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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kelleris" data-source="post: 3300919" data-attributes="member: 19130">Well yeah, I've already copped to this being a play-style thing, for myself and my players - we all try for cool characters and memorable moments, and my game as a DM is pretty much engineered from top to bottom to produce things like Mallus's crazed dragon-hopping.  That sort of thing in particular happens so often in my games I have a set of developed rules for fighting on monster-back and don't generally give out my "awesome move" hero point for trying it unless there are extenuating circumstances.I don't like the randomness and chaos and we get enough laughter in our sessions already that we can barely fit a game in edgewise as-is.  I use other resources to cover the tripping, bowstrings breaking, and accidentally whacking friends than fumbles, though - stuff that makes the character's own abilities relevant, stuff they can plan for.  I call for Balance checks in constricted terrain to keep your feet, for instance, and the ninjas don't care while the fighters hope for a good roll.  And everyone knows going in that if you try to fight in a constricted area, you may end up prone unless you've got the skills to avoid it.  Likewise, anyone who wants to try it can go for a Bluff to redirect an attack in combat, though admittedly with a high DC if you don't specifically have that trick in your arsenal.  Magical bows get their strings cut with a sunder attack, and it doesn't bother me to gloss over the day-to-day maintanence that keeps them from just randomly breaking.  Perhaps if someone subjected their bow to some truly horrifying lack of maintanence (carrying stringed through a sewer for hours, or something) I'd ask for a Fortitude save from the bow to still be in proper working order.  And even then, an accomplished archer would recognize that his bowstring's in danger of snapping the next time he stresses it, and I'd tell him up front what the chances of that happening are.The point is that I don't like the sheer randomness of critical fumbles, I don't think it adds any fun to the game, and there are more interesting uses of my game time and my players' undeniable penchant for making a hash of things than rolling on a critical fumble chart - IMO, YMMV, and all that.</blockquote>

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