Also, if you're worried about fighter types being too penalized at higher levels, you can have some kind of spell failure system for casters.  We have this and it works okay but you can of course allow for the caster to make a save or attribute check to avoid it.  This works well in Castles & Crusades where the built-in Siege Engine lets you do pretty such anything seamlessly.  So if the foes rolls a nat 20 on the save or spell resistance negates a spell, the caster makes a siege check and if they fail that, the spell failure roll applies.

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.

The associated critical table in Spