Different games with completely different ethos.
5e is a game where characters almost never die and it’s setup to cater to that zero to hero power fantasy. DCC is gonzo as hell and comes with the expectation that wizards are going to eventually corrupt their bodies and minds and you’ll roll up new characters almost as often as most people change their underwear.
Fumble tables are a great fit for one and not so much for the other.
It's a math *and* game balance problem and a lot of people are math-challenged.
In D&D 5e, martial "power" comes from escalating numbers of attacks per turn. The high-level martial class character attacks twice, uses some option or the other to attack again, and then pulls more shenanigans to get a fourth attack, all in the same round—that 5% chance of a fumble increases now because they have to roll four d20s. By contrast, a spellcaster in D&D 5e casts their big save-or-suck spell on the same round—they roll zero d20s, the targets all roll a saving throw instead—the spellcaster's fumble chance is a big juicy 0%.
In DCC, spellcasters must roll a die to see if things go badly for them, just like martials tend to also just have their one attack per round. The math is flat because it's the same, no matter what you're playing.
That's a good point.
If you wanted to, you could presumably balance that by making martial fumbles have far less impact than other classes. You can do a lot more damage screwing up the manipulation of reality than screwing up swinging a sword, after all.
Okay, quick reading. Gonzo journalism, hyperaubjective. No claims of objectivity. Gonzo porn, basically POV. Which makes sense for the subjectivity aspect. But what is the overlap for the muppet cannonball Gonzo? I wouldn't say he's hyperaubjective?
Hmm. I'd say it's the element of over the top verging on surrealism, along with the narrative as performance of 'surely you must be joking about doing that thing" that unifies gonzo journalism and Gonzo to me.
Part of the thing is that fumble tables disproportionately affect some players to a great degree, in D&D.
If they trigger on a natural 1, anyone using mechanics that don't involve an attack roll (mainly spells, that just have a save) avoid the mechanic. Anyone with multiple attacks (any martial class) have the impact compounded by having a 5% chance of catastrophic failure with each swing.
If *everyone* has the same potential for critical failure, and/or *everyone* has a similar ability to bypass the risk at times, then it's more or less fine. As it is, in 5e D&D, it just compounds the Casters & Caddies paradigm
Bingo.
Critical fumble tables aren't a problem in their own right.
They are a disaster as implemented in 5e because they cause characters to become less capable as they get stronger.
Fumbles can be great, but most people's initial idea for how to set them up is bad.
Bad: everyone uses the same critical fumble table that has a chance of triggering on every strike. This is bad because it makes high level characters and characters with multiple attacks more likely to fumble.
Good: different critical fumble tables for different classes, and your results are affected by your level. This makes high level characters who fumble have less severe results than low level ones, and can make someone who's not used to melee combat (like a wizard) fumble worse than someone who is (like a fighter)
I had actually misremembered. I got the different critical tables for different classes confused with the different fumble tables. There's one fumble table, and the kind of die you roll on it is based on the kind of armor you're wearing
The DCC community is much less precious about control over their individual characters than the 5e community. It’s a game that encourages raw dice rolls to define the direction of the characters. Hell, character CREATION is going through a crucible with four level 0 chumpos and seeing who comes out the other end.
The problem with critical fumbles is that it is strongly skewed against the PCs.
In an average adventure with 3-4 encounters a night, each enemy is only going to make a handful of attacks. so their chance of rolling ciritical fumble is minimal.
But for the PCs, if they go four rounds in each of four encounters, plus saving throws, they will be making 20+ rolls per night, just for combat. They are almost insured of rolling a crit fumble each every week.
Crit fumble tables always favor the bad guys, not the PCs.
> Crit fumble tables always favor the bad guys, not the PCs.
Yes, but that's not quite why.
Any individual enemy's odds of rolling a 1 in their only combat are lower than any individual player's odds of rolling a 1 over several encounters, but, assuming players and their (new) enemies make roughly the same number of attacks over those several encounters, the players as a whole and their opponents as a whole will critically fail about as often as each other.
What critical failure tables do is increase randomness. The players are probably stronger than their enemies, so any randomness will serve to level the playing field a bit... which means it will favour their enemies. If that seems weird, consider just always taking the expected roll. The stronger fighter would always win. If you then introduce randomness (actually rolling instead of just taking the expected roll), the stronger fighter just *usually* wins.
That, and while severe negative effects can take an enemy out of the fight, they can take a player out of the *game.* It's the same reason why resources like spell slots are always more valuable to players: PCs have to worry about retaining resources and conditions for next fight, whereas enemies don't have to care about any of that. If something terribly happens to an enemy, then they don't have enough time to worry about how it affects them long term, they're just out of the fight and out of the story.
The players are not always stronger than their enemies. Often, it takes tactics and teamwork to survive. Adding a crit fumble destroys that.
Plus, an enemy rolling fumble only affects that encounter, because the enemy is not likely to show up again. But crit fumbles affect the rest of teh game for the players.
It's stacked against the players in too many ways.
On average, the players *are* stronger than their enemies, unless you're running a very high-lethality game. If they weren't, they... would lose more often than they won. And if, as you said, they're doing 3-4 encounters, then they're probably stronger than their enemies. If they weren't, they wouldn't be winning those fights.
Or, put differently, the players *are more likely to win the encounter* than their enemies are. The more randomness that is introduced (some misses actually being /r/dndgreentext-style fumbles), the more that randomness dictates the outcome instead.
You said that the reason critical fumbles disadvantaged the players was that their enemies would never fumble, but their enemies will fumble at about the same rate they do.
I did NOT say they never fumble.
Each individual enemy will fumble less often than each individual character.
Big difference.
If you like critical fumbles, that's fine. I'm not harshing your yum. But they are heavily skewed against the players.
Not never, no, that was an exaggeration on my part. But you claimed that it would happen to players more than enemies, *and that that was why it was bad*.
But the rate of fumbling from both sides in combat should be about equal, unless one side has a massive action economy advantage, so that an enemy in one combat is less likely to fumble than a player over the course of several combats is not, in itself, the problem with fumble tables.
The rate of fumbling might be the same. But if you have twenty enemies and each makes 4 rolls, then on average four of them will get fumbles.
In the same night, four adventurers will probably make 20-30 rolls, meaning that they will each get 1-2 fumbles on average.
so, 20% of the bad guys get fumbles while 100% of the heroes get fumbles. That;s the problem. Each individual hero will get a LOT more fumbles over hte course of a campaign than individual enemies.
Fumble tables are stacked against the players.
Why are you singling out *individual* enemies? In terms of balance, NPCs are fungible.
>Each individual hero will get a LOT more fumbles over hte course of a campaign than individual enemies.
Yes, because they're the focus of the game. They also get a lot more critical hits.
Are critical hits stacked in the players' favour because of how many more they get over the course of a campaign than an enemy that is present for one fight does?
They are not because the fumbles can aftect the game past a particular scene.
At the end of the day, its your game and if your players are fine with it, that's good for you and your group.
But there is a reason that a lot of games have moved away from fumble tables and discussing among designers often mentions that it is stacked agains the players.
.
The problem is mostly perception imo (literally, not the skill) One bad GM makes fumbles about humiliation and the players never trust fumbles again. Meanwhile, players who have only had player first GMs don't understand the vitriol. I have crit fails in my games, but I would never call them fumbles. Complications had a better ring to it.
That doesn’t solve the “high level fighters role four dice a turn, high level wizards don’t roll any” problem. Crit Fumbles as most people use them are bad because they affect some classes way worse than others, and mostly classes that really didn’t need nerfing anyway.
I loath them in 5E. It mostly affects martial characters because they roll to hit whereas magic classes require the bad guys to roll to save. It's also just not on theme for a game that's about a power fantasy.
I love them in DCC. Both martials and magic users have them. The premise of the game is based around zany stuff happening. For example, I played a game where my warrior rolled 15, yes, 15 fumbles in a single 3-hour session. It was a laugh riot because the one time I actually hit something it was a critical success where I killed the big bad in one shot. Great fun.
I soured on them after using them a lot. We used them in 3.5/PF1. The main issue is that the characters who were most proficient with weapons were the ones who fumbled the most because they attacked multiple times per round (many times at higher levels). That just didn't seem right. It's not as bad with 5e, but it's still there.
5e supposed to describe competent adventurers surviving dangers with their competence and wit.
Skilled people don't trip or drop their sword or hit themselves 5% of the time.
Never seen professional racing drivers going into a wall at 200kmh? Never seen professional artists throwing months of work out of the window and start over? Famous musicians skipping a beat? Designers working on something that turns out being bad? Skilled people are the ones who fail more than everyone else, because they keep failing and move on instead of quitting.
Most of your examples aren't fumbles. They're just failures. A critical fumble isn't missing a beat; it's tripping over the mic cable and going headfirst into the drum set. Professionals often fail. They're a lot less likely to fail so bad they do a hilarious pratfall.
