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

[Vaalingrade]

IME, Nothing kills the mood faster than a clutch crit that fails to confirm.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I play a lot of Dungeon Crawl Classics, and crit/fumble tables are part of the rules. We use them all the time.

We actually beef them up, even, because sometimes the roll on the crit table is actually less impactful than just rolling double damage. So generally we do double damage PLUS the crit roll, and it rocks.

 

[Lyxen]

IME, Nothing kills the mood faster than a clutch crit that fails to confirm.

This is a really good point, actually, rolling a 20 should be exciting, but if it's to kill it a significant portion of the time...

Note that one way around this is to always roll the confirmation at the same time as the attack roll, but it's gotten complicated in 5e with the adv/dis mechanics...

 

[Ancalagon]

There's no reason why fumbles can't apply to casters as well, particularly if you houserule that they have to roll to aim their a-of-e spells.

They would apply to spells that have a to-hit number, but even then there is a disparity, because the great majority of them have only a single to-hit roll (say, firebolt). Martials make multiple attacks per round regularly.

 

[Stormonu]

They would apply to spells that have a to-hit number, but even then there is a disparity, because the great majority of them have only a single to-hit roll (say, firebolt). Martials make multiple attacks per round regularly.

You can also apply to fireball, lightning bolt, etc. I played in a 2E game once where if you wanted to place a fireball where you wanted, you had to hit AC 10 (later, AC 5 since the spot "didn't move", and thus had a Dex of 0), and we used the scatter diagram* from the DMG if you missed. It was pretty to rule the impact point of Fireball since it was a pea-size ball that'd hit the impact point and explode; for things for lightning bolt (or burning hands) where it was a line you picked the endpoint(s) and scatter from there.

* roll 1d8; 1 = left, 2 = left ahead, 3-5 = ahead, 6 = right ahead, 7 = right, 8 = short.

 

[Lanefan]

You can also apply to fireball, lightning bolt, etc. I played in a 2E game once where if you wanted to place a fireball where you wanted, you had to hit AC 10 (later, AC 5 since the spot "didn't move", and thus had a Dex of 0), and we used the scatter diagram* from the DMG if you missed. It was pretty to rule the impact point of Fireball since it was a pea-size ball that'd hit the impact point and explode; for things for lightning bolt (or burning hands) where it was a line you picked the endpoint(s) and scatter from there.

* roll 1d8; 1 = left, 2 = left ahead, 3-5 = ahead, 6 = right ahead, 7 = right, 8 = short.

It's specifically spells like fireball, lightning bolt, sleep, web, etc. - anything that affects an area or targets within an area - where I like there to be some sort of aiming roll required to see if you got the area right. Even more so for lightning bolts, which bounce/rebound in our game meaning a serious miss can have all kinds of consequences.

For misses, we just use d8 for direction of miss using the 8 compass points (so, equal chance of missing in any direction unless environmental considerations overrule this). The worse your to-hit roll was, the greater the potential miss distance (though usually not very much); and a '1' threatens an outright fumble, which can get messy...

 

[Dausuul]

I see a critical fumble rule, I immediately start rolling up a Halfling.

I just play a spellcaster.

Of course, I was probably going to do that anyway. But fumble rules add extra incentive. If every d20 roll has a chance to blow up in your face, I will play the class where my enemies do all the rolling.