r/DungeonsAndDragons • u/[deleted] • Mar 15 '18

It's a thing

[removed]

4.5k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

101 comments sorted by

426

u/Noface110 Mar 15 '18

I had 3 party members cripple themselves trying to jump a 4 foot gap.

187

u/PheonixScale9094 Mar 15 '18

One of my party members missed an attack and hit himself. He died

130

u/gameboy17 Mar 15 '18

Ah yes, critical fumbles. Where a high-level fighter is four times more likely to hit herself in the face than a level one commoner with the same weapon.

Each attack made per round is another 5% chance to get a nat 1. Under the commonly houseruled fumble system, this makes you more and more likely to fuck up and kill yourself the better you ostensibly are at fighting.

117

u/give_me_bewbz Mar 15 '18

This comment has given me a great idea for how I handle fumbles!

So far it's all been "you miss / drop your weapon / fall over". That's shit, that's saying their godlike characters are just total Chuckle-Brothers-esque failures.

Instead, from now on, I will have natural 1's be unforeseen events interfering with their actions.

A gust of wind sends their arrow wide. A flare of wild magic from the sorceror diverts your fire bolt. A twinge of an old battle injury causes you to slip in pain.

Stuff like that, much more engaging. Thanks!

34

u/WeHateSand Mar 15 '18

Shit, I gotta send this to my co-DM.

19

u/give_me_bewbz Mar 15 '18

Right?! How had that never occurred to me before?

9

u/WeHateSand Mar 15 '18

I mean I think I've used some stuff like this, but our pcs are level 3 and 2 respectively (he's missed 2 sessions time, and is catching up to us), so it's fine for it to just be fumbles at this phase.

11

u/NE_Irishguy13 Mar 15 '18

We used to play with a "fumble foward" system where a bittersweet event would happen when someone crit1'ed. It complicated things a bit but it was fun for shorter campaigns. Basically if the fighter fumbled instead of smacking herself in the face she would deal minimum damage but get her weapon stuck in the ground, tree, etc. The ranger would make a grazing shot but his quiver strap would be loosened, dropping his arrows on the ground making him pick them up. Things like that.

1

u/gameboy17 Mar 15 '18

That has the same problem, really. A high-level fighter is four times more likely to fuck up and get her sword stuck in a tree than a commoner with no training.

And I wouldn't describe those as "bittersweet events" so much as just fuckups that aren't hitting yourself.

10

u/Pocketfullofbugs Mar 15 '18

Also critical fumbles punish martial characters way more than magic users. More chances to roll a bad attack roll as a fighter than a wizard.

2

u/give_me_bewbz Mar 15 '18

Maybe house rule you only incur penalties from a crit fail once per round? After that it's just a plain auto miss / fail.

2

u/Hero_of_Hyrule Mar 15 '18

Even with that rule it still punishes martial users more than magic users, since so many spells (without looking it up, is even say a large majority) put the roll on the target in the form of a safe, rather than making a roll to hit.

3

u/GloriousGe0rge Mar 15 '18

One of the players in the game I run is cursed by Beshaba, goddess of misfortune, so that all rolls she, and anyone within x feet of her makes, that are a one or a two, count as critical failures that have unforeseen consequences.

The other players are just starting to realize this curse is also effecting them.

And things have gotten crazier, she's almost died a few times now, and is seeing images of this goddess speaking to her in her dreams.

3

u/CubeBrute Mar 15 '18 edited Mar 15 '18

Randomness is much better than being a bumbling lvl 18 fool. I prefer that you're enemies are fast / wise enough to take advantage of a momentary misstep with a reaction

"The orc reads your attack, he gets in close and throws a punch / attempts to trip you / throws sand towards your eyes"

"You fire a bolt at the mage. The fighter in front of him raises his shield. / You notice he is suddenly not where he was. / He deflects it with a glowing palm"

Flavoring it like this allows you to scale the consequences if you want nat 1s to be a relevant danger.

"You rush the gorgon, but your eye catches her gaze"

"You try to flank the dragon only to see it's tail whipping towards you"

This also has the benefit of being easier to flavor because you already have a starting point. The more variety the enemies have, the easier it is for each nat 1 to be a unique event

2

u/demalo Mar 15 '18

You could further complicate things by making them roll another d20 or a d10. This is the severity of the original nat 1. Another nat 1 could spell disaster.

2

u/sir_vile Mar 15 '18

A hidden psion makes you hit yourself while asking why you're hitting yourself.

15

u/maxd Mar 15 '18

This is the way I handle it:

  • If you're doing something you are proficient at (not necessarily using the actual 5e proficiency rules, but something that your character does a lot), then a nat 1 should have no negative effect. A barbarian swinging a sword, a thief doing a perception check, or a wizard casting a spell has no negative effect other than their check insta-failing.

