The mechanical problems with botch/fumble systems are well-documented. There's a quick breakdown below the comic over here. I'm curious how many of you guys use botch rules anyway. Any recommendations to combat the inherent problems?
The comic you link to more or less encapsulates the problem: it actively penalizes you for rolling additional attacks. I've never found a fumble system I actually like, and I've even houseruled away automatic failure on natural 1 saving throws because I like the idea of super-high saves granting pseudo-immunity to weak effects.
last fumble system I found bearable was Role master... because the chance of critical were conversely much greater, and more fun.
I do not use critical fumble rules in any way. If I joined a game that used them I would play a caster and force enemies to roll as many dice as possible. On the rare occasions where it looks like I'll have to roll a d20 I'll exaggeratedly search through my character sheet to find a way to avoid it first.
Fumbles are fun if you like slapstick. I don't like slapstick.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Pffft!
Using a critical fumble system (like the Paizo critical fumble deck that I use) is *not* a problem, as long as you respect some basic principles.
1) It's essential that higher level characters not be penalized for making more attacks. So the only time you risk a critical fumble is on the first attack roll in a given round.
2) The chance of fumbling should be inversely proportional to your expertise relative to your adversary. So when you roll a natural "1" on your first attack in a round, you have to roll again to "confirm" the fumble. On a miss, you must draw a critical fumble card (or roll on an appropriate table).
Some folks complain that it turns combat into an episode from the three stooges. I disagree. I think critical fumbles add more excitement to combat sequences - especially when they happen to your adversaries. But even when it happens to a PC, it opens a fun opportunity to play off the fumble and try out new tactics.
If you really don't like critical fumble rules, hey, more power to you. But I use them, and my players like the system. With the two above caveats, they do not unfairly penalize two-weapon fighters or fighters with multiple attacks or high-level guys.
YMMV.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Fumbles are fun if you like slapstick. I don't like slapstick.
This. A competent fighter shouldn't be smacking himself with his weapon every 1 in 20 swings, nor even every 1 in 400.
The biggest problem I see with most botch/fumble systems is that they generally lack a solution to the multiple attack problem. Possible solutions I can think of would be to either check for fumbles only on the first attack of an attack sequence or to have any fumble before the last attack simply result in the loss of all remaining attacks.
Even the "first attack" thing isn't really sufficient. The chance of fumbling ought to go down dramatically as your character's skill at whatever she's doing increases. Instead, it stays the same (1 in 20), or in the case of having to confirm a fumble it still caps at the same (1 in 400). With those odds, on average a fighter, no matter how skill, doing his morning exercises against a training dummy or sparring partner is going to slip up and chuck his sword or behead himself every day or so.
Alternative system: When you roll a natural 1 on your first attack of the round, make a second attack roll. Any adjacent enemies also make an attack roll. If any of them rolls higher than you, you fumble (as a result of their actions). Natural 1 on your second roll is not an auto-fumble.
That at least fixes the 'training dummy' problem.
If you use the critical fumble deck, most results are not as drastic as losing your weapon or beheading yourself.
And the concept of "confirming criticals" drastically reduces the chances of a skilled combattant fumbling, unless he's up against an adversary equal to or greater than his supposed expertise.
Most fumble results do not entail a guy "slapping himself". They are quite varied and interesting, IMHO. It doesn't devolve into slapstick. Really.
But, again, if you don't like the concept of critical fumbles, don't use them. They are only partially supported by Paizo. In answer to the OP, I suggested the two essential rules that I use to keep critical fumbles in line. It works for me and my players. YMMV.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I use botches... When I'm running White Wolf, a system that has botches. Not in Pathfinder though.
I use botches... When I'm running White Wolf, a system that has botches. Not in Pathfinder though.
Same, White Wolf and Glitches in Shadowrun.
Fumbles take all of the fun out of the game for me personally and it makes players NOT want to do things. Why try stealthing or using survival or heal if it gets your party killed? Why try that bullrush if a fumble will throw you over a cliffside?
I just love playing a bumbling oaf 5% of the time. /s
Its just awful IMO
I use botches... When I'm running White Wolf, a system that has botches. Not in Pathfinder though.Same, White Wolf and Glitches in Shadowrun.
Fumbles take all of the fun out of the game for me personally and it makes players NOT want to do things. Why try stealthing or using survival or heal if it gets your party killed? Why try that bullrush if a fumble will throw you over a cliffside?
I just love playing a bumbling oaf 5% of the time. /s
Its just awful IMO
Skill checks are subject to the nat 1/fumble.
