Even if you did hit yourself with your own sword, it's not going to do any appreciable damage.....unless that sword is a lightsaber.

Quote from: ForgottenF on September 23, 2023, 02:00:32 PM
Even if you did hit yourself with your own sword, it's not going to do any appreciable damage.....unless that sword is a lightsaber.

Oh yes it could.  I can tell you've never used a real sword.  Real ones are razor sharp

Quote from: Scooter on September 23, 2023, 12:49:14 PM
The point is charts like this are beyond stupid.  I never hit myself when fencing with a saber.  Never dropped or threw the weapon either.  If a friend weren't right in front of me standing next to my opponent I would have never hit him/her either.  And I was only what the game rules would call a 0 level fighter.

Just to be devils advocate. Have you ever fought side by side in a confined space, on questionable ground,  while wearing heavy gear, and lit only by torchlight?

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 23, 2023, 01:12:40 AMSpeaking of nonsense why would a learned skill or ability only be useable when a crit is rolled? The idea of something cool and off the wall happening to make crits more interesting than just extra damage is a great idea but only getting to use learned abilities on a crit seems strange. Unless you mean these actions take place as a free bonus on a crit and would otherwise need to be declared as a main action.

The critical hit is a resource that can be spend to perform certain tasks. It replaces the "called shot" type of rules. The primary reason I do it this way is that it speeds up combat resolution as the player don't have to pre-declare special actions but, instead, can choose from a list of special results that are most appropriate for the situation.

Quote from: Scooter on September 23, 2023, 12:49:14 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on September 23, 2023, 12:45:54 PM
I like crits and fumbles.  They add a little more excitement and tension to the game, which is always a good thing.  In my AD&D days, a natural 20 was double damage, and a natural 1 meant roll a d10 for a result on a table.  I don't recall the details, but it was something like
1 hit self
2 hit friend
3 drop weapon
4 throw weapon
5-7 various other stuff
8-10 no effect

The point is charts like this are beyond stupid.  I never hit myself when fencing with a saber.  Never dropped or threw the weapon either.  If a friend weren't right in front of me standing next to my opponent I would have never hit him/her either.  And I was only what the game rules would call a 0 level fighter. 

Fencing is nothing like an actual brawl, and hit points are abstract enough that damaging yourself can have a lot of interpretations besides striking off your own leg with a sword/

Honestly, I wouldn't care even if you were right.  It was fun and that's the point

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 23, 2023, 02:17:14 PM

Quote from: Scooter on September 23, 2023, 12:49:14 PM
The point is charts like this are beyond stupid.  I never hit myself when fencing with a saber.  Never dropped or threw the weapon either.  If a friend weren't right in front of me standing next to my opponent I would have never hit him/her either.  And I was only what the game rules would call a 0 level fighter.

Just to be devils advocate. Have you ever fought side by side in a confined space, on questionable ground,  while wearing heavy gear, and lit only by torchlight?

You can't bring the attack of most melee weapons close enough to the body for accidental self-harm to be plausible; the techniques just don't work that way. The cutting part of a sword is about two feet away from your fingertips and it needs to be moving quite fast to do anything besides nick the skin. If you are swinging, you need to extend your arm to get enough leverage to cut effectively. If you pull the sword close enough to plausibly injure yourself, the cutting blade will no longer be moving fast enough to cut. This means that if you are in a confined space you will either use vertical cuts (which are easily defended) or thrusts (which are always pointing away from you thanks to the biomechanics.)

The one possible exception is if you have an extreme novice (like, never held a sword before) using a shorter weapon and putting in a whole lot of overswing. If you have that combination, you might hit yourself in the foot or lower leg. The only sensible injury a seasoned soldier will ever give themselves is nicking their hand or fingers from carelessly drawing or sheathing a blade.

Friendly fire is a different matter, of course.

Arguing the biomechanics of fumbles is missing the point.  Unless you are in the "hp are only meat" camp, you could easily describe any "damage" done by a fumble that is not fatal as the loss of position/tactical awareness/etc. that makes the killing blow more possible.  Crits and fumbles have nothing to do with simulation.

The real effect of a crit or fumble is to add an additional level of randomness to combat results.  It's a flavor/thematic thing (and a psychological thing).  It's also a function (at least as far as D&D is concerned) of the changes in D&D over the years.  I don't find critical hits or fumbles particularly impactful in 1e (or equivalent) games, primarily because death is a real possibility in a handful of rounds for most combats.  When you start with 2 hp, you don't need critical hits or fumbles to feel danger.  As the later editions have increased hps (one of the biggest criticisms of 5e is that monsters are just bags of hps), combat can slog along (while they still only take 4-8 rounds, much more tends to happen during each round to slow down combats).  So something to speed up combats is welcome.

Additionally, with the added bloat of hp in the modern versions, crits against present the illusion of danger without the actual lethality of the earlier editions.  Even if dropped to 0 hp, characters are much harder to kill, and there are so many additional healing resources, so a bad crit against seldom is catastrophic.  So crits give a feeling of danger without changing the "medieval superheroes" that modern D&D has become.

What critical hits add to a game is psychological reinforcement via memorable events.  If you have low hps for PCs and monsters, then individual hit/misses create memorable moments because each has an oversized effect on the outcome.  When hps balloon, you end up with "spreadsheet combat" (enough combat rounds happen to generally smooth out the randomness, so you can pretty much predict the outcome before the first sword is drawn.  It's by-the-numbers combat).  Critical hits then provide that lost randomness, a moment where you should lose, but a crit turns the tide.  It provides that memorable moment missing due to hp bloat.

So crits and fumbles really serve a purpose in modern D&D as a form of recapturing some of the randomness and deadliness of the earlier editions (not explicitly, but that's the effect).

