Joshua Taylor 151's page

I handled this in my game using action points (coupled with action point uses from various sources).

One of the uses was the ability to save a spell just cast, spending a number of action points equal to 1/2 spell level (round up)

So..... I'm a 5th level wizard with 7 Action pointd (5+ 1/2 lvl) who just cast a much needed fireball. As I'm casting the fireball (before determing it's effect) I decide to spend 2 Action points to retain that spell. Fireball goes off and I roll baddly on damage. Luckily, I still have that same fireball i can use again, and if need be...retain by spending two more action points.

The only issue (both good and bad) is that since action points only refresh when a character levels up, it either makes it so that they're only used in extreme dire circumstances early in a level....or near their next level they get blown left and right. Good or bad? That's up to you really.

I contemplated a form of Critical Fumbles a while back, and the fighter of my group noted that it did kind of a disservice to the attackers of a group.

At first I was skeptical, but after thinking about it I realized he made some sense.

Anyone who makes more attack rolls is going to be subject to a higher chance of fumbles than those who don't. So your fighters and archers and rogues are going to fumble a lot more often than your wizards and probably clerics.

Now, it COULD be said that on the flip side, your attackers also get to crit more foten than your spellcasters. This is true...however...usually a critical effect doesn't matter as much against enemies as they do against players.

When my fighter gets stabbed and loses 1d4 dex, it sucks. When the orc gets stabbed and loses 1d4 dex it's not a big deal since he's probably dead next round anyways.

I contemplated the concept of using spells with saving throws to have a critical effect as well, if the person resisiting rolls a nat 1 or nat 20 to save, but I'm iffy as to whether that'd work.

ie. A wizard casts lightning bolt at a single goblin (for whatever reason). If the goblin rolls a Nat 1 on his save, the wizard gets to draw from the crit deck, and apply it to that goblin. If the goblin rolled a Nat 20 on his save, then the wizard would instead have to draw a fumble card (when they exist). This seems okay to me actually.

If that lightning bolt hits 5 goblins, Any gob that rolls a Nat 1 suffers some spell related critical effect (draw one card and apply to all). Cool. if any gob roll a Nat 20, then a fumble card is drawn? That means that the wizard had 5 seperate 5% chances to have a fumble effect in a given round. Is that equal to the general chance an attacker has to fumble and crit during a given combat? On one hand, it would nicely represent a more chatoic form of spell casting.

I guess my question revolves around wondering how exactly a critical fumble happens in this system. A critical hit was allready in the rules, paizo just came up with some neat effects to add to it. So what actually causes someone to draw from this critical deck?

When I started my Pathfinder game (just using normal 3.5 rules) I actually changed my races upa little bit to have them have a little more feeling and meaning.

In my case...I actually (and ammusingly) ended up giving the same stat modifiers that Pathfinder did to their updated races. Then, as my answer to the racial feel (and not wanting to fully create abilities from scratch) I simply gave them the racial paragon abilities (just the abilities, not HD, skills or spells) at 2nd, 4th, and 6th level respectively.

So...if you were playing a human you looked like this

+2 to any stat
+1 skill point (+4 1st lvl)
+1 Feat

2nd Lvl : Choose any skill, this skill perm becomes class skill
4th Lvl : Bonus Feat
6th Lvl : +2 ability increase to any stat