As for the bullrush.... well. You are fighting on a cliffside. Someone is getting thrown over, pushed off, or something.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't use fumbles. Rare is the fumble system that doesn't overly penalize martials over casters. Many of them also make you more likely to fumble as you gain levels. Woe betide the 20th level TWF hasted fighter who dares to actually think he might be slightly cool.
Any good feelings I might have once had for fumbles died in about 1985 when my 1e monk punched himself to death.
I do remember playing one system where fumbles were a thing for arcane and divine casters but not for psychics or martial types. I wonder why everyone playing in that system created psychic fighters?
Skill checks are subject to the nat 1/fumble.
I'm not sure if you're talking about the other game systems being mentioned, but in Pathfinder skill checks do not automatically fail on a natural 1.
The automatic success/failure rule is mentioned for attack rolls and saving throws, but there is no such rule for skill checks.
Skill checks are subject to the nat 1/fumble.
I'm not sure if you're talking about the other game systems being mentioned, but in Pathfinder skill checks do not automatically fail on a natural 1.
The automatic success/failure rule is mentioned for attack rolls and saving throws, but there is no such rule for skill checks.
No no. I mean that many GMs who use 3.P Fumble Rules generally (from my experience) include it with Skill Checks as well, is all.
Derping. I meant to say skill checks AREN'T subject to fumbles.
Fumbles are fun if you like slapstick. I don't like slapstick.
Oh, come on... It might be fun every once in a while to play a bard who specializes in Slide Whistle or Trumpet (with a Wah-Wah mute) using Inspire Incompetence on your enemies... A witch who sits on the sidelines laughing (er, cackling) madly (after using Misfortune, of course)... A Halfling who takes careless strolls about the battleground (under full defense, provoking as many AOOs as possible)...
"Might be," I said...
I do for the first roll of an attack sequence. I then have a 1-6 on d20 to confirm with an effect. Typically this is being subjected to a free combat manoeuvre, or becoming out of position (feinted) or dropping the weapon. I don't consider it a fumble on behalf of the attacker, but an excellent defence on the part of the defender.
This goes beyond no to a hell no! for me. I won't sit at a table using fumble rules.
I don't care how toned down they are or how cool you think they are they are not worth it.
The fact that I near killed an ally in my very first role master game has absolutely nothing to do with my intense dislike of the mechanic.
I do, like this.
tldr: 1st attack only, confirm based on your skill plus situational modifiers (not the opponent), move action for sure footing gives +10 to confirm, most fumbles are minor.
I've never found that it makes it slapstick; OTOH, it does make combat a whole lot more interesting. You might need to narrate around the occasional odd result.
The only real problem is that in PF (or D&D) casters don't roll dice so they get impaired by this. OTOH, any competent fighter will almost never fumble under normal situations (even a 4F might have +20 to make DC20). And monsters do roll dice.
Some amusing recent results:
* In a fight in a dark room, the cleric got a Drop Something result. He was holding the Wand of CLW in his off-hand. He then had to spend a couple of rounds frantically scrabbling around for it before the Enlarged fighter and the swarm of kobolds trod on it.
* fighter fumbles a survival-tracking roll when searching for cart tracks. "Hit something else" becomes "see something else". I extemporise some fey-touched dragonflies over a dead goblin. Cleric goes to investigate, fumbles his (untrained, Dex 10) Ride roll. Dragonflies panic his horse which goes racing off down the hill.
* same cleric misses a charging boar, drops weapon. Clearly it bashed it out of his hand.
* Same cleric misses a charging Tatzlwyrm, loses balance, falls. Clearly it knocked him over. He was having a bad day.
* Sorceress in a diseased forest with ray gets a Hurt Self 1d2 nonlethal, 1 temp dex damage. I figure she's bumped a fungus which releases a cloud of toxic spores instead.
* Same sorceress having a bad day with ray gets 1, slips, 1d4 nonlethal, 1 temp dex damage.
* Same cleric attacks giant centipede, gets a Hurt Self, which I narrate as him fending off a centipede's bite with his holy tankard and bending it.
* Same sorceress, having a really bad day, with cold ray vs centipede gets Blinded for 1 Round, which becomes being sprayed by gore and entrails as the fighter guts it.
* Skeleton's helmet slips, blinding it. Makes it easy fodder for Sneak Attack.
This was at 2nd-3rd levels. The cleric has 10 Dex. You note that the 3 martials (fighter, ranger, unrogue) never fumbled in combat. Though the ranger did drop all his arrows in a swamp the week before.
The point is that none of this is really harmful (except the tatzlwyrm incident which was a real sphincter moment), but none of it would happen without fumble rules and all of it is fun and interesting. And "fun and interesting" is why I play the game. I recall a recent post lamenting how combat was simply 3 or 4 rounds of rolling dice and asking for some way to get it over with quicker. Personally, I prefer my way...
