defense, allowing anyone adjacent to the square you occupy, or that has threatening reach on you, get an opportunity attack. If there isn’t anyone adjacent to the square you occupy, or that has threatening reach on you, you must succeed on a DC 10 Dex check or drop your melee weapon or spend a full round restringing your bow, untangling your sling or retrieving your thrown weapon stuck in the ground or some object. Another option is that it grants Combat Advantage to anyone adjacent to the square you occupy, or that has threatening reach on you.
#2 masteraaron Feb 24, 2009 21:27:26	I would strongly recommend that you avoid the opportunity attack version. This will result in absolute carnage for some characters, and have minimal effect on others. Dropping your weapon is not nearly as bad as, for example, four monsters getting free OAs on a defender. The combat advantage version is probably sufficient. Instead of having the "Dex check or you inconvenience yourself" clause, just make the character grant CA to all enemies. That'll affect ranged characters just as much as melee.
#3 Novacat Feb 24, 2009 21:29:33	This topic has been discussed to death in multiple other threads, and I suspect this one will end the same way. There are way too many problems with any critical fumble system that I've seen to make it mechanically appealing, as far as I'm concerned. I will never implement one, and if one were core, I would probably house-rule it out. That said, if it works for your group, more power to you. I've played under a DM that had a minor critical fumble house rule (nat 1 ends your turn), and while I found it annoying, he was a good enough DM that I was able to live with it, because the rest of the game was so fun.
#4 Crimson_Concerto Feb 24, 2009 21:49:21	If you're really going to decide that you want to implement a house rule as horrible as critical fumbles, at least be quick, simple and consistent about it. Go with the one where you grant everybody CA until the beginning of your next turn. Be advised that the more attacks a player makes (higher level characters with powers that grant multiple attacks or even a lower level wizard with an area attack), the more this house rule screws them over, which makes no logical sense.
#5 rikiji Feb 24, 2009 22:00:44	This topic has been discussed to death in multiple other threads, and I suspect this one will end the same way. There are way too many problems with any critical fumble system that I've seen to make it mechanically appealing, as far as I'm concerned. I will never implement one, and if one were core, I would probably house-rule it out. That said, if it works for your group, more power to you. I've played under a DM that had a minor critical fumble house rule (nat 1 ends your turn), and while I found it annoying, he was a good enough DM that I was able to live with it, because the rest of the game was so fun. This. But if you must, please make some effort to respect the system. Classes that roll multiple attacks will roll 1s more often that classes that focus on small numbers of targets. This is unbalanced. I suggest using the wording from Epic Resurgence to compensate 'If you use an attack that targets multiple foes, you (fumble) only on the first attack roll you make.' That gives all classes a roughly equal chance of fumbling. As to effects, opportunity attacks are a good way to kill your characters. Combat advantage is better, but penalizes melee classes more than ranged classes. Losing actions is probably the most balanced option - I'd suggest a move action representing the character's efforts to recover from the fumble. So, my suggested rule would be as follows: Fumble: If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, you lose your move action recovering. If you have already used your move action this turn, you lose your move action on your next turn. If you use an attack that targets multiple foes, you fumble only on the first attack roll you make. There - it penalizes all classes equaly and works for both players and monsters. The penalty is significant but not crippling and reasonably explained in the context of the rules. The mechanism is simple and does not bog down the game. As a bonus, it still works with the Wild Magic Sorcerer who has a class specific fumble rule. I'm not a terrible fan of fumble rules, but that's the sort of thing you should be aiming for.
#6 dirtyfrank Feb 24, 2009 22:18:07	I think I would have to agree with Rikiji here on how to rule it. If you do want a randomness factor to the fumble rule then doing a dex check should be fine and reasonable. I would keep half-level bonus out of the check and make it a 10 that needs to be beat or else you lose your action. If losing an action isn't enough then you can go with the granting of CA instead. The obvious problem with this is that a defender will likely be surrounded by enemies that may also be able to get a flanking bonus on top of CA. The other problem with it is that controllers and some strikers have low ACs and giving them more chances to grant CA will give them more chances to become ground up meat.
