Critical Hits and Fumbles - Why?

[Talisman]

So, crits and fumbles. Some gamers love 'em, some hate 'em with a burning passion. Some like crits and hate fumbles (although I've never met anyone who likes fumbles and hates crits).

The pro-crit argument states that it models the occasional "lucky blow," and is dramatic and cool and suchlike.
The anti-crit argument states that it introduces an element of wild unpredictability, such that a 1st-level orc warrior armed with a greataxe can take out a 5th-level fighter in one hit.

The pro-fumble argument states that fumbles are realistic (everyone makes mistakes) and add an element of chance to the game; and after all, bad guys can fumble to!
The anti-fumble argument states that screwing up big time is neither fun nor dramatic, and being higher level = rolling more dice = more chances to fumble, which is outright stupid. There's also the fact that a fumble mechanic usually screws mundane classes more than it does spellcasters (although not so much if the system demands a spellcasting roll of some kind).

I personally am pro-crit and mildly pro-fumble (although I realize this is more emotional than logical), but I can understand why some people positively hate 'em.

So, what do you guts think?

[ckafrica]

I don't like the roll a 20 crit. It leads to people having luck dice and is monotonuous/ annoying if you have the "never rolls a 20" die. Fading Suns made your crit number be your target number; so that if I need a 10 to hit, a 10 on the die was the critical. and you got a better success the closer you were to your target. I thought it was a neat concept.

On the whole I think crits are exciting and make you feel there is more than pass or fail, but I've never seen fumbles done well or handled that well by a DM (I don't use them).

[Maxus]

I hate fumbles. Especially when the DM takes any natural 1 as an invitation to disaster.

I remember playing a game where a druid and his animal companion flanked and attacked. Animal companion rolled a 1 on his attack.

Oops.

The wolf collides with his master in mid-lunge, and they both fall down and get into a grapple with the monster.

My character stands back and attacks.

He rolls a 1.

This pile of elf, wolf, and dire gopher rolls over him, too. Oops, he's in a grapple.

Eventually, wolf wins Grapple, and somehow pins the Dire Gopher *and* my guy.

Since I was playing a Fire Mage, this is the point where I decided to put the burden of succeeding a roll on the gopher, and used that small area-of-effect flame burst to kill the gopher.

[Roy]

Define these terms. Normal crits are fine. Eventually, everyone's immune and doesn't care, but whatever.

Natural 1 as auto miss is also fine.

If by 'crit' you mean 'a fuckload of arbitrary random bullshit happens' then fuck that, that's just asking for disposable character syndrome via constant luck hax. BSF is screwed enough as is

If by 'fumble' you mean 'a fuckload of arbitrary bullshit happens' then see above. Also, ditch the incompetent liability BSF.

[Talisman]

Define these terms.

Crit: On an extremely good (or lucky) roll, Good Stuff Happens. You deal extra damage, or extra status effects, or insta-succeed, or whatever.

Fumble: On an extremely bad (or unlucky) roll, Bad Stuff Happens. You drop your weapon, or hit an ally, or look like a chump, or whatever.

I'm not speaking exclusively of D&D here, but any system that uses critical successes/critical failures. I'm also not speakinge exclusively of attack rolls; I've seen crits/fumbles on skill checks and similar rolls as well.

[Roy]

Any such rule applied to skills is going to fall under the above in D&D. Not talking about other systems because I don't know them, but regardless the enemy is there for one fight and you're there for many, so luck hax still screw the players.

[Psychic Robot]

I think they're fun. My group uses a Paizo critical hit/fumble deck, and we all really enjoy it. Some of the effects on a fumble are too strong, I think, but some are funny (fumble on a spell and you summon random elementals...oops).

[ubernoob]

I hate them. Special effects should happen because:
Crit: You're really that awesome and CAN chop off that orc's head in a single swing OR you are using a Special Move that does in fact hit harder and better than your normal moves (ala tome of battle). Crits should be a power disparity or special move, not luck based.

Fumble: Why the fuck do you fail even though you are powerful enough that you completely outclass the challenge? Again, it should be failure against the DC and not the die roll that matters.

I like the idea of crits and fumbles. I don't like them being purely luck based. Having them being "Exceed or miss target number by more than X" is absolutely fine.

[schpeelah]

What ubernoob said. It entirely depends on what they do and when they happen. Random 5% to auto-kill somebody or hit an ally is not fun. On the other hand, I recall a thread on a Mage: the Awakening board about meaningfully increasing the chance of critical fumbles because effects are cool.