I gotta say, after playing for years (10+) with a crit/fumble system that I thought to be fantastic, now find myself questioning the awe in which I have held this system.
After reading some posts, and the article, I recall times at level 16 with four attacks/round feeling frustrated when I suddenly found myself fumbling far more often than I ever had. I did learn to NOT roll all four attacks in one roll. Two at a time did reduce the frequency.
I'm almost positive my guy threw his hammer every single boss fight.
Our house-rule went as follows:
All crits are automatically confirmed (no confirmation roll)--roll % d100, ~50 options, varying additional die damage and conditional modifiers, i.e. CRIT! 58% = leg, enemy fall prone, additional 1d10 damage.
All "1's" are automatic fumbles--roll % d100, ~50 options, varying ability saving throws and conditional modifiers, i.e. "1" FUMBLE! 24% = throws weapon 10 ft, roll 1d8 = square thrown.
In addition, ANY ability or magical effect that increases crit range of a weapon only increases it by one, i.e. an improved crit/keep rapier crit range = 17-20x2 (MAX possible), not that standard 15-20x2.
The crit/fumble tables did make each crit and fumble spectator events, but in hindsight, at high levels, they become sure stumbling blocks to what should be masters of their crafts.
I think in future games, I would be in favor of using the tables until maybe level 6th?, but once the PCs reach a certain level of power, maybe 10th (8th?) level and above for certain, I may be in favor of the crits remaining, but fumbles would be a thing for the imperfect, the inexperienced, the rookies.
Fumbles could provide humor at lower levels that the higher levels have already been through, and have ascended the lesser ranks and are hurtling towards perfection.
I believe if I were to GM, I would forgo this particular system, and try out the original and let the players describe their crits themselves.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
No, and I don't play in games that use them. It's a dealbreaker for me. I'm playing Pathfinder, not Moe Larry Curly: The Stoogening. They're just another way of penalizing martial characters.
Chance to hurt yourself or an ally on every attack roll? This means you become more likely to botch the higher your level (aka the better you are at fighting). Meanwhile, it's very easy to make a caster build that never makes an attack roll, rendering you immune to such things.
I don't even use the '1 is an automatic failure' rule. At worst, you might spin yourself around with a wild swing or put an arrow in your wizard buddy's pointy hat or something similar, without mechanical consequence, just flavor.
Again, I have to bring up the example of a late 1970s/early 1980s game (AD7d 1st Edition) I was in that adopted a Fumble system. This resulted in my Paladin accidentally killing both of his acquired allies while they were all bashing on Shriekers. (Amazingly, no monsters showed up while all this was going on.)
I don't. The worst I ever did was rider effects on critical hits, and it was a relatively brief stint.
Oh, and I occasionally still have the bowstring of a bow snap when the PCs nat 1, but I let them restring it as part of their next attack action, so it's just flavor.
|
I often do, mostly because my players like them. Generally they aren't anything game changing, just adds a bit of unexpected variety. When I do them it's less "you accidentally hit yourself, roll to see if you cut your head off" and more "you overextended yourself a bit and are flat footed until your next turn" or "you accidentally poured too much energy into that spell and are dazed for a round." Only time it gets into silly slapstick territory is if we're playing a kind of silly campaign already.
I just love playing a bumbling oaf 5% of the time. /s
Its just awful IMO
That's what taking 10 is for.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Where a 20 is an exceptional result, a 1 makes sense as exceptionally bad. I don't need a lot of complex rules for this though nor do I want to make it statistically bad. We use a confirmation roll to see if it's just a failure or actually bad (two 1's in a row).
It's worked out well, because we take it with good humor. We had a fighter for example who learned Improved Bull Rush. Every time he had an opportunity to use it... every single time... he rolled a natural 1. Instead something epic would happen. Now the first time he went off a cliff in full plate into a river and nearly drowned, but when we realized he was destined to roll 1's every time, I turned it around and made sure he wasn't screwed by it. Sure, he botched a bull rush on the wall of a town being assaulted by an army and fell into the breach, but that was an incredible spot for a scimitar master who held off the unit trying to force its way inside until the party rallied around him. Yes, he botched the bull rush against a hooligan in a town riot but ended up bowling balling into the entire gang knocking them down. After 4 or 5 straight incidents of this across the campaign and a complete track record of epic failure 1's on every bull rush, somewhere around level 8 he said he was going to untrain it. Nobody could blame him, but there was a collective groan around the table at the end of the epic failures to success they had witnessed.
