I love the Paizo Boards because of how helpful and honest its posters are please help me.
If the wording is bad on any of them please let me know
Hit Points
Characters start first level with max hit points any time a character rolls new hit points and they don’t want their roll they can take half of the max dice roll instead.
Character Traits
All character will select a two trait (one Campaign and one other) from the Pathfinder Character Traits List during character creation.
Maximum Starting Gold
All characters begin play with the maximum possible gold for their 1st level class rather than rolling for it.
Drawing an Item
Any character who can draw a weapon as a part of a move can draw anything reasonable (a wand, potion, etc.) as a part of move. This is also true for the feat quick draw
Healing
When a character uses a healing effect and does not like the roll of the dice they may ask the DM to roll for them you have to take the DMs result.
Exploding Critical Hits
Whenever you threaten a critical hit if your confirmation roll is another critical hit (and confirms the critical) then increase the critical multiplier by one.
Critical Fumbles
If a character rolls a 1 on an attack roll and fails to confirm the character will consult their confirmation roll to this chart.
20. No effect
19-15 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round
14-10 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and provokes an attack of opportunity unless the character makes an acrobatics check with a DC equal to the lowest CMD of characters threatening him
9-6 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and provokes an attack of opportunity unless the character makes an acrobatics check with a DC equal to the lowest CMD of characters threatening him and throws his weapon (1d4 times 10 feet away)
5-2 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and falls prone and throws his weapon (1d4 times 10 feet away). He also hits himself doing weapon damage with all modifiers, as well as sunder damage to his weapon
1 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and falls prone and throws his weapon (1d4 times 10 feet away). He also critically hits himself doing critical weapon damage with all modifiers, as well as a critical sunder damage to his weapon
Instant Death
If a character rolls 3 20s in a row on an attack the victim of the attack dies instantly. If a character rolls 3 1s in a row on an attack the attacker dies. (Character must be vulnerable to instant death)
Fumbled Saving Throws
If a character rolls a 1 on a saving throw and the character takes double damage or effect from the spell.
Books in Use
Only Paizo books will be allowed in this game. Anything from Paizo before the Pathfinder RPG will be converted
I love the Paizo Boards because of how helpful and honest its posters are please help me.
If the wording is bad on any of them please let me knowHit Points
Character Traits
Maximum Starting Gold
Drawing an Item
Books in Use
I am going to start a new campaign soon and all of these were on the list of rules for the new game.
Healing
When a character uses a healing effect and does not like the roll of the dice they may ask the DM to roll for them you have to take the DMs result.
I can see this rule, or maybe like a new hp roll they could take the average if they feel like it.
One thing I have been playing around with is having healers roll a touch attack if healing in battle. I would then let them "crit" a heal and also use channel smite for an extra boost if they channel positive energy.
Exploding Critical Hits
Critical FumblesInstant Death
I have done the exploding critical hits and that was fun. I like the idea of 3 in a row for both 20s and 1s. The fumble issue is always tough to do. I like your chart, that could be fun. I think I am going to try out the fumble deck from Paizo and see how that works.
Fumbled Saving Throws
I like this idea a lot, though I feel like I should reward rolling a 20 for a save as well.
Hit Points
Characters start first level with max hit points any time a character rolls new hit points and they don’t want their roll they can take half of the max dice roll instead.
I use a similar rule, but make the player decide before they roll. They can choose half their "hit die" max value + 1, or take whatever the roll is.
Healing
When a character uses a healing effect and does not like the roll of the dice they may ask the DM to roll for them you have to take the DMs result.
I've danced around this in my own games, but never implemented anything lasting. I was thinking something more of a straight value, like "Cure Light Wounds heals 5 hit points +1 per caster level (max 10)".
Exploding Critical Hits
Whenever you threaten a critical hit if your confirmation roll is another critical hit (and confirms the critical) then increase the critical multiplier by one.
I like this one - keep in mind it works against the players also, and they're subject to a LOT more criticals than most monsters.
Hit Points
Characters start first level with max hit points any time a character rolls new hit points and they don’t want their roll they can take half of the max dice roll instead.
If your goal is to offer a "average or better" then let them roll with the buffer that if they roll below average, they can take the average intead. Otherwise no one will ever roll.
Exploding Critical Hits
Whenever you threaten a critical hit if your confirmation roll is another critical hit (and confirms the critical) then increase the critical multiplier by one.
Instant Death
If a character rolls 3 20s in a row on an attack the victim of the attack dies instantly. If a character rolls 3 1s in a row on an attack the attacker dies. (Character must be vulnerable to instant death)
I'd recommend just increasing the multiplier as long as confirm rolls continue to crit. Instant kill has too much potential to mess up a good encounter, whether by killing the player or by killing the NPC you put so much work into.
Critical Fumbles
Fumbled Saving Throws
I despise fumble house rules. An attack roll of 1 misses. A save of 1 fails. Proceed as usual. None of the fumble rules ever make sense, all they do is penalize players for rolling dice, they're never fun, and they add nothing to the game. And if you only need a 1 to save, then you either take half or double damage, but never normal damage.
Hit Points
Characters start first level with max hit points any time a character rolls new hit points and they don’t want their roll they can take half of the max dice roll instead.If your goal is to offer a "average or better" then let them roll with the buffer that if they roll below average, they can take the average intead. Otherwise no one will ever roll.
