D&D 5E Critical Hits and Fumbles

[Ridley's Cohort]

1 in 20 is simply TOO MUCH for a catastrophic event, it doesn't add drama, it adds unmitigated punishment for playing a character with many attacks... or for that matter- attacks at all.
A sorcerer who casts nothing that uses an attack roll will *never* fumble an attack, as the requisite RNG condition can never be met.

I agree in spades.

Regardless of the intention, the net effect of fumble rules as most people apply them is to severely punish characters who earn their paycheck in melee.

Simply giving a 5% fumble chance to spells that require aim is not sufficient balancing factor. In the heat of combat, every time you cast a spell, not matter how minor or innocent, you should have a 5% of frying your own brain. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Yes, I literally do mean that you should give the Healing Cleric a 5% chance of casting Inflict on himself instead of healing his friend.

And, yes, the baddies, too. There should be a 5% chance that the Evil Lich Overlord accidentally Disintegrates himself instead of the PC.

Why not? Fun is fun!

 

[Thyrwyn]

Another reason against.

Criticals are inherently heroic - whether you kill the BBEG or it kills you, you have a story;

Fumbles are inherently un-heroic - if you die facing the BBEG because you fumbled, you feel cheated, and if you slog through 20 levels of growth and development only to have the BBEG fall on his sword, you also feel cheated

 

[SirAntoine]

I have seen days with dozens of fighters on the field for several hours, and seen only a handful of "visible fumbles" - one per person-hour on the field is way too many.

I says this both of fence and of SCA heavy, and of live steel reenactor practices (with both weighted boffer and rebate steel).

And half of those (namely most of the injuries) are more like crits in the execution.

No. Those charming enactments don't even scratch the surface of what combat is like.

 

[SirAntoine]

Why roll dice? Just impose a "cool tax": you get to choose how much damage you do, but for every point of damage you dish out, you take an equal amount - that would be fair. To be really fair, it should apply to healing as well.

Random catastrophe does not equal drama.

I wouldn't recommend fumble tables for anyone who wouldn't enjoy them. I am sorry you took offense, but I wanted to write about them.

 

[Paraxis]

I am not a fan of fumbles, but have come to realize some players enjoy them so I came up with this.

On a natural 1 when you make an attack or ability check, the person rolling CAN opt to re-roll the die and take the new result. If the new roll is a success, good for them. If the re-roll fails, a fumble occurs. Halfling luck, if a halfling wants to risk a fumble he can roll two d20's taking the higher, or he can just re-roll a single d20 like normal if he wants.

Fumbles, the DM picks something from this list or comes up with another suitable effect.

+Tool or weapon being used breaks, until repaired any task attempted with the item is at disadvantage until it is repaired. Magic items are normally immune to this effect.
+Injury to self, something went wrong and you got hurt. Damage varies.
+Injury to others, if you fumble while someone is providing a cover bonus to the targets AC you strike one of the creatures giving the cover bonus instead.
+Disadvantage to all your next attack, save, ability cheuck before the end of your next turn. This could be psychological, getting smacked in the head, or wrenching some muscle, a good time to take non-attack actions like Dodge.
+Grant advantage to attackers until the start of your next turn.

 

[Murkmoldiev]

I have been using this system for years ( 20 crit , 1 fumble ) and there is a few things that balance it.
1. The monsters have to use it too.
2 . I have a similar chart for Fails Save on a 1 or crit with Spell on a 20 hit roll .
3 . The NO!!!!!!!!
The NOOOOOOOOOOO !

Once per game session , a player is allowed to use a NO.
This allows a reroll with 3 d 20 advantage. Or can be used to avoid something horrible ( eg: Death ) by rolling 7 or higher on a D20 this NOOOOOOOO!!! may be saved up from session to session.