My GM uses it for attack rolls, but you can avoid the fumble with hitting on a second roll. Still, it's just annoying - I am not a fan of rules that only make your life harder, with no interesting options attached to them.
There are more issues: It affects certain characters way more (monks, TWF martials etc.) than others (full casters), so it's easily perceived as unfair. The fumble effects are not necessarily balanced - my GM's cards range from a small AB penalty to being stunned for multiple rounds. And finally it doesn't fit to my image of capable heroes that can easily do their thing after a few levels.
|
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
Fumbles on skills are in some ways even worse. You don't see an Olympic class swimmer failing to stay afloat in calm water in 1/20 races. (In a race situation no one is taking 10). If a character has enough skill to succeed on a 1, well then the task is trivial and doesn't even require a roll. Experts can make even hard tasks seem easy.
Well. I knew a lot of folks hate any sort of fumble rules, but this thread serves as a reminder just how much some people hate them.
There are ways that fumbles can be made to apply to spellcasters as well. The Paizo critical fumble deck has a line specifically for spellcasting fumbles. Spells that require an attack roll are easiest - they work the same way as fumbling with your weapon. To make other sorts of spells "fumble-able" you either have to require an additional "spell success roll" which PF doesn't have, or base the fumble chance on the target's saving throw. I admit that I haven't gone that far in actual gameplay.
Fumbling doesn't have to be seen as three stooges-style slapstick. Pathfinder combat is highly abstract, and if you conceptualize most fumble results as being the result of your adversary's active opposition, they tend to make more sense.
There are also some special circumstances. When firing a ranged weapon or thrown weapon into melee, you can declare that a natural "1" means a chance of hitting one of your buddies. As things stand, that chance is zero, which to my mind is counter-intuitive. All that having to shoot past your buddies does is give you a penalty (which you can then negate with the right feat).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One more argument: It slows down combat. Once you roll this 1, you will probably have to roll again to confirm or avoid the fumble. Either way, on fumble the GM has to consult their list of fumble events. And the event might require another roll.
High level combat is already slow. If you don't use rules to avoid higher fumble risk on higher level, it will slow down the battle even more...
It only slows things down on one in twenty attacks.
And 'slow' only matters if you're bored. Calculating your attack bonus with five different buffs can be boring, but if you love slapstick combat, or are terrified you'll cut your own head off, you won't be bored after rolling a natural one.
There are good reasons not to use fumbles, but speed of play doesn't seem like an important one.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, no. "lets make the guy thats supposed to be better at fighting screw up more often" is a terrible idea.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This is what we use:
Critical "Fumbles":
If you Roll a 1 on an Attack Roll in melee combat, make a level check (roll a 20-sided, if you roll less than your level you pass the check); if you fail the level check, you left yourself open and trigger an AoO.
In addition, a confirmed fumble ends your attack action.
If you Roll a 1 on an Attack Roll in ranged combat, make a level check (roll a 20-sided, if you roll less than your level you pass the check); if you fail the level check, you must roll as if a scatter. The attack can scatter up to a number of squares equal to the fired range increment. If another target is in one of the column of squares designated, make an Attack Roll against that target as normal.
In addition, a confirmed fumble ends your attack action.
A natural 1 on a skill check is considered a -2 to your skill modifier.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have done it in the past, but not anymore, and even when I did I had the player confirm the fumble.
I dont use them because the math is against the player. Most enemy NPC die on first contact with the party so it doesn't matter too much. PC's will have several combats, and if you use Paizo's fumble deck you are very likely to have some terrible things happen that last beyond the current encounter.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Not unless the game is specifically advertised as slapstick. I might use them for the We Be Goblins series of adventures.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I often do, mostly because my players like them. Generally they aren't anything game changing, just adds a bit of unexpected variety. When I do them it's less "you accidentally hit yourself, roll to see if you cut your head off" and more "you overextended yourself a bit and are flat footed until your next turn" or "you accidentally poured too much energy into that spell and are dazed for a round." Only time it gets into silly slapstick territory is if we're playing a kind of silly campaign already.
That's what taking 10 is for.I just love playing a bumbling oaf 5% of the time. /s
Its just awful IMO
You can't take 10 in combat.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
shouldn't magic be the dangerous, unpredictable, mysterious and almost random force in the universe? Not a three foot piece of steel
^A few class abilities exist that allow you to take 10 on a skill roll (but not an Attack Roll or Save) during combat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I sometimes have monsters fumble, because it can be funny and my players don't care if the monsters aren't maximally deadly. I wouldn't do it to the players, but I do sometimes have players just spontaneously decide to narrate their own catastrophic failures when they roll a 1, so I go with whatever it is they want.