Where did fumbles come from?

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

I'm having a crisis here. As long as I can remember playing D&D (back to 1977 or 78), we've had crits--i.e. a 20 always hits--and fumbles--a 1 always misses and something bad happens. (In fact, we had a slogan, "A crit is better than a hit.")

During a discussion of what happens when you're firing into melee with a bow and roll a 1, we started trying to find the rules.

They weren't there, in 3.5. So where did we get that rule about fumbles? That is, the idea that a fumble isn't just a miss, but that it has a bad consequence. Any ideas?

(And the fact that I can't find a reference to a critical anywhere in the AD&D book--1978--is bothering me as well.)

 

[hong]

There's never been a rule about critical misses in 3/3.5E.

IIRC there also never was a rule about critical hits or misses in 1E. You always hit on a 20 and missed on a 1, but there were no additional effects beyond the hit or miss. It was just a very common house rule to have crits.

 

[Morrus]

Yeah - it was a house rule that pretty much every gaming group I've met experimented with at some point or other - but was never official.

 

[nix4]

Fumbles and the Greatsword

I played for several years as a elf warrior using greatsword, and I can only say that I am very very happy there are no fumble rules in 3e.

Every bloody time (and it often was) a fumble would occur for my character it would result in someone being horribly wounded or, in most comical situations, my own unconsciousness....

During the first few levels, I can understand these accidents. But when I reached levels 5 - 7, I began to get really irritated. These rules do not give your character the look of a hero but in some cases a bumbling fool who cant even manage to control themselves. Granted, there are situations in combat where accidents occur...but is that 1:20 every time you swing (and considering the number of attacks you get at higher lvls the chances increase).

Ya you swing, you roll a 1!, roll percentage dice for the fumble table! Oh, you critically hit yourself! ya! your 7th warrior just managed to knock himself unconscious fighting a kobold...congratz!

Good Riddance I say!

 

[dcollins]

Hong is correct. Critical hits first entered core D&D rulebooks with 3rd Edition. There is a critical fumble variant in the 3rd Ed. DMG. Any time prior to that it was only a house rule or 3rd-party supplemental variant.

 

[Jupp]

Fumbles are great to get a party of adventurers back from sleep. Whenever there is that special time when the party starts to feel self-confident someone rolls that dreaded 1 and the whole table goes "FUMBLE!". Its the time when our DM's eyes start to glow red and he gets that table out of his box. Most of the time someone from our party gets seriously hurt but still...loads of fun when the 1 shows on the table
Some of the best fumbles are still being discussed years later because they were just too cool to forget

Edit: Systems that had fumble tables, IIRC, where Runequest and Midgard, among others

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, see son, when a mother fumble and a daddy fumble love each other very much, there is magic and thus is born a new fumble.

On a more serious note, almsot all D&D fumble and critical charts for the matter, have come from outsider sources like Dragon (and Mayfair back in the day) and 3rd party d20 sources handle it now like Advanced Player's Guide and Torns Assunder.

 

[irdeggman]

Actually critical hits made the "officially published" list in 2nd ed Player's Option: Combat and Tactics which had very complete tables for critical hit locations and detailed rules for their results. They also had critical hits for magic listed there too.

3.5 Unearthed Arcana has a house-rule side bar on critical misses (IIRC) and that would be worth looking up. Basically in 3/3.5 if a critical hit needs a threat roll and a follow up success to work then so should a critical miss to keep things balanced.

 

[Whisper72]

The DMG 2nd Edition (page 61) has critical hits _and_ critical fumbles as optional rules...

 

[Henry]

Well, the concept is as old as the concept of Friendly Fire, which in turn is as old as the first caveman who tossed a rock and accidentally whacked his buddy instead of his target.

The gaming concept of same has been around since the earlier days of wargaming in the 1960's, and to my knowledge the first printed instance of a critical fumble chart came in an early Dragon Magazine (as in sub- issue #50 or so). Ditto with critical hits, because the concepts are linked.

EDIT: In fact, (having the Dragon Archive handy right this second, Carl Parlagreco wrote "Good Hits and Bad Misses" in Dragon #39, published in July 1980; from his wording, critical hits were in common parlance in groups even back then at the time of the article.