Isnt that what its saying if they dont like there roll then they get to take the Half?
Isnt that what its saying if they dont like there roll then they get to take the Half?
Hit Points
Characters start first level with max hit points any time a character rolls new hit points and they don’t want their roll they can take half of the max dice roll instead.If your goal is to offer a "average or better" then let them roll with the buffer that if they roll below average, they can take the average intead. Otherwise no one will ever roll.
D'oh! Yeah. I read that and saw "choose whether" to take half or roll the die.
In my defense, I've only had one cup of coffee this morning.
EDIT: What I read was "if they don't want TO roll"...
Exploding Critical Hits
Whenever you threaten a critical hit if your confirmation roll is another critical hit (and confirms the critical) then increase the critical multiplier by one.
Instant Death
If a character rolls 3 20s in a row on an attack the victim of the attack dies instantly. If a character rolls 3 1s in a row on an attack the attacker dies. (Character must be vulnerable to instant death)I'd recommend just increasing the multiplier as long as confirm rolls continue to crit. Instant kill has too much potential to mess up a good encounter, whether by killing the player or by killing the NPC you put so much work into.
I despise fumble house rules. An attack roll of 1 misses. A save of 1 fails. Proceed as usual. None of the fumble rules ever make sense, all they do is penalize players for rolling dice, they're never fun, and they add nothing to the game. And if you only need a 1 to save, then you either take half or double damage, but never normal damage.Critical Fumbles
Fumbled Saving Throws
So you like to give players a benefit for rolling dice, but don't penalize, if your not going to use critical fumbles, then you shouldn't use critical hits
I personally dislike any fumble chart that can lead to an "I kill myself" situation, and have never done anything more than a Dex check or drop their weapon.
Haven't DM'd a Pathfinder game yet, but if I had to write it now it would be:
Make a CMB check vs opponent CMD, if fail choose between:
a. Drop Weapon
b. Suffer an AoO
c. Fall prone
d. Weapon takes "damaged" conditionKeep it Simple, few possibilities, and nothing that is instantly fatal.
I like to make the game have the threat of death at every turn. If there is no threat of death why play?
So you like to give players a benefit for rolling dice, but don't penalize, if your not going to use critical fumbles, then you shouldn't use critical hits
I do penalize. A 1 misses every time. Critical fumbles are a tax on players who are bad at math.
Fumbled Saving Throws
If a character rolls a 1 on a saving throw and the character takes double damage or effect from the spell.
That's pretty harsh. I would make it do 50% more damage instead.
Otherwise, I like the flavor of your house rules.
Fumbled Saving Throws
If a character rolls a 1 on a saving throw and the character takes double damage or effect from the spell.
That's pretty harsh. I would make it do 50% more damage instead.
Otherwise, I like the flavor of your house rules.
Extra Math bad double is much easier then extra 50 percent LOL but that is a good idea
So you like to give players a benefit for rolling dice, but don't penalize, if your not going to use critical fumbles, then you shouldn't use critical hitsI do penalize. A 1 misses every time. Critical fumbles are a tax on players who are bad at math.
I don't see, your reasoning that its a tax.
if you roll a 1 on an attack roll, then there should be something that could or could not happen, just like for people who roll a 20.
I started using the Paizo fumble deck in my game, and my players have found it fun and interesting. they don't see it as tax for failure.
just like critical hits having a benefit, critical failures should do more then just miss, if you fail to confirm.
I don't see, your reasoning that its a tax.
if you roll a 1 on an attack roll, then there should be something that could or could not happen, just like for people who roll a 20.
I started using the Paizo fumble deck in my game, and my players have found it fun and interesting. they don't see it as tax for failure.
just like critical hits having a benefit, critical failures should do more then just miss, if you fail to confirm.
That's great for you and your players, but I don't see your reasoning that I'm playing wrong by using RAW on that. All fumble rules are house rules that I don't use, because I don't like them. The OP asked what people thought of his rules. I advocated against a fumble rule.
|
Overall, very solid and concise, with the tendency to support the characters vs poor rolling. Usually every table has an unlucky dice roller, and rules like these help them a lot.
We use very similar rules at our table, most of which the players voted on and selected. We used the exact same crit and fumble rules, with a different fumble table obviously, until we adopted the critical and fumble decks from Paizo. The added excitement of not knowing exactly what might happen seems to appeal to our group, sort of like a mini-draw from a Deck of Many Things. The one big difference is that you have to comfirm a fumble just like a critical hit, which is more than fair if you look at results that can show up on the fumble deck :)
We also use the exact same rules for HPs after our barbarian rolled a 2 for 2nd level HPs, and I could almost here Xanetia laughing. Now you cant receive less than average hps per level. I like the fact that a bad roll for HPs doesn't cripple a character.
I like the GM healing re-roll rule, esp because its awful to roll 2 1s on a 2d6 healing burst. We use hero points (aka action points) instead, which I award instead of XP awards for good roleplaying, clever thinking, and heroic deeds (we are use story point leveling instead of XP). This lets them re-roll a roll, add 5 to a result, or stabilize a dying character. So far the most used options have been for failed saves, spell penetration checks, and of course stabilization. This lets them have some control over when they want "extra help".