4. The HERO POINT.

Ths is awarded to players who perform heroic deeds, usually at great personal risk.
These encourage players to take risks often with spectacular results.
They are usually awarded at the end of a massive quest for the side of good, where there have been trials of great magnitude.
A HERO POINT allows the player to accomplish the impossible.
Perform multiple actions at once, dive free of instant death, or break the rules in some way
or automatically hit with a maximum damage confirmed critical.
There is always a chance of failure or reward with using up a hero point.
When the Hero point is used a d20 is rolled. On a 1 critical failure occurs.
On a 20 the hero point is not used up.

So as you can see my game had to become an Arm Race of Checks and Balances to fix up my broken Crit charts.
WINNING.

 

[SirAntoine]

Increasing the length of a round causes alot of problems- Spell cast times and duration- everything would have to be multiplied by 10, otherwise you'd have 1 action and 1 min. cast times become equal.. and have spells with 1 min duration last but a single round! (as examples)

1 in 20 is simply TOO MUCH for a catastrophic event, it doesn't add drama, it adds unmitigated punishment for playing a character with many attacks... or for that matter- attacks at all.
A sorcerer who casts nothing that uses an attack roll will *never* fumble an attack, as the requisite RNG condition can never be met.

By simply increasing the length of a round, you are actually changing nothing: a level 1 with 1 attack will only fumble 1/4th as often as a level 20 with 4 attacks.

The return is worth it, especially if you use a fumble table. The character with more attacks should fumble more often, and recover more easily.

 

[Stormonu]

I've experimented with a myriad of critical/fumble rules and the one I go with is pretty simple.

Roll a 20, take an extra attack. It's open-ended, so if you roll another 20, continue with extra attacks until you hit or miss (including 1's, which aren't fumbles).

Roll a 1, make a "recover" check. If you fail, one opponent gets to make a free attack against you.

 

[Lanefan]

I use a similar, though more elaborate (d% instead of d20) chart.

However, one thing to note is in our system fumbles only confirm on a 1/d6 after a (modified or natural) 1/d20; so they're not as frequent as some here would have them.

That said, I really like some of the ideas in your table and will probably incorporate them.

One suggestion to add in:

If a roll calls for a magic weapon to be damaged roll here instead...


D20 roll + of weapon with a + for each ability.
Natural 1 - Explodes in a ball of magic all in 15 ft take 1-6 D6 from magic force damage and bits and are knocked prone no save.
2-3 Explodes with a loud pop, Wielder takes 1- 6 damage from magic force damage and bits and is knocked prone no save.
3-4 Breaks in half with the sound of shattering glass and the smell of green smoke.
5-6 Becomes Damaged.- gets broken conditon- any attacks made with the item suffer disadvantage due to warping.
8 Gets bent slightly - 1 to damage
9 Gets a nick. -1 to hit
10 + no effect. except for light saber like sparks and sound.

As they've put that nice wild magic surge table into the DMG, might as well use it. So, all remains the same except what is 2-3 becomes just 3, and add:

2 - Breaks with a loud pop or crack, generating a wild magic surge; consider weapon wielder as "caster" for purposes of the WMS table.

Oh, and in the above you probably mean "4-5" and "6-7" where you put 3-4 and 5-6 respectively.

Lan-"if a magic weapon would be damaged by a fumble we just give it a save vs. crushing blow"-efan

 

[Thyrwyn]

I wouldn't recommend fumble tables for anyone who wouldn't enjoy them. I am sorry you took offense, but I wanted to write about them.

Nah, my bad - I wasn't offended. Just overly snarky it seems

I was trying to address the fact that fair=/=equal (see my later post on the subject - much more eloquent). Criticals let you do a less than an extra hit's worth of damage (because static values aren't doubled); therefore, I would hesitate to add fumble rules that take away as much or more than one hit's worth of damage.

Some systems - 2nd & 3rd editions of RuneQuest come to mind - where the chance to critical/fumble change in relation to your chance to succeed, see less swing from fumble rules, because experts are less likely to fumble per action than novices, and more likely to critical. In those systems, criticals are one of the rewards of increased proficiency, and fumbles are a disincentive to try the truly outrageous. When the chance of either occurring are the same on every roll of the die it is pure dumb luck that makes the difference.