Critical Failure chart

[Celebrim]

I was always a fan of Good Hits and Bad Misses, from the pages of Dragon magazine.

I used it extensively in 1e, and I can say that there is really only one thing good about it - it tries very hard to make fumbles rare for skilled combatants and conversely criticals rare for the unskilled. It does this by making the confirmation roll for a fumble be rolling on a d% a number less than the difference between what you rolled and what you needed to hit. In other words, if you couldn't miss except on a '1', you also couldn't fumble, and if you needed a '2' to hit, then at most you had a 1% chance of a fumble. Probably more than any other attempt, this followed #1 on my list of guidelines the best. If it wasn't so complicated, I'd still be using it.

The problems you are going to run into if you use the table are that fumble and critical results are far too significant, to the extent that you can almost garuantee that it is going to be the result of some fumble or critical that ends the life of the PC. At some point, you are going to 'Critical Hit: Self' and/or be auto decapitated, and that will be all she wrote. Also, if you use it, it will be a good way to remove magic weapons from your game, because it has the 'weapon breaks' or 'shield breaks, no save' problem discussed earlier. Some bugbear with a wooden club is going to smash your +4 dwarf-forged mithril shield sooner or later. Also, 'hit self' in some fashion is one of the more common fumbles, so don't be surprised in a battle if half the deaths occur to self-inflicted wounds.

 

[Dragonhelm]

The problems you are going to run into if you use the table are that fumble and critical results are far too significant, to the extent that you can almost garuantee that it is going to be the result of some fumble or critical that ends the life of the PC.

Or the DM. I once ran a game, and I asked my player what he was doing. He says, "I kill the DM." Rolls a natural 20. I had him roll on Good Hits and Bad Misses. Double-zero. Beheaded, immediate death.

I could only logically assume that with the death of the DM, the universe imploded. Game over, man!

 

[Connorsrpg]

Darsuul & Cerebrim: Fair comments on the 'use of fumbles' - though we don't mind a 'little' craziness. Could I request you check out (and maybe try) those we use. (As linked above, but word docs are available for download under my sig, under DM Tools Page). Hitting friends is in there, but rare, as is a system that a/cs for quality of weapon when break rolls come up.

To OP. No need for a screen shot. My links (and sig) take you to my site where the crits are available as a WORD doc that you can download and even modify until your heart is content. I cannot attach b/c Enworld won't support docx files apparently??? The discussion on our crits is on our forums.

 

[turnip]

... I cannot attach b/c Enworld won't support docx files apparently??? ...

.docx is not backwards compatible with earlier Word programs/programs that recognize .doc files.

Why Microsoft decided to utilize a format that can't be read by its own program just 3 years prior is beyond me.

btw...Word 2007 can save as .doc instead of .docx. Just so you know.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Yeah, I realise that thanks Turnip (cool name).

Perhaps I should do that. Not wanting to threadcap, but why can't Enworld allow docx attachments?

 

[Lanefan]

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.

In our system, if a fumble result comes up as "damage to weapon" and the weapon is magical, it gets a save to avoid the damage. The amount of enchantment it has affects the save; thus a +4 weapon is going to have a better save chance than a +1.

As for confirming, a natural '1' gets followed by a d6; roll '1' on that as well and you've fumbled on the main table. If you don't fumble, you miss - a '1' always misses.

A to-hit roll brought to or below '1' by baneful or adverse effects - including missile fire into melee - also rolls a d6; a '1' there and you've fumbled but on a less damaging table where most results are either minor damage to self or to friend. Baneful to-hit effects get applied first, so if you're at -2 to hit due to some adverse effect and you roll a '3' you check for fumble first; if you don't fumble then we add it up and see if you hit.

Lanefan

 

[Hand of Evil]

I don't think D&D has ever been a good game for fumble tables but have tryed different ones over the years. The best one I came up with was a fumble resulted in the foe(s) having a better chance to hit the character. Just a simple -2 to AC during the next round/attack (whichever came first).

Just could not see a X level fighter wounding themself or having weapon breaks, but could see them leaving an opening.

 

[Evilhalfling]

The fair fumble rule I came up with for 3/3.5 specifies that:

1. only the first attack roll in a round can result in a fumble.
2. fumbles can be averted with a dex check (DC 10 or 15 if the PC/monster is doing something stupid or precarious)

my fumble charts were similar to others posted here.

 

[Kerranin]

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.

Encouraging recklessness? That is most unlike your characters.

 

[Dausuul]

[MENTION=19265]Connorsrpg[/MENTION] - Sorry, I have Word 2003 and can't read .docx files. If you save it as a .doc, I'll be glad to have a look. (I play 4E, so I have to find another way to be grumpy and grognardy; my solution is to gripe about the new Word 2007 interface and refuse to upgrade on some kind of obscure principle.)

Here's a suggestion to address the multiple attacks issue: Roll on the critical fumble table if the attacker gets a natural 1 on at least one attack roll and all of her other attack dice that round come up 10 or less. I just ran the numbers on this, and it results in a diminishing likelihood of fumbles as your number of attacks rises: 5% per round for one attack, 4.8% for two, 3.4% for three, 2.1% for four, 1.3% for five. (These calculations were made very hastily as I was getting ready for work, but they look about right.)

This does require people to roll all their attacks at once, though, or apply crits retroactively.

After that, I'd just make a crit fumble table in which 50% or more of the entries are minor, tactical fumbles--something like, "You miss badly and are thrown off balance. Lose your next move action." Throwing your weapon or hitting your ally would be a rare and nasty fumble.

I wouldn't use this approach in 4E, since in 4E there isn't much correlation between level and number of attacks; it all depends on the attack power you're using, and you could easily be making four attacks in a round* at 1st level or one attack at 30th. For 4E, I'd just stick with "fumble on a natural 1" and then factor attacker level into the fumble table somehow.

[size=-2]*Not every round, obviously, but there are a number of "sweep" attacks where you attack each enemy adjacent to you.[/size]