Do you all have any house rules for combat feats or spells? We houseruled that you could use cleave at the end of a charge if the requirements were met, and we modified slightly a couple spells in our game. Just curious if your group uses everything else RAW or not...
Do you all have any house rules for combat feats or spells? We houseruled that you could use cleave at the end of a charge if the requirements were met, and we modified slightly a couple spells in our game. Just curious if your group uses everything else RAW or not...
Spring attack and Vital strike work togther
Im thinking of allowing Vital Strike on a charge or Cleave on a charge
One note about the critical fumble table. By the time you get the absolute worst results, you've received the following effects:
Critical Fumbles
If a character rolls a 1 on an attack roll and fails to confirm the character will consult their confirmation roll to this chart.
20. No effect
19-15 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round
14-10 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and provokes an attack of opportunity unless the character makes an acrobatics check with a DC equal to the lowest CMD of characters threatening him
9-6 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and provokes an attack of opportunity unless the character makes an acrobatics check with a DC equal to the lowest CMD of characters threatening him and throws his weapon (1d4 times 10 feet away)
5-2 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and falls prone and throws his weapon (1d4 times 10 feet away). He also hits himself doing weapon damage with all modifiers, as well as sunder damage to his weapon
1 Character loses all attacks for the rest of the round and falls prone and throws his weapon (1d4 times 10 feet away). He also critically hits himself doing critical weapon damage with all modifiers, as well as a critical sunder damage to his weapon
A roll of 1 means you've lost all other attacks (let's say that's equal to being stunned), fallen prone (equivalent of being tripped), thrown your weapon up to 40' (disarm with a vengeance), received a critical from your own weapon (which is likely better than what most of your foes will ever have), and critically sundered your own weapon (ignoring that weapons are objects that don't take criticals, it's still a successful sunder). So all told, for the price of a pair of bad rolls (initial 1 plus the confirmation roll-how DO you confirm that you screwed up royally?), you've just admininstered at a minimum 3 successful combat maneuvers (disarm, sunder, trip), plus a critical hit (2 more successful rolls worth of luck), and lost any remaining attacks (which could have no effect on your day or be the equivalent of getting stunned without further penalty).
In the course of a game, the GM will make more rolls than a given player unless it's a very combat-light game. Fumbles introduce a new random element. But the players will be on the game stage all the time, while a given foe is likely to be on the stage only once. Fumble rules will come back to bite the PCs over and over again, especially those who make oodles of attack rolls (e.g. TWF rogues and fighters). Your average mook, even a henchman, won't be bothered by the fumbles; they're supposed to die, after all. But your PCs will see them over and over, which means that in the long term they'll be hindered by them more than you, as GM. Yes, some players can't roll a d20 and get anything less than an unmodified 18. Others can't roll over a 4. And your fumble table will start giving the opponents the equivalent of free combat maneuvers fairly quickly (roll of 9 or less, which is 45% of the time).
A critical hit can inflict massive damage. But in the end, it doesn't matter if you kill a guy with a hit for 10 damage or for 40 damage. And they don't do anything beyond damage. In comparison, a critical fumble means you might well manage to take your sword, impale yourself through both lungs (critical hit), dull both edges and snap it off at the hilt (critical sunder), fall down with it, and still throw the pieces 40' away. Who needs enemies when this happens? And heaven help you if someone has a spell or effect that forces you to reroll anything....
|
|
Fumble rules will come back to bite the PCs over and over again, especially those who make oodles of attack rolls (e.g. TWF rogues and fighters). Your average mook, even a henchman, won't be bothered by the fumbles; they're supposed to die, after all.
Two anecdotes about this:
1) After complaints about a natural 20 being "un-special", the players temporarily voted that a nat 20 auto-confirms a critical hit. I say temporarily because after the 6th or 7th critical hit scored by a fairly innocuous monster, they realized they were getting hosed by their own rule, especially when you consider that natural attacks only crit on a 20.
2) Twice now so far in our campaign, the party has had their behinds saved by an encounter that had them on the ropes, until, the BBEG fumbled. One fell prone in front of three melee types, and one fumbled a ranged touch attack and nauseated himself. Both completely altered the encounter. On the flip side, our resident dragon disciple once charged up to an average mook, fumbled and fell prone, stunning himself, and was promptly dispatched by two lucky hits.
|
Hit Points
I go with half +1 myself, so a d6 HD character would get 4 hp, a d8 HD character would get 5 hp, a d10 HD character would get 6 hp and a d12 HD character would get 7 hp.
Character Traits
Maximum Starting Gold
Drawing an Item
Cool. We've used max hp at 1st level and max starting gold since 1st edition, really. :)
Check to see if the Drawing an Item ideas will at all affect the use of alchemical throwables. (I'm not even sure if it would, although it did make that process a little easier, I sure wouldn't complain...)
Healing
To streamline and make it consistent with your hit points idea, perhaps you could allow it to do half or half +1 instead?
Exploding Critical Hits
Critical Fumbles
I kinda hate confirmation rolls. They slow things down. I'd be tempted to just reduce their potency and allow crits to happen on a straight threat roll, but doing max damage or something instead (and turning weapons with x3 or x4 crit mods into 19-20 or 18-20 threat range weapons instead). Maybe max damage +1, so that a crit with a Shuriken is better than a normal hit. :)
As for a streamlined crit fumble, if a roll of 1 still would have hit, it does minimum damage, because no matter your skill, that was weak!
