User talk:Teh Storm/Failtacular (3.5e Variant Rule)

Fumbles are Dumb

Here's why. --Ghostwheel 05:45, May 12, 2010 (UTC)

You'll think this is fun until the Ranger's brand new +3 Flaming Longbow is destroyed. I can assure you I don't want to be at the table when you explain where his 32,000 gp went. I'm usually the DM trying to keep my players on the verge of tears, and I've got to say this is just cruel. --The Badger 06:41, May 12, 2010 (UTC)

I did you one better. A monk I played a year ago rolled a natural one three times in a flurry. The end result? He lost his arm and his vorpal kama after he decapitated two party members and we spent the rest of the night trying to hunt down the rat that ate my arm after succeeding on the DC 30 search check that our party rogue failed. We had a blast!Teh Storm 06:47, May 12, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and this is only part one. Part two details my hit location and superior critical tables, which will serve as the counter to this article.Teh Storm 06:47, May 12, 2010 (UTC)

Some people play Hollywood games, and some people play realistic games. In a ultra-fantastic game I think it would be fun to see a sword fly out of your hand and up into a tree only to have it fall out and kill the wizard 3 rounds later. While this rule will never make it to a real game I play, it may just show up in DnDnD (Dungeons and Dragons and Drinking; high-powered, silly, and fun meat grinders with those Hollywood moments, and of course booze). --The Badger 06:58, May 12, 2010 (UTC)

"I don't understand why my entire party decided to play Dragonfire Adepts. On a random side note, they haven't used their d20s to attack once since we started playing..." -- Eiji Hyrule 07:06, May 12, 2010 (UTC)

Meh, that isn't too difficult to solve. A group of quasi-spell casters says to me that they want to face creatures with unusual abilities. I would recommend magic traps, lots of monsters with spells or spell-like abilities, and powerful magic users as overlords. Though if you ever get sick of all this, don't feel guilty about staging the classic orc ambush: no time for preparation, they close for melee almost instantly, and keeps the players on their toes.Teh Storm 23:06, May 15, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, the delicate art of sarcasm online.--Tavis McCricket 19:56, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

Eiji's point was that this ignores an entire subset of characters; they can completely ignore this variant rule by never rolling attacks and just making enemies roll saves.

Also, for the sake of completion, how does this handle touch attack spells, both melee and ranged? - TarkisFlux 20:36, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

My campaigns let attack roll spells follow the same rule as weapons, thus fumble and critical both apply.Teh Storm 20:43, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

There is no attack roll involved in a breath weapon, so it will won't fumble.--Tavis McCricket 21:05, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

Specifically, how is weapon damaged or lost or whatever applied to a touch attack spell. Saying that they apply doesn't tell us how to apply them. - TarkisFlux 21:07, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

To the first, I pay close attention to area effects. REALLY close attention. If there is not enough room for one, it starts doing things like warping shape or getting concentrated. More than one player has died from using a fireball in a 10 by 10 room.

To the second, remember my bit on natural attacks? The same applies to spells, but broken and destroyed get weird. You do not have to copy me, but a Broken result causes ability damage to the spell casting attribute while Destroyed causes ability drain. Again, you do not have to copy me, and feel free to create your own spell mishaps for fumbled spells. I won't be offended.Teh Storm 21:20, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

Fumbles are Fun

At least when I'm DMing...--Tavis McCricket 00:40, May 13, 2010 (UTC)

I think so too, though I doubt that anyone was as cruel as me when playing with them. I was surprised by the lack of fumble and hit location tables on this site. Are they taboo?Teh Storm 20:57, May 14, 2010 (UTC)

No, just mean spirited. If I DM, and a player fumbles, either they lose the rest of their turn, they drop/pitch the weapon, or they damage it. That's it. They never risk killing another player. I feel like having a table to govern critical fumbles almost celebrates the failure of a player.

In case you were wondering, my system is really simple: If you roll a natural 1, you roll the d20 again to confirm the fumble (like you do for a crit). If they roll anything 6 or higher, it's just a miss. If they roll 5 or lower, it's a critical fumble. They roll the d20 again. 11-20 is a lost turn, 6-10 is a dropped/pitched weapon, 2-5 is weapon damage. If they roll another 1, they break the weapon outright.--Tavis McCricket 21:34, May 14, 2010 (UTC)

(grumble edit conflict grumble) Not really taboo. A lot of us just don't like what they do in the grander mechanical scope of things. For starters it makes action resolution take longer, and combat turns already take a substantial portion of time. More problematic than that though is that they disproportionately affect melee classes, and they already generally have the shaft in a number of playstyles. So while wizards are unlikely to ever roll on such a chart after low levels because they stop making attack rolls, warriors are going to have a higher chance of fumbling as they level because they roll more dice for their bonus attacks. On average, a level 1 warrior will fumble once every 20 turns, but a level 16 one will fumble once every 5. You can mitigate the caster / attacker disparity by making a spell fumble table for when enemies roll 20s against you so everyone is equally at risk (even though the caster only throws one spell, lots of enemies could crit save against it in a round), though no one ever has that I'm aware of, but it still doesn't resolve the problem of these things happening more as you get higher in level (though that may not be a problem for your playstyle). Plus, anything that increases randomness diminishes the players chances on a large enough scale (like a campaign) for reasons based on iterative probability and the failure tolerance variance of the players vs. team monster (again, not a problem for some playstyles, mine just don't fit that anymore). - TarkisFlux 21:40, May 14, 2010 (UTC)

I guess part of the reason I have these tables is because I made the superior critical table first and I have bizzaro luck: my dice are compelled to commit the most epic of fails and wins. Thus my monsters critical and fumble more often than my players. And because the SCT was the first created, my players were getting pissed when a monster would auto coup de grace a player then just automatically miss on the next attack or so. So I made this table. I still had to add the natural attack sub-note to completely balance it, but I think it is worth it. Besides, there is nothing like seeing the shock and glee on a groups face when an orc critical misses and ends up killing half his posse!Teh Storm 21:41, May 15, 2010 (UTC)

And totally doesn't make up for the times when a PC critical misses and ends up killing half the party... >_> --Ghostwheel 22:05, May 15, 2010 (UTC)

Which is why this table should never be used without Superior Critical by its side. Just as I would never recommend a class that got full spellcasting abilities with fighter feats and monk abilities, I would never recommend that Failtacular or Superior Critical be used by itself; they need to balance each other. Maybe I should link the two?Teh Storm 22:56, May 15, 2010 (UTC)

You could link them in their intros, and probably should if you don't intend them to ever be used separately, but that's not really Ghost's point. If the orcs fumble and kill half their party, that's not a big deal for the game. If the players fumble and kill half their party, that might screw them utterly and wind up ending the game. The numerical balance might be there, but the effect balance isn't because one is a hilarious memory and the other is a game ending annoyance. This isn't a concern in an adversarial, 2E style DM vs. Players setup where death happens and games end and you move on but it is a concern in a more cooperative style where the players dying means the story never gets played out entirely. - TarkisFlux 20:27, May 17, 2010 (UTC)

So this is all about a play style argument?!? Because in that case let it be known I am an improv DM- let the game flow where it may. Every now and then I do prepare an adventure/quest path, but I never commit to it unless the players become absorbed in it. Sometimes a "key" player (note the quotations!) dies and the others just completely depart from the storyline that they were following. And I'm cool with that.Teh Storm 20:42, May 17, 2010 (UTC)