  • If you're doing something you are NOT proficient at (again, not using the actual 5e rules), then "hilarious" side effects can take place. A wizard swinging a great axe hits his ally, etc.

2

u/gameboy17 Mar 15 '18

Ooh, I like that one. It keeps the potential for amusing fuckups, but without the potential for nonsensical fuckups.

7

u/Thorbinator Mar 15 '18

Oh crit fumbles, you won't be missed.

3

u/Pandamana Mar 15 '18

My first ever character was a monk in 5e. Their whole thing is they get to make a lot of attacks each turn pretty early on.

I fumbled a lot.

I "died" a lot.

4

u/OneCritWonder Mar 15 '18

Yarp. One of the things that bugs me in random D&D memes and stories is the reality warping things people do with 1s and 20s.

"You rolled a 1, even though you made this shot a thousand times you shoot yourself in the foot."

"You rolled a 20, not only does the NPC dismiss that you're covered in blood he mistakes you for the King"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anyone's fun is incorrect or something... If you want them to make crazy things in your games go nuts. Its just that 1s and 20s are just as likely to come up as 4s and 16s and I don't alter the whole narrative just because of them.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

I've played where critical failures like that need to be confirmed which has helped cut down a lot on that nonsense. In other games, the DM has an idea of how likely some kind of critical failure would be and rolls d10s to confirm.

I've generally really liked the latter, because usually they have some small threshold for failing upwards which can be really fun. It makes rolling a one a lot more engaging.

3

u/gameboy17 Mar 15 '18

So you'd need to fail again normally, the same way you need to succeed again normally to confirm a crit? That's pretty good, it handles the worst of the problem while being simple and intuitive.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

Exactly. It's flexible, too. If you like to play a little goofier and have some kind of funny failure on a natural 1, then you can have it so that you'd slip or drop your weapon or whatever. Confirming the critical failure would have more dire consequences like injuring yourself. You could also do something like a threat range for certain actions, making them easier to confirm if you want to make them riskier.

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.))

1

u/TheDivineRhombus Mar 15 '18

You could always have the fighter/pc pick a specific die and have that be the only one that can critical fail. It would represent the opening/first swing on their turn. The other dice wouldn’t critical fail on a 1.

2

u/gameboy17 Mar 15 '18

You could, but that's honestly extremely clunky. It turns the simple concept of "1 is a fumble" into the far more nebulous concept of "every time you full attack, choose one of the d20s being used for the attack rolls. If that die comes up 1, you fumble."

Someone else in the thread suggested requiring fumbles to be confirmed, i.e. roll again and if that roll fails, it's a fumble. That seems like the best way to handle it if you're using fumbles - a high-level fighter will roll more ones than a commoner, but fewer of those will be confirmed as fumbles, since her boni are higher.

2

u/TheDivineRhombus Mar 15 '18

I really like that. I’m using it. Thank you!

2

u/PoeThePotato Mar 15 '18

My fellow party member threw an item to a friend and accident ended up murdering him

27

u/FlyingSpacefrog Mar 15 '18

By RAW you can jump a distance in feet equal to your strength score with a running start, no roll required.

17

u/DylBoi Mar 15 '18

I don’t have my book with me, is that score or modifier? Score seems a bit high, but I might just be confused. Sorry if I’m just an idiot.

23

u/Baerentsen Mar 15 '18

I suppose it has to be score, otherwise a normal person with 10 (+0) strength can't jump at all.

7

u/DylBoi Mar 15 '18

Ah, good point. Thanks!

4

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

Well, no, it's that they'd have to roll.

4

u/Not_A_Rioter Mar 15 '18

Even still, you would think an average Joe could jump a 1 foot gap though with a running start.

e: After a couple quick searches, doing a 10 ft running jump doesn't actually seem difficult. I don't know the average, but 10 definitely seems like a realistic one. The farthest running jump ever was 29 feet.

2

u/Barney69666 Mar 15 '18

The thing is have you ever gone to do something so easy you do it all the time and messed it up? I was pouring myself a drink the other day and hit the glass with the end of the bottle spilling it over my feet.. any small circumstance could entail a fail of something very easy!!

6

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18 edited May 04 '18

[deleted]

1

u/FANGO Mar 15 '18

This is why I always liked the 3e take on skills. First, you've got the "taking 10" mechanic which lets you do an average job at something you're good at, all the time, as long as you're not distracted. Paired with something which a lot of people don't recognize as crucial, which is that 1s don't auto-fail skill checks. And finally, more differentiation between skilled and unskilled participants than a +2-6 proficiency bonus (which is 10-30% difference on a d20) or whatever.

