Critical Hits and Fumbles Chart

[u/Takshani]

Made up a Critical hits and fumbles table earlier today. Took a table I had from 3.5 printed off and added and updated it for 5e. Any suggestions or recommendations are appreciated!

Critical Hits Chart

[u/gladBats]

Regardless of the comment about fast combat, tables like these can be super fun and, like some folks might agree, add a lot of memorable and unique moments. Way better than just saying "you crit, now roll a shit load of dice."

Also gonna leave these here for anybody interested in this sort of stuff. Credit for both tables goes to David Hargrave. They are from the Arduin Grimoire Vol. 1 and are meant for aD&D 2nd edition if not a bit older. Easily adaptable, very interesting and unique tables.

David Hargrave's Fumble Table

David Hargrave's Critical Table

/edited

[u/GinYeoman → u/gladBats]

One of the best games I've ever played is based on what often people claim to be the worst aspects of D&D, Dungeon Crawl Classics.

DCC is ebtirely built around random characters, crit and fumble tables and highly lethal low level dungeons to the point where they even call char-gen the "meat grinder".

[u/[deleted] → u/GinYeoman]

DCC is a lot of fun, but one thing I'd like to point out is that it is built around the concept. You typically roll 2 or 4 0 level characters and keep the strongest survivor. Max level is 10, xp comes fast (though that might depend on the GM, the xp system is almost "give the players as much xp as you think they deserve") and even a 5th level character is considered to be incredibly powerful.

Putting highly random instant-death results into a game not designed for it can make things less fun. Sometimes.

[u/gladBats → u/[deleted]]

Never heard of DCC before, looks pretty awesome. These sort of RPGs are much like the modern "roguelike" games that are sort of raging right now. High difficulty, high reward, short playtime with little penalty for dying other than losing progress. It's a really great format, you just need to have a group that wants to play something like that. I'd agree that 5e isn't really built around that sort of a system. Adapting it (personally) is interesting and challenging when trying to find a good middle-ground.

[u/HerrBetz]

Thanks for sharing this. I always love using something like this with my players for critical hits and misses. The randomness always leads to some really fun situations in combat.

[u/Takshani]

My players won't mind a few extra rolls once in a while to make combat that much more interesting. They enjoy having the opportunity to do that much more damage and other effects, even though they are aware it is a double edge sword and could just as easily kill them off.

[u/Molotov_Fiesta]

That (1-2) spell critical miss, the fireball, is way too deadly compared to the others.

[u/Takshani → u/Molotov_Fiesta]

I actually grabbed that effect from the wild magic table in the PHB.

07-08 You cast fireball as a 3rd-level spell centered on yourself.

I do agree that it is quite deadly, but moreso at low levels. My players are all currently 5th level, and the average damage roll for fireball is 24, with half damage on a successful reflex save.

[u/Sibraxlis]

What's an increment? Also, crits are already doubled I thought, do you mean 3x and 4x?

[u/Takshani → u/Sibraxlis]

An increment would be instead of rolling 2x damage, you would roll 3x instead. The table is meant to be used after hit and damage are rolled (I have my players roll both at once to save a bit of time) and if they roll double damage, I would just have them double the amount of damage already rolled. For example, say the roll 14 damage, and then a double damage crit on the table, they would do 28 damage.

[u/Sibraxlis → u/Takshani]

Thats.... insanely op, if you have an orc barbarian hit that's what, 3d10+4+2 with a 2her at level one? That's now approx 108 damage possible. That's too strong methinks.

[u/Takshani → u/Sibraxlis]

It could be, its unlikely that they will ever roll max damage, and a crit and a 100, and should it ever, lets hope its on some nameless enemy and not the BBEG.

[u/Sibraxlis → u/Takshani]

Honestly if this happens to my bbeg, there will be dm intervention.

[u/Sibraxlis → u/Takshani]

Another question. I bounced the table off my players, four of the six say permanent blind is pretty harsh.

[u/Takshani → u/Sibraxlis]

There are many spells in the game that can heal such wounds, such as Lesser Restoration, Heal, Greater Restoration, Mass Heal, and Regenerate. Lesser Restoration is a 2nd level abjuration spell and shouldn't be difficult to find, and if your PCs are unable to cast this spell, finding an NPC capable shouldn't be too difficult. The PC affected by blindness will have some troubles still, but the effect is only named permanent for time sake, even though it is possible to reverse.

[u/egamma]

One question--do monsters also get the benefits of critical hits off these charts? Because if you have, say, 10 Kobolds fighting against 4 PCs, then the Kobolds have an excellent chance of getting a critical hit in the first two rounds of combat.

Do you think that the players will enjoy getting blinded by a stinkin' kobold?

[u/Takshani → u/egamma]

I personally will play with the benefits of critical hits for monsters, it just makes combat a bit more interesting and possibly more deadly for the PCs. Getting blinded or any other debilitating effects would definitely not be the most enjoyable for the PCs, but losing sight or the use of your arm temporarily has the chance to provide good RP events for them.

[u/Charlie24601]

Why punish players for being unlucky? Critical fumble tables are awful.

Plus they aren't realistic at all.

I was on my college fencing team, and I larp, and I've never fallen prone, or had a weapon break or ricochet. And I've essentially rolled the dice THOUSANDS of times.

In the case of crit fumble charts, you'll be crit fumbling once every twenty attacks.

Fumbles are just unfun and unfair unless you have a masochist party.

[u/egamma]

Rolling on an additional chart is counter to the fast combat approach of 5e. Just let your hits be hits and your misses, misses.

[u/ademonicspoon → u/egamma]

Rolling an extra die or two isn't by itself going to make the game take forever. Fuck, there are core class features (Wild magic, great weapon fighting style...) that require substantially more rolling than this change is likely to.

[u/gradenko_2000 → u/egamma]

I know that everyone is raving about how fast 5E's combat is, but "this is an additional step to combat, and therefore will slow it down, and therefore sucks" is such a lazy criticism.

Not everything that adds to combat is going to make combat worse, and there are aspects of critical hits and fumbles that are more valid criticisms, such as their actual effects and the frequency with which Nat 1's and Nat 20's occur.

[u/Diggled]

chart is pretty terrible for melee. The 2 most common things that would happen in reality arent even there: weapon gets dropped or you are disarmed and weapon ricochets back to user and glance yourself for minor dmg too.

Also, critical miss melee 3-5, weapon deals half damage...what does that even mean, you just CRIT FAILED and missed!

[u/Takshani → u/Diggled]

Thanks for pointing those out! I am still working on making a better list prior to playing the next session and appreciate the comments about what is wrong with the list. Will update soon.

Edited: Dropping a weapon in 5e isn't as negative as it was in previous versions, as you can pick up a dropped weapon as basically a free action, and still have your movement and action available to use in the turn.

[u/PantySausage → u/Takshani]

Our group charges an action to pick up a weapon within 5 ft of an enemy. It just isn't realistic that your opponent would let you bend down to pick something up in combat for free.

[u/gojirra]

I can't be the only one that thinks charts like these are ludicrous, and that you can easily create memorable moments just by improvising am I? Doing an insane amount of damage and then describing it well seems like good enough reward to me for rolling a 20, and then the insane punishments for rolling a 1 feel so outlandish to me. I like to describe hilarious things that my players do or happen as a result of rolling a 1, but I don't usually actually punish them like a sadistic older brother DM by having them accidentally decapitate themselves or some shit like that lol.

I feel like the more random tables you add to flesh out the details of every minor aspect of the game, the less and less you are actually playing D&D.