#7 Shadowfax7 Feb 25, 2009 22:05:31	Results of a fumble aside, my other concern was if there is any problem with the mechanics of this fumble rule. A natural attack roll of 1 on a d20 is a critical fumble if the total attack roll is low enough to miss the target’s defense . . .
#8 rikiji Feb 26, 2009 10:06:03	Results of a fumble aside, my other concern was if there is any problem with the mechanics of this fumble rule. A natural attack roll of 1 on a d20 is a critical fumble if the total attack roll is low enough to miss the target’s defense . . . It's redundant. If your monsters are scaled appropriate to the level of the characters fighting them, a roll of a 1 will pretty much always be a miss. In 3.5 it was possible to build a melee character that 'never missed'. In 4E not so much. Also, it needs some kind of restriction to keep it from overly penalizing classes that make multiple attack rolls. The Epic Resurgance feat is the best example in the game of a rule that would work for that.
#9 Janx_14 Feb 26, 2009 10:31:10	I had a friend who usually DM's 2nd and 3rd ed to a mini 4th ed adventure for my birthday. He included fumble rules. We fought a boss with a 'special' repeating cross bow like Van Helsing. Made him sound all powerful and dead. 'Helsing' rolls ones on all attacks and the DM has the guys bow explode and deal him damage. Later on the same boss tries to throw a grenade and bloodies himself on another one. Totally ruined any respect for that boss. It also cemented my belief that a fumble shouldnt be anything more than just combat advantage (which i can see as over-extending).
#10 1shmael Feb 26, 2009 12:58:26	Totally ruined any respect for that boss. Why did you lose respect for this Boss? Because the "Boss" had precisely the same chance of fumbling as did any other monster or PC. 5%. The error made by your DM was not inherent in the concept of a "fumble" rule. The error he made was in not in tacking the chance of fumble to the relative skill of each entity. This oversight can be overcome by making a roll of 1 on a d20 a mere trigger for a fumble attack vs. a creature defence: Reflex, Will or Fortitude, for example. The creature then actually fumbles only if that triggered attack succeeds. In this way, less skilled entitites fumble far more often than highly skilled entities. I have published a preliminary "Ultimate Fumble Table" (because I love these rules) that does just that. However, the current version is buggy. I am in the process of updating it so will refrain from linking to it until my revision is ready.
#11 Janx_14 Feb 26, 2009 13:17:56	Because it was supposed to be survival/horror'y and this darkish ranger dude who the DM had built up as this dark and deadly guy was making half the group laugh hystericly. And he had a higher chance because he rolled alot more d20's in a turn than we did. We on the other hand crit him twice with dailies. Respect for a monster isnt entirely in its statistics, its from how it preforms. If it doesnt live up to hype, by instead making a laughing stock out of it i'd say respect is loss. This can happen without fumbles, but it usually isnt to the point of laughing at the boss. I still think just giving combat advantage on a one is the most realistic and fair approach. It doesnt make you look like an utter buffoon, but it can represent you over extending your swing, or messing up the concentration on your spell. Its your game in the end of course.
#12 erk_ Feb 26, 2009 13:37:47	I think I would have to agree with Rikiji here on how to rule it. If you do want a randomness factor to the fumble rule then doing a dex check should be fine and reasonable. I would keep half-level bonus out of the check and make it a 10 that needs to be beat or else you lose your action. If losing an action isn't enough then you can go with the granting of CA instead. The obvious problem with this is that a defender will likely be surrounded by enemies that may also be able to get a flanking bonus on top of CA. The other problem with it is that controllers and some strikers have low ACs and giving them more chances to grant CA will give them more chances to become ground up meat. Flanking grants combat advantage; if you are granting CA and flanked, the two do not stack. Also, the guy and his group clearly enjoy their fumbles, so no need to harp on the "horrible rule" thing. Some people enjoy different things. I, for one, would go for using the rule that only the first roll can be a critical fumble. Further, if it was my game, I'd require a 3e-style 'confirmation roll': if the confirmation also missed then it is a true fumble. I'm biased by not caring for fumbles either, but I do think they should be rarer than criticals.
