Where did fumbles come from?

[diaglo]

Supplement II Blackmoor had the body part variants.

but a natural 20 wasn't always a hit. that came with 1edADnD and 2edD&D Holmes Basic. and even then a natural 20 to hit wasn't always a hit in 1edADnD. that rule was for saving throws and such. a natural 1 was a failed save. and natural 20 was a successful save.


The Armoury also had a booklet for the d30 with a critical hits table back in the day.

 

[jasper]

hong is wrong. Around Dragon issue 45 an article was published with the title like Good Hits, Bad Misses. 2 pager with 4 charts. one misses, one basicallys swords, one blunts, and one arrows. Any one have the dragon mag cd to get the exact title and issue

 

[francisca]

Just did a little digging through the Dragon Archive.

In issue 24, Gygax argued against a high roll or a 20 causing extra damage, because it would unbalance combat in favor of the PCs. In a later issue (couldn't find it, but remember reading it), he stated that any benefits from a critical hit would need to be extended to NPCs/monsters as well, which most players wouldn't like.

The earliest crit/fumble table I could find is in Dragon #39.

edit:
If anyone is interested, I've attached an old set of crit/fumble rules I used in my 3.5 game for a while, before it went on hiatus.

 

[francisca]

hong is wrong. Around Dragon issue 45 an article was published with the title like Good Hits, Bad Misses. 2 pager with 4 charts. one misses, one basicallys swords, one blunts, and one arrows. Any one have the dragon mag cd to get the exact title and issue

Issue, 39, actually. That was the article I mentioned in my previous post. We must have been typing at the same time.

Edit:
Just to nitpick, Hong is correct. Just because it appeared in Dragon, doesn't mean that it was considered part of the ruleset. Dragon wasn't always "100% Official Content", as it says on the cover these days.

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

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

I loved the fumble and crit tables from the old Rolemaster books (ca. 1979), especially "Split in twain."

 

[Plane Sailing]

Furthermore, the dragon articles were merely following a trend (or not, as the case might be with EGG article)

I still have some of my APA (amatuer Publishing Association) magazines from the late 70's (The Wild Hunt and especially Trollcrusher to which I contributed) and everyone was discussing critical hit and fumble tables back then. When RQ (2nd edition at least) came along it had a built in fumble and critical mechanic and that would have been about 1977/78.

Cheers

 

[Scribble]

Man, I just went through those crit/fumble charts in dragon 39... Those were some harsh crits!

 

[Theron]

The first published fumble charts I know of popped up in The Arduin Grimoire books, which were originally D&D knock-off add-ons, and later reworked into their own system.

RuneQuest also had an early one, based on the things Steve Perrin (the author) had personally witnessed in SCA tournaments and melees (I've been subject to more than a few odd fumbles myself under similar circumstances).

For a long time, crits and fumbles just seemed part and parcel of the collective unconscious of the gaming world. I remember Gygax doing a screed early on in the pages of Dragon (or possibly an APA, before he dismissed them out of hand as hopelessly "jejeune and puerile") where he railed against such things, proposing a "crit chart" that amounted to "Score a crit and your opponent dies. Happy now?"

 

[Whimsical]

I have seen a really simple yet elegant critical fumble rule somewhere. Basically, if you roll a 1 on your attack roll, you provoke an attack of opportunity from your opponent. Just like if you did a combat maneuver that provokes an attack of opportunity, such as disarming or grappling.

This is a pretty cool rule. It works for players and monsters, for 1st level or epic, for any sort of type of melee attacks. It's easy to remember with no chart needed, and it uses a mechanic that is already integral to 3e combat.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Back in the day, Mayfair's Role Aids line had Blood & Steel. If you rolled a 1, you opened yourself up and suffered a repitoire or something of that nature. Basically a free attack.

With attacks of opportunity in 3rd ed, we pretty much just make it an attack of opportunity. Takes care of some headaches that come up with multiple 1s happening at higher levels.