D&D 5E Advantage, Criticals, and Fumbles

[Lanefan]

There's a huge flaw with this though: attack with what? If I critically miss you with a crossbow or scorching ray, how do you hit me back with only the melee weapon in your hand? If you need a ranged attack, how long do you have to get it out to use it (and possibly with disadvantage if my buddy's in your face)? This would once again punish melee over ranged characters.

Yeah, for ranged it'd work if the enemy also had active ranged attackers; there'd be a free shot against the fumbler from a randomly chosen enemy shooter (except if an enemy shooter was the fumbler's target that shooter would always get the free shot).

If the enemy doesn't have active ranged attackers that means either a) you're shooting into melee, in which case hitting allies should be a significant risk and that's what a fumble would always mean, or b) you're shooting fish in a barrel, in which case the DM would have to decide what went wrong.

 

[DND_Reborn]

5E was built upon the premise that people don't want things that complicated, and for the vast majority of players they've been right.

That's part of my point. Simple math isn't complicated really. If you have problems with it, practicing it helps a lot in most cases (not all, certainly, but most IME as a math teacher and tutor).

 

[Azuresun]

Fumbles don't scale well. A 20th level fighter will be fumbling 20 percent of the time with 4 attacks. An extended combat that lasts over a minute basically ensures that said fighter would break a weapon, chop off his own head, kill the wizard, etc.

I really like the design of Halflings in 5e. They're a great way to protect yourself from DM's who haven't yet realised critical fumbles are bad ideas.

 

[lingual]

I really like the design of Halflings in 5e. They're a great way to protect yourself from DM's who haven't yet realised critical fumbles are bad ideas.

Vader and Kenobi dueling to the death. After about a few rounds, Vader slices off his own foot while Kenobi trips and impales himself.

In a long battle, both would definitely die of self-inflicted wounds.

 

[DND_Reborn]

 

[el-remmen]

Vader and Kenobi dueling to the death. After about a few rounds, Vader slices off his own foot while Kenobi trips and impales himself.

In a long battle, both would definitely die of self-inflicted wounds.

That's great if what you're trying to emulate are narrative-derived cinematic battles, but not all of us are trying to do that. I, personally, don't run D&D to re-play stuff like it happens in action movies (unless it is dealing with the consequences of being bare foot because you lost your shoes like Die Hard )

 

[Azuresun]

Vader and Kenobi dueling to the death. After about a few rounds, Vader slices off his own foot while Kenobi trips and impales himself.

In a long battle, both would definitely die of self-inflicted wounds.

They both fared better than General Grievous. Poor sod made his character around "make loads of attacks" where each attack has a 5% chance of humiliating failure.

That's great if what you're trying to emulate are narrative-derived cinematic battles, but not all of us are trying to do that. I, personally, don't run D&D to re-play stuff like it happens in action movies (unless it is dealing with the consequences of being bare foot because you lost your shoes like Die Hard )

And I prefer not to emulate slapstick comedies, with the greatest warrior in the world being 3x more likely to stab an ally or sling his weapon across the room on an average turn than a rookie.

Which is why Halflings are great!

 

[DND_Reborn]

Fumbles done correctly work well.

Using a simple "fumble on a natural 1" will give you all sorts of headaches.

 

[Ancalagon]

fumble mechanic is a penalty for characters who attack a lot. It's anti-martial, and especially anti-monk. It also has the potential of affecting warlocks more because of EB. 1 being auto-fail is ok though

 

[Lanefan]

Vader and Kenobi dueling to the death. After about a few rounds, Vader slices off his own foot while Kenobi trips and impales himself.

In a long battle, both would definitely die of self-inflicted wounds.

Assuming they never inflicted any wounds on each other, I suppose; but on average if you're hitting yourself more often than you're hitting your foe you've got much bigger problems - to wit, you probably can't hit your foe at all and might want to consider something other than combat before it's too late.