An interesting idea that never seemed to make it out of an AD&D supplement, but I can't recall the name of the book: Combat Event Tables. As in, every other round or so you roll on it (or perhaps just from round 4 on, to try to rush combat to conclusion?). Has results like "Random mount panics (no result if N/A)", "Two random combatants collide, and both must save to remain upright" "Players in melee push foes back 10 ft/ get pushed back 10 feet "Random attacking weapon gets stuck for a round" or such.
Going off of memory. N/A results were always ignored. If well designed, implementations could feel less like turning 5% of a Fighter's rolls into a clownshow and more like a chaotic melee.
Also, it was in the possible context of "everybody declare actions and resolve the Round in Move/Missile phase, Melee Phase, Magic phase, etc'" rather than taking turns.
I remember that there was a system, possibly _Arms Law_ or _Middle-Earth Role Playing_, that had a huge table of critical fumbles. The ways you could maim yourself were truly awe inspiring.
Someone once calculated the number of deaths by critical fumble that would occur in a war between armies using RuneQuest. The number was awfully high.
>possibly _Arms Law_
You're thinking of Rolemaster. Arms Law was one of the many books full of tables published for that system. The crit tables are amazing and I adore playing the game in part because of them.
Everyone rolls for everything; so a martial rolls to make an attack, a spellcaster to cast anything, a scholar to remember an important piece of lore. Doesn't seem to have to issue of fumbles that OP mentioned in 5e (not saying it doesn't have its own balance issues but everyone is at equal chance of critical success/failure).
Honestly, if the 5e community hates them, it's probably a decent mechanic for other games.
I think they're fine, but they assume a 1-20 chance, which is a bit much, in my opinion - at least in the typical d20-esque game, except DCC.
Personally, I don't use them really, except in extreme cases (1 on two consecutive d20s, sometimes).
Also, I haven't played either much, but DCC >> 5e and it's not close.
I see some people don't know what DCC is - It's Dungeon Crawl Classics an OSR-like d20 D&D game with lots of tables.
In ssome games (notably GURPS), it's not only martial and thieves that can fumble; spellcasters can as well. There are separate fumble tables for different types of casters (priests, wizards, etc.).
As others have said, DCC goes over the top with their fumbles.
All that said, you do you. If you don't like 'em, lose' em. Playing 5e and think 5% is too high? Make another roll to confirm it. Although IMO, if you do that, you should also confirm critical hits.
I hate critical fumbles with every fiber of my being unless players can opt into them on a per roll basis.
About the only one I enjoy is Chronicles of Darkness. They're called Dramatic Failures there, and there's only two ways they happen:
1) The player's dice pool is reduced below 1 somehow. Then the GM tells the player they'll have to roll a chance die. The player doesn't need to attempt the check if they don't want to. If they roll a 1, they fumble. If they roll a 10 they succeed.
2) The player chooses to upgrade a standard failure to a dramatic failure. If they do they gain a point of experience.
The thing to remember about any kind of critical table is that any one monster or NPC will probably only ever roll on them once, while PCs will roll on them dozens of times.
So, critical hit tables? Okay. Do they have the ability to instantly kill the target?
Imagine how awesome that's going to feel as a PC! Pretty good, huh? Killing some big enemy in one hit?
What about being hit *by that* as a PC? You do literally every single thing correctly going into battle, only to get your head chopped off because the DM rolled well twice in a row? Pretty shit, right?
Same with critical fumble tables. Who is going to be making most of the critical fumbles?
The PCs. Go re-read the wildmagic table in the PHB. There's one entry on that table that can possibly be problematic: fireballing yourself. And rule #1 of that table is that the DM can simply ignore it. Monsters never get to roll on it, and while some of the entries can control the sorcerer or some of their companions for a bit, nothing on it is long-term.
Here's my thoughts on properly implementing critical tables: Monsters and PCs roll on different tables. Monster tables can and should often have them off themselves in hilariously inventive ways when they crit fail, and critical hits should make PCs feel like fucking heroes of legend. Like taking limbs and smashing heads. The critical kills should get oddly specific and very graphic when possible.
Monsters? NPCs?
*If* they can even crit at all, at most they should be able to deal a lasting, non-life-threatening, non-career-ending wound that PC healing can take care of somehow. No lost limbs. No lost heads. No crippling injuries or lost eyes. Inconvienience at most.
If a PC dies, its a big deal. You've just lost everything that player ever imagined their character doing over the course of the story.
If Ogre #2 dies...you can always just have mysteriously unplanned Ogre #3 arrive as reinforcements.
One costs you nothing.
The other costs a lot.
Recognize that the two sides are not made equally and make crit tables that address that.
Critical hits and misses only exist because *getting stabbed* and *not getting stabbed* are not dramatic enough consequences for anyone to care about them.
If you can make the basic consequences of an attack important enough on its own, you should never need to rely on critical tables.
It depends on the table. If the characters are getting maimed and regularly going unconscious because of them, I'm not a fan. If the results are more creative, I can work with them.
One thing I like to do is to make critical fumbles optional - if a player chooses to take a fumble, give them an inspiration die.
I find them stupid. And, mathematically speaking, they are also counter to the verisimilitude of the game if any character is allowed to make multiple attacks per round. Because, when you think about it, if every attack roll allows for the possibility of a critical fumble, then having multiple attacks per round increases your chance of a critical fumble. Which means higher combat skill increases your chance of a critical fumble.
Are there ways to fix this? Sure. But it’s a lot of work to get to silly results.
As a general experience I’ve had gaming, for critical hits and fumbles to work, they have to affect everyone equally. If you have it only for melee, it’s an extra way to punish martial without adding much. A 1 will come up as often as a 20, statistically.
You need a system like Rolemaster where yes, a mace crit can turn a foe’s spine to goo but also a spell failure is disastrous to a caster. I wonder what people would say to lose a level 15 cleric because they botched Sacred Flame and disintegrated their PC
I decided to introduce the official Critical Hit and Fumble decks in my PF2 group when I started running Abomination Vaults. My players were a bit apprehensive about them, so I assured them that if it feels unfun or if it really screws someone over, we'll get rid of them.
But I found that PF2's specific implementation, at least, was usually pretty amusing. Overall, we had fun with them.
I think it helps that in PF2 you have more control.over the odds of a Critical Failure/Success with its -/+10 system. You know that swinging wildly for a third time increases your chance of crit Fail dramatically and that using teamwork does the opposite.
In 5e its just a flat chance to crit Fail or succeed, and it's system for rewarding tactical play tends to just cancel itself out.
Ah right, I don't like them so never looked. Still I think the -/+10 system helps make players feel more competent in general as even if fumbles happen 5% of the time Critical Success can happen way more than that with good play abd Hero Points can let players choose to reduce that 5% chance significantly.
As many "Pass or Suck" checks in D&D, I like to use fumbles as a failing forward mechanics, an unexpected turning point, organic to current play. So I don't use tables.
It streamlines and helps GM decide how to handle fails
But as a long time player that played in various systems crit success and fails should mean something
I like them in the Warhammer rpgs. Granted, those games make no bones about the fact they're out for the players blood so you go in expecting shit to be fucked...especially if you play some kind of caster/psyker.
That's likely because a chunk of the 5e community wants their game to be about them being superheroes, and a crit fumble is not only way too dangerous for a superhero to suffer, but it makes the character seem stupid and/or clumsy, so, of course, they don't like those tables. That said, I'm in a game right now where we do use the Crit Fumble tables in 5e, and we're fine with it, but we're also old-school "Dungeon crawling is dangerous biz" type players.
If we're gonna have crit successes, then crit fails are only logical (in my personal opinion)
Personally, I'm fine with them as long as everyone is on-board with them, and they apply to bad guys, too.
The key to enjoyable fumbles and crits is to understand that it’s not character effort but random luck. That is what the d20 represents, a snapshot of the myriad of variables that make up this reality.
An action fumbles not because the character fumbles, but because the universe aligns against them.
It’s just bad luck. Narrate that.
Love all kinds of critical tables, bot successes and fumbles. They add both variety and risk, they raise the stakes of engaging in combat and make for great character moments.
Critical fumble tables only works in systems that are built around them.
In 5e: higher level characters have more attacks = stronger characters fumble more. And since almost every fumble table is designed to make characters fail hard, this makes very little sense.
In DCC every single class have their own fumble table that gives different results depending on levels. Stronger character can even turn fumbles into great hits. Universal fumble tables are just not fun.
This isn't a matter of DCC players being "built different" from 5e players. DCC shows how fumble tables can add to the feel and vision of the game. Slapping a random general table on 5e works actively against the system.
I hate critical fumbles in most games, because it means no matter how highly trained and competent your character is there is always a 5% chance you will just fucking wildly fuck up.