On the other hand, the exploding critical hits does sound neat, and I have gamed with some people that would love, love, love knowing that they could, in theory, roll three 20's in a row. Too swingy for my taste. I'm a slow and sure kinda guy, who'd rather do a consistent amount of damage reliably than have a small chance of blowing up the planet (and an equally small chance of blowing up myself).
Then again, I used to play nothing but 2nd edition Wild Mages, and cast Nahal's Reckless Dweomer in every combat, so I wasn't always this conservative!
Instant Death
Seems very unlikely to happen, so much so that I'm not sure if it warrants a rule...
Fumbled Saving Throws
Going with the above, having a 20 or a 1 on a saving throw result in a minimal or maximal damage result could be neat. Bob gets hit by a 6d6 fireball and has to save to avoid taking 20 pts of damage. If he saves, he only takes 10 pts. If he rolls a 20, he only takes 6 hp (minimum), if he rolls a 1, he takes 36 hp (max).
Books in Use
Sensible. Everyone has a cut-off, and sometimes it's just easier to draw a line and say, 'Here, no further,' than to cherry pick and second guess every single optional source.
Fumble rules will come back to bite the PCs over and over again, especially those who make oodles of attack rolls (e.g. TWF rogues and fighters). Your average mook, even a henchman, won't be bothered by the fumbles; they're supposed to die, after all.Two anecdotes about this:
1) After complaints about a natural 20 being "un-special", the players temporarily voted that a nat 20 auto-confirms a critical hit. I say temporarily because after the 6th or 7th critical hit scored by a fairly innocuous monster, they realized they were getting hosed by their own rule, especially when you consider that natural attacks only crit on a 20.
2) Twice now so far in our campaign, the party has had their behinds saved by an encounter that had them on the ropes, until, the BBEG fumbled. One fell prone in front of three melee types, and one fumbled a ranged touch attack and nauseated himself. Both completely altered the encounter. On the flip side, our resident dragon disciple once charged up to an average mook, fumbled and fell prone, stunning himself, and was promptly dispatched by two lucky hits.
Good stories, both of them. One point though: normally, you only have 1 PC as a player. He dies at low level, he's toast. Higher level, you can get him back with some magic and some diamonds. How many BBEGs does the GM have? Also, the BBEG in your anecdote pretty much annihilated himself. I prefer to have the sense of accomplishment of kicking the enemy's behind myself, not have him flatten himself. The dragon disciple story proves my point, more or less.
Instant DeathSeems very unlikely to happen, so much so that I'm not sure if it warrants a rule...
Happened in our last game to one of the players it was pretty EPIC
(he rolled 3 1's|
|
I prefer to have the sense of accomplishment of kicking the enemy's behind myself, not have him flatten himself.
My last group was like this, so we just took out fumbles. Personally, I like the possibility that things can go awry on both sides, it makes for more unexpected situations, much like life.
As far as the BBEG annihilating himself, yep, but the same has happened to players, so its balanced. Our group felt no lack of satisfaction for killing them easier after having been on the other side of the situation a few adventures before. It really depends on what sort of flavor you want for your combat scenarios, which is why I make the players vote for how they want most of the house rules to run. The only house rules I control fully are ones that affect the flavor of the world.
|
I don't see, your reasoning that its a tax.if you roll a 1 on an attack roll, then there should be something that could or could not happen, just like for people who roll a 20.
I started using the Paizo fumble deck in my game, and my players have found it fun and interesting. they don't see it as tax for failure.
just like critical hits having a benefit, critical failures should do more then just miss, if you fail to confirm.
Critical hits do a multiple of damage. Critical misses do no damage. Add more to one and you have to add more to the other. The crit decks are good for that.
My complaint is that 1 out of 20 attacks fumble. I prefer requiring two successive natural 1s to fumble. That way multiattack fighters aren't punished for attacking more than others.
|
|
I do penalize. A 1 misses every time. Critical fumbles are a tax on players who are bad at math.
I don't get the bolded part. What does being good or bad at math have to do with rolling a 1 (ie, the output of a uniformly distributed random number generator)? If you roll d20's often enough, you'll roll a 1. Some of those 1's will confirm crit fumbles. It's a matter of chance, not how good someone is at math.
@ Joey -
I don't really like your "3 consecutive 1's = instant death rule." I could see losing actions for your next round, but to die instantly from your own failed attack rolls is lame.
I also don't like your fumble on a save rule. It's not balanced against getting something on a 20 (not that I especially like the idea of a critical save to begin with).
Everything else loos ok. Have fun with your game.
-Skeld
|
|
My complaint is that 1 out of 20 attacks fumble. I prefer requiring two successive natural 1s to fumble. That way multiattack fighters aren't punished for attacking more than others.
Hmm. Rolling a 1 doesn't fumble, but rolling 2 1's does? I can see how that cuts down on the likelihood of a fumble (1/20 to 1/400), but it's still going to affect characters that make many attack rolls more than those that make a few.