#13 trailfoot Feb 26, 2009 13:44:34	Fumble rules are a bad idea in general, and I've never seen a campaign do anything but improve by removing them, or do anything but get worse by adding them. If you must have them, make them a small effect (combat advantage might be too big!), consistent (no fumble chart. Oh gods, no fumble chart), quick to apply, and only apply if the natural 1 is rolled on the first attack. Also, make them consistent in their effects across classes - DO NOT punish players for picking a class from a particular power source (weapons get dropped but implements a splode! No, bad), for picking a class with a particular defense high or low, or... well, any other choice they make. But best is to just not use the bloody things. EDIT: The most-common argument I've seen for using them is to have something to "counteract" critical hits. The system has always had something of the sort. It's called "missing."
#14 dirtyfrank Feb 26, 2009 13:44:47	How about this: A natural 1 means you lose your move action during this current round or your next round if you have already used it. A player can instead spend an Action Point to have his or her attack do half damage instead of missing. The attack does none of its special effects even if it says that it does them on a miss. The character also grants Combat Advantage until the start of their next turn. This way your critical miss causes you to lose an action in order for you to try and keep yourself from being open to attack. You can instead use an Action Point, which is representative of you using a bit more effort on this bad attack, that allows for you to hit but at the cost of leaving yourself open. What do you guys and galls think of this?
#15 trailfoot Feb 26, 2009 13:49:05	How about this: A natural 1 means you lose your move action during this current round or your next round if you have already used it. A player can instead spend an Action Point to have his or her attack do half damage instead of missing. The attack does none of its special effects even if it says that it does them on a miss. The character also grants Combat Advantage until the start of their next turn. This way your critical miss causes you to lose an action in order for you to try and keep yourself from being open to attack. You can instead use an Action Point, which is representative of you using a bit more effort on this bad attack, that allows for you to hit but at the cost of leaving yourself open. What do you guys and galls think of this? Likely too complicated at the table... would slow combat. Which would make an already doubly-frustrating situation (I missed AND I fumbled) worse by doing so.
#16 erk_ Feb 26, 2009 13:49:17	How about this: A natural 1 means you lose your move action during this current round or your next round if you have already used it. A player can instead spend an Action Point to have his or her attack do half damage instead of missing. The attack does none of its special effects even if it says that it does them on a miss. The character also grants Combat Advantage until the start of their next turn. This way your critical miss causes you to lose an action in order for you to try and keep yourself from being open to attack. You can instead use an Action Point, which is representative of you using a bit more effort on this bad attack, that allows for you to hit but at the cost of leaving yourself open. What do you guys and galls think of this? This makes a natural 1 in some ways superior to a 2. If I am fighting a character I must hit, I can take him out more reliably if I roll a natural 1 than if I miss normally on a low roll.
#17 rikiji Feb 26, 2009 13:55:02	How about this: A natural 1 means you lose your move action during this current round or your next round if you have already used it. A player can instead spend an Action Point to have his or her attack do half damage instead of missing. The attack does none of its special effects even if it says that it does them on a miss. The character also grants Combat Advantage until the start of their next turn. This way your critical miss causes you to lose an action in order for you to try and keep yourself from being open to attack. You can instead use an Action Point, which is representative of you using a bit more effort on this bad attack, that allows for you to hit but at the cost of leaving yourself open. What do you guys and galls think of this? A bit unwieldy. It actually gives an advantage to rolling a 1 if you can spend an action point to negate the miss. Perhaps a bit overpowered - although turning a disadvantage into an opportunity fits the cinematic feel action points are supposed to portray. Not allowing effects that normally take place on a miss really really penalizes the poor player who just spent their daily, so I can't see that as fair. Also very few monster abilities have miss effects so it punishes players more than monsters - given that critical fumble rules favor monsters to start, it's a bad option. And I'm simply not in favor of using combat advantage at all - it unfairly biases the system against melee combatants. EDIT: Also, I don't believe it would work well with the class feature Wild Magic Sorcerers have that triggers on a natural 1. Any reasonable fumble rule will have to allow for that.
