Critical Fumble?

My house-rule:

If you roll a 1 on your attack roll, then you must make a DC12 Reflex save to avoid overextending yourself on the attack.

By overextend yourself I mean you get a -2 AC penalty until your next turn and you get a -2 penalty on your next attack roll.

It's never come up, but if the character rolled a 1 on the Reflex save I'd probably make them drop the weapon or trip themselves or do something similar.

I had a DM who used to make you drop your weapon on a 1. Actually, you'd throw your weapon 1d6 squares in a random direction. I saw a 7th level hasted fighter fumble three times in one combat because of it, and my evoker never fumbled. That rule definltely sucked, as Patryn points out, because those most likely to roll a 1 are high-level fighters, who roll to attack more often. A full 5% of their attacks will be fumbles.

Patryn of Elvenshae said:

Which is another reason why critical fumble rules are ... odd.

Especially when it's a +5 adamantine great sword.

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Well, it's not so much a RULE as it is just the DM "deciding something interesting to happen". I'm sure he wouldn't "Break" a +5 Adamantine sword.

If it were ME, I'd probably think of something along the lines for that weapon as "You swing your sword at the Golem, and miss, striking the wall next to him. You swung with such force, the blade imbeds itself deep into the stone" - and then I'd require a mild STR check next turn to pull it out.

The weapon in question that broke was just a mundane longsword.

Murrdox said:

The weapon in question that broke was just a mundane longsword.

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Yeah, but I can't recall ever seeing a set of critical fumble rules that distinguished between the two.

Ick, I hate critical fumbles, but the group I am in currently plays with them. Our ratio of critical fumbles compared to critical hits is about 2:1 or even 3:1. While they shouldn't be that far off when looking at the numbers, our dice must be cursed

My biggest problem is that critical fumbles always seem to have multiple options for penalties. For example, if we critical fumble, then we roll percentage dice and they results are looked up on a table. Everything from damaging an adjacent ally, damaging yourself, dropping your weapon, breaking your weapon, etc. can occur On a critical hit you only have the option of extra damage.

Patryn of Elvenshae said:

Yeah, but I can't recall ever seeing a set of critical fumble rules that distinguished between the two.

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I think we should write into the Sage and demand that the next PHB 3.5 2nd Edition devote 10 pages to a large table which has critical fumble rules for every possible weapon/enchantment/material combination.

Example:

Flaming +1 Silvered Longsword - On a Critical Fumble this blade flies from your hand, striking the neared gnome.

Cold Iron Goblin-Bane Heavy Flail - Aliens decend and "beam" the weapon out of your hand. 2000 years later, it mysteriously reappears in Roswell, NM.

Critical Failure

Patryn of Elvenshae said:

The reason critical fumbles don't work as well as critical hits is that the character who is most likely to make a critical fumble is the high-level fighter.

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I agree. Even though our group worked out a very reasonable critical fumble dynamic (see attached), we eventually dropped it.

We basically realized that a character with more attacks, gets more chances to fumble. After a while, it just didn't make sense to us that a highly skilled fighter would get more opportunites to screw up his/her attacks.

We tried changing the rule to only apply to an armed combatant for their first regular attack and their first attack of opportunity. However, this just added a level of complexity to the game that none of us cared to keep track of.

So, we just decided to dump the fumble rule ... it was easier that way.

Critical fumbles should be the exclusivity of NPC class if at all IMO.

Yeah, but I can't recall ever seeing a set of critical fumble rules that distinguished between the two.

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I had another DM a few years ago who ruled that a fumble means you miss and do damage to the weapon. I don't recall if he made up the rule or got it from a message board forum or got it from the Kingdoms of Kalamar book.

Anyway, my gnome rogue/wizard couldn't do enough damage to his dagger to overcome its hardness, so fumbles for me were no problem. However, the cleric broke his axe at least once and the paladin and barbarian were in danger of breaking their weapons as well.

Hmmm, I wonder what happened to the monk using his fists when he fumbled?

atom crash said:

Hmmm, I wonder what happened to the monk using his fists when he fumbled?

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Perhaps he dropped them?

atom crash said:

Hmmm, I wonder what happened to the monk using his fists when he fumbled?

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Well, I'm thinkin' ...