Critical Failure chart

[jonesy]

1) Skilled combatants are less likely to fumble than unskilled ones, and ideally this is true even if the skilled combatant attacks more often than the unskilled one.

How about a rule that says there can only be max one fumble per round. The rest are just regular misses.

Edit: although, that might mean that someone who always does a zillion attacks would almost always get a fumble per round. =)

 

[Celebrim]

How about a rule that says there can only be max one fumble per round. The rest are just regular misses.

Edit: although, that might mean that someone who always does a zillion attacks would almost always get a fumble per round. =)

Yeah, that's exactly what it would mean.

If you wanted hard protection against fumbles, a better rule might be that you can always cancel a fumble by forgoing a latter attack in the round.

So a character that could make a zillion attacks per round would simply lose X attacks. Of course, any reasonable system where a character could make a zillion attacks per round would resolve this as a single attack anyway.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I was wondering if any fellow DM's might have a botch table that they use? I listen to a friend of mine DM all the time and he has his own botch table that he rolls to unleash on his groups. Just looking for some clever ideas for my group.

I like the Dark Sun botch rule - on a natural 1 you may reroll. Hit and you hit, miss and your weapon breaks. Normal natural 1s without this risk/reward have the problem that the more attacks you make, the more botches you roll - so give this reroll risk option (miss you roll on the fumble chart, hit you narrate something stupid that should not work and catches the enemy offguard - e.g. slipping on a rock). If the player wants to play safe, let them.

 

[Kerranin]

I like the Dark Sun botch rule - on a natural 1 you may reroll. Hit and you hit, miss and your weapon breaks. Normal natural 1s without this risk/reward have the problem that the more attacks you make, the more botches you roll - so give this reroll risk option (miss you roll on the fumble chart, hit you narrate something stupid that should not work and catches the enemy offguard - e.g. slipping on a rock). If the player wants to play safe, let them.

I am not a fan of 'weapon break' results in games where magical weapons are the norm, I suspect most players would play-it-safe if that could happen.
Any risk which could have a long-term consequence would deter most players from taking the risk.
I would suggest that consequences need to be limited to the encounter.

 

[jonesy]

I am not a fan of 'weapon break' results in games where magical weapons are the norm, I suspect most players would play-it-safe if that could happen.

Because it isn't mandatory it presents an interesting option for certain situations where failure might mean more than just a broken weapon.

 

[Celebrim]

I am not a fan of 'weapon break' results in games where magical weapons are the norm, I suspect most players would play-it-safe if that could happen.

Having an absolute 'weapon breaks' result that pays no attention to the quality of the weapon is an example of a rule that breaks my second guideline: "Fumble results don't make unnecessary assumptions about the combat situation, so that any result applies equally well to any situation."

Weapon breakage has to be equally reasonable of a result if you are using a poor quality of a weapon or if you are using an adamantium +6 holy avenger. There have always been rules for handling breaking weapons, saving throws of items, hardness, hit points of objects and so forth, and yet too often the fumble result tables I see regardless of era just run clean past them. It's not unreasonable that a weapon take some damage as a result of a fumble. What's unreasonable is that no weapon is apparantly more resistant to taking damage than any other.

 

[Dausuul]

Not a fan of critical fumbles, myself. I've never yet seen a critical fumble system that didn't result in a lot of silliness, mainly because the probability of a fumble is way too high--with a party of 4 to 6 PCs and a comparable number of monsters, a couple of natural 1s are more or less guaranteed in every combat that lasts more than a round or two, so you're forever seeing people flinging their weapons across the room or hitting their friends. Moreover, since high-level characters tend to get more attacks, they fumble more often than low-level characters.

If I were going to make a crit fumble table, I'd definitely include some kind of confirmation roll. Beyond that, I'd stick to Celebrim's guidelines, especially #1.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I was always a fan of Good Hits and Bad Misses, from the pages of Dragon magazine. Paizo did a 3e version in their Best of Dragon book, though I personally preferred the original.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I am not a fan of 'weapon break' results in games where magical weapons are the norm, I suspect most players would play-it-safe if that could happen.
Any risk which could have a long-term consequence would deter most players from taking the risk.
I would suggest that consequences need to be limited to the encounter.

To clarify, the weapon breakage rules are for Dark Sun (and metal weapons are harder to break). I was suggesting that instead of a weapon break that if you missed the reroll then you rolled on the fumble table rather than have the weapon break as the only (or even likely) fumble. What this means is that it's not skill that determines the probability of a fumble - it's recklessness. If you're cautious, you never fumble - but get fewer hits.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

I have a massive Fumble chart (charts actually) that I've done, tweaked and re-tweaked several times and my players have enjoyed it, because there are so many options that they are pretty much alwats surprised when I roll a result and the same result rarely comes up twice. My table takes into consideration weapon types, one-handed or two-handed weapons, firearms, ranged weapons, common injuries from martial arts, weapon safety precautions, surroundings, sudden fatigue (lactic acid), dropping or throwing your weapon away (highly unusual), tripping at your own feet (and the position you end up in), sudden lapses...
Nimbly characters and fighters are favoured in the chart.

Unfortunately my tables are not in English, so posting the whole thing here would be useless. Too bad, because I'd like to hear constructive criticism about it.