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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 12:37AM
#31
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Not really, no. Especially the 'steal from your teammates' B.S.
its not really a concern if the players are comfortable enough with eachother
a lot of what's being discussed in this thread is a 'your mileage may vary' scenario, if the players like fumbles, have 'em, if they don't, ditch 'em, or if they think they're too harsh, dial them down, what I should do is come up with something interesting that can happen with a nat 20 on a fumble roll so there's a potential for a positive to the whole business, probably a good idea for my game where the 1s have such cosmic timing
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 3:05AM
#32
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Date Joined:
Dec 31, 2007
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I think critical fumbles are just fair, when you can have critical hits on the other hand. We did the 1 as an auto-miss with a chance of a fumble. To confirm we rolled against the THAC0 in 2E – would be an attack against DC20 in 3.x. The idea behind this was, that you fumbled less at higher levels. Everything that helps you to control your weapon better also helps you to avoid fumbles. On the other hand, you are more likely to fumble with an unfamiliar weapon. As for the effect of the fumble it depended on how good or bad the confirmation roll was – all of Sean’s options were possible. All in all critical hits and fumbles worked well in our games.
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 4:40AM
#33
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Date Joined:
Dec 10, 2008
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We did the 1 as an auto-miss with a chance of a fumble. To confirm we rolled against the THAC0 in 2E – would be an attack against DC20 in 3.x. The idea behind this was, that you fumbled less at higher levels.
But you're still making the classic mistake that folks make when they try this idea - you still fumble more often the more attack rolls you make, which is unfair to those who make more attack rolls. It penalizes them for improving at what they're best at. IOW, more Fighters drool and casters rule.
Just because the chance to confirm the fumble gets smaller it doesn't necessarily mean you're less likely to fumble if you keep getting more attacks as you level up. Depending on how much the confirmation chance drops, you could (and usually are, in my experience with this kind of system) still be much MORE likely to fumble the higher level you get.
In 3E, why should a 20th level Monk be five times more likely to accidentally kill himself than a 1st level Monk, simply because he makes more attack rolls?
OD&D, 1E and 2E challenged the player.
3E challenged the character, not the player.
Now 4E takes it a step further by challenging a GROUP OF PLAYERS to work together as a TEAM.
That's why I love 4E.
"Your ability to summon a horde of celestial superbeings at will is making my ... BMX skills look a bit redundant."
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 4:49AM
#34
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2012
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You roll a 1, you miss. That's bad enough. If you want to go beyond that you can be descriptive, and that's far more interesting than rolling on some chart to see how silly you look, how much you hurt your friends, or how bad you sucked. If you like sucking, feel free to RP that as much as you want. As a DM, I won't even require that you take a 6 in some ability score either!
Agreed.
Agreed.
Some of the most anti-climactic final battles i have been a part of are ones where the super tough bad guys roll a 1 and fumble. It ruins the whole fight, and takes the feeling of "We just overcame something epic and tough" away from the players.
I use the auto-miss + description for the monsters (when I remember) - but when the Big Bad gets an unlucky streak of 1s the players still feel like he's a loser, but a hardcore boss. Them's the breaks though I guess!
I've been lucky that only a single session I've been in had it - it was a first time DM who thought it was funny how the warden would stab his foot ([W] damage + slow save ends) or how the seeker shot his encounter power into an ally. It wasn't funny for us :| Thankfully he got over it pretty quickly when he noticed only he was enjoying the critical failures.
Now that the topic is also started to broach critical successes - I tend to add a description there too - either from myself or the player (depending on what the player enjoys most). It usually involves a Monster Hunter (PSP/Wii) style limb removal or object breakage. Things like one of the kank's manibles shattered, or that the orc's weapon was cleaved in two. Just something a little cinematic to emphasise how special the 20 was. Depending on the situation, I might impose a penalty to certain attacks, or reduce AC for that monster to make the player feel good about themself.
In 3E, why should a 20th level Monk be five times more likely to accidentally kill himself than a 1st level Monk, simply because he makes more attacks?
I agree with this mentality, and not just on critical failures. There's a few other things which make great mechanical sense in 4e (passing DCs) that are terrible from a roleplaying point of view.
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 6:21AM
#35
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Date Joined:
Dec 31, 2007
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We did the 1 as an auto-miss with a chance of a fumble. To confirm we rolled against the THAC0 in 2E – would be an attack against DC20 in 3.x. The idea behind this was, that you fumbled less at higher levels.
But you're still making the classic mistake that folks make when they try this idea - you still fumble more often the more attack rolls you make, which is unfair to those who make more attack rolls. It penalizes them for improving at what they're best at. IOW, more Fighters drool and casters rule.
Just because the chance to confirm the fumble gets smaller it doesn't necessarily mean you're less likely to fumble if you keep getting more attacks as you level up. Depending on how much the confirmation chance drops, you could (and usually are, in my experience with this kind of system) still be much MORE likely to fumble the higher level you get.
In 3E, why should a 20th level Monk be five times more likely to accidentally kill himself than a 1st level Monk, simply because he makes more attack rolls?
It worked out well for 2E where all attacks were made with the same base attack bonus. Only fighters (or someone fighting with two weapons) got multiple attacks and not as many (or as early) as in 3E. So your point is true for 3E but not for 2E. Concerning the spell-casters I’m with you. A lot of the changes from 2E to 3E made spell-casters more powerful (Bonus spells for mages, meta-magic feats, shorter memorization time for high level casters) But the problem is, casting doesn’t require skill checks in DnD. Other systems that do, have failure chances for spells as well.
