Spell Crits and Fumbles - Advice and rules?

[redcelt32]

So after reading several recent lengthy threads on melee crits and fumbles, I started a discussion with my group about crits and fumbles for spells. Rarely do my players use ranged touch attack spells (at least so far), so we decided to experiment with some rules for spellcaster crits and fumbles.

spellcrit playtest:

We wanted to keep it simple and we are already using the crit and fumble decks. Here is what we are considering trying out:

- 20 is a crit chance, 10-20 on a second D20 confirms
- 1 is a fumble chance, 1-10 on a second d20 confirms
- crits/fumbles use the same decks we use for ranged touch attacks.
- these rules apply to ALL (not just those that require an attack roll) 5th lvl and higher spells slots, but also include staves casting 5th or higher spells.

We tossed around some other ideas, like spellcraft to modify, but in the end decided to keep it as simple as possible.

So two questions:

- Is there an existing set of rules for spell crits/fumbles/miscasts compatible with Pathfinder?
- Any thoughts about the playtest we are thinking of trying out?

One last note: this will be a unanious decision among the players and myself or we won't go forward with it. So far I have discussed it with the casters in the party and they are okay with it for parity's sake.

[kmal2t]

I say if you roll a 1 the spell just fizzles and fails..a 1 and then a 1-8 the spell works but does not cast where you intended..i.e. your fireball or color spray goes in another random direction/area of effect that's randomly rolled by the Dm so it could hurt your own group.