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If anything, I would remove the auto-miss on a 1 and call it a "threatened miss", then require some form of confirmation roll to make it a real miss (perhaps a secondary roll at -10 or -20?).
It's borderline retarded to have a CR25 Tarrasque miss a CR1/3 peasent 5% of the time, while also having a CR5 Manticore miss a CR 1/3 peasent 5% of the time. Did the CR25 creature get absolutely no use out of the extra +27 to attack rolls? It seems so, because it and a creature 20 CRs lower have the same to-hit chance against this guy (# of attacks notwithstanding.)
Also, I would like everyone to keep in mind that statistically a fumble rule will damage the party more than anyone else. This is basically because there are always more monsters, but only so many PCs. It would be fun for a comedy game, though, depending on what was in the fumble deck.
Also, I would like everyone to keep in mind that statistically a fumble rule will damage the party more than anyone else. This is basically because there are always more monsters, but only so many PCs. It would be fun for a comedy game, though, depending on what was in the fumble deck.That's not totally true. It benefits the party equally if any given fight there are an equal number of attacks made by the enemy team. Personally, I like using mobs of guys, so players get to counter attack a lot.
Yeah, every time I see someone post that fallacy on the forums I want to puke. Blanket statements are almost always wrong*.
Criticals, whether they be success or failure, are as useful for the PCs as it is for the NPCs. Even in a situation where there's only a single opponent (which is rare) then the single opponent usually has multiple attacks (like a hydra for example). In general the system is skewed toward NPCs having similar numbers of attacks at a given CR. An animal with claw/claw/bite vs four first level people with one attack each for example, or a CR 17 dragon with bite (reach), claw, claw, tail swipe, wing buffet vs a four man part with a fighter, a rogue, a cleric and a wizard (3/2/2/1). The evening out part being that the dragon is making all his attacks at max attack (or at -2 if he's got secondaries, since he'll have multiattack).
For GMs that use mobs (defined as multiple lower CR creatures to attain a higher CR) this actually reverses.
So overall, it evens out with everyone having the same chance of failure given the same number of attacks. For those who get more attacks (this is the 'oh woe is me fighter get hosed' fallacy), they are getting a benefit for the increased danger of a crit failure.
An example I like to use. Imagine there was an ATM in your living room, and every time you pushed the button, it gave you a $1. No charge, no fee, no bank account required. But, it had a 1/100 chance of punching you in the crotch every time you pushed the button.
Now, being someone who's smart and hates getting punched in the crotch, you only use it in emergencies, taking $5 or $10 every few weeks for gas money or groceries or something. You might get punched in the crotch once every six months.
Your idiot little brother punches it 50 times a day to go get money to spend on his girlfriend. He get's punched in the crotch every other day.
He's using it 10 times more often than you, and getting punched 10 times more than you. But he's getting a value for it, he's getting 10 times more money than you. So his return on investment (money for punches to crotch) is exactly the same as yours, over the course of a couple of years.
This is the same as a fighter vs a wizard. The fighter is gaining a return on investment (hp damage to enemies) commensurate to the amount of risk he's taking. Actually, he's doing better than a mage who attacks only with damage spells. The mage who does this is likely only going to crit succeed on a 20, and crit fail on a 1. Whereas the fighter is likely to crit succeed on anywhere from a 15 to a 20 (depending on build) and still only crit fail on a 1. So if that's the case, then the fighter's ROI is significantly better than someone who can only crit fail once per turn and only crit succeed once per turn.
*Yes, this is a blanket statement, but since it allows for some blanket statements to be true, it becomes it's own proof.
mdt, did you see my offer to meet up somewhere this Saturday while I'm in Austin? You know, before our conversation got deleted for uncivil behavior?
No, I didn't.
We could try to meet up at the Dragon's Den for a bit if you like. I'm still not up on a lot of places in Austin other than that. I travel for work, so I don't spend a lot of time in Austin.
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There are some good variants in this thread that I might try using.
Here's my Crit/Fumble Table Rules.
1. We use both Decks. Both Players and GM potentially draw from the decks.
2. The PLAYERS action the crit cards in play for the night, not the GM. The GM may only draw a crit card IF at least one player has drawn one that evening, never before. Once actioned (in-play) crit deck is used by players and GM the rest of the evening's game session. Note: this creates an awesome mini-game insomuch as the players sometimes deny themselves a card, because they fear their foes doing the same. (Thus the deck is sometime's available (players' perogative) and used sparingly.
