The Gaming Den

Took a look at the new LOTR RPG that just came out, and it has... issues, but it also has a take on fumbles I hadn't seen before.

The idea is that when you make an attack, you can choose to make a 'called shot,' which has a reduced chance of success but triggers your weapon special (disarm for sword, shield-break for axe, etc) if it does succeed. And if you fuck up on a called shot attempt, you get a fumble result. So fumbles are only possible if you are specifically trying a risky show-off move in the first place. That addresses certain statistical inevitability issues, and also lets the player choose whether or not they even want to interact with the fumble mechanic at all.

NT.

My idea for fumbles is that Roethlisberger could actually recover one of his. Not really new, but it would still be revolutionary.

I'm surprised you haven't seen it before. Because this is just a repackaging of an At-will a 4th Edition Fighter has, only it doesn't have penalties associate with it. Seriously, it's called Battle Master's Strike, you sheath and draw a weapon, you get different effects dependent on the type. Only no risk of dropping it, no stupid attack roll penalty.

YAWN.

I know it's LotR and it's supposed to simultaneously grovel before and fatally donkey punch the DMF, but mechanics like these just serve to underscore how gameplay(edly) and intellectually bankrupt that worthless slurry slurper is.

Is this The One Ring? It is very...unusual from what I've read.

Lago, of course I have seen weapon-specific specials before. That was not the point. The point was the idea that crit fails were a thing you could opt into or out of to taste. I mean, that idea could apply to an entire skill system.

Psychic Robot wrote:Is this The One Ring?

Yes.

What happens on a fumble result? Do you stab your buddy or yourself? If so, then fuck that.

I don't understand why people are focusing on the specifics of implementation in this particular game. I particularly don't understand why there is such a hatred of the possibility of 'own goaling' in a fight, when that possibility only exists if you choose to let it. In exchange for a potential benefit. That being the actual issue I'd like to discuss.

To answer the question, in TOR, fumbling means you are easier to hit until your next turn.

4E Dark Sun sort of did this as well - on a nat 1, you could choose to reroll, but if you did then your weapon broke (for the normal crappy weaponry, metal weapons were just damaged). Actually a reasonable way of doing weapon breakage without screwing over fast-attacking types.

that's not a bad compromise. personally I feel that fumbles are right for a certain kind of game. generally I hate them in D&D because my first game had a DM whose fumbles were LOL YOU HIT YOUR FRIEND and LMAO YOUR BOW BREAKS and HAHAHA FUCK YOU YOU LOSE THE REST OF YOUR ITERATIVE ATTACKS AND HIT YOURSELF

Psychic Robot wrote:that's not a bad compromise. personally I feel that fumbles are right for a certain kind of game. generally I hate them in D&D because my first game had a DM whose fumbles were LOL YOU HIT YOUR FRIEND and LMAO YOUR BOW BREAKS and HAHAHA FUCK YOU YOU LOSE THE REST OF YOUR ITERATIVE ATTACKS AND HIT YOURSELF

I had a DM like that. The DM dropped her fumble rules pretty quickly when she had one monster that managed to deal more damage to itself than the whole party combined via fumbling like 4 back to back attacks.

Ice9 wrote:4E Dark Sun sort of did this as well - on a nat 1, you could choose to reroll, but if you did then your weapon broke.

I kind of like that actually. Nat 1 is either a miss or a "reroll and something unfortunate" helps to balance out fumbles with regards to multi-attacking types, since those characters are likely to get more rolls and have a single miss be less meaningful than characters who went for large single attacks. It's still picking on non-casters in systems like pre-4e D&D where the casters don't make attack rolls because the targets make save rolls instead, but in something like 4e where everything is an attack roll or a reduced effect auto-hit, it's a reasonable way to allow for rare and especially unlucky events to happen in a TTRPG.

Also the bit where "your weapon breaks" for non-weapon-users means:

Monk types either have
A. No effect, hahaha! (they're still useless!)
or B. They break their limb

Casters either have
A. No effect, hahaha!
or B. The spell breaks, presumably causing Psyker Syndrome where, if a non-caster fucks up, they are personally inconvenienced and laughed at, but if a caster fucks up, everybody dies.

As for the "You can choose to just not interact with the fumble rules, or take a gamble" bit, that can work. Well, as long as the fumble is something that affects only you (generally in the form of falling prone, provoking or dropping your weapon) as opposed to hitting your allies. It gives choice, lets people avoid fumbling forever if they hate it, but lets people gamble against an unlucky roll.

My only experience *in D&D* with fumbles were from a White Wolf fanboy who passed botching off as a core 3.0 rule. Still, it wasn't as bad as it could have been: as opposed to "You hand all of your items over to your target, give them a soothing back massage, shout out your PIN and SSN, tear your own legs off and kill your auntie with them" of WW, it was just "Rolling a 1 to hit provokes an AoO. You still have all your other attacks if the AoO doesn't drop you."

Note that this was 3.0, also known as Tower Shield Edition. So we wandered around with Full Cover, thus never provoking for anything, which shat the DM right up the wall.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:To answer the question, in TOR, fumbling means you are easier to hit until your next turn.

In that case, the consequence sounds relatively harmless so I'd probably turn on "extra effect mode" whenever possible.

My criticism about fumbles is that it's hard to find a result that's not ridiculously stupid (e.g. you stab yourself in the face) or boring (e.g. your sword takes one point of damage).

Koumei wrote:Casters either have
A. No effect, hahaha!
or B. The spell breaks, presumably causing Psyker Syndrome where, if a non-caster fucks up, they are personally inconvenienced and laughed at, but if a caster fucks up, everybody dies.

C. Their implement breaks.

It's not unreasonable that you cast spells with a magic wand or something.

Monk types either have
A. No effect, hahaha! (they're still useless!)
or B. They break their limb

the DM I had did this. not with a monk but the ranger's blink dog broke a tooth. not that the blink dog was any good in combat anyway but it's the principle of the thing.

Casters either have
A. No effect, hahaha!
or B. The spell breaks, presumably causing Psyker Syndrome where, if a non-caster fucks up, they are personally inconvenienced and laughed at, but if a caster fucks up, everybody dies.

yep, this happened. it was only an orb of force but our party was low point buy and overall unoptimized, so hitting him for 10d6 damage wasn't exactly great news.

That sounds very fucking stupid.

Ice9 wrote:4E Dark Sun sort of did this as well - on a nat 1, you could choose to reroll, but if you did then your weapon broke (for the normal crappy weaponry, metal weapons were just damaged). Actually a reasonable way of doing weapon breakage without screwing over fast-attacking types.

Can you still reroll if you have an unbreakable weapon? What happens then?

ModelCitizen wrote:Can you still reroll if you have an unbreakable weapon? What happens then?

The 3rd way to destroy a major artifact.

ModelCitizen wrote:Can you still reroll if you have an unbreakable weapon? What happens then?

No idea, I don't think that was ever addressed. IIRC, metal weapons (rare in Dark Sun) had an advantage here - they were only damaged instead of broken (I think they could be damaged two or three times before becoming unusable), and could be repaired. So I think giving indestructable weapons the reroll for free would be a reasonable perk, it's not like there are very many of them anyway. Also IIRC, magic weapons can be repaired pretty cheaply, it's not like you have to get a whole new one.

Re: Monks, Wizards, etc - pretty much everyone in 4E has either weapons or implements. If adapting this for another system, I'd give them some kind of temporary penalty instead (fatigue or nonlethal damage for martial types, random status condition for casters, or maybe waste a spell slot).