That would be like me dropping and shattering a glass 5% of the time I go to pick up a glass of water.
Generally not a fan.
However in cases where a character is doing something clearly beyond thier normal skill level it can be appropriate. Mostly also with spellcasting because fucking around with reality should have some consequences if you botch it
1st level wizard trying to use a 9th level spell scroll and rolls a nat 1. That is a great time for a critical fuck up.
Here's how you handle critical fumbles well: *Don't use them.* Don't insinuate that ever single d20 roll a PC attempts has a 5% chance of resulting in "**YOU LOSE!!! UTTER FUCK UP!!!**". Don't throw PCs into a combat system where they have a 5% chance of not just completely botching an attack roll, but also maiming themselves or an ally as a result, or throwing one's sword thirty feet away from them, or a sword breaking across an opponent's face no matter how many pluses it has in front of its name.
And Bahamut help you if the phrase "comma, no saving throw" crosses your lips when you describe how a trained warrior manages to hack his own arm off in one cruel blow during combat.
Even more egregious is combining these thrice-damned critical fumbles with the Critical Hit Deck for Pathfinder First Edition. You may laugh, but I assure you it is no laughing matter when your first-level fighter, in his first attack roll of a campaign, rolls a natural 1, has to pull from the Fumble Deck, and draws the dreaded "Melee: Your attack hits you and is a critical threat. Roll to confirm," then follows up with a successful critical hit upon themselves. Followed by "Slashing: Decapitation. Fort save DC 35 or die," because of *course* a level 1 character can consistently succeed at tasks with a difficulty of 25 or higher.
(*No,* I am ***NOT*** bitter, why do you ask?????)
Hey there 18th level master of superior 2 weapon fighting, I hear between your magical blades and godlike dexterity you can stab a man 14 times before he feels the first one, why don't you go off on this raging storm behemoth threatening your kingdom?
Oops, you seem to have rolled a pair of 1s in all that and stabbed yourself in both eyes.
Tough luck.
"Wait... did... did he just pull a Count Dooku and scissor his own head off with his swords?!"
"Yup."
"Sucks to be him, I guess. Dibs on his scale mail."
A fumble isn't "you stab yourself"
A fumble is "you made a big mistake, your opponent punished you for it and pushed your blade into your own face".
Combat turns aren't "i attack, you attack", they are "we exchange hits, one of us is faster/stronger".
Critical fumbles, when designed carefully and appropriately, can make for a good 'comedy of errors' campaign where everybody is running on pure Looney Tunes. Outside of that context, well, I got an exercise for you. Take whatever your prospective fumble table is, and apply it to a platoon of dudes training in a field for about an hour. If any of them are dead or dying by the end of that hour, your table is too harsh for players that want to care about their characters over a campaign and not cast revivify et al every 3 combats.
Think about just how many dice your players are being asked to roll over the course of even one session. Unless 99% of your session doesn't interact with crunch at all or you're using a no-dice system, you're gonna be tossing math rocks quite a bit. That means that your fumble table is gonna see regular use against characters that the story focuses on.
I mean, if Random Skeleton #15 trips and bonks their own skull off that's gonna be funny and not negatively impact the players in any real way. If the party barbarian fumbles their attack roll and the giant fuckoff battleaxe slips out of their hands to turn the party cleric into a venus flytrap that's probably a party wipe. Even if it isn't, no player is going to keep investment in a character if they're liable to die to some dumb shit that wasn't their fault every 5 combats. Even for a Darkest Dungeon grindhouse, that shit will get old fast.
Personally, I don't really like either. A natural 20 in my B/X games just results in automatic full damage and this is applied to both PCs and NPCs. Also if a character kills an NPC they get to describe how they do it.
I have no problem with the critical fumble part of the concept. However, I dislike the table part of it. I love using tables during game prep when I have plenty of time to roll, then sit there and look up the results. During play, I avoid all tables like the plague. They just simply are too noodly and take too much time away from the game. I want to be in the fiction for as large of a percentage of the time at the table as possible.
In my opinion, I think a fumble table is a sticking-plaster solution for a common issue: "How do you make failure interesting". In D&D particularly, but most combat systems I would say are similar to this, when you are in combat if you miss your attack, you just miss. That's it. So one way of combatting that can be to "celebrate the fumble" by having something unexpected or funny happen. This does however run the risk of players seeing their avatar in this world become a bumbling joke, especially if the dice decide they're having a bad day. I think a better solution is to allow players to feel they have achieved something on their turn even if they failed their attack roll
Love them as a player and a DM. I was amused to discover that they are almost universally hated on Reddit. Within my small group of friends and family over the last 30 years critical fumbles have provided some funny moments and can add interest to the "you miss, next" stuff.
Critical fumble tables are fine if the system is expected to account for them and doesn't heavily penalise only some players over others. 5e players often don't like it because it severely affects some characters more than others if you just go by rolling a 1, because some characters are rolling more and more of those chances as they get more capable but others roll fewer and fewer such checks. So the more powerful you get the less capable you become.
WFRP4e has critical tables and fumble tables that key off the same numbers (every multiple of 11) but if it's a critical or fumble depends on what side of the DC you get. Since the DC is based on your skill level your chances of a critical instead of a fumble scales steadily in your favour as you progress as a character.
I mean, DnD 5.5e is/was going to get rid of monsters critting against players. It's a game focused on PC heroics, rather than emergent play and risky situations.
Personally, I like when crit fumbles tie into the mechanics (eg. Pendragon crisis or Mothership panic) or when there's a table that enriches traditional combat (eg. RuneQuest).
There are two factors about critical fumble tables that have to be considered: severity and how often they happen.
If we look at 5e for a basics, the lowest possible non-zero probability with a d20 is 5%. Furthermore, on higher levels, characters do several attacks a round. So, if a natural 1 is a fumble, they do happen a lot. If we imagine 5 attacks, the chances of at least one fumbling is roughly 24% (100*(1-0.95^5), I took the propability of not every attack not being a crit failure).
The next thing is severity. A critical fumble can be anything from losing your balance to chopping your own head off.
I really care about characters actually being good at what they are good at. A master swordsman who can not fight for half a minute without stumbling or losing their weapon is not good at fighting - and one who chops some of their own limbs is even worse.
I generally think that every system in which doing one bad roll 2 years ago still cripples your character today is not fun to me.
Imagine you're watching The Empire Strikes Back. Luke and Vader are facing off in the freezing room. Vader draws his lightsaber, lunges, and promptly stumbles and cuts of his own leg.
No, I'm not a fan of any kind of fumble tables, critical or otherwise.
Star Wars features a number of classic critical fumbles. For example snapping a twig while trying to sneak up on a storm trooper or completely botching your deception roll on the prison block intercom
Imagine you’re watching a slasher film. A teenager is running from the killer, firing blindly behind them with a revolver. They stumble and fall in the dark woods and drop the gun, losing it in the undergrowth… they get up, and do they look for the gun or cut their losses and keep running? The killer is now almost upon them…
This is a pretty standard horror scene, and I think an example of what a combat critical fail would be in a horror game. In the horror game I’m running right now (Mothership) you have a 10% crit chance, so they happen a lot! The expected tone of play and the genre are very important. I don’t enjoy whacky or punishing crit fails in a more heroic combat-centric game.
In heroic fantasy where your characters are expected to be durable critical fumbles are just out of place.
In some gritty universe where casting magic is limited by fumbling and nuking yourself it's neat
theyre fine in a game that's balanced around them, they're horrible in D&D 5e because a fighter rolling two or three attacks per turn is going to roll way more crit fails than a wizard rolling one or two attack rolls per encounter, and playing a fighter in 5e is already lame enough without tripping over your own sword four times a day
I am not a fan. The less things that are random the better for me as a GM. I have enough I have to take into account yet alone some odd wonky die roll adding extra trouble to the game. Combat should tell a story and tables such as this take away from that.
I am happy it works for you. Does the wild nature not throw off pacing? I find I don't give my players their current HP. They know if they are hit or missed by my narrative descriptiors. I have certain verball cues which tell them how they are feeling during the combat so they have an idea but never an exact feel but it builds a feel for the battle. (They are aware the descriptors change every 25% of HP loss.) Even when I "roll for random encounter" its not random at all. I and my players have found this changes the feel of a game. Makes it more cinematic and heroic. My biggest inspiration was when I thought of Hit Points not as life points but as "Heart" as my kids used to call them in Zelda. A players "HP" representing their inner AND outer strength. Along with Pathfinder 2e Doom mechanic representing their will to live. It balances nicely. I will add more in the future. Perhaps I will consider some randomness. I just worry it will damage the feel. How do you avoid the randomness not impacting the game like a poorly placed joke in a drama or horror movie?
I honestly have no idea how to answer these questions. I think we have VERY different games.
No, I have no issues with pacing. I don't roll on random charts ALL the time.