[Shoggoth]

I like both crits and fumbles, mostly because they provide a sense of anticipation when you roll and excitement when it happens. It helps break up the monotony of Roll-To-Hit/Dmg/RTH/Dmg/RTH/Dmg that plenty of melee fights fall into.

I actually like the descriptive kinds of crits and fumbles when the group is cool and you can trust your GM to make things fun. Games like Paranoia where you already have a bunch of GM Fiat are perfect for that kind of thing.

[Elennsar]

I agree with "failure/success by X" for critical results.

I don't like critical fumbles, but I'd be willing to include them if they were interesting.

I'm in a way more lukewarm about critical hits. If there is such a thing as a "critical success", I'd like there to be something between it and "normal success".

So say, marginal, complete, critical.

[Koumei]

If I know a DM uses fumble rolls, then first I will tell them it's a dumb idea. If they disagree, I will tell them to go slam their dick in a car door. And then, when playing, I use my special d20.

It's one of those prism ones, sort of cylindrical. Most noteworthy is that it's not weighted, but it has a clear bias for a small section containing 7, 12 and 17. I don't remember ever rolling a 1 on it (though it may have happened - likewise rolling a 20 is pretty rare too), and one could easily elect to make a mistake and not realise that 1 was facing up, not one of the numbers next to it.

No, I seriously have no qualms with cheating and just not rolling ones if the DM decides to introduce a stupid fumble rule.

[Josh_Kablack]

Koumei, no group I have ever played with have ever tolerated those types of "suppository" d20s - in fact for a while the two different groups I played with kept sneaking one of them back into the other's primary gaming house as they are that annoying.

My like of crits/fumbles depends very much on the implementation.

I've seen far too many games where "you rolled a one, you break your magic sword" is accepted to universally like fumbles

I liked how Rolemaster (prior editions, I haven't played in over a decade) had the fumble range decided per weapon, so players made a conscious choice to play it safe with a low-fumble weapon like short sword or take a risk with a higher damage, high-fumble weapon like the morningstar. It also helped that most of the fumbles were just miss the next attack or penalties to the next couple attacks.

I also like how Feng Shui handles them, where you critical fail if you fail to meet a difficulty 0 (which will happen less than one half of one percent of the time for PCs at anything they are good at, but has a substantially greater chance of happening on unskilled checks), but if you roll boxcars you then reroll and "something special happens" - with success generally on the task meaning that the special is good and failure that it's bad. Intuitively, this 1/36 chance of a roll being special feels right to me.

[Maj]

We keep in fumbles and crits mostly as a cute justification for flavor text.

If you roll two 20s on a crit, you get another roll. If that third roll comes up 20, it's insta-kill - even if it's the BBEG.

If you roll a 1, you miss, but you also roll a reflex save DC 15 (so high enough level characters auto-pass). If you fail the reflex save, you have something happen like dropping your weapon or ending up prone. An NPC always rolls for the save, and if they roll a 1 on the save, they suffer some Bad Stuff (TM).

[Heath Robinson]

I find it very much appropriate for Shadowrun 4 to have a fumble mechanic that allows you to achieve success and still fumble. It also becomes much, much rarer as you get better. You can spend Edge to negate a fumble, as well.

It implies that fumbles don't have to be related to the possibilities that success and failure bring to the table.

[Talisman]

If you're talking about those horrid little cylindrical dice, I hate them vehemently. Rolling those in from of my game crew is grounds for a thorough mocking at best.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I think the biggest rule for fumbles should be "no kamikaze fumbles." I played in a group with a fumble table that included hitting yourself or allies. A couple of times somebody hit themselves or a teammate hard enough to kill them. The worst that should happen on a fumble in combat is that you're placed at some sort of disadvantage. I'm not sure if this principle should apply to skill checks or not.

[Cynic]

Fumbles bring about the most ridiculous shit out there.

Way back in 3.0, I decided to play a straight monk wielding a quarterstaff. While fighting a gelatinous cube, I fumbled and had to roll on the chart. The effect was that my weapon cuts off my god damned limb.

yes, the q.staff cut off my arm.

But the above is just a tangent. The fumble and crit system are rather arbitrary and they don't conform to what a character is able to do.

The only way crits and fumbles work well are if there are two or three static effects for each and they don't require rolling off a table but the effect used is based on the situation.

This might seem monotonous but so is the idiocy of the mechanic in general.

[Elennsar]

What's so idiotic about the fact that a character who bungles an attack roll (or any other roll) will actually have something bad happen instead of just a miss?

I agree that "cuts off his arm" with a quarterstaff is idiotic, but that's a specific result in a specific circumstance, not the fumble concept.

Personally, I prefer the idea of being off balance (penalty to AC).