In other words, a character that makes 400 attacks in the course of a module is still going to fumble more than a character that makes 400 attacks in a campaign.
-Skeld
Fumbles should be confirmed the same way Critical hits are. Re-roll the d20 and anything that would be a 'miss' confirms the fumble. That way, heavy melee PCs may roll more 'potential' fumbles, but are far less likely to actually fumble. As for effects, I prefer the Fumble Deck. The chart shown above is insanely harsh. IMO.
Fumbled Saving throws... meehhh, I'm on the fence, but it could be interesting.
Instant death rules suck. Period.
Otherwise, not bad house rules. Your fumble and instant death rules would prevent me from ever playing a melee character in your campaign, but I'd roll with the rest.
I do penalize. A 1 misses every time. Critical fumbles are a tax on players who are bad at math.I don't get the bolded part. What does being good or bad at math have to do with rolling a 1 (ie, the output of a uniformly distributed random number generator)? If you roll d20's often enough, you'll roll a 1. Some of those 1's will confirm crit fumbles. It's a matter of chance, not how good someone is at math.
Because agreeing to play under those conditions implies a lack of understanding of probability.
@ Joey -
I don't really like your "3 consecutive 1's = instant death rule."
Read it again. It's TWO consecutive ones. If you roll a 1 on your fumble-confirm roll, you do critical damage to yourself and break your weapon. You are as likely to kill yourself and break your weapon as you are to explode (using the above house rules) the critical HIT with an axe.
I second everything Lathiira said.
1. Criticals and fumbles will hurt PCs more than they hurt the bad guys. This is because each monster and bad guy dies almost immediately after entering the game. Any one monster/bad guy will only exist for a few combat rounds, then be gone forever. Even if he dies to a crit, no big deal, he was supposed to die anyway. This is not true of players. they spend thousands of rounds in combat, and every critical against them, or every fumble they roll, hurts their chances of surviving.
2. It's extremely anticlimactic to finally reach the BBEG, the overlord who has been masterminding all the campaign's trouble, only to watch him trip himself and stun himself and get gorked by his own bad die rolls. Shouldn't that guy be an epic encounter rather than an episode of The Three Stooges?
3. The fumble rules presented are fully capable of killing the PC who rolls a fumble. Over thousands of rounds, many of which have multiple iterative attacks, each PC will likely roll hundreds of fumbles, and many of them will fall into the "I completely incapacitate myself and let the monsters kill me easily" range. It's way too much.
And some new thoughts:
I don't like the DM-healing houserule. Keep what you roll. Pathfinder has more way to heal than any edition of D&D before it. The PCs have healing coming out their backsides. The last thing needed is even more possible healing. Besides, many DMs are going to roll those healing dice, evaluate the situation, and spit out a big number if the PCs are in trouble or spit out a little number if the PCs are winning easily. If I were your player, I would expect you to do that. Which means I would metagame the system and only ask you to reroll my bad healing rolls when we're in trouble. Which makes this a metagame rule rather than a game rule.
So, aside from destroying the PCs at an alarming rate, and the healing thing, the rest of it looks good.
|
|
My complaint is that 1 out of 20 attacks fumble. I prefer requiring two successive natural 1s to fumble. That way multiattack fighters aren't punished for attacking more than others.
We require a confirm to score both a critical hit or a fumble, which basically gives you a "saving throw" to avoid a fumble. Top that with the ability for a player to use a hero point in our game to re-roll the confirm, and you can avoid most fumbles if you really want to. Honestly only the ones right at the beginning of a big battle are "really bad", if you fumble when a fight is wrapping up, you just look foolish mostly, rather than risk mortal danger.
Having to roll 2 1s for a fumble makes is going to make them ultra rare, like maybe 2-3 times in the course of a campaign, unless someone is Unlucky Man of the Cursed Dice. We used to use the same triple 1s, triple 20s rules in our games, and over the course of like 3 years of playing, we were hanging on the edges of our seats probably a half dozen times to see if they rolled that fatal final 1.
2. It's extremely anticlimactic to finally reach the BBEG, the overlord who has been masterminding all the campaign's trouble, only to watch him trip himself and stun himself and get gorked by his own bad die rolls. Shouldn't that guy be an epic encounter rather than an episode of The Three Stooges?
Very True. I would either use one of his quickened escape routes in this case, to allow him to regroup, or use DM fiat and prevent if from happening (a la NPC hero points, if you feel this is unfair to the players).
The fumble rules presented are fully capable of killing the PC who rolls a fumble. Over thousands of rounds, many of which have multiple iterative attacks, each PC will likely roll hundreds of fumbles, and many of them will fall into the "I completely incapacitate myself and let the monsters kill me easily" range. It's way too much.
I agree that the table Joey uses is a bit harsher than I would use, but how fatal a fumble is will also be affected by the size of the party. If you have 8 players for example, usually someone can pick up the pieces, fill in, etc, to prevent it from being devastating. I do agree that fumbles are a lot more devastating to a combat when you have say 3 players though, especially if only one is melee.
Ill say this again on my crit chart and fumbled saves; I want death to be a threat during every encounter and I think these rules do that with out being a D!CK DM pulling shanagins that are trying to kill the PCs
Critically sundered your own weapon (ignoring that weapons are objects that don't take criticals, it's still a successful sunder).
