D&D 5E How fantastic are natural 1's?

[Oofta]

Hey, I’m with you, I despise fumble rules. Just saying, it is one of those sorts of rules that people tend to get soured on by experiences where GMs use them poorly. (Of course, I’m of the opinion that even at their “best” fumble rules are an annoying inconvenience.)

Yeah, sorry if that wasn't worded quite right. I'm actually a little more triggered by this topic than some because I have had ... well let's just say I've had DMs in the past that I swear were just tired of DMing but didn't want to admit it so they started implementing increasingly worse house rules until everyone stopped showing up.

 

[Oofta]

FWIW, if you rolled 29 times or more (likely IME in a session), getting 4 nat 1's is not significant statistically. It is pretty bad luck, obviously, but could easily happen just due to random chance.

Once, in 3E, we used "exploding" criticals and I rolled 7 nat 20's in a row. So, strange things happen once in a while.

I have to admit the exploding dice can be fun. Once had a ranger with a hatred of giants. Went into a room with 3 giants and after a succession of way too many 20s in a row all the giants were dead.

However fun they are, rules apply to both sides evenly so they tend to help team monster more than team PC.

 

[Arvok]

To those out there who had bad experiences with fumble rules, did the DM apply the same rules to the monsters?

Just curious, because if not, I can't think of any fumble system that would be enjoyable.

 

[Charlaquin]

To those out there who had bad experiences with fumble rules, did the DM apply the same rules to the monsters?

Just curious, because if not, I can't think of any fumble system that would be enjoyable.

They did in my case. The problem was that many of the effects on both the critical hit and fumble tables were far worse for us than they were for the monsters. Lingering injuries as a result of a critical hit, for example, are a huge detriment to PCs, but don’t really mean anything to a monster that probably won’t survive the fight they got it in.

It kind of became a meme in that campaign, you’d roll a 20 and sarcastically mumble, “oh boy, can’t wait to give this guy a festering wound...” meanwhile, actually getting a festering wound yourself was pretty damn nasty. The fumbles actually weren’t even that bad, as the most common result of a fumble was just that the opponent could make an opportunity attack against you,

 

[Oofta]

To those out there who had bad experiences with fumble rules, did the DM apply the same rules to the monsters?

Just curious, because if not, I can't think of any fumble system that would be enjoyable.

Not sure why it matters. The monsters are there to be defeated in most encounters anyway.

As I said before, fumbling by the enemy to the degree that every chart I've seen is just as bad as PCs fumbling in my opinion.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

To those out there who had bad experiences with fumble rules, did the DM apply the same rules to the monsters?

We actually beat three separate bosses because they decapitated themselves within the first few rounds of combat. Nobody cared, because they were going to die anyway.

When the fighter killed himself, three months into the campaign, that was a major bummer. Of course, the player immediately replaced that character with a spellcaster (like the rest of the party) so they wouldn't have to worry about that anymore.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Right. So I can use statistics to come up with whatever answer I want.

But I don't care about the odds of fumbling on any particular turn, I care how frequently my PC is going to fumble over the course of several turns and encounters. If I make 1000 attacks, 50 of them will on average be fumbles. That may take many, many turns but it doesn't change how many fumbles I will end up with over time. I understand that the odds of fumbling on any particular turn will be less than 20%

Right, if the odds on a particular turn are obviously less than 20%, how can the overall average value increase to 20%? It doesn't, because these are two separate questions and so have separate answers. Also, when you say "average to X%" you really need to understand that there's a bell curve involved. As I posted above, there's about a 95% likelihood that over 400 trials the results will be between 13 fumbles and 27 fumbles. The odds of 20 fumbles exactly is about 9.11%. This is because this question is a statistics question, not a probability question (the clue is "average," which probability doesn't do). Statistical analyses first build a model with specific assumptions and then give an answer that is based on the input data and those assumptions. Here, you're getting 20% as an answer but not examining how the model comes to that answer, or what extra information is being left out.

(although your analysis doesn't seem to account for multiple 1s on a single turn, I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong).

Um, did you read the post, because it spends the whole middle talking about multiple 1's per turn -- the entire analysis and how it works rests on detailing all the possible cases where a fumble occurs, especially multiple ones.

Or maybe you'll just have to accept that I don't view the world through the lense of statistical analysis.

It's great to not want to deal with stats and prob -- they're a pain in the arse. But, if so, you should maybe stop asking how they work? Because, if you recall (and, if you don't, I quoted it in the prior post), you did ask how this works.