3. Fumble Deck Rule: Always in play, and changes are 25% of 5% (low) that they will be used. Process: Player rolls a "1", then rolls to confirm the fumble on a d20. If the roll results in 5 or less, a fumble card is drawn. (Thus, the deck is always available, but rarely used.)
I don't propose that there is any "right" way to use these - everyone using them in their own way is probably best i.e. it really depends on the group you're gaming with. I loved crit hits/fumbles in 2nd Edition D&D, but these days, the gaming culture doesn't really like to fumble. Rewards without risk, cheapen the game for me personally, but using the decks too often became less fun for this particular group, so I reduced their frequency, now it's reached the perfect balance for this particular group.
I wish folks up-thread wouldn't make absolute statements like, "it sux" because maybe it just sux for them, but would be fun for other groups. In my case, both decks are a great deal of fun, and even their "potential" use adds a certain thrill to the night's game.
Pax
I had to do away with combat fumbles. They were fun in an "Ooh! Let's see what will happen!" way, but they don't play nicely with 3.X. At all. Cases in point: iterative attacks, TWF vs. THW, warriors vs. casters, etc.
Right. Such “fumbles” heavily nerf warrior types and leaves spellcasters relatively untouched. Fireball, Haste and what not have no attack roll and thus can’t fumble.
I think we all agree, that in PF and 3.5, spellcasters are way more powerful than warriors and such-like. So why insert a mechanic that slows combat down and makes the power-level disparity between the two types even larger?
Fumbles are not even realistic- I was a SCA heavy weapons fighter, and trust me, a fumble rarely occurs, no-where near the once a minute that James Fridelle has nicely done the math on. Maybe once per day- not per person, once per day for all combatants. So, if you were trying to be realistic, it’d be “Nat 1, followed by nat 1, followed by na1, followed by confirm”.
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@mdt: You're missing one important factor here.
If a monster loses and dies horribly because of a fumble, what is lost? Not much, they're expected to die. At worst, you add another monster as a late-comer and life moves on.
If a player loses and dies horrible because of a fumble, what is lost? Depending on the PC, anywhere from not much, to everything. Especially since one PC death makes another PC death far more likely.
In other words, random penalties affect PCs more than NPCs not because they are imbalanced on a pure damage game, but because a fatal penalty (which all penalties have the potential to be) is extremely damaging to a PC, but (in the end) is unimportant to the nebulous group of monsters. So a random "lol, you're screwed" penalty will end up being more damaging to the PCs in the long run.
@mdt: You're missing one important factor here.
If a monster loses and dies horribly because of a fumble, what is lost? Not much, they're expected to die. At worst, you add another monster as a late-comer and life moves on.
If a player loses and dies horrible because of a fumble, what is lost? Depending on the PC, anywhere from not much, to everything. Especially since one PC death makes another PC death far more likely.
In other words, random penalties affect PCs more than NPCs not because they are imbalanced on a pure damage game, but because a fatal penalty (which all penalties have the potential to be) is extremely damaging to a PC, but (in the end) is unimportant to the nebulous group of monsters. So a random "lol, you're screwed" penalty will end up being more damaging to the PCs in the long run.
You have the wrong starting point. You are looking at the PC as a special snow flake.
Either you're looking at things from a world view standpoint (Roleplay standpoint) or you're looking at it from a gaming standpoint (OOC standpoint).
From a roleplay standpoint, the character has no more or less advantage or disadvantage than the enemies it's fighting. They all exist in the same world reference.
From an OOC standpoint, the player is no more inconvenienced than the GM is. The GM has to worry about a tailored villain getting gacked by a lucky/unlucky hit before his time. By the same token, the Player does as well.
Basically, it comes down to a double standard. It comes down to 'I want to have my cake and eat it to'. I want to have a 19-20 or 15-20 crit range when I'm attacking, but I want to have no danger of failing as spectacularly as I can succeed.
That is, to me, a very monty haulish outlook. To me, anyone who wants to do away with critical failures, or minimize them, or make them less prevelant, should also want to do away with critical successes in the same manner, and for the same reason. A crit success by an NPC can gack a PC just as quickly, more so in fact, than a critical failure can get a PC gacked.
But nobody ever argues that critical successes should be done away with for the good of the game or the good of the PCs. It's only the downsides of the crit system that people want to do away with. Because it's fun to be the guy who crit kills with one hit, but not so fun to drop your sword and look like a goof.