Self (or ally) injurying fumbles might make sense some of the time, but almost never to the point of death, except with explosives. Explosives are supposed to be nasty like that.

[JonSetanta]

What's so idiotic about the fact that a character who bungles an attack roll (or any other roll) will actually have something bad happen instead of just a miss?

PC lifetime vs. "5-round lifespan" of an average NPC in combat.

A player will encounter infinitely more fumbles than ANY foe and eventually they will be fatally debilitating.

I am wholly against critfumbles.. unless there's a per-battle or per-day limit to them.
Like action points (Luck or Fate, take your pick) for the DM to spend; each one causes a fumble to injure the PC or an ally, or worse, but since there's a cap on how often it's not nearly as deadly.

Likewise, the PC party as a whole might have similar points to spend to make enemies botch when they roll badly, also per battle or day.

[Elennsar]

Anything based around the idea that the PCs are the only characters who will make more than five rounds worth of actions is irredeemably sunk into stupidity and eunuch envy (which is like penis envy, but involving envying those who had a penis to lose because one is that pathetic, and has nothing to do with the gender of the one envying).

So if the PCs are that dominant, then they should eventually get fucked by bad luck, since otherwise they might as well be unstoppable...no NPC can realistically expect to beat them, EVER, otherwise.

[Fuchs]

We do use crits. Fumbles are usually just an auto-miss, with some added flavor, which occasionally, depending on the situation, creates some minor or major havoc - if say a barbarian rolls a 1 it's usually just a miss. If he is wiedling a keen two-handed sword, and if he's fighting an enemy who has his back to a support beam, then I might have him roll some test to avoid cleaving said beam in half.
I usually describe natural 1s on easy targets - when we even roll such such fights anyway - by high-level PCs as more related to bad luck, not to some ineptitude. "Your blow would have cut him apart, but the corrupt mage trips over his own feet in his frantic attempts to fall back and as he plants his face into the stone floor your blow passes over his head by a hair's width."
I do not have people hit themselves, ever, though (unless we're talking fumbling with something that works like an explosive), and allies only run the danger of getting hit through a fumble if they are in grappling combat with the target or in similar situations.

Generally, both crits and fumbles should add to the fun of a game, not detract from it, which means it's a matter of personal preference. Not everyone likes things like, say in the support beam example, the ceiling starting to collapse, changing the nature of the fight, just because someone rolled a 1. In such cases, fumbles are out of place. Others like such events.

[Username17]

Fumbles are fun in Paranoia where you're basically supposed to die anyway and the key is figuring out how to do it in as hilarious a way as possible.

I can't really think of a game where Crits add to the enjoyment.

So mark me down for seeing a place for fumbles but not criticals.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Actually, I thought of a game where the crits and fumbles do work:

WWE Know Your Role.

See, criticals are important, because after someone wails on you for three rounds, you suddenly hit them out of nowhere with something that takes them off their feet, leaving you with a few rounds to recover and get the advantage yourself. This has to happen, because that's how it works on TV. So they got that right.

Fumbles are also important (due to the TV factor). Climbing on top of the turnbuckle? Of course there's a chance you'll slip and land crotch-first on it. Leaping off any great height? There's always the risk of them rolling out of the way and you getting a face full of matt.

Better still, it is possible for both to critically succeed at the same time, or for both to fumble at the same time - seen on TV as where two people collide head-on, or clothesline each other simultaneously, or whatever.

The rules do well to emulate the source material, so it actually feels the way it's meant to.

[ZER0]

Hm. I like criticals. Fumbles only to the extent of not stabbing yourself in the face. Weapon dropping, maybe, but not stabbing yourself. But I don't like auto-successes or auto-failures.

When I'm running D&D, a 1 is a 1. If you miss, you miss, and if you hit, you hit. This is due to a personal dislike of fumbles because usually they screw players more than monsters. Monsters are expendable. Players less so.

A 20 is a possible critical (or a 19 or 18 or whatever your threat range is), but only if it would hit to begin with. So, the Orc with a +4 to hit with a Greataxe likely won't kill the 5th level Fighter even on a crit, because the Fighter will probably have an AC higher than 24. On the other hand, if that character has a +12 to hit, then they hit the Orc's AC of 13 on a 1 every time. Even were I playing with fumbles, the fumble would only occur if the attack/save/skill check/whatever missed and the character rolled a 1.

That opinion only represents d20 systems, but a similar opinion stands for any other systems. I only get a critical success if I roll well and hit the target number, and I only get a critical failure if I roll poorly and miss the target number.

I guess that's my opinion on that. To clarify, while I have a personal dislike of fumbles, they can still be worthwhile if done correctly.