How do you describing fumbles?

[Boregar]

So, I ran my first session of Runequest last night, and much fun was had by all. However, there was one thing that came up that I wasn't happy with, and that was the issue of fumbling.

I don't have any issues with the idea of fumbling, or the fumble result chart itself, but where I was falling down was in describing the outcomes without things descending into farce. Three NPC's, for example, had a piece of their armour break at different times, and all thread roled 'head' for the location. By the third time, instead of a fairly serious, gritty description of the combat, we were ending up with comments about how they must have been sold a dodgy lot of second hand headgear.

So I was wondering, how do other people deal with things like this? How do you keep the descriptions serious and believable, yet retain the random nature of fumble checks?

edit - Note to self - when you decide to change the title of your thread, make sure you proof-read it properly! D'oh!

 

[Hand of Evil]

First, I hate fumbles...I perfer that the person who fumble looses their next attack/action, this is just because I just don't see a 10+ level anything screwing up as bad as a 1st level.

Having said that it comes down to the charts you use. Yep, if you are going to have them in your game, you have to find the charts that best give you the feel you want.

 

[Dioltach]

I loved the fumble charts in ICE's Middle Earth Role Playing, but they kind of detracted from gameplay. Nowadays, for fantasy roleplaying at least, if a player rolls a natural 1, I allow them a Dex check/Reflex save, and if they fail they've dropped their weapon. Clean, simple and quick, and doesn't punish the players too harshly for a poor roll.

 

[megamania]

I use fumbles differently from group to group, game to game.

I've had fumbles that played as good at first then bad.
Example-
Darksun- 1/2 giant was surrounded by dozens of low level elven bandits. Fumbled. The large oversized sword slipped free of his grasp. Good news.... it took another 2 elves down with it. Bad news... three other elves are teaming up to carry it away.

I've had them choice between losing a round to free their from a tree trunk or start up with another weapon. No real issuse beyond different possible weapon / damage.

On more devious days I've had players miss but cut the line of an important rope that creats utter chaos on a ship or riggings of a scaffle.


Varies by group, game and mood.

My one rule- a fumble should never result in the death of a player and whenever possible...add to the story.

 

[DragonLancer]

I wouldn't use fumbles but my players enjoy them. What I tend to do is if a fumble comes up there is a 1 in 10 chance of hitting an ally (player or ally) and any other result is just a miss.

 

[Vaslov]

By the third time, instead of a fairly serious, gritty description of the combat, we were ending up with comments about how they must have been sold a dodgy lot of second hand headgear.

How cool! Tell me you ran with this idea. Maybe someone is out to get them. Nothing better than player inspired paranoia to make a great plot hook. Sure it came up through a random number, but the characters do not know that (even if the players do). Tell them when they check their gear that night they did notice some less than normal signs of wear in their armor.

To your question typically I do not rely on random tables for results of a fumble. After enough years of playing with charts I have an idea of he range of the possibilities and choose one I think works best in the moment. I tend to prefer something like they drop or throw their weapon, but at times will have a bow string break or some other minor consequence.

 

[the Jester]

I use homebrewed fumble charts.

First: each player decides whether to enable fumbles for their character. If you don't enable fumbles, you don't fumble- but neither do monsters attacking you.

If you have fumbles enabled, a natural 1 is a fumble, but that's a slight oversimplification. To avoid the whole "aargh, I fumble all the time because my spells target enough people that I roll to hit too much!" issue, when you make an attack that targets multiple targets, only the first attack roll is subject to fumbles.

When you fumble, you roll 3d6 for severity. Lower is, er, less bad for you; really high fumble severity is bad news. An 18 is a disaster, but since an 18 severity fumble only happens 1 attack in 4320, that's okay.

That said- we had one of Friday night, from a pc!

18 severity crits are really, really bad. Each severity has a d% chart that determines the specifics of the fumble; an 18 includes things like heart attacks, strokes and spontaneous combustion (alas, only on a 00). The guy who fumbled rolled a stroke, but is playing a shardmind, so since he has no brain, I went to the next result on the chart and he critted himself. Ouch!

That same encounter on Friday had probably a half dozen fumbles in it- way more than was statistically likely.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

So, I ran my first session of Runequest last night, and much fun was had by all. However, there was one thing that came up that I wasn't happy with, and that was the issue of fumbling.

I don't have any issues with the idea of fumbling, or the fumble result chart itself, but where I was falling down was in describing the outcomes without things descending into farce. Three NPC's, for example, had a piece of their armour break at different times, and all thread roled 'head' for the location. By the third time, instead of a fairly serious, gritty description of the combat, we were ending up with comments about how they must have been sold a dodgy lot of second hand headgear.

So I was wondering, how do other people deal with things like this? How do you keep the descriptions serious and believable, yet retain the random nature of fumble checks?

edit - Note to self - when you decide to change the title of your thread, make sure you proof-read it properly! D'oh!

That's great! And of course they were joking about it. After all, even their characters would be!

I used to just do the weapon drop/break on a fumble but my latest set of homebrew rules (If I ever get a chance to use them!) makes crits and fumbles Advantages and Disadvantages. If they want to be able to crit they have to pay for the privilege, but they get points to spend on Advantages if the player 'allows' the character to make fumbles. Still mostly drop/break, but magic does the opposite of what it should have.

 

[Dausuul]

It is the nature of fumble rules to descend into farce. If I understand it correctly, you're describing a situation where the NPCs attack, fumble, and break their own helmets? That's... pretty farcical.

Now, people do screw up in stupid ways. Nothing wrong with a bit of comedy from time to time, but I would take a long hard look at a ruleset that's capable of producing this result three times in the span of a single fight.

If you do stick with it, I think your players came up with the most convincing explanation for this particular circumstance. These guys got badly made helmets. You'll have to improvise along similar lines every time this happens; the rules are dictating a farce, and you're trying to make it serious, which means you're going to be fighting the rules every step of the way.

 

[Ryltar]

My players are fine with me using the Fumble rules in a rather loose manner.

If a natural 1 comes up, I usually look at the environment of the unlucky character and what he was doing at the time. I then assign a negative consequence in addition to him missing his attack/not succeeding, but try to avoid any consequences that effectively take the character out of a fight or reduce his abilities to the level of uselessness.

For example, if a character is fighting in a narrow alley, I might rule that one of his sword swipes is aimed so badly that the sword gets stuck in or wedged between the alley's walls, requiring the character to pull it out first. This costs the character an action and potentially exposes him to danger in the meantime, but doesn't 'gimp' him totally.

Basically, all consequences that are okay in my book are some sort of action tax: sword gets stuck, character drops weapon, character accidentally knocks down a pile of crates which proceed to bury him (requiring an action to free himself); etc. If the action that caused the fumble was extremely stupid from an OOC standpoint, I may add minor damage to the fumble effect, e.g. 'You manage to wedge your mace in between the alley's walls, and as you try to dodge your opponent's next swing, your head squarely connects with the mace's shaft. Take 2 bludgeoning damage.' (but this is more for laughs around the table than anything else ).

I would argue against using the typical 'fumble charts', because from a player standpoint, it is bad enough that you auto-missed your opponent. You do not need to crit, dismember, blind or otherwise cripple your character to boot.