What if I changed it to Auto Broken Condition?
|
|
Ill say this again on my crit chart and fumbled saves; I want death to be a threat during every encounter and I think these rules do that with out being a D!CK DM pulling shanagins that are trying to kill the PCs
Makes perfect sense. In your game, the danger level is an important part of the "flavor", so they are house rules you have full control over, and honestly, I have played under a crit system where you can be beheaded, have limbs chopped off, eyes poked out, etc. by a critical hit, so by comparison, its certainly not a system that would cause me to quit or anything. If I were a player in your game, I would just make sure to carry extra healing/restorative supplies and plan and play a lot more carefully, since loss of luck could undermine even a perfect plan of attack. Which I think is the feel you are going for...
As a DM, I sort of pick my battles, and I am far more concerned about spells that break my game economy or large scale defenses that criticals and fumbles, so I let the players pick the crits and fumbles and am more hard-nosed about other stuff. Every group is different in this way, which is why I am always fascinated to read other groups house rules. One of my guilty pleasures is browsing through house rules for different games on Obsidian Portal :)
As far as damaging weapons, with spells available now to repair items, its certainly not the end of the world, just an inconvenience.
|
|
Read it again. It's TWO consecutive ones. If you roll a 1 on your fumble-confirm roll, you do critical damage to yourself and break your weapon. You are as likely to kill yourself and break your weapon as you are to explode (using the above house rules) the critical HIT with an axe.@ Joey -
I don't really like your "3 consecutive 1's = instant death rule."
I have read it again. It's in Joey's first post. I'll repost it here.
If a character rolls 3 1s in a row on an attack the attacker dies.
It very clearly states that if a character rolls 3 1's in a row on an attack roll, the character dies instantly (unless they're immune of course).
If they roll 2 1's in a row (confirming their fumble with a natural 1), then they crit themselves, throw and damage their weapon, and fall down and can't take any more actions. It sucks, and I grant the fact that this very well might just lead to a dead character if it happens. But if they roll a third 1 (a 3rd consecutive roll) and get another natural 1, none of the fumble chart stuff matters because they are dead.
But I'll give you some credit: you're right about being just as likely to roll 3 natural 20's as you are to roll 3 natural 1's.
As an aside, the general tone of your reply (which can be a hard thing to measure in a text post) to me comes off as kinda jerky. Maybe you intended that and maybe you didn't. If you didn't, no problem. If you did, it's uncalled for and I don't know what set you off. I've reread my own comments in this thread and I don't think I said anything questionable to you, but maybe I did (unintentionally). Paizo's got a pretty cool messageboard community and it tends to run alot smoother with less ruffled feathers when folks reply to one another without "read the post again" and "[whoever] doesn't understand probability" types of responses.
-Skeld
Ill say this again on my crit chart and fumbled saves; I want death to be a threat during every encounter and I think these rules do that with out being a D!CK DM pulling shanagins that are trying to kill the PCs
But I'll agree with some others in that "insta death" might be a tad harsh compared to epic damage you caused yourself from your 3 1's. You can live through it, but death is most likely still a bigger percentage due to the fact you have truly done a significant amount of damage to yourself and now the enemy has his chance to compound that.
Of course I'm looking at it from a standpoint of an epic fight like a dragon, not Joe the farmer vs one of your PC's.
And this is based on the fact you haven't modified it in here somewhere and I missed the mod.
|
|
Ill say this again on my crit chart and fumbled saves; I want death to be a threat during every encounter and I think these rules do that with out being a D!CK DM pulling shanagins that are trying to kill the PCs
And I want death to be a possibility if the dice turn against the party or they make stupid decisions. There are enough 'roll a 1 and you die' effects in PF and especially in 3.5 for my taste. You want to see character death and I do not, not until they can spend resources to repair the problem. I never again want to see a player roll up a character over the course of an hour, only to die on her first action, and never come back to the game.
Read it again. It's TWO consecutive ones. If you roll a 1 on your fumble-confirm roll, you do critical damage to yourself and break your weapon. You are as likely to kill yourself and break your weapon as you are to explode (using the above house rules) the critical HIT with an axe.@ Joey -
I don't really like your "3 consecutive 1's = instant death rule."
I have read it again. It's in Joey's first post. I'll repost it here.
If a character rolls 3 1s in a row on an attack the attacker dies.It very clearly states that if a character rolls 3 1's in a row on an attack roll, the character dies instantly (unless they're immune of course).
To death. Yes, you're right, I was referring to this later part:
If they roll 2 1's in a row (confirming their fumble with a natural 1), then they crit themselves, throw and damage their weapon, and fall down and can't take any more actions. It sucks, and I grant the fact that this very well might just lead to a dead character if it happens.
Yes, that's the part I was referring to. You're really most likely dead at that point, the third roll is almost superfluous. A crit on yourself will kill most low-level PCs, and will kill higher-level PCs that have been fighting for a few rounds. Survive that and you're prone and defenseless at the feet of the monster you just tried to hit. And just when you thought your day couldn't get any worse, you have to roll again to see if you die instantly.
