D&D 5E "Confirmed crits and fumbles," anyone tried it?

toucanbuzz · Oct 2, 2021

My gaming group two sessions ago observed I owned Pathfinder's (3rd edition) critical hit and fumble decks. They were curious as no one has played a prior edition before 5E. I explained in 3rd edition, one had to "confirm" a crit or hit by making the same attack again (if you hit, you've confirmed the crit; if you miss you've confirmed the fumble, otherwise it's just a hit or a miss).

Without sharing whether they liked it or not, is anyone doing this at their table, and if so have you run into any issues with 5E?

Lanefan · Oct 2, 2021

Haven't done it in 5e but I've been doing this in my own game since forever: roll a 20, then roll another die (a d10 these days, it's changed a few times over the years) to confirm the crit and its effect.

I can't see why it'd be a problem in 5e, particularly if you want to expand the range of what crits and fumbles can achieve.

Hawk Diesel · Oct 2, 2021

I do it. But I also calculate crit damage differently. A crit is max damage, and then you confirm. If you confirm, it becomes double max damage, plus a d100 roll for an additional effect on a critical hit chart.

ECMO3 · Oct 2, 2021

toucanbuzz said:
My gaming group two sessions ago observed I owned Pathfinder's (3rd edition) critical hit and fumble decks. They were curious as no one has played a prior edition before 5E. I explained in 3rd edition, one had to "confirm" a crit or hit by making the same attack again (if you hit, you've confirmed the crit; if you miss you've confirmed the fumble, otherwise it's just a hit or a miss).

Without sharing whether they liked it or not, is anyone doing this at their table, and if so have you run into any issues with 5E?

No I am not using confirmed crits right now but we are using fumbles in one game and in my experience both have major problems in 5E.

Confirming crits slows down play for no benifit really and it unbalances the game, making martials in general and Rogues, Hexblades, Paladins and Champions in specific weaker in combat and the game does not need to be biased any more towards casters than it already is.

Fumbles are worse, mostly because they also hurt martials far more than casters. A martial getting multiple attacks is going to be rolling more dice and therefore rolling more fumbles, which makes absolutely no sense when these guys are supposed to be the masters of weapon combat. For example a fighter with 3 attacks a turn will average a fumble once every 6-7 rounds of combat (5 if he uses TWF), where the Rogue doing SA will only average a fumble once every 20 turns (even less if he gets advantage) and a caster casting 50% attack spells and 50% save spells will roll a fumble once every 40 turns of combat. So your fighter with 3 attacks is fumbling about 6 times as often as your caster and over 3 times as often as a Rogue. Confirming fubles would soften it, but it would still suck and fumbles have made multiple lists of the worst homebrew rules in 5E.

Hawk Diesel · Oct 2, 2021

ECMO3 said:
No I am not using confirmed crits right now but we are using fumbles in one game and in my experience both have major problems in 5E.

Confirming crits slows down play for no benifit really and it unbalances the game, making martials in general and Rogues, Hexblades, Paladins and Champions in specific weaker in combat and the game does not need to be biased any more towards casters than it already is.

Fumbles are worse, mostly because they also hurt martials far more than casters. A martial getting multiple attacks is going to be rolling more dice and therefore rolling more fumbles, which makes absolutely no sense when these guys are supposed to be the masters of weapon combat. For example a fighter with 3 attacks a turn will average a fumble once every 6-7 rounds of combat (5 if he uses TWF), where the Rogue doing SA will only average a fumble once every 20 turns (even less if he gets advantage) and a caster casting 50% attack spells and 50% save spells will roll a fumble once every 40 turns of combat. So your fighter with 3 attacks is fumbling about 6 times as often as your caster and over 3 times as often as a Rogue. Confirming fubles would soften it, but it would still suck and fumbles have made multiple lists of the worst homebrew rules in 5E.

Not a perfect fix by any means, but in my games crits and fumbles can happen on any combat related d20 roll. So as an example, if an enemy rolls a natural 1 on a saving throw against a wizard's spell, then it is considered a crit and that enemy would have to roll again to confirm. The opposite is also true with magic fumbles if an enemy rolls a natural 20. This does level the frequency of crit and fumbles between marshals and casters. Though it doesn't really address the way rogues might be affected, but then again thematically it does make sense. Rogues seem more methodical and choose their strikes more carefully.

I do agree that requiring crits to be confirmed in order to be a full critical hit is a problem. This is why a natural 20 in my games is special, regardless if its confirmed. Confirmation is just icing on an already delicious cake.

overgeeked · Oct 2, 2021

We tried it for a short time and found it pointlessly cumbersome and a waste of time. Utterly drains the enthusiasm for a critical hit. We like seeing the dice roll to a stop and getting jazzed that it says “20”.

ninjayeti · Oct 2, 2021

I think confirming crits worked great in 3.x, where crits were likely to do significantly more damage. The extra roll slowed down the game a bit, but it was worth it because it was something players really got excited about (or nervous about when an enemy was confirming a crit). 5E crits are often non-events; having players roll an extra time to confirm the crit and then only getting an extra point or two of damage would seem like a waste to time. So if you want to houserule confirming crits, I would also beef up the results of getting a crit.

Personally I have never really liked fumbles, and if you take away the requirement to confirm the fumble they are going to happen much more often. Characters with two attacks are essentially going to get a fumble on 10% of their turns, which seems excessive.

Charlaquin · Oct 2, 2021

toucanbuzz said:
My gaming group two sessions ago observed I owned Pathfinder's (3rd edition) critical hit and fumble decks. They were curious as no one has played a prior edition before 5E. I explained in 3rd edition, one had to "confirm" a crit or hit by making the same attack again (if you hit, you've confirmed the crit; if you miss you've confirmed the fumble, otherwise it's just a hit or a miss).

Without sharing whether they liked it or not, is anyone doing this at their table, and if so have you run into any issues with 5E?

Not in 5e proper, but I did use it during the playtest. The thing is, the problem that crit confirmation was designed to solve doesn’t really exist in 5e thanks to bounded accuracy.

You see, because a natural 20 is always a hit, if a target’s AC is higher than 20+ your attack bonus, you end up with a situation where you can hit that target for critical damage, but not for normal damage. Crit confirms were created to prevent this situation - because if you can’t hit the target except on a crit, you can’t hit the crot confirmation roll.

Now, this is already a silly way to solve this “problem,” such as it is. You could get the same benefit by simply ruling that a crit on a target you can’t otherwise hit does normal damage. The only reason to use crit confirms instead of ruling is if you’re so averse to giving players any information at all that you’d rather make them roll twice every time they crit, potentially losing the extra damage if they don’t roll high enough the second time, then let them know a monster’s AC is too high for them to hit. But even if you would rather do that? It’s unnecessary in 5e because you’ll never encounter a monster you can’t hit on less than a natural 20 in that game.

Confirming fumbles is even more pointless. Literally the only purpose they serve is to maintain symmetry between natural 20s and natural 1s if you’re using crit confirmation.

Lyxen · Oct 2, 2021

Honestly, 5e is designed to be streamlined and blindingly fast, so any initiative to slow down the system is counterproductive for me.

Also, as explained by others, confirming critical hits have no special interest with bounding accuracy in the game, the mechanism in 3e/PF was only to avoid having an automatic critical hit when you could hit only on a 20 or similar higher number.