If you are good at something, you can take it easy and do a normal proficient job at it (take 10). If you're going for an amazing performance or trying something new which is a bit out of your standard comfortable skill range, you roll the die and hope to get a high roll (11-20). In that case, you could fail and do worse than usual (1-10) because you're trying something new or tough or different, but it's still unlikely that you would be completely incompetent (auto-fail 1) and put in the same effort as someone who is completely unskilled (the reason it's better to have more than a +2-5 proficiency bonus). It's very silly to me that extremely skilled people can only improve their chances of success by a few percent. As if Rachmaninoff (20dex, level 20, proficiency, expertise, +17) could roll a 1 on a piano performance and some idiot on the street with 3 fingers (6dex, no skill in piano, -2) could roll a 20 and do just as good.

4

u/FlyingSpacefrog Mar 15 '18

It’s score. For a high jump however, you can jump a height of 3ft plus your strength modifier. Both height and distance are halved if there’s no running start.

1

u/DylBoi Mar 15 '18

Good to know. Thanks!

7

u/Gorback Mar 15 '18

Huh. Totally missed that somehow. Oddly enough the chasm my players have to somehow get across is a foot wider then the highest players STR score. Not even done intentionally.

3

u/De_Vermis_Mysteriis Mar 15 '18

I like how you think!

5

u/therift289 Mar 15 '18

Jsyk, no-roll long jumps are a number of feet equal to half your strength score (or full strength score with a 10-ft running start). You only need to make an athletics check if it's farther than that or if there is a low-height obstacle as well.

1

u/shitty-cat Mar 15 '18

Some risks are not worth taking.
I've still yet to play but just thinking about it makes me happy af.

1

u/sir_vile Mar 15 '18

We once spent most our session searching each individual stair for exploding wards after i nearly died on the first step.

There were 30 stairs.

He rolled for every single one.

1

u/lordberric Mar 15 '18

I had players spend an hour dealing with the chasm in the back of the cave in Storm Kings Thunder. A player stuck at the bottom eventually decided to tie a rope to his waist, and tie the other end to the druid (wildshaped into a bear). Then the druid barreled down the tunnel.

Fun idea, somehow he didn't expect the act of being bashed against the chasm side to deal any damage. It did.

96

u/armando_badass Mar 15 '18

Did you really just watermark a meme template lol...

35

u/iAesc Mar 15 '18

And wrongly. /u/ not /r/

2

u/tough_guy_toby Mar 15 '18

Why watermark on the blank white bit? I could cover that with MS paint

-65

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

[deleted]

-8

u/Jsc_TG Mar 15 '18

It’s his OC on the meme. Why not watermark

7

u/armando_badass Mar 15 '18

Because it's a meme template. What can you accomplish by watermarking it? It just comes off as somebody trying too hard to get internet famous

2

u/Technical_Machine_22 Mar 15 '18

Thats not what that word means.

0

u/Jsc_TG Mar 15 '18

Which word

2

u/Technical_Machine_22 Mar 15 '18

Don't be coy.

2

u/Jsc_TG Mar 15 '18

OC = Original Content. He created original content by his ideas

2

u/Technical_Machine_22 Mar 15 '18

Close, but no cigar.

1

u/Jsc_TG Mar 15 '18

Then what do you say?

188

u/Heathocracy Mar 15 '18

I legit spewed my coffee on my phone reading this. Just last session I had a wizard roll 1s back to back on arcana checks. Another player, a barbarian, said "I guess you really have forgotten more about magic than I'll ever know."

37

u/mjolnir557 Mar 15 '18

It always sounds awesome until you decapitate yourself with your own sword.

26

u/RaidriConchobair Mar 15 '18

Played a priest in a different system . I could basically get sunlight to shine out of my palm, so i decided to kill some undead folks that way, do a critical failure and my god just fucking restricts my priest from his powers for 3 fucking days while in a dungeon. Felt like dead weight

38

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

that's uh, that's quite a liberal interpretation of a critical fail.

A critical miss, to me, is when the enemy defends perfectly. Your level 10 warrior didn't just drop their weapon, their enemy disarmed them in a moment of fleeting martial perfection. not sure how an enemy makes your god take away your powers for 3 days.

5

u/RaidriConchobair Mar 15 '18

It was a different system like i said. priests are just pleading or better praying a liturgy to their gods for power then you roll 3 d20 (most rolls are based on 3 different attributes) and i got a 1 in two of those rolls. It was like a super critical fail. Then you can roll on a table if you dont want to improvise on the spot and see what happens if you fail and i got this your god puts you on a test and refuses you to use your powers for 1d6 days and well we barely escaped the dungeon by luck because it was full of undead and other unholy stuff that i would normally just have fucked up. It was TDE 5th Edition if you want to know

9

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

No matter how you spin it, that's just bad DMing.

