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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7694680" data-attributes="member: 4937">Fumble rules do screw the PC's, but not for the reason you cite.  You have in your mind a particular implementation of fumble rules, but that isn't the only way to organize them.Consider the way criticals are handled in 3e.  Normally, you critical only when you throw a 20 on an attack roll.  But you don't automatically critical.  You only threaten to critical on a 20.  Your chance of actually hitting after throwing a 20 depends on your attack bonus.   The more likely you are to hit, the more likely you are to critical.  Moreover, as you increase in skill and a level, your expected chance of achieving a critical tends to increase as well.  You start threatening to critical on a 19 or 20.  Some of my player's character threaten to critical on a 12+ and basically miss only on a 2+.  A true mook would only critical them 1 time in 400, whereas they critical a true mook about 43% of the time.  The same thing generally applies to fumbles.  The more skilled you are, the less likely each individual attack results in a fumble.  For example, there are a whole class of fumbles that provoke balance checks, and the consequences of the fumble - tripping, stumbling, or falling down - only happen on a failed skill check.  A skilled rogue (for example) is basically immune to fumbles of this class.  And there is a whole class of fumbles that provoke endurance checks, where the consequences of the fumble (becoming fatigued, being winded, pulling a muscle) only happen if you fail a constitution check.   This basically never happens to the stouter members of the party with their magically enhanced constitutions and Endurance feats.  All but the most serious ones they are immune to.   Likewise, there are several sorts of fumbles where you only fumble if a second attack roll at your full BAB would also miss.   This rarely happens to a skilled fighter.  Despite all this, fumbles do hurt the PC's more than NPC's.  The simple fact of the matter is that most NPCs are going to lose anyway (however you rationalize it, that's true).  As such, it doesn't really change anything if an NPC fumbles occasionally.  The NPC just loses very slightly quicker.  But when a PC fumbles, it changes the dynamics.   The odds that a PC will experience a game changing run of bad luck that results in an unavoidable defeat increase.  I certainly don't think that fumbles are for everyone.  The only reason I use them is that they add variety to D&D's sometimes overly abstract combat, which might otherwise not be marked by anyone imagining events happening at all, but rather only by the rolling of dice and the marking down of numbers in tally columns to see who won.   The occasional unexpected narratable event in a combat gives D&D combat more life.</blockquote>

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