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 6:39AM
#36
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Date Joined:
Aug 24, 2012
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I agree that spell-casters get a reduced risk for crit fails, but also for crit hits. Perhaps the system could be tweaked? Spells which require an attack roll benefit from crit hit bonuses and crit success on saves vs spell attacks negate all damage (for spells which suggest half damage)? This is probably not a good idea because it would imbalance so much else between the classes.
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 7:29AM
#37
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I agree that spell-casters get a reduced risk for crit fails, but also for crit hits. Perhaps the system could be tweaked? Spells which require an attack roll benefit from crit hit bonuses and crit success on saves vs spell attacks negate all damage (for spells which suggest half damage)? This is probably not a good idea because it would imbalance so much else between the classes.
In D20: Classes are already unbalanced, and your change is not a meaningful addition to that imbalance. So knock yourself out: You aren't breaking the system any more than it's already broken.
In D&D4: Your suggested change is already in place, except there are no critical failures because critical failures are bad game design.
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 7:37AM
#38
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Date Joined:
May 25, 2012
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In 3E, why should a 20th level Monk be five times more likely to accidentally kill himself than a 1st level Monk, simply because he makes more attack rolls?
That is a bad and unlikely extreme. Furthermore, in an extreme fumble system like you are assuming, in fact it is more likely that the 1st level monk would kill himself rather than the 20th level monk because of the hit point difference - the level 20 monk could probably withstand his self-inflicted wounds where the 1st level monk would probably knock himself unconscious.
It is a bad DM that allows bad luck with dice determine the fate of his players. At worst fumbles should be embarrassing, maybe they hurt a lot but never deadly. In my current campaign a player rolled three 1s in a row - all that happened was his character fell on his ass and let go of his weapon.
Furthermore, chances are that a confirmed fumble in my game would negate the rest of that character's attacks. So if the high level monk fumbled on his first attack the remaining four would not even happen - probably because he loses his footing and cannot continue or something to that effect, or a high level fighter loses his weapon and he either has to pick up the weapon he dropped or draw another. Either way, the only way the character dies is if his opponent can take advantage of the situation and even then the chances of that happening in one round is slim. I am reminded of the scene in Die Hard 2 when McClain is pinned under debris (on the people mover) and his gun is ten feet away. He killed the bad guy anyway because the bad guy goy cocky, took his time changing clips, and did not realize (until it was too late) that McClain would get to his gun. We all knew McClain would get to his gun but there was still tension in the air.
That being said, you do have a point that more attacks means more chances of failure. Therefore, I intend to float the idea to my players in the campaign I am running that as the party levels, it becomes more difficult to fumble - something along the lines of: for every additional attack your class gets you get a +5 on the confirmation roll; so that level 20 monk with five attacks gets a +20 (4 additional attacks multplied by +5 bonus), therefore chances are the only way he can confirm the fumble is by rolling another nat 1. Furthermore, with this in mind, if you can only confirm a fumble by rolling a nat 1 then it does not break away.
But as someone else said, "mileage will vary." Maybe my group will be OK with the fumble system as is (they have only just reached the multiple attack stage so they have not felt that sting yet).
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 9:07AM
#39
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Date Joined:
Dec 31, 2007
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In D&D4: Your suggested change is already in place, except there are no critical failures because critical failures are bad game design.
Critical failures may be badly designed as they are but they are not bad game design IMO.
DaBeerds suggested a nice fix (which comes down to the confirmation roll using the highest base attack bonus for all attacks).
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3 months ago ::
Mar 15, 2013 - 9:21AM
#40
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Date Joined:
Dec 10, 2008
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DaBeerds suggested a nice fix (which comes down to the confirmation roll using the highest base attack bonus for all attacks).
While it's true that you can tweak the confirmation chance to make a high level character have a lower chance per attack of confirming a critical miss than a low level character does, it does nothing to change the fact that at any given level, the monk is still more likely to get critical failures if he chooses to make more attack rolls. This punishes him for doing something that is normally to his benefit - attacking more. The chance of confirming the critical is irrelevent, unless it's a 0% chance. The fact remains that no matter what chance the monk has of confirming a critical failure, he's still being punished if he rolls for more attacks.
I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but people just don't seem to understand this. Tweaking the confirmation chance is a common "fix" for the critical miss problem, but it doesn't fix anything. I've seen it over and over again in pre-4E games and it's frustrating to me because it clearly gimps anyone who rolls to attack a lot (in other words, non-casters). The only way to fix the fact that a PC who rolls to attack more often will get critical fumbles more often is to not have critical fumbles.
And no, I don't think the chance of getting critical hits balances out the critical misses because critical misses are far more punishing to PCs than critical successes are rewarding to PCs.
And oh yeah, just because a 2E Fighter doesn't get as many attacks as a 3E Fighter doesn't mean the 2E Fighter still isn't punished for multiple attack rolls if you use critical misses.
Of course, play your game whatever way your group finds fun, but maybe in the interest of full disclosure and fairness, you may want to inform people who play PCs that make more attack rolls that critical misses will affect them more often than the people who don't make attack rolls as often. No matter what mechanic you use for crit misses, if it's tied to the attack roll then the folks who make more attack rolls will be affected more. Then sit back and watch them roll up a party of nothing but casters. 
OD&D, 1E and 2E challenged the player.
3E challenged the character, not the player.
Now 4E takes it a step further by challenging a GROUP OF PLAYERS to work together as a TEAM.
That's why I love 4E.
"Your ability to summon a horde of celestial superbeings at will is making my ... BMX skills look a bit redundant."
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