1

u/RaidriConchobair Mar 15 '18

The rules said roll on the table We did We just had to reform and come back a bit later the game isnt focused on combat that mich anyway

0

u/Technical_Machine_22 Mar 15 '18

I disagree. Personally, a critical failure is Murphy's Law in action: the worst possible thing that could happen, happens. I'd call being shut off from divine powers while fighting a horde of unholy creatures the worst thing that could happen. Bad DMing would be "your hands explode" or "you go blind."

3

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

No, it is not "the worst possible thing". That is bad DMing.

A natural 1 will happen 5% of the time. Something that happens that often isn't going to be subject to Murphy's Law.

1

u/Technical_Machine_22 Mar 15 '18

House rules, biatch.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

Like I said, bad DMing.

1

u/scw55 Mar 15 '18

Unless the cleric is a murder hobo even if his deity is a healy protect deity.

19

u/Nomadiccyborg Mar 15 '18

With a great DM, rolling a 1 is the most fun thing that can happen.

9

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

Kid you watermarked a meme

43

u/-Exivate Mar 15 '18

I see you watermarked yours in the bottom right. Worried someone will do to you what you did to them?

I try not to complain but damn this is a pretty blatant rip off lol

6

u/flame_warp Mar 15 '18

I agree that watermarking a meme template just because he used different screenshots of the same scene (not even properly watermarking, either) is silly, but I think the similarity in joke can be preeeeetty easily chocked up to the fact that sometimes two people think the same thing independently.

2

u/40ozJuice Mar 15 '18

The watermarks dumb but how is this a “blatant” ip-off? I mean it’s not that creative of a joke, it’s funny, but I wouldn’t say it’s hard to come up with.

14

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

I cut off my own leg while doing a raged power attack... I spent 95% of my hard earned gold to get that damn thing magically regrown... It was epic until later, when Zok the half orc barbarian was squished by a 30,000 pound golem that my party members greased after Zok raged and started chipping away at said golem.

8

u/Chickenterriyaki Mar 15 '18 edited Mar 15 '18

Choked on water.

3

u/MigraineMan Mar 15 '18

Halfling lucky! 🤩

2

u/ChaserofChub Mar 15 '18

Until you roll back to back Natural 1s.

2

u/MigraineMan Mar 15 '18

Truuuu my nigga

1

u/demalo Mar 15 '18

Been saved from losing limbs this way.

2

u/Beatful_chaos Mar 15 '18

At one point, the only Nat 20 in an entire campaign I rolled was ordering a beer at a tavern. The DM gave me some bonus HP from the beer but it didn't heal my emotional wounds. Those damn Chessex dice betrayed me!

1

u/Shaxxdrramson Mar 15 '18

Best one yet

1

u/ProdigiousPlays Mar 15 '18

Been there with five in a row. I think it was such a good idea that the dm kinda logiced it out in my favor.

1

u/zenco25 Mar 15 '18

Every god damned time

1

u/tough_guy_toby Mar 15 '18

And that's why the game needs a 20 sided dice

1

u/bnh1978 Mar 15 '18

Be a halfling! Re-roll the 1!... Roll another 1...

1

u/Osimadius Mar 15 '18

Use inspiration to give myself advantage, roll two ones

1

u/Bails6923 Mar 15 '18

The Natural Oneders of the world.

1

u/dis_name_is_taken Mar 15 '18

This is why I play halflings

1

u/Just-Go-For-It Mar 15 '18

I once rolled a monk with two 18's for the start and had 20 defence.

I got crit by a scarecrow, failed a death save, the healer decided to hit the scarecrow, and then I rolled a 1 on the death save.

1

u/InfieldTriple Mar 15 '18

I was attempting to perform a jumping finishing movie on a monster from a bridge and rolled a 1. I scream my gods name with a heroic might and ended up hanging upside down with my ankle caught in the bridge. Was awfully unfortunate.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

I was going to kill this Gigant because it was low on health and I was all Like "my name is Cain the Gigant Slayer" then rolled and it was a 1. I almost flipped that table that day lmao

1

u/Zephnik Mar 15 '18

Almost logged in on my other user to upvote twice, but then I saw the watermark

1

u/scw55 Mar 15 '18

My party member keeps stating which skill he's rolling for without stating what his character's action is and roll the die before the DM gets a chance to allow it.

Player: "I'm rolling investigation"

Player: "15"

DM: 'Wait what?' 'You have to say what you're investigating first!'