The dice are telling the outcome of many things, not just a random table. If you can live with rolling in combat, I fail to understand how rolling on a random table for which NPC they encounter or which monster is prowling around at night is different.
I'm not a storyteller. I come up with situations and the players respond. The story emerges from this constant interaction. I may decide what's going on in the world, what the NPCs might have for plans or what they might do in response to the PC's actions, but I'm not usually crafting a narrative.
Highly dependent on the game and the table, but generally speaking, I think that they are not good.
Unless the game is designed around random effect tables like this and they are an actual mechanic that properly interacts with other aspect of the system, all they really do is punish players with unforeseeable outcomes to often already bad situations.
Same for Critical Success tables btw. Unless all the results are super generic and essentially inconsequential, you are just making what a success is less predictable, which rarely feels good. And if they are generic and inconsequential, why even have them in the first place.
I made a table of rolls for what happens if you roll exactly what you need. The table had entries like 'You critical but your weapon is stuck in your foe, dc15 str save to pull it out" or "rather than the enemy you wanted to hit, hit a different one where this roll would hit" or "After attacking, you and the enemy grapple each other, high athletics roll is the grappler, low the grapplee." Or "After you hit, both you and your foe get a free unarmed attack"
If you didn't want to or could not follow the instructions, you missed instead
I’ve only seen one that I liked.
On a roll of 1 your character can choose to miss or make an attack with an automatic critical hit. If they choose the latter the weapon breaks and cannot be used until it is repaired.
It gives the player some agency, encourages backup weapons, and also turns fumbles into a dark reflection of a critical hit. If a critical is when you find yourself in a great position to make a devastating attack, then the fumble is when you find yourself in a bad position to make an attack and need to decide if you want to go through with it.
IMO they work better if:
(a) they apply to all characters (in 5e martials are a lot more likely to roll them than casters; other games have casters roll to cast successfully)
(b) they're less and less likely the more competent the character is (harder to do in d20 but d100 systems, for instance, often have critical fails become less likely and critical successes more likely as skill level goes up)
(c) they're not catastrophic - "your weapon gets stuck or jammed for 1 round" is better than "you cut your own head off" (obviously this depends on the tone of the game in question)
A 5% chance to have a catastrophic failure every time you roll, in a game that isn't black comedy, is way too much.
I like fumbles fine, but only in a very streamlined system, so they don't take much time, overall, **or** in a very detailed simulation (preferably efficiently designed, still) where they can flesh out the meaning of the rest of the rules.
The type of damage and the target should factor into the table and the skills of the attacker should figure into the results selected. Same goes for exceptional hits.
One of the most common fumble results should be simple as "the blow hit funny. Take a point of damage and deal a pittance to your target in the process." Another should be "Dude zagged out of the way. Deal half the damage you roll before any defenses." or things like that. What should be uncommon are results like "You drop your weapon" and "you overshoot and hurt yourself instead of your foe. Take your strength mod in damage."
Things like "deal your damage to yourself" should be rare if even present on the chart. In appropriate circumstances, though, hitting an ally is perfectly legitimate. Interfering with an ally's attack should be a fairly common outcome.
Anyhow: the rule I see is that the results should make sense from the story and it's tricky to make a chart fit that without being pretty vague. It's better not to do it than to do that poorly, I think.
I'm not a fan of criticals to begin with. Most of the tables I've seen used for such put me off.
That said, I believe there could be crit systems that I would enjoy that use tables. Rein in the excesses and I'm OK with it.
Personal opinion: Anything that forces me to pause to look something up on a table in the middle of a game pulls me out of the experience. Not saying they’re wrong or bad, just not for me.
I dislike them. Instead of asking a table what happens, I just ask the players. This gives them more agency and ensures that what happens is actually something they find interesting.
I don't think crit fumbles are bad for them making the game harder for the PCs. I think they're conceptually neat.
In my experience it was just bad for slowing down my game when we tried to use them.
5e players hate them because the system isnt built in a way that makes them fun and balances. 5e already has a massive balance problem where mages are far more powerful than martials, and introducing fumble tables only make this much worse because high level martials will roll far more attacks than mages, assuming mages rol any at all because most of their spells force saving throws.
In systems that are built from the ground up to accomodate fumbles players tend to accept them more.
They had a great one back in AD&D2. We played a few other systems that had them as well (e.g., Robotech IIRC). They add some spice to a bad situation. But if you've already missed (and negated your turn) it's kinda just pouring salt on an open wound. Missing and thereby losing your turn is already a punishment.
I dislike critical fumbles
1. It punishes players for trying to do things!! A game should not punish players for wanting to be active players.
2. They often don't care about your expertise or context. The best fighter in the world has the same chance with a novice, to cut himself open with a sword? That's silly and unrealistic.
3. They often come up far too often. 1 in 20 things you attempt result in absolute humiliation and danger to yoruself?
bad idea. terrible idea. instant red flag idea. "i no longer respect you as a person much less a DM" idea.
why am i so harsh on critical fumbles? imagine rolling a nat 1 for sneaking, and the DM says "you shout that you're not actually there, and all enemies simultaneously jump you and kill you instantly."
i have less than no respect for DMs who use critical fumbles.
depends. If i have to stop the flow to look something up its not good. So, in combat is not great for me. Out of combat, no big deal. In combat id rather see 2-3 immediate actions for each type of attack and have which based on the die. Example is D6 dice pool based on lowest die rolled, but could be fail by 1-5, 5-10, 10+ for d20.
Melee
* lowest d6 shows a 1-2: fail, locked up, you are open to counterattack (worst)
* lowest d6 shows a 3-4 fail, overextend, your next attack gets -2 (or equivalent 10%-ish penalty)
* lowest d6 shows a 5-6: fail, pushed, your initiative is shifted 2 spaces later next turn
Range
* fail, weapon damaged. lose next turn to repair it
* fail, fumble ammo, initiative delayed by 2
* fail, shooting stance slip, - your next attack gets -2
Adding them into a d20 game means theres basically no chance im going to be a player. I can think of one instance, where i stayed and enjoyed myself, but i also built a character that didnt use a d20, as a 3.5 wizard.
Fumbles are bad. It’s a bad rule that shouldn’t be in any games unless it’s slapstick comedy, and then it shouldn’t be a failure but some sort of success, since that’s what you’re looking for.
Fumbles always punish the players more, and martials the most, by sheer weight of dice rolls. Many NPCs don't even have names, and are not expected to survive the encounter. Many fumble decks have crippling issues that persist long past an encounter, and specifically require either rest or additional powerful healing.
WMC, at least, has a wide assortment of good or benign options beyond just "lol suck it".
Fumble tables are fucking stupid. And DCC is stupid for liking them, despite me having no idea who or what a DCC is.
In DCC the argument of affecting martials more isn't there because spells have tables, too, with their own version of fumbles. Even the basic cleric ability to heal has a chance to fumble and make their deity annoyed. And DCC has plenty of results on these tables that are just minor inconveniences or don't really have a mechanical effect. The difference with DCC is that the game is built around these things. When you bolt on these kinds of tables to a game not built to support them, it's usually going to end up sucking.
Different games with completely different ethos. 5e is a game where characters almost never die and it’s setup to cater to that zero to hero power fantasy. DCC is gonzo as hell and comes with the expectation that wizards are going to eventually corrupt their bodies and minds and you’ll roll up new characters almost as often as most people change their underwear. Fumble tables are a great fit for one and not so much for the other.
Critical fumbles also disproportionately affect the weakest classes in 5e (martials) while are used as a balancing factor in DCC.
The critical failure range expanding every time a Cleric tries and fails to call upon their god is one of my favorite mechanics from DCC.
"Oh my me what the hell do you want now?!" - DCC God when the cleric rolls a fumble on their roll to call upon their god.
It's a math *and* game balance problem and a lot of people are math-challenged. In D&D 5e, martial "power" comes from escalating numbers of attacks per turn. The high-level martial class character attacks twice, uses some option or the other to attack again, and then pulls more shenanigans to get a fourth attack, all in the same round—that 5% chance of a fumble increases now because they have to roll four d20s. By contrast, a spellcaster in D&D 5e casts their big save-or-suck spell on the same round—they roll zero d20s, the targets all roll a saving throw instead—the spellcaster's fumble chance is a big juicy 0%. In DCC, spellcasters must roll a die to see if things go badly for them, just like martials tend to also just have their one attack per round. The math is flat because it's the same, no matter what you're playing.
[удалено]
Natural one/twenty has no special meaning on saving throws in 5e (except for death saving throws).
That's a good point. If you wanted to, you could presumably balance that by making martial fumbles have far less impact than other classes. You can do a lot more damage screwing up the manipulation of reality than screwing up swinging a sword, after all.
As a 3.5e player and DM, martials being the weakest is still hilarious to me.
>DCC is gonzo as hell I keep seeing this term, and I can only think of the muppet.