#18 trailfoot Feb 26, 2009 13:59:14	And I'm simply not in favor of using combat advantage at all - it unfairly biases the system against melee combatants. *nods* I can see that... I'm just seeing combat advantage as the least bad of a bunch of bad approaches here. Even as a melee character - even as a fighter or swordmage - I'd rather grant combat advantage than lose an action 99% of the time.
#19 dirtyfrank Feb 26, 2009 14:30:04	I think that CA would be worst for rogues and barbarians for they both will be getting into melee and they both are easier to hit than a defender. I think that the barbarians AC will likely be lower than the rogues so giving CA would be likely be the deadliest to the barbarian. As far as I see it Shadowfax7 is asking for a good or reasonable fumble system rather than whether or not it would be good to implement a system. I personally don't like fumbles but to tell Shadowfax7 such wont really help him/her for that is not what Shadowfax7 asked for. I do realize that some people like a fumble system because of all the crazy things that can happen from it. Those that like things such as fumbles are fine with there being extra dice rolling and calculations because, for them, it will add more to the game so to argue against such is often moot. The reason why I suggested an AP for some damage that grants CA is because the AP is suppose to represent a character giving a little extra effort. Usually a character would use an action point to use a daily or an encounter. I often see them used as a combo such as, use an encounter, spend action point, and then use extra action to use daily. This means that instead of using it to do normal, or max damage, with an attack they are doing a fraction of that damage and leaving themselves open. This is similar to the type of fumbles I did in 3e. They often did damage but gave some sort of penalty to the attacker. I also thought about suggesting that the damage be 1/4 what it would normally do and leaving in effects that would happen on a miss, but then nobody would be willing to use an action point to do damage that leaves them open to attack.
#20 volcanon2 Feb 26, 2009 15:16:41	if they roll a 1, have them reroll. one another 1 they do something buffonic. On everything else, they miss. I think fumbling 1/400 times is a lot more realistic than fumbling 1/20 times. These are heroes, not trainees.
#21 trailfoot Feb 26, 2009 22:42:40	I think one issue we're running into is that there's no real mechanic that even comes close to impacting all classes to a similar degree. Perhaps a mechanic that had different effects based on the kind of attack that fumbled... but that's something that threatens to be VERY overcomplicated.
#22 dirtyfrank Feb 27, 2009 10:05:45	Part of the reason why people like fumble rules is because it makes things more complicated. So, to say that a fumble system should be used because it may be too complicated is a bit moot.
#23 Shadowfax7 Mar 02, 2009 9:51:41	Results of a fumble aside, my other concern was if there is any problem with the mechanics of this fumble rule . . . and there is. A natural attack roll of 1 on a d20 is a critical fumble if the total attack roll is low enough to miss the target’s defense makes it so that you would always fumble on a 1. What about another mechanic ?? Such as a Dex check DC10 or DC 15 to drop your weapon, snap your bowstring, get your X-bow stuck or tangle your sling, etc. Powers/spells which require attack rolls could require a different ability score check on a fumble ??
#24 trailfoot Mar 02, 2009 10:24:40	Results of a fumble aside, my other concern was if there is any problem with the mechanics of this fumble rule . . . and there is. A natural attack roll of 1 on a d20 is a critical fumble if the total attack roll is low enough to miss the target’s defense makes it so that you would always fumble on a 1. What about another mechanic ?? Such as a Dex check DC10 or DC 15 to drop your weapon, snap your bowstring, get your X-bow stuck or tangle your sling, etc. Powers/spells which require attack rolls could require a different ability score check on a fumble ?? That pretty blatantly punishes classes that have no need for Dexterity over those that do. Though that would fade pretty fast, given the addition of 1/2 level to ability checks.
#25 1shmael Mar 02, 2009 11:33:31	What about another mechanic ?? Such as a Dex check DC10 or DC 15 to drop your weapon, snap your bowstring, get your X-bow stuck or tangle your sling, etc. I am working on such a game mechanic. I call it The Ultimate Fumble Table. I don't yet advise it's use. This version, which is 0.1, does not work as it needs to. When I have an improved version, I will post. There are some great ideas in this table though. The "close combat" rules are really a lot of fun (so my group has found). New version coming soon.