As for the math, if you have 5 players, and if the average combat length is 4 rounds, that means you have 20 player attacks every fight. On average, someone will roll a 1 once in that fight, assuming everyone gets one roll. Every 20 times someone rolls a 1, they follow it up with another 1. Statistically, you'll have a self-inflicted death every 20 encounters, before iterative attacks start to throw that off. Dice being what they are, that may never happen. It might happen in the first session. You never know. But the odds aren't good.
But I'll give you some credit: you're right about being just as likely to roll 3 natural 20's as you are to roll 3 natural 1's.
On that, I was referring to the exploding critical, which was following up a critical with another critical, e.g., two 20s in a row with an axe (20/x2).
As an aside, the general tone of your reply (which can be a hard thing to measure in a text post) to me comes off as kinda jerky.
I'll try to watch that, then. I didn't mean the parts you quote me on as being cruel or arrogant. Well, maybe a little arrogant, but that's because I think I'm right; otherwise, I wouldn't have said anything at all. The OP asked what we thought of his house rules. I gave my opinion. I wasn't trying to insult or attack anyone. If we care about tone, I find "I'll give you some credit" a trifle condescending, but in the interest of world peace, I'll decline to take offense.
EDIT: Added an IF in there somewhere
|
|
I'll try to watch that, then. I didn't mean the parts you quote me on as being cruel or arrogant. Well, maybe a little arrogant, but that's because I think I'm right; otherwise, I wouldn't have said anything at all. The OP asked what we thought of his house rules. I gave my opinion. I wasn't trying to insult or attack anyone. If we care about tone, I find "I'll give you some credit" a trifle condescending, but in the interest of world peace, I'll decline to take offense.
No problem, Christopher. We do care about tone, so I didn't intend the "I'll give you some credit" to be condescending, even a trifle. ;)
-Skeld
Ill say this again on my crit chart and fumbled saves; I want death to be a threat during every encounter and I think these rules do that with out being a D!CK DM pulling shanagins that are trying to kill the PCs
Well then go for it.
Just make sure to hand out lots of 5,000 gp diamonds, or lots of blank character sheets - your players are going to need one or the other.
It's your game, it's your call. Believe me, I've done deadly crits before too. I wanted death to be a real threat. I've been where you are.
In fact, one set of homebrew rules I wrote back in the 80's using 2nd edition D&D (which was still moderately new at the time) was that the plaers got HP based on race (elf/gnome 4, human/halfling/half-elf/half-orc 6, dwarf 8) and then gained 1-3 HP each level (mages 1, clerics/rogues 2, fighters/etc. 3). So a 10th level human cleric would have 26 HP. And he would need a CON of 15 to get 36 HP and if his CON were higher than 15 he could have 46 HP, max, total, ever - no more HP was even possible without going up another level. Death happened at 0 HP. And in that game, I used 2nd ed. damage rules and had some fairly nasty crits. A couple of trolls could kill a healthy human fighter in no time flat without any crits at all. And if they got a crit, it was even faster.
I had lots of PC death. Even some TPKs. I had some players quit and find other groups where they could play the same character for more than a month or two. I had some players who really liked the system and the threat of "real" death. But eventually they got tired of dying too.
In the end, even the players who liked it got tired of it and we went back to a more normalized 2nd ed. HP system.
So I'm not just talking out of my hat. Been there, done that. Lathiira gave you the theory on it, and now I've shed some light of experience on it.
Rule it the way you want. It's your game; I'm not trying to order you to play it one way or the other. Heck, with Pathfinder HP, it won't be nearly as bad as my homebrew version.
You posted here asking what we thought. I've told you what I think. Just don't be surprised if some of your players don't like it. Don't be surprised if some get tired of it quickly (and leave, or threaten to) or if others get tired of it eventually even if they initially like it.
There is a risk here. And by risk, I mean risk to the quality of the game itself, to the fun that everyone is having, to the integrity of the roleplaying experience.
Maybe it will all work out. Maybe you have just the right group that will love it forever. Or maybe not. I just wanted you to get the feedback that you asked for.
Critically sundered your own weapon (ignoring that weapons are objects that don't take criticals, it's still a successful sunder).What if I changed it to Auto Broken Condition?
That makes sense.
One other comment. You stated that you want there to be a threat of death in every combat. Isn't that normally the case? And to be fair, how much more "threat of death" do your critical fumble rules create, beyond that of a normal encounter with your other rules? Is the change so much that it's worth it?
Isn't that normally the case? And to be fair, how much more "threat of death" do your critical fumble rules create, beyond that of a normal encounter with your other rules?
Is the change so much that it's worth it?
There is a threat of Death but this intensifies it and give a edge to the game
Shouldnt there a negative for a postive you can crit and cut a guy in two you can fail and hurt yourself really really bad
Isn't that normally the case? And to be fair, how much more "threat of death" do your critical fumble rules create, beyond that of a normal encounter with your other rules?
Is the change so much that it's worth it?There is a threat of Death but this intensifies it and give a edge to the game
Shouldnt there a negative for a postive you can crit and cut a guy in two you can fail and hurt yourself really really bad
Unless you're using a spiked chain or something, it'd be really hard to kill yourself with your own weapon, though. Besides, the enemies can get 3 20s to kill the players too...no need for players to be killing themselves.
Another thing to note is that rules like the fumble thing overly penalize TWF characters, since they depend on more attacks to do their damage. And beyond that, it penalizes any martial type character more than a caster, since casters often don't even make rolls, and if they do, it's likely to only be once on any given round regardless of level.