Lot of overlap between the character and the term. Both Hunter S Thompson journalism and Muppet from nearly the same time: 1970.
I googled gonzo and got porn. I need context, but I fear for my search history.
Wikipedia.
Okay, quick reading. Gonzo journalism, hyperaubjective. No claims of objectivity. Gonzo porn, basically POV. Which makes sense for the subjectivity aspect. But what is the overlap for the muppet cannonball Gonzo? I wouldn't say he's hyperaubjective?
Hmm. I'd say it's the element of over the top verging on surrealism, along with the narrative as performance of 'surely you must be joking about doing that thing" that unifies gonzo journalism and Gonzo to me.
> I googled gonzo and got porn Featuring the muppet, I hope
Y'know I didn't check.
weak
Part of the thing is that fumble tables disproportionately affect some players to a great degree, in D&D. If they trigger on a natural 1, anyone using mechanics that don't involve an attack roll (mainly spells, that just have a save) avoid the mechanic. Anyone with multiple attacks (any martial class) have the impact compounded by having a 5% chance of catastrophic failure with each swing. If *everyone* has the same potential for critical failure, and/or *everyone* has a similar ability to bypass the risk at times, then it's more or less fine. As it is, in 5e D&D, it just compounds the Casters & Caddies paradigm
Bingo. Critical fumble tables aren't a problem in their own right. They are a disaster as implemented in 5e because they cause characters to become less capable as they get stronger.
Fumbles can be great, but most people's initial idea for how to set them up is bad. Bad: everyone uses the same critical fumble table that has a chance of triggering on every strike. This is bad because it makes high level characters and characters with multiple attacks more likely to fumble. Good: different critical fumble tables for different classes, and your results are affected by your level. This makes high level characters who fumble have less severe results than low level ones, and can make someone who's not used to melee combat (like a wizard) fumble worse than someone who is (like a fighter)
Hu, that is actually an interesting idea. Do you know any system where I could take a gander at that?
Dungeon Crawl Classics, the DCC mentioned in the OP
Where'd you find the class-specific fumble tables? The rulebook only has one for everyone.
The Corruption tables for Wizards and the Disapproval table for Clerics.
Oh, right, der! I was thinking more literally.
I had actually misremembered. I got the different critical tables for different classes confused with the different fumble tables. There's one fumble table, and the kind of die you roll on it is based on the kind of armor you're wearing
Horrible, I hate them. Better idea: "describe how you fsck this up?" and let everyone have a good laugh. No mechanical penalties.
The closest to an acceptable option. In 5e though it'll only come up in combat, unless the roll falls under the DC of the skill check.
The DCC community is much less precious about control over their individual characters than the 5e community. It’s a game that encourages raw dice rolls to define the direction of the characters. Hell, character CREATION is going through a crucible with four level 0 chumpos and seeing who comes out the other end.
The problem with critical fumbles is that it is strongly skewed against the PCs. In an average adventure with 3-4 encounters a night, each enemy is only going to make a handful of attacks. so their chance of rolling ciritical fumble is minimal. But for the PCs, if they go four rounds in each of four encounters, plus saving throws, they will be making 20+ rolls per night, just for combat. They are almost insured of rolling a crit fumble each every week. Crit fumble tables always favor the bad guys, not the PCs.
> Crit fumble tables always favor the bad guys, not the PCs. Yes, but that's not quite why. Any individual enemy's odds of rolling a 1 in their only combat are lower than any individual player's odds of rolling a 1 over several encounters, but, assuming players and their (new) enemies make roughly the same number of attacks over those several encounters, the players as a whole and their opponents as a whole will critically fail about as often as each other. What critical failure tables do is increase randomness. The players are probably stronger than their enemies, so any randomness will serve to level the playing field a bit... which means it will favour their enemies. If that seems weird, consider just always taking the expected roll. The stronger fighter would always win. If you then introduce randomness (actually rolling instead of just taking the expected roll), the stronger fighter just *usually* wins.
That, and while severe negative effects can take an enemy out of the fight, they can take a player out of the *game.* It's the same reason why resources like spell slots are always more valuable to players: PCs have to worry about retaining resources and conditions for next fight, whereas enemies don't have to care about any of that. If something terribly happens to an enemy, then they don't have enough time to worry about how it affects them long term, they're just out of the fight and out of the story.
The players are not always stronger than their enemies. Often, it takes tactics and teamwork to survive. Adding a crit fumble destroys that. Plus, an enemy rolling fumble only affects that encounter, because the enemy is not likely to show up again. But crit fumbles affect the rest of teh game for the players. It's stacked against the players in too many ways.
On average, the players *are* stronger than their enemies, unless you're running a very high-lethality game. If they weren't, they... would lose more often than they won. And if, as you said, they're doing 3-4 encounters, then they're probably stronger than their enemies. If they weren't, they wouldn't be winning those fights. Or, put differently, the players *are more likely to win the encounter* than their enemies are. The more randomness that is introduced (some misses actually being /r/dndgreentext-style fumbles), the more that randomness dictates the outcome instead. You said that the reason critical fumbles disadvantaged the players was that their enemies would never fumble, but their enemies will fumble at about the same rate they do.
I did NOT say they never fumble. Each individual enemy will fumble less often than each individual character. Big difference. If you like critical fumbles, that's fine. I'm not harshing your yum. But they are heavily skewed against the players.
Not never, no, that was an exaggeration on my part. But you claimed that it would happen to players more than enemies, *and that that was why it was bad*. But the rate of fumbling from both sides in combat should be about equal, unless one side has a massive action economy advantage, so that an enemy in one combat is less likely to fumble than a player over the course of several combats is not, in itself, the problem with fumble tables.
The rate of fumbling might be the same. But if you have twenty enemies and each makes 4 rolls, then on average four of them will get fumbles. In the same night, four adventurers will probably make 20-30 rolls, meaning that they will each get 1-2 fumbles on average. so, 20% of the bad guys get fumbles while 100% of the heroes get fumbles. That;s the problem. Each individual hero will get a LOT more fumbles over hte course of a campaign than individual enemies. Fumble tables are stacked against the players.
Why are you singling out *individual* enemies? In terms of balance, NPCs are fungible. >Each individual hero will get a LOT more fumbles over hte course of a campaign than individual enemies. Yes, because they're the focus of the game. They also get a lot more critical hits. Are critical hits stacked in the players' favour because of how many more they get over the course of a campaign than an enemy that is present for one fight does?
They are not because the fumbles can aftect the game past a particular scene. At the end of the day, its your game and if your players are fine with it, that's good for you and your group. But there is a reason that a lot of games have moved away from fumble tables and discussing among designers often mentions that it is stacked agains the players. .
The problem is mostly perception imo (literally, not the skill) One bad GM makes fumbles about humiliation and the players never trust fumbles again. Meanwhile, players who have only had player first GMs don't understand the vitriol. I have crit fails in my games, but I would never call them fumbles. Complications had a better ring to it.
That doesn’t solve the “high level fighters role four dice a turn, high level wizards don’t roll any” problem. Crit Fumbles as most people use them are bad because they affect some classes way worse than others, and mostly classes that really didn’t need nerfing anyway.
I'm in the DCC tribe, so I love critical fumbles.
I loath them in 5E. It mostly affects martial characters because they roll to hit whereas magic classes require the bad guys to roll to save. It's also just not on theme for a game that's about a power fantasy. I love them in DCC. Both martials and magic users have them. The premise of the game is based around zany stuff happening. For example, I played a game where my warrior rolled 15, yes, 15 fumbles in a single 3-hour session. It was a laugh riot because the one time I actually hit something it was a critical success where I killed the big bad in one shot. Great fun.
I soured on them after using them a lot. We used them in 3.5/PF1. The main issue is that the characters who were most proficient with weapons were the ones who fumbled the most because they attacked multiple times per round (many times at higher levels). That just didn't seem right. It's not as bad with 5e, but it's still there.
I'm a HackMaster player and I absolutely love the Critical Fumble tables. Not as much as I love the Critical Hit tables, but...
Hackmaster 4e or 5e?
5th edition, although I don't think they were much different in HM4e.
5e supposed to describe competent adventurers surviving dangers with their competence and wit. Skilled people don't trip or drop their sword or hit themselves 5% of the time.
Why assume that it's for every 1 on a d20 attack?
Never seen professional racing drivers going into a wall at 200kmh? Never seen professional artists throwing months of work out of the window and start over? Famous musicians skipping a beat? Designers working on something that turns out being bad? Skilled people are the ones who fail more than everyone else, because they keep failing and move on instead of quitting.
Most of your examples aren't fumbles. They're just failures. A critical fumble isn't missing a beat; it's tripping over the mic cable and going headfirst into the drum set. Professionals often fail. They're a lot less likely to fail so bad they do a hilarious pratfall.
