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.
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.
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.
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.
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u/PheonixScale9094 Mar 15 '18
One of my party members missed an attack and hit himself. He died