Where did fumbles come from?

[cybertalus]

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?"

My respect for Mr. Gygax just increased more than if you'd told me he had singlehandedly figured out cold fusion.

I sincerely wish that whereever fumbles and criticals came from that they would go back there and never come back.

 

[velm]

I see role playing as a game, a way to interact with other people and most of all have fun.
Crits, can often be the highlight of a battle. How often has a battle been going against the PCs to have them bloody, bruised and battered, then suddenly that player who is playing a Dwarven fighter rolls that die, it LOOKS like it going to roll a 5, but then suddenly a little bit more momentum carries it to a 20, then the whole table cheers? That bit of adrenaline rush can really spark the players to life, I know it has in many occasions that I have seen. Is it really an unbalance issue? doubt it.
Critical fumbles are the same way, I have seen some off the wall critical fumbles happen. Is it bad? usually not that bad, a dropped weapon or hitting someone nearby or sometimes yourself.
I still have fond memories of one of my first characters fumbling while fighting in a dungeon and nearly killing the person infront of me and behind me with my morningstar. Would I still remember that battle had it not been for the fumble? No.

 

[Andre]

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.

Yep. Volume 1, pages 60-61, published in 1977. Unfortunately, I just discovered that the volume I bought on eBay is missing those pages (aargh...)

The only thing I remember from the fumble charts in AG is that it was possible to castrate yourself on a fumble - because a low-level cleric I was playing did just that. That's about the time I decided I didn't like fumble charts...

 

[TheYeti1775]

Had a great DM before I joined the Marines,
He had a Critical Hit and Fumble chart all printed out on the back of his DM screen. I loved it, he had it worked up for using a d%. The higher the %, the better or the worst your roll.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Heh, I had a set of critical hit and fumbles charts that date back to about 1982. Purely homebrew, d% based. And boy, I'm glad I'm no longer using them!

They're in an old D&D notebook along with homebrew spell greats like monster mush and hypothetical half, and crazy homebrew magic items like gauntlets of green slime and the infamous +2 rubber chicken -- which on a natural 20 had a 5% chance of causing the target to die laughing, no save!

 

[Plane Sailing]

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.

We initially used this rule, but found it was devastating to the PCs, so we ditched it for a simple drop weapon / damage weapon / lose next action kinda fumble.

 

[Trainz]

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

*pssst*

3.5 DMG page 28

Variant rule.

 

[IronWolf]

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.

Now I like that idea! Nice and simple and no need for some complex chart.

For the most part though I am against fumbles for rolling a 1. Maybe for levels 1 through 3, but really aren't things hard enough at those levels? Much above that it just gets annoying in my opinion.

While I like giving my players a challenge, I still see this game being about heros. Critically fumbling can make that feeling dissipate quite quickly.

 

[Trainz]

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.

3.0 DMG, variant rule.