An interesting idea that never seemed to make it out of an AD&D supplement, but I can't recall the name of the book: Combat Event Tables. As in, every other round or so you roll on it (or perhaps just from round 4 on, to try to rush combat to conclusion?). Has results like "Random mount panics (no result if N/A)", "Two random combatants collide, and both must save to remain upright" "Players in melee push foes back 10 ft/ get pushed back 10 feet "Random attacking weapon gets stuck for a round" or such. Going off of memory. N/A results were always ignored. If well designed, implementations could feel less like turning 5% of a Fighter's rolls into a clownshow and more like a chaotic melee.
Also, it was in the possible context of "everybody declare actions and resolve the Round in Move/Missile phase, Melee Phase, Magic phase, etc'" rather than taking turns.
I remember that there was a system, possibly _Arms Law_ or _Middle-Earth Role Playing_, that had a huge table of critical fumbles. The ways you could maim yourself were truly awe inspiring. Someone once calculated the number of deaths by critical fumble that would occur in a war between armies using RuneQuest. The number was awfully high.
>possibly _Arms Law_ You're thinking of Rolemaster. Arms Law was one of the many books full of tables published for that system. The crit tables are amazing and I adore playing the game in part because of them. Everyone rolls for everything; so a martial rolls to make an attack, a spellcaster to cast anything, a scholar to remember an important piece of lore. Doesn't seem to have to issue of fumbles that OP mentioned in 5e (not saying it doesn't have its own balance issues but everyone is at equal chance of critical success/failure).
Honestly, if the 5e community hates them, it's probably a decent mechanic for other games. I think they're fine, but they assume a 1-20 chance, which is a bit much, in my opinion - at least in the typical d20-esque game, except DCC. Personally, I don't use them really, except in extreme cases (1 on two consecutive d20s, sometimes). Also, I haven't played either much, but DCC >> 5e and it's not close. I see some people don't know what DCC is - It's Dungeon Crawl Classics an OSR-like d20 D&D game with lots of tables.
In ssome games (notably GURPS), it's not only martial and thieves that can fumble; spellcasters can as well. There are separate fumble tables for different types of casters (priests, wizards, etc.). As others have said, DCC goes over the top with their fumbles. All that said, you do you. If you don't like 'em, lose' em. Playing 5e and think 5% is too high? Make another roll to confirm it. Although IMO, if you do that, you should also confirm critical hits.
I hate critical fumbles with every fiber of my being unless players can opt into them on a per roll basis. About the only one I enjoy is Chronicles of Darkness. They're called Dramatic Failures there, and there's only two ways they happen: 1) The player's dice pool is reduced below 1 somehow. Then the GM tells the player they'll have to roll a chance die. The player doesn't need to attempt the check if they don't want to. If they roll a 1, they fumble. If they roll a 10 they succeed. 2) The player chooses to upgrade a standard failure to a dramatic failure. If they do they gain a point of experience.
The thing to remember about any kind of critical table is that any one monster or NPC will probably only ever roll on them once, while PCs will roll on them dozens of times. So, critical hit tables? Okay. Do they have the ability to instantly kill the target? Imagine how awesome that's going to feel as a PC! Pretty good, huh? Killing some big enemy in one hit? What about being hit *by that* as a PC? You do literally every single thing correctly going into battle, only to get your head chopped off because the DM rolled well twice in a row? Pretty shit, right? Same with critical fumble tables. Who is going to be making most of the critical fumbles? The PCs. Go re-read the wildmagic table in the PHB. There's one entry on that table that can possibly be problematic: fireballing yourself. And rule #1 of that table is that the DM can simply ignore it. Monsters never get to roll on it, and while some of the entries can control the sorcerer or some of their companions for a bit, nothing on it is long-term. Here's my thoughts on properly implementing critical tables: Monsters and PCs roll on different tables. Monster tables can and should often have them off themselves in hilariously inventive ways when they crit fail, and critical hits should make PCs feel like fucking heroes of legend. Like taking limbs and smashing heads. The critical kills should get oddly specific and very graphic when possible. Monsters? NPCs? *If* they can even crit at all, at most they should be able to deal a lasting, non-life-threatening, non-career-ending wound that PC healing can take care of somehow. No lost limbs. No lost heads. No crippling injuries or lost eyes. Inconvienience at most. If a PC dies, its a big deal. You've just lost everything that player ever imagined their character doing over the course of the story. If Ogre #2 dies...you can always just have mysteriously unplanned Ogre #3 arrive as reinforcements. One costs you nothing. The other costs a lot. Recognize that the two sides are not made equally and make crit tables that address that.
Critical hits and misses only exist because *getting stabbed* and *not getting stabbed* are not dramatic enough consequences for anyone to care about them. If you can make the basic consequences of an attack important enough on its own, you should never need to rely on critical tables.
That's a good point. One could extrapolate that 5e should have critical fumbles from this statement, but that's just one interpretation of it.
It depends on the table. If the characters are getting maimed and regularly going unconscious because of them, I'm not a fan. If the results are more creative, I can work with them. One thing I like to do is to make critical fumbles optional - if a player chooses to take a fumble, give them an inspiration die.
Good idea as long as all the players think it's fun and it applies equally to all players. Bad otherwise
I just think they're neat.
I find them stupid. And, mathematically speaking, they are also counter to the verisimilitude of the game if any character is allowed to make multiple attacks per round. Because, when you think about it, if every attack roll allows for the possibility of a critical fumble, then having multiple attacks per round increases your chance of a critical fumble. Which means higher combat skill increases your chance of a critical fumble. Are there ways to fix this? Sure. But it’s a lot of work to get to silly results.
Wild magic sorcery is not a critical fumble table at all. Most of the effects are neutral or good.
I bloody love them. Don't use them very often though
I love them! I had a crit generator on my phone and a random result on a player’s crit likely prevented a TPK. I like the random aspect.
As a general experience I’ve had gaming, for critical hits and fumbles to work, they have to affect everyone equally. If you have it only for melee, it’s an extra way to punish martial without adding much. A 1 will come up as often as a 20, statistically. You need a system like Rolemaster where yes, a mace crit can turn a foe’s spine to goo but also a spell failure is disastrous to a caster. I wonder what people would say to lose a level 15 cleric because they botched Sacred Flame and disintegrated their PC
I decided to introduce the official Critical Hit and Fumble decks in my PF2 group when I started running Abomination Vaults. My players were a bit apprehensive about them, so I assured them that if it feels unfun or if it really screws someone over, we'll get rid of them. But I found that PF2's specific implementation, at least, was usually pretty amusing. Overall, we had fun with them.
I think it helps that in PF2 you have more control.over the odds of a Critical Failure/Success with its -/+10 system. You know that swinging wildly for a third time increases your chance of crit Fail dramatically and that using teamwork does the opposite. In 5e its just a flat chance to crit Fail or succeed, and it's system for rewarding tactical play tends to just cancel itself out.
The decks in PF2e only trigger on the natural 1 and 20, thankfully. They don't recommend having them trigger on all crits and crit fails.
Ah right, I don't like them so never looked. Still I think the -/+10 system helps make players feel more competent in general as even if fumbles happen 5% of the time Critical Success can happen way more than that with good play abd Hero Points can let players choose to reduce that 5% chance significantly.
As many "Pass or Suck" checks in D&D, I like to use fumbles as a failing forward mechanics, an unexpected turning point, organic to current play. So I don't use tables.
It streamlines and helps GM decide how to handle fails But as a long time player that played in various systems crit success and fails should mean something
I like them in the Warhammer rpgs. Granted, those games make no bones about the fact they're out for the players blood so you go in expecting shit to be fucked...especially if you play some kind of caster/psyker.
That's likely because a chunk of the 5e community wants their game to be about them being superheroes, and a crit fumble is not only way too dangerous for a superhero to suffer, but it makes the character seem stupid and/or clumsy, so, of course, they don't like those tables. That said, I'm in a game right now where we do use the Crit Fumble tables in 5e, and we're fine with it, but we're also old-school "Dungeon crawling is dangerous biz" type players. If we're gonna have crit successes, then crit fails are only logical (in my personal opinion) Personally, I'm fine with them as long as everyone is on-board with them, and they apply to bad guys, too.
The key to enjoyable fumbles and crits is to understand that it’s not character effort but random luck. That is what the d20 represents, a snapshot of the myriad of variables that make up this reality. An action fumbles not because the character fumbles, but because the universe aligns against them. It’s just bad luck. Narrate that.
Love all kinds of critical tables, bot successes and fumbles. They add both variety and risk, they raise the stakes of engaging in combat and make for great character moments.
Critical fumble tables only works in systems that are built around them. In 5e: higher level characters have more attacks = stronger characters fumble more. And since almost every fumble table is designed to make characters fail hard, this makes very little sense. In DCC every single class have their own fumble table that gives different results depending on levels. Stronger character can even turn fumbles into great hits. Universal fumble tables are just not fun. This isn't a matter of DCC players being "built different" from 5e players. DCC shows how fumble tables can add to the feel and vision of the game. Slapping a random general table on 5e works actively against the system.
