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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6195337" data-attributes="member: 4937">It doesn't.  Many of the fumble results specifically exempt the penalty if you are using natural weapons, including for example all the results in the 'Drop Weapon' category and (I think) all the results in the 'Strike Self' category.   In general, this makes it easier to fumble with a club than a fist, and easier to fumble with a sword than a club.   The Stirge could still produce results in categories like 'Clumsy Attack', 'Break Weapon', 'Trip Self, 'Overexertion', and potentially 'Strike Ally' categories (assuming adjacent allies, which in the Stirge's case, because it has no reach would have to be in the same square).Break Weapon is a specially nasty case here, in that when you get this result with a natural weapon in most cases it means that you suffer hit point loss depending on the natural weapon type.  (Again, you can see that my penchant for the color of realism tends to cause my rules to disfavor attacking 30' long creatures of horn and iron scales with nothing more than your bare hands, to say nothing of fire elementals or grey oozes.)   I suppose in that case its conceivable that in the event of a Stirge fumbling and severely injuring itself, I might color the incident as the proboscis having snapped, but that would be more a matter of ad hoc ruling (having dashed itself unwisely against a steel shield, your average low intelligence creature is going to decide to stop attacking and flee this strange inedible creature anyway IMO).   Likewise, some of the Overexertion results can lead to ability damage.  I might color that in the case of the Stirge as having damaged its proboscis unwisely trying to stab through the breast plate of a suit of +1 plate.Fumbles occur fairly rarely in my game, but are often sources of amusement, comic relief, and occasional utterances of 'oh crap'.  As such, despite the extra overhead I find them worth the cinematic color they lend the fight, rather than just the recital of accumulating numbers that D&D is prone too.   YMMV I admit.tl;dr: Fumbles themselves aren't all bad, but many implementations of fumble rules are very poorly thought out.  I'd like to think that mine are better than average.</blockquote>

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