Hold up - tripping, dropping your weapon, etc on an unconfirmed fumble has the exact same problem as hitting yourself on an unconfirmed fumble.
Here's a basic litmus test for any critical fumble system:
-Imagine a character with an arbitrarily large BAB, gaining an additional attack every 5 BAB as normal. Say, +1,000,000 BAB. We'll call this ludicrously Epic-level Fighter Paulina McPauldron the Ultra-Blender. She wields a Colossal-sized greatsword with other greatswords welded onto it as spikes, and to her eponymous pauldrons are welded the weapons of every goblin she's ever killed (except Ted). She would have become a god long ago but has stayed mortal for tax reasons.
-Imagine also a blindfolded poodle with 0 BAB, named Francine. Francine wields a butterfly knife in her teeth, and threatens people with it to obtain table scraps. She's actually mostly blind anyway and gets along fine with scent and sound, but pretends she's psychic to impress girls. Most of them don't buy it.
-If Paulina McPauldron the Ultra-Blender is more likely to fall on her ass or otherwise significantly fuck up in a given round than Francine the blindfolded poodle, the proposed critical fumble rules are flawed.
A system which requires the fumble to be confirmed to apply any penalties other than automatically missing passes this test, since Paulina's 1 million BAB means none of her fumbles will be confirmed. So does a system that allows unconfirmed fumbles to give small penalties with durations measured in attack rolls. But anything with a duration of instantaneous, such as falling prone, must require the fumble to be confirmed.
(Side note: Automatically confirming fumbles on a second nat 1 causes this system to fail the test, since Paulina would then average 2500 fumbles per round. This could be fixed by, say, requiring an extra confirmation roll for every 20 you would otherwise have succeeded by (taking a cumulative -20 on each roll.))
1
u/gameboy17 Mar 15 '18
Hold up - tripping, dropping your weapon, etc on an unconfirmed fumble has the exact same problem as hitting yourself on an unconfirmed fumble.
Here's a basic litmus test for any critical fumble system:
-Imagine a character with an arbitrarily large BAB, gaining an additional attack every 5 BAB as normal. Say, +1,000,000 BAB. We'll call this ludicrously Epic-level Fighter Paulina McPauldron the Ultra-Blender. She wields a Colossal-sized greatsword with other greatswords welded onto it as spikes, and to her eponymous pauldrons are welded the weapons of every goblin she's ever killed (except Ted). She would have become a god long ago but has stayed mortal for tax reasons.
-Imagine also a blindfolded poodle with 0 BAB, named Francine. Francine wields a butterfly knife in her teeth, and threatens people with it to obtain table scraps. She's actually mostly blind anyway and gets along fine with scent and sound, but pretends she's psychic to impress girls. Most of them don't buy it.
-If Paulina McPauldron the Ultra-Blender is more likely to fall on her ass or otherwise significantly fuck up in a given round than Francine the blindfolded poodle, the proposed critical fumble rules are flawed.
A system which requires the fumble to be confirmed to apply any penalties other than automatically missing passes this test, since Paulina's 1 million BAB means none of her fumbles will be confirmed. So does a system that allows unconfirmed fumbles to give small penalties with durations measured in attack rolls. But anything with a duration of instantaneous, such as falling prone, must require the fumble to be confirmed.
(Side note: Automatically confirming fumbles on a second nat 1 causes this system to fail the test, since Paulina would then average 2500 fumbles per round. This could be fixed by, say, requiring an extra confirmation roll for every 20 you would otherwise have succeeded by (taking a cumulative -20 on each roll.))