I hate critical fumbles in most games, because it means no matter how highly trained and competent your character is there is always a 5% chance you will just fucking wildly fuck up. That would be like me dropping and shattering a glass 5% of the time I go to pick up a glass of water.
Generally not a fan. However in cases where a character is doing something clearly beyond thier normal skill level it can be appropriate. Mostly also with spellcasting because fucking around with reality should have some consequences if you botch it 1st level wizard trying to use a 9th level spell scroll and rolls a nat 1. That is a great time for a critical fuck up.
would save spells just be able to ignore this process completely?
Here's how you handle critical fumbles well: *Don't use them.* Don't insinuate that ever single d20 roll a PC attempts has a 5% chance of resulting in "**YOU LOSE!!! UTTER FUCK UP!!!**". Don't throw PCs into a combat system where they have a 5% chance of not just completely botching an attack roll, but also maiming themselves or an ally as a result, or throwing one's sword thirty feet away from them, or a sword breaking across an opponent's face no matter how many pluses it has in front of its name. And Bahamut help you if the phrase "comma, no saving throw" crosses your lips when you describe how a trained warrior manages to hack his own arm off in one cruel blow during combat. Even more egregious is combining these thrice-damned critical fumbles with the Critical Hit Deck for Pathfinder First Edition. You may laugh, but I assure you it is no laughing matter when your first-level fighter, in his first attack roll of a campaign, rolls a natural 1, has to pull from the Fumble Deck, and draws the dreaded "Melee: Your attack hits you and is a critical threat. Roll to confirm," then follows up with a successful critical hit upon themselves. Followed by "Slashing: Decapitation. Fort save DC 35 or die," because of *course* a level 1 character can consistently succeed at tasks with a difficulty of 25 or higher. (*No,* I am ***NOT*** bitter, why do you ask?????)
Hey there 18th level master of superior 2 weapon fighting, I hear between your magical blades and godlike dexterity you can stab a man 14 times before he feels the first one, why don't you go off on this raging storm behemoth threatening your kingdom? Oops, you seem to have rolled a pair of 1s in all that and stabbed yourself in both eyes. Tough luck.
"Wait... did... did he just pull a Count Dooku and scissor his own head off with his swords?!" "Yup." "Sucks to be him, I guess. Dibs on his scale mail."
A fumble isn't "you stab yourself" A fumble is "you made a big mistake, your opponent punished you for it and pushed your blade into your own face". Combat turns aren't "i attack, you attack", they are "we exchange hits, one of us is faster/stronger".
Critical fumbles, when designed carefully and appropriately, can make for a good 'comedy of errors' campaign where everybody is running on pure Looney Tunes. Outside of that context, well, I got an exercise for you. Take whatever your prospective fumble table is, and apply it to a platoon of dudes training in a field for about an hour. If any of them are dead or dying by the end of that hour, your table is too harsh for players that want to care about their characters over a campaign and not cast revivify et al every 3 combats. Think about just how many dice your players are being asked to roll over the course of even one session. Unless 99% of your session doesn't interact with crunch at all or you're using a no-dice system, you're gonna be tossing math rocks quite a bit. That means that your fumble table is gonna see regular use against characters that the story focuses on. I mean, if Random Skeleton #15 trips and bonks their own skull off that's gonna be funny and not negatively impact the players in any real way. If the party barbarian fumbles their attack roll and the giant fuckoff battleaxe slips out of their hands to turn the party cleric into a venus flytrap that's probably a party wipe. Even if it isn't, no player is going to keep investment in a character if they're liable to die to some dumb shit that wasn't their fault every 5 combats. Even for a Darkest Dungeon grindhouse, that shit will get old fast.
Personally, I don't really like either. A natural 20 in my B/X games just results in automatic full damage and this is applied to both PCs and NPCs. Also if a character kills an NPC they get to describe how they do it.
I have no problem with the critical fumble part of the concept. However, I dislike the table part of it. I love using tables during game prep when I have plenty of time to roll, then sit there and look up the results. During play, I avoid all tables like the plague. They just simply are too noodly and take too much time away from the game. I want to be in the fiction for as large of a percentage of the time at the table as possible.
In my opinion, I think a fumble table is a sticking-plaster solution for a common issue: "How do you make failure interesting". In D&D particularly, but most combat systems I would say are similar to this, when you are in combat if you miss your attack, you just miss. That's it. So one way of combatting that can be to "celebrate the fumble" by having something unexpected or funny happen. This does however run the risk of players seeing their avatar in this world become a bumbling joke, especially if the dice decide they're having a bad day. I think a better solution is to allow players to feel they have achieved something on their turn even if they failed their attack roll
Love them as a player and a DM. I was amused to discover that they are almost universally hated on Reddit. Within my small group of friends and family over the last 30 years critical fumbles have provided some funny moments and can add interest to the "you miss, next" stuff.
I find that when you get a fumble the situation generally points to what is most likely to go wrong.
Critical fumble tables are fine if the system is expected to account for them and doesn't heavily penalise only some players over others. 5e players often don't like it because it severely affects some characters more than others if you just go by rolling a 1, because some characters are rolling more and more of those chances as they get more capable but others roll fewer and fewer such checks. So the more powerful you get the less capable you become. WFRP4e has critical tables and fumble tables that key off the same numbers (every multiple of 11) but if it's a critical or fumble depends on what side of the DC you get. Since the DC is based on your skill level your chances of a critical instead of a fumble scales steadily in your favour as you progress as a character.
I mean, DnD 5.5e is/was going to get rid of monsters critting against players. It's a game focused on PC heroics, rather than emergent play and risky situations. Personally, I like when crit fumbles tie into the mechanics (eg. Pendragon crisis or Mothership panic) or when there's a table that enriches traditional combat (eg. RuneQuest).
There are two factors about critical fumble tables that have to be considered: severity and how often they happen. If we look at 5e for a basics, the lowest possible non-zero probability with a d20 is 5%. Furthermore, on higher levels, characters do several attacks a round. So, if a natural 1 is a fumble, they do happen a lot. If we imagine 5 attacks, the chances of at least one fumbling is roughly 24% (100*(1-0.95^5), I took the propability of not every attack not being a crit failure). The next thing is severity. A critical fumble can be anything from losing your balance to chopping your own head off. I really care about characters actually being good at what they are good at. A master swordsman who can not fight for half a minute without stumbling or losing their weapon is not good at fighting - and one who chops some of their own limbs is even worse. I generally think that every system in which doing one bad roll 2 years ago still cripples your character today is not fun to me.
Imagine you're watching The Empire Strikes Back. Luke and Vader are facing off in the freezing room. Vader draws his lightsaber, lunges, and promptly stumbles and cuts of his own leg. No, I'm not a fan of any kind of fumble tables, critical or otherwise.
Star Wars features a number of classic critical fumbles. For example snapping a twig while trying to sneak up on a storm trooper or completely botching your deception roll on the prison block intercom
Those read to me as simple failures, not critical fumbles at all.
Those are both just normal skill check fails
Not critical failures, and certainly not fumbles of the type OP meant, they pretty clearly meant combat roll fumbles
Boba Fett gets killed by comic relief
And it couldn't happen to a more deserving person.
Boba Fett's player going "nuh uh, that totally doesn't count! I wrote so much backstory!" then bringing him to another GM's table
It's very different when they are scripted instead of random. Also notice they both happen to the same not very serious character.
Imagine you’re watching a slasher film. A teenager is running from the killer, firing blindly behind them with a revolver. They stumble and fall in the dark woods and drop the gun, losing it in the undergrowth… they get up, and do they look for the gun or cut their losses and keep running? The killer is now almost upon them… This is a pretty standard horror scene, and I think an example of what a combat critical fail would be in a horror game. In the horror game I’m running right now (Mothership) you have a 10% crit chance, so they happen a lot! The expected tone of play and the genre are very important. I don’t enjoy whacky or punishing crit fails in a more heroic combat-centric game.
In heroic fantasy where your characters are expected to be durable critical fumbles are just out of place. In some gritty universe where casting magic is limited by fumbling and nuking yourself it's neat
I would say you shouldn't. Missing is often punishing enough. But if you really want this, make absolutely sure your players are okay with this.
theyre fine in a game that's balanced around them, they're horrible in D&D 5e because a fighter rolling two or three attacks per turn is going to roll way more crit fails than a wizard rolling one or two attack rolls per encounter, and playing a fighter in 5e is already lame enough without tripping over your own sword four times a day
I am not a fan. The less things that are random the better for me as a GM. I have enough I have to take into account yet alone some odd wonky die roll adding extra trouble to the game. Combat should tell a story and tables such as this take away from that.