In all the games I play in, our fumble chart is: "If you roll a 1, the DM decides on something hilarious to do to you."
The instant death is harsh, but if your players are the kind that are cool with burning through characters (a mood I've been in myself, lots of concepts to try out) then, hey that's the flavor of the month.
As a PC (and a bit of an optimizer) I would really want to abuse Exploding Criticals. Ever had a problem with that?
All in all, these are all very similar to house rules we've used in our games. We'll roll to confirm critical fumbles (roll again on a natural 1, if you miss it's a critical fumble) but that usually leads to something else...:
In all the games I play in, our fumble chart is: "If you roll a 1, the DM decides on something hilarious to do to you."
This is something I've always enjoyed.
A little humor mid combat never hurt; and if the GM handles it correctly is often quite a socially acceptable way to balance a bad/bitter event for the PCs with a little lightheartedness.
Sugar with the medicine in a way.
Ill say this again on my crit chart and fumbled saves; I want death to be a threat during every encounter and I think these rules do that with out being a D!CK DM pulling shanagins that are trying to kill the PCs
While I agree that death should always be a threat, I feel that your fumble rules are very much in the realm of a 'Richard' DM. They severely punish your melee PCs for doing the thing they are supposed to be good at, swinging their weapons.
|
|
They severely punish your melee PCs for doing the thing they are supposed to be good at, swinging their weapons.
And that's an issue I see here. These rules would be most brutal on people with multiple attacks, and utterly meaningless to spellcasters who focus on save or dies, battlefield control or similar spells.
Any spellcaster reviewing this system would think of how much damage a Scorching Ray backlash would do, and choose to use only spells that require no attack roll (grease, color spray, sleep, burning hands, etc. just from first level. No shocking grasp, obviously, too big a chance of zapping your own nuts off.).
The Fighter, Monk, Ranger, etc. do not get this option, to utterly bypass the 'threat of death in every combat via critical fumble' rule by using attacks that require no attack rolls.
Which ends up with the unintentionally hilarious consequence that the highly trained warrior is vastly more likely to accidentally stab himself with his longspear, and the ranger with Rapid Shot is *many times* more likely to put an arrow in his own eye, while the wizard dances around a wild melee, casting color sprays and sleeps and grease spells, knowing that since he's not holding a sharp object in his hand, his utter lack of combat training makes him safer.
And flurrying Monks throwing Shuriken? Oh, the poor, poor man. He kept pulling all of these shiny things that looked star-shaped metal cookie molds out of his robe-thingie, and there was blood and screaming and so much blood!, did I mention the blood?, and fingers flew in all directions! The wizard, when he stopped laughing, said he cast something called haste on him, saying that it somehow made it even more inevitable that he'd cut himself up like that. Promise me you'll never let that nasty man cast haste on you! Hasten not into that cold night!
Fight slow, stay alive! In fact, use Total Defense and try to outwait the opponent, since he's bound to screw up and gank himself eventually!
.
Humor aside, game systems with a beefier critical success and failure system, such as GURPS, tend to also have skill-based spellcasting, which evens the playing field by requiring spellcasters to roll for every cast, with a similar chance of a critical success or fumble.
That might be a potential solution, if you do want to go with this enhanced critical system, requiring spellcasters to make a Spellcraft roll for spells that don't already require Attack Rolls, *or* have spells that use saving throws have a chance of rebounding on the caster if the target rolls a 20 on his saving throw, as the magic flails around and recoils upon the caster, being a wild barely controlled hostile thing that, if denied a chance to affect the foe, will turn and attempt to charm, sleep, daze, etc. the caster of the spell.
It's certainly a neat idea, and one that fits some interpretations of magic as a barely controlled force. Like an old-school Aerial Servant, if the spell fails to affect the target, it lashes out and attempts to punish it's summoner.
I too would back off damaging characters from fumbles. I usually went with dropped weapons, triping and going prone etc. To counter balance this I added fumbles to concentration checks...things like magical bursts that nock the wizard prone, or dropping much needed spell compenents when shoved at the wrong moment. It creates the same feel but backs off the lethality and makes things more even for the melee guys.
Isn't that normally the case? And to be fair, how much more "threat of death" do your critical fumble rules create, beyond that of a normal encounter with your other rules?
Is the change so much that it's worth it?There is a threat of Death but this intensifies it and give a edge to the game
Shouldnt there a negative for a postive you can crit and cut a guy in two you can fail and hurt yourself really really bad
I have no problem with someone getting hurt on a fumble. I could live with receiving a critical hit even. But as I detailed, you're offseting a critical hit (up to X4 damage) with effects up to a critical hit and several combat manuevers, all at one shot. It's a matter of proportion.
|
|
One my favorites whas the Runequest fumble chart applied to mass combat where one of the major causes of casualties were soldiers dismembering themselves with their own swords.
I was just thinking of that! The average grunt soldier did enough damage with their axes to kill a soldier of their toughness, and every round there was a 5% chance they would critically fumble and hit themselves, meaning that for every 100 experienced dwarven soldiers, 5 of them would cut their own heads off in every round of combat.
Ah, Murphy's rules, such fun.