Regardless, the prob and stats of it all don't really impact your basic point, which I'd expand from fumbles unduly impacting multiple attacks to a statement that fumbles punish competence, period. You can be the best at what you do, in any field, and if you roll a fumble the usual expectation is that you make a major mistake. This means that, at a certain point of competence, you either succeed easily or majorly blunder -- you're either the hero or the goat. This can be true without fumbles, of course, if the GM is running with failures being due to incompetence, but it's magnified in any game that features fumbles because there has to be some delineation between routine failure and fumble failure, and that almost always comes at the cost of describing the PC's action outcomes as incompetent in some way.

I've taken a page out of Blades in the Dark, which tells GM to never narrate failure as a result of PC incompetence -- they are highly competent and this damages the fun. Instead, narrate failures as unexpected changes in the environment or due to the other side also being competent. This way, even when things don't go the PC's way, you're not making the player feel like their character is a blundering idiot when they're supposed to be a competent adventurer.

 

[Oofta]

Right, if the odds on a particular turn are obviously less than 20%, how can the overall average value increase to 20%? It doesn't, because these are two separate questions and so have separate answers. Also, when you say "average to X%" you really need to understand that there's a bell curve involved. As I posted above, there's about a 95% likelihood that over 400 trials the results will be between 13 fumbles and 27 fumbles. The odds of 20 fumbles exactly is about 9.11%. This is because this question is a statistics question, not a probability question (the clue is "average," which probability doesn't do). Statistical analyses first build a model with specific assumptions and then give an answer that is based on the input data and those assumptions. Here, you're getting 20% as an answer but not examining how the model comes to that answer, or what extra information is being left out.


Um, did you read the post, because it spends the whole middle talking about multiple 1's per turn -- the entire analysis and how it works rests on detailing all the possible cases where a fumble occurs, especially multiple ones.

It's great to not want to deal with stats and prob -- they're a pain in the arse. But, if so, you should maybe stop asking how they work? Because, if you recall (and, if you don't, I quoted it in the prior post), you did ask how this works.

Regardless, the prob and stats of it all don't really impact your basic point, which I'd expand from fumbles unduly impacting multiple attacks to a statement that fumbles punish competence, period. You can be the best at what you do, in any field, and if you roll a fumble the usual expectation is that you make a major mistake. This means that, at a certain point of competence, you either succeed easily or majorly blunder -- you're either the hero or the goat. This can be true without fumbles, of course, if the GM is running with failures being due to incompetence, but it's magnified in any game that features fumbles because there has to be some delineation between routine failure and fumble failure, and that almost always comes at the cost of describing the PC's action outcomes as incompetent in some way.

I've taken a page out of Blades in the Dark, which tells GM to never narrate failure as a result of PC incompetence -- they are highly competent and this damages the fun. Instead, narrate failures as unexpected changes in the environment or due to the other side also being competent. This way, even when things don't go the PC's way, you're not making the player feel like their character is a blundering idiot when they're supposed to be a competent adventurer.

Honestly? I can't prove that you're wrong. That doesn't mean that you're right because quite simply it defies basic logic. If I roll a 20 sided die, any specific number has a 1 in 20 chance of occurring. If I understand your conclusion, no specific number should show up 5% of the times even if I roll an infinite number of times. That can't be true.

But I'm not going to argue with you because I'm not fluent enough in probability to challenge it. Other than to say there's lies, damn lies and statistics. Have a good one.

 

[Umbran]

FWIW, if you rolled 29 times or more (likely IME in a session), getting 4 nat 1's is not significant statistically. It is pretty bad luck, obviously, but could easily happen just due to random chance.

Once, in 3E, we used "exploding" criticals and I rolled 7 nat 20's in a row. So, strange things happen once in a while.

Yes. That's the point. I was responding to the suggestion that really, this stuff doesn't happen. But clearly it does.

This is the problem with critical failures - they are, in effect, kicking the character when they are down. They have, of course, failed, and then a critical failure will make it worse than just failing. For me this weekend, that would have happened four times in rapid succession. Worse than failing four times, and not because I was making poor choices - just for having the temerity of trying to act.

I can fully understand the idea of "let the dice fall where they may" but perhaps there ought to be some limits on exactly how bad a day a character has just for bad luck.

 

[Charlaquin]

Honestly? I can't prove that you're wrong. That doesn't mean that you're right because quite simply it defies basic logic.

Statistics often seem to defy basic logic, but that’s because human brains are really bad at them. Ovinomancer is correct here though. It seems unintuitive, but that statistics for you. They don’t work in a way that is intuitive to us.