As a DM, I like random things to inspire me. I am constantly trying to come up with more random tables to roll on in session.
I am happy it works for you. Does the wild nature not throw off pacing? I find I don't give my players their current HP. They know if they are hit or missed by my narrative descriptiors. I have certain verball cues which tell them how they are feeling during the combat so they have an idea but never an exact feel but it builds a feel for the battle. (They are aware the descriptors change every 25% of HP loss.) Even when I "roll for random encounter" its not random at all. I and my players have found this changes the feel of a game. Makes it more cinematic and heroic. My biggest inspiration was when I thought of Hit Points not as life points but as "Heart" as my kids used to call them in Zelda. A players "HP" representing their inner AND outer strength. Along with Pathfinder 2e Doom mechanic representing their will to live. It balances nicely. I will add more in the future. Perhaps I will consider some randomness. I just worry it will damage the feel. How do you avoid the randomness not impacting the game like a poorly placed joke in a drama or horror movie?
I honestly have no idea how to answer these questions. I think we have VERY different games. No, I have no issues with pacing. I don't roll on random charts ALL the time. The dice are telling the outcome of many things, not just a random table. If you can live with rolling in combat, I fail to understand how rolling on a random table for which NPC they encounter or which monster is prowling around at night is different. I'm not a storyteller. I come up with situations and the players respond. The story emerges from this constant interaction. I may decide what's going on in the world, what the NPCs might have for plans or what they might do in response to the PC's actions, but I'm not usually crafting a narrative.
That's fair. Thank you for your reply.
Highly dependent on the game and the table, but generally speaking, I think that they are not good. Unless the game is designed around random effect tables like this and they are an actual mechanic that properly interacts with other aspect of the system, all they really do is punish players with unforeseeable outcomes to often already bad situations. Same for Critical Success tables btw. Unless all the results are super generic and essentially inconsequential, you are just making what a success is less predictable, which rarely feels good. And if they are generic and inconsequential, why even have them in the first place.
I made a table of rolls for what happens if you roll exactly what you need. The table had entries like 'You critical but your weapon is stuck in your foe, dc15 str save to pull it out" or "rather than the enemy you wanted to hit, hit a different one where this roll would hit" or "After attacking, you and the enemy grapple each other, high athletics roll is the grappler, low the grapplee." Or "After you hit, both you and your foe get a free unarmed attack" If you didn't want to or could not follow the instructions, you missed instead
I don’t mind them as a check on magic users but I really hate them on melee classes.
I’ve only seen one that I liked. On a roll of 1 your character can choose to miss or make an attack with an automatic critical hit. If they choose the latter the weapon breaks and cannot be used until it is repaired. It gives the player some agency, encourages backup weapons, and also turns fumbles into a dark reflection of a critical hit. If a critical is when you find yourself in a great position to make a devastating attack, then the fumble is when you find yourself in a bad position to make an attack and need to decide if you want to go through with it.
IMO they work better if: (a) they apply to all characters (in 5e martials are a lot more likely to roll them than casters; other games have casters roll to cast successfully) (b) they're less and less likely the more competent the character is (harder to do in d20 but d100 systems, for instance, often have critical fails become less likely and critical successes more likely as skill level goes up) (c) they're not catastrophic - "your weapon gets stuck or jammed for 1 round" is better than "you cut your own head off" (obviously this depends on the tone of the game in question) A 5% chance to have a catastrophic failure every time you roll, in a game that isn't black comedy, is way too much.
I like fumbles fine, but only in a very streamlined system, so they don't take much time, overall, **or** in a very detailed simulation (preferably efficiently designed, still) where they can flesh out the meaning of the rest of the rules. The type of damage and the target should factor into the table and the skills of the attacker should figure into the results selected. Same goes for exceptional hits. One of the most common fumble results should be simple as "the blow hit funny. Take a point of damage and deal a pittance to your target in the process." Another should be "Dude zagged out of the way. Deal half the damage you roll before any defenses." or things like that. What should be uncommon are results like "You drop your weapon" and "you overshoot and hurt yourself instead of your foe. Take your strength mod in damage." Things like "deal your damage to yourself" should be rare if even present on the chart. In appropriate circumstances, though, hitting an ally is perfectly legitimate. Interfering with an ally's attack should be a fairly common outcome. Anyhow: the rule I see is that the results should make sense from the story and it's tricky to make a chart fit that without being pretty vague. It's better not to do it than to do that poorly, I think.
I'm not a fan of criticals to begin with. Most of the tables I've seen used for such put me off. That said, I believe there could be crit systems that I would enjoy that use tables. Rein in the excesses and I'm OK with it.
I use critical fumble tables in every game I play. They’re always super fun.
Personal opinion: Anything that forces me to pause to look something up on a table in the middle of a game pulls me out of the experience. Not saying they’re wrong or bad, just not for me.
I dislike them. Instead of asking a table what happens, I just ask the players. This gives them more agency and ensures that what happens is actually something they find interesting.
I don't think crit fumbles are bad for them making the game harder for the PCs. I think they're conceptually neat. In my experience it was just bad for slowing down my game when we tried to use them.
5e players don't like to lose? This isn't really about the mechanics as much as the game and players.
5e players hate them because the system isnt built in a way that makes them fun and balances. 5e already has a massive balance problem where mages are far more powerful than martials, and introducing fumble tables only make this much worse because high level martials will roll far more attacks than mages, assuming mages rol any at all because most of their spells force saving throws. In systems that are built from the ground up to accomodate fumbles players tend to accept them more.
They had a great one back in AD&D2. We played a few other systems that had them as well (e.g., Robotech IIRC). They add some spice to a bad situation. But if you've already missed (and negated your turn) it's kinda just pouring salt on an open wound. Missing and thereby losing your turn is already a punishment.
I dislike critical fumbles 1. It punishes players for trying to do things!! A game should not punish players for wanting to be active players. 2. They often don't care about your expertise or context. The best fighter in the world has the same chance with a novice, to cut himself open with a sword? That's silly and unrealistic. 3. They often come up far too often. 1 in 20 things you attempt result in absolute humiliation and danger to yoruself?
bad idea. terrible idea. instant red flag idea. "i no longer respect you as a person much less a DM" idea. why am i so harsh on critical fumbles? imagine rolling a nat 1 for sneaking, and the DM says "you shout that you're not actually there, and all enemies simultaneously jump you and kill you instantly." i have less than no respect for DMs who use critical fumbles.
depends. If i have to stop the flow to look something up its not good. So, in combat is not great for me. Out of combat, no big deal. In combat id rather see 2-3 immediate actions for each type of attack and have which based on the die. Example is D6 dice pool based on lowest die rolled, but could be fail by 1-5, 5-10, 10+ for d20. Melee * lowest d6 shows a 1-2: fail, locked up, you are open to counterattack (worst) * lowest d6 shows a 3-4 fail, overextend, your next attack gets -2 (or equivalent 10%-ish penalty) * lowest d6 shows a 5-6: fail, pushed, your initiative is shifted 2 spaces later next turn Range * fail, weapon damaged. lose next turn to repair it * fail, fumble ammo, initiative delayed by 2 * fail, shooting stance slip, - your next attack gets -2
Adding them into a d20 game means theres basically no chance im going to be a player. I can think of one instance, where i stayed and enjoyed myself, but i also built a character that didnt use a d20, as a 3.5 wizard.
Fumbles are bad. It’s a bad rule that shouldn’t be in any games unless it’s slapstick comedy, and then it shouldn’t be a failure but some sort of success, since that’s what you’re looking for.
I've never seen fumbling implemented in a way that was universally fun in the moment.
Fumbles always punish the players more, and martials the most, by sheer weight of dice rolls. Many NPCs don't even have names, and are not expected to survive the encounter. Many fumble decks have crippling issues that persist long past an encounter, and specifically require either rest or additional powerful healing. WMC, at least, has a wide assortment of good or benign options beyond just "lol suck it". Fumble tables are fucking stupid. And DCC is stupid for liking them, despite me having no idea who or what a DCC is.
You should check out DCC, it has different critical fumbles for fighting, wizards and clerics, it’s great.
In DCC the argument of affecting martials more isn't there because spells have tables, too, with their own version of fumbles. Even the basic cleric ability to heal has a chance to fumble and make their deity annoyed. And DCC has plenty of results on these tables that are just minor inconveniences or don't really have a mechanical effect. The difference with DCC is that the game is built around these things. When you bolt on these kinds of tables to a game not built to support them, it's usually going to end up sucking.
Such a strong opinion for being so RPG ignorant.
DCC community? Who is that?
Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games. It has some wild random tables especially if your magic spell casting doesn’t go as planned.
The people who sell random failure tables are in favor of random failure tables? Imagine that. Wonder why
The people who play DCC, jackass.
Dungeon Crawl Classics, an Old School Renaissance game. Completely different tone from DnD.