Quote from: Fheredin on September 23, 2023, 06:19:27 PM
You can't bring the attack of most melee weapons close enough to the body for accidental self-harm to be plausible; the techniques just don't work that way. The cutting part of a sword is about two feet away from your fingertips and it needs to be moving quite fast to do anything besides nick the skin. If you are swinging, you need to extend your arm to get enough leverage to cut effectively. If you pull the sword close enough to plausibly injure yourself, the cutting blade will no longer be moving fast enough to cut. This means that if you are in a confined space you will either use vertical cuts (which are easily defended) or thrusts (which are always pointing away from you thanks to the biomechanics.)

I'm not so sure, I can see someone cutting they hand while half-swording, missing bad and the follow through hits a foot or leg. Then you have possible injuries that aren't directly caused by your own weapon. Perhaps an enemy parry hits your arm instead of your weapon, or you strain a muscle or sprain an ankle slipping on blood and entrails. Maybe you lose track of your position and hand basically smashing the wall mid swing. A fight in a poorly lit dungeon would not be the same as fencing with specific rules.

I also don't like self-injury but don't think it would be impossible.

How do you guys who like fumbles deal with the fact martials make tons of attacks and could fumble a lot more the better they get?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on September 24, 2023, 02:38:44 AM
How do you guys who like fumbles deal with the fact martials make tons of attacks and could fumble a lot more the better they get?

As hinted in my first answer, I only have fumbles happen when the player is deliberately trying something risky, not for routine stuff.  I also don't allow a 20 to have special meaning on every routine skill check (beyond the fact that it is already a high roll, and thus likely to succeed). 

This gets back to GM as adjudicator of the game with the rules as tool, instead of the GM as trained monkey to referee the (strict) rules.  Envision the situation, decide if it is possible to fail and succeed. If so, call for a roll.  If it is possible for the success or failure to be wild, then allow for critical hit and/or fumble as well. 

Example, character tries to climb a ladder in a hurry during a fight.  It's the kind of thing that wouldn't even require a roll outside of combat.  Player rolls a 1.  They don't make it up the ladder, which is already serious enough without tacking on a fumble.  They are notably inept at the attempt but suffer no additional consequences.  Later, the character tries to scale a 30 foot cliff.  Player rolls a 1.  The fumble is a critical hit from the falling damage (which for me is more likely to lead to an injury more serious than "hit point" loss). 

I think where people get into trouble is trying to make both cases parallel, which is not always what you want.  I've got critical success and fumble built into my initiative system.  A critical success (natural 20 or high enough roll even without a natural 20) is a bonus action in the round.  Fairly significant. A critical failure (natural 1 or adjusted to less than 1 on another roll) is that the character moves absolutely last in the round, after all other characters and monsters.  Only significant in some rounds, and occasionally even helpful (player getting to see what everyone else did before acting).  And note this only works because it is part and parcel of how initiative works.  You couldn't tack that kind of thing onto 3E or 5E initiative and get the same results, given that their initiative systems are cyclic.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on September 24, 2023, 02:38:44 AM
How do you guys who like fumbles deal with the fact martials make tons of attacks and could fumble a lot more the better they get?

If a fumble happens on a natural 20 how do you get more the better you get? Is that because you attack more?

Ideally a fumble table would go from more "hurt yourself" to "slip on bloody, miss" and then have martial classes add their level to the role and thus more experienced fighters get non-damaging results. Or martial classes roll at Advantage to push them away from the dangerous results.

Crits are fun.
Fumbles suck. It's penalizing an already bad roll. My ruling is usually a fumble means you fail no matter the target number, and that's it.

I don't mind crits/fumbles in systems which were designed with them from the ground up. I don't like them in D&D. I've tried many approaches to crits in D&D, over the years, because players always seem to want them (even though it's a net loss for the players if monsters/NPCs use the same rules), but I'm firm in my opinion, these days.

The last critical/fumble system that I used (again, before abandoning such things completely) was simply "On a natural 20 which hits the enemy you gain an additional attack roll in the current round. On a natural 1 one enemy -- randomly selected if necessary -- receives an additional attack roll against you in the current round. If such additional attacks are not applicable to the situation/circumstances then there is no special effect from the natural 20 or natural 1."

That approach wasn't too disruptive, but it just seemed unnecessary, and having these random additional attacks happen 10% of the time wasn't something that I found useful for the game. That goes for other critical systems, too: having "special" stuff happen 10% of the time injected too much additional random swingy-ness into combat, in my opinion.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on September 24, 2023, 02:38:44 AM
How do you guys who like fumbles deal with the fact martials make tons of attacks and could fumble a lot more the better they get?

Not a fan of crits or fumbles in abstract combat systems such as D&D. An attack roll is supposed to represent the potential damage done in the round, it is NOT one swing of a weapon. Therefore spectacular hits and misses are too granular for the system. I have also come to dislike iterative attacks for PCs. I prefer to leave attack routines for monsters and instead use class and level based damage for PCs. This cuts down on die rolls and makes rounds go faster. Also, combat dominance (the mook effect) is built in. Instead of a 6th level fighter having to roll 6 attacks against 6 kobolds, the player instead rolls a single attack roll and 3d6 damage. If the attack hits one mook then apply damage to each mook until it is used up. One and done. The only time I would consider using a crit or fumble is to the apply the Fighter Hiyabusa rule. If you attempt a very risky maneuver and get a great roll or a really crappy one then the move could be devastating or catastrophic.

The thing we do, cribbed from DCC, is have martial types get higher crit ranges as they advance in levels.  So they're doing criticals more often as they gain experience.  But the monsters don't get that benefit.  And our fumble table is not especially punishing, plus it includes a 25% chance of no fumble at all; just a loose grip and recovery.