I have had the pleasure of both being the GM and at another time the Player using this tool. As a GM and a Player (even when it was my fumble) thought this tool is insanely fun! I always used fumbles (even for skill checks!) and it has always put a strain on me to come up with a funny, harmful, but not too harmful consequence. This takes a lot the strain off me. Mostly I love if the Players don’t like the results of the fumble, I get to hide behind “Don’t look at me! It’s the Critical Fumble Deck’s fault!”

I’d like to start off by saying that I personally think fumbles are lame; they harm PCs more than enemies, don’t scale well with levels (becoming more common the more experienced the character becomes), and they make PCs seem more like bumbling buffoons than heroes. This deck takes that nonsense to the next level. While the Critical Hit Deck merely suffered from poor execution of a good idea there is very little positive that I can say about this product.

After wanting to give the product a fair chance to impress me, I used it in two campaigns (once as a player and once as a GM). In both games I was disappointed to not even find a single merit to the cards. The fumble themselves are poorly thought out. Many do ability damage, which can hardly hinder a villain for several round, but can cause serious problems for a PC who must suffer the condition until it is repaired. Others rely on the fumbler fall into a specific set of circumstances to have any affect at all, such as flying via use of wings, or specifically attacking with a bow, and don’t mean anything other than a miss for the opposition. One card popped up time and time again: “Your attack hits but deals minimum damage.” When a PC dies because their enemy fumbles there is a serious problem.

With no real flavor or artwork, this could have been a d% table as opposed to a more than $10 product which is only a thinly veiled gimmick to get money.

After the campaigns involving this deck concluded I gave it away, although I should have trashed it or let the cards collect spiderwebs in a closet somewhere and not burdened someone else with them. They are a blight to the game and a GM should only use them if they truly hate their friends.

I was apalled by the lack of official fumble rules in the Pathfinder rulebooks, but with this deck, my players can now fail like they've never failed before! There are many possibilities offered by the good amount of cards and the fumbles that result from casting spells (like making your target bigger instead of wounding it or accidentally summoning a hostile creature) are especially fun and devastating, a bit similar to wild magic!

I snagged both card sets and, let me tell you, they bring back the word Critical. For me, they're reminiscent of the old Critical Tables from Fantasy RPGs of days gone and are an excellent addition to any fantasy game table.

[I rate on a 4-star scale: 1-Too many problems to be worth your money or time, 2-Needs work, 4-Good and solid with a few nitpicks, 5-Love it/best in class. The third star in a five-star scale is too nebulous, IMHO.]

I picked up the Game Mastery Critical Fumble Deck during a sale at my FLGS on a whim. It's pretty solid, but I do have some complaints.

Most of the effects are good, but it's really missing some things:
* Effects for divine casters. What if your god doesn't like your prayer?
* Effects for psionics. What if you have a brain fart?
* Permanent physical disabilities: lost fingers and eyes; scars; burns

The magic user effects can somewhat be applied to divine casters and psionics, though not perfectly (especially in the case of psionics). I'd much rather have them be source specific, especially for the divine.

The "bleed"/ongoing damage effects seem to be a missed opportunity. It would make sense that you continue to take damage after losing a finger or taking a very deep cut, or etc., until you receive healing. Unfortunately those effects are pretty much not flavored at all. I can write this stuff in, but that really defeats the purpose of buying a product like this. There are a few physical effects that are nicely done--lost teeth and fingernails--and some temporary damage to seeing and hearing, but it's all pretty tame.

To pre-answer any criticism that such effects would be extreme and unduly harsh, I say the whole reason of using a fumble deck in the first place is to introduce an additional element of the extreme and harsh (amongst other elements, such as comedy) as a penalty for failure.

The cards look and feel pretty good, and are easy to read. The corners are a little sharp, maybe because they are so new, but whatever. The edges are pretty jagged, like the machine that cut them out of the printing sheets needed to be sharpened or replaced. It's really noticeable because of the black edges of the cards.

Unfortunately, the box the come in tore in half the first time I opened it. That put a very negative vibe in my head before I even had seen the cards! I'm going to have to use a rubber band now, which will significantly shorten the life of the cards.

All that said, I'll be keeping these for use with my 4E games. (They should convert extremely easily, for the most part. You'll want to be aware that "bleed" means ongoing damage. And you'll need to come up with a weapon and armor hit point system for a couple of effects, or rewrite them.) If any one of my complaints were fixed along with a better box it would be a 4-star product. If they were all addressed and the price came down it would easily be a 5-star product.

I picked up both this and the Critical Hits deck while at DunDraCon this year, purchasing them solely on the recommendations of my gaming circles, and promptly incorportated them into a pick up game I ran.

So I haven't had much play time with them, oh well. In reading over the cards, they do vary in extermity, but tend to stay within reason. As someone who likes balanced game play, I find the critical fumbles to be a good way to balance out critical hits.

I plan to continue using them, and I like the optional rules that Paizo provided (confirming a crit, cashing in crit hits for crit fumble passes).

I would suggest that for lower level campaigns that the DMs allow characters to make a luck roll (opposed d20s) or some such to take a different crit fumble as the harsher ones could very well be deadly for PCs under about level 5 or so.

My gaming groups have a love/hate relationship with this deck. They HATE it when they mess up for now the consequences for them rolling a one are now even more deadly! But they love it for it brings more fun to a game we love. This is highly recommended!!