The closest I've heard to this is people suggesting that crit successes shouldn't be used against PCs (which is basically I want my cake, and your cake, and I want to eat both!).
When someone posts that they want crits done away with completely, then I will respect that position as something other than 'give me the glory but none of the risk'. So far, I haven't seen anyone who wasn't just wanting the glory and no risk.
EDIT : On a side note, if my gaming group said 'We don't like critical failures, we don't want them anymore', I'd nod and say 'Ok, we'll do away with the whole critical system' and I'd be just fine with it. I don't mind doing away with crits in general, or even changing them (like requiring two nat 1's, but then also require 2 crit successes before threatening)
*raises hand* I would totally like to get rid of the crit system completely, not just the fumble system.
You're the first person I've seen post it then TOZ.
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@mdt: You're missing one important factor here.
If a monster loses and dies horribly because of a fumble, what is lost? Not much, they're expected to die. At worst, you add another monster as a late-comer and life moves on.
If a player loses and dies horrible because of a fumble, what is lost? Depending on the PC, anywhere from not much, to everything. Especially since one PC death makes another PC death far more likely.
In other words, random penalties affect PCs more than NPCs not because they are imbalanced on a pure damage game, but because a fatal penalty (which all penalties have the potential to be) is extremely damaging to a PC, but (in the end) is unimportant to the nebulous group of monsters. So a random "lol, you're screwed" penalty will end up being more damaging to the PCs in the long run.
You have the wrong starting point. You are looking at the PC as a special snow flake.
Either you're looking at things from a world view standpoint (Roleplay standpoint) or you're looking at it from a gaming standpoint (OOC standpoint).
From a roleplay standpoint, the character has no more or less advantage or disadvantage than the enemies it's fighting. They all exist in the same world reference.
From an OOC standpoint, the player is no more inconvenienced than the GM is. The GM has to worry about a tailored villain getting gacked by a lucky/unlucky hit before his time. By the same token, the Player does as well.
Basically, it comes down to a double standard. It comes down to 'I want to have my cake and eat it to'. I want to have a 19-20 or 15-20 crit range when I'm attacking, but I want to have no danger of failing as spectacularly as I can succeed.
That is, to me, a very monty haulish outlook. To me, anyone who wants to do away with critical failures, or minimize them, or make them less prevelant, should also want to do away with critical successes in the same manner, and for the same reason. A crit success by an NPC can gack a PC just...
You also fall into a couple of traps here. One: The enemies get just as much benefit from criticals as you, and (just like with fumbles) tend to benefit monsters more than players for the very reason that monsters are expendable.
And yes, the villain takes some work to make, but what about that monster you pulled straight form the Bestiary? Did that take work? I'd hope not. At least, nowhere near as much as the PC.
And there's a false equivalence between the crafted villain and the crafted PC: If the DM is doing his job, the villain is supposed to die. The PC is not. Add something that increases the odds of random death and you increase the odds that both die in an unfair manner, BUT the PC is not supposed to die, that's not the point of the game. Sure, they CAN die, but it shouldn't just be complete dumb luck (or lack thereof).
Sure, from an in-character standpoint these rules are perfectly fair, but from the OOC perspective they are not because the game is not built to give PCs a 50/50 chance of dying in each encounter; it's built to give the PCs the advantage (in general) while still keeping death possible if they screw up (by bad choices, not necessarily luck).
I am not arguing that adding critical successes should not be met with more critical failures, I'm simply arguing that adding EITHER will, on average, hurt the players more than help due to the fact that they can only die once, but a monster can be pulled out of the bestiary ad nauseam.
Personally, my solution to this whole thing is to make it so that if you roll a nat 20, you re-roll at a +20, if you roll a nat 1, you re-roll and a -20. Both stack with themselves and each-other. However, if the first nat 20 roll is high enough to hit (without the auto-hit rule), you hit (no reroll). If a re-roll caused by a nat 20 is high enough to hit, you hit. If a nat 1 is low enough to miss (without the auto-miss), you miss (no reroll). If a re-roll caused by a nat 1 is low enough to miss, you miss.
Thus, in 99% of cases, there are never re-rolls. In the other cases they re-roll with a +/- 20 (stacking each time they roll) until a result is achieved.
Example: Guy has a +5 to hit, enemy has a 56AC. He rolls a 20, rerolls and gets a 20, but rerolls and gets a 1. He misses.
Example 2: Guy has a +5 to hit, enemy has 23AC. He rolls a 20. He hits.
Example 3: Guy has a +5 to hit, enemy has 23AC. He rolls a 1. He misses
Example 4: Guy has +46 to hit, enemy has AC 15. He rolls a 1. He re-rolls and gets a 1. He re-rolls and gets a 6. He misses.
TL;DR - Random chance of heavy failure or heavy success ALWAYS benefits the monsters more, simply because the game is built with the presumption that the PCs generally succeed, but those systems give a higher chance of a dumb-luck defeat.
Take a guy with a +20 to attack and 50 AC against a guy with +0 to attack and 10AC. If there are no auto-hits or auto-misses, the latter guy loses *EVERY TIME*. If there are auto-hits and auto-misses, the latter guy has a non-zero chance to win. The more likely auto-hits and auto-misses are, the higher the win chance for the underdog. Assuming equal damage, if you moved auto-hit to 11-20, and auto-miss to 1-10, then the little guy now has an even chance of winning. These "auto failure" and "auto success" rules always benefit the guy on the losing end as they don't care how big of a modifier you have. Since the PCs are, for most encounters, supposed to be either on even footing or on the upper side, they will (on average) come out worse because of such rules. Only the main villains (every 8 or so sessions) should have a chance of being outright stronger than the PCs, and even those are still expected to be defeated (implying that, in reality, the PCs had at least a 50/50 chance of winning and thus were not the underdog).
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I should note that my post makes the assumption that the auto-success/auto-failure cannot be improved/alleviated through skill. If it can (as critical can via Improved Critical and various other things), then it does not necessarily benefit the underdog more. Part of my dislike for fumble decks is that they do not generally come with a set of feats/abilities that help reduce the chance of pain, which would prevent it from being a sure benefit to the underdog.
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I use a 1 as automatic "fiasco" on any d20 roll, whether attacks or skill checks or whatever. For combat attacks I allow a Reflex check to bring the effect down to just a simple miss, otherwise bad things happen based on how badly they miss the check. Using a Reflex check allows you to keep within the existing rules instead of messing around with house rules. For fumbled skill checks I allow a Fort/Ref/Will check or an attribute-based check depending on what skill and the circumstances under which it's being used.
I use a 1 as automatic "fiasco" on any d20 roll, whether attacks or skill checks or whatever. For combat attacks I allow a Reflex check to bring the effect down to just a simple miss, otherwise bad things happen based on how badly they miss the check. Using a Reflex check allows you to keep within the existing rules instead of messing around with house rules. For fumbled skill checks I allow a Fort/Ref/Will check or an attribute-based check depending on what skill and the circumstances under which it's being used.
Under this rule, a fighter is more likely to fumble an attack than a bard.
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I use a 1 as automatic "fiasco" on any d20 roll, whether attacks or skill checks or whatever. For combat attacks I allow a Reflex check to bring the effect down to just a simple miss, otherwise bad things happen based on how badly they miss the check. Using a Reflex check allows you to keep within the existing rules instead of messing around with house rules. For fumbled skill checks I allow a Fort/Ref/Will check or an attribute-based check depending on what skill and the circumstances under which it's being used.
This is a house rule on two levels.
First, a fumble (by RAW) is just a miss (attack rolls) or failure (saving throws, et al.). Nothing else. Ever. It's a simple failure as though you didn't have enough mod and rolled a 2.
Second, skill checks do not fumble. A 1 is just a 1+mod, and you may still make it. (For example, a character with a +9 or higher acrobatics mod could not, without some kind of circumstantial penalty, fail a DC10 acrobatics check.)
So please do not mislead yourself into thinking that by putting a reflex check in there that you are somehow NOT making a house-rule, because you are.
(Note: I do not mean to insinuate that house rules are bad, but house rules that punish the player for having bad luck are very much not fun, which breaks Golden Rule 1 for house-rules "It must promote fun." If you're playing a comedy game and people want this, then it's fine. If you're playing a serious game, then no-one will want this because it causes catastrophic failure every other session for no reason other than bad luck.)
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lots of sensible stuff
great stuff as well
On my tables we use the confirm fumble rule as well, but the effects are determined by everyone at the table. It's natural for the players to suggest a funny or disadvantageous effect for the fumbling player, and I take one of the suggestions that makes most people smile and shape it so that it's fair-ish. This way everyone gets to be creative and a fumble adds to the fun instead of frustrating the players.
Playing by the rules is great, but people should break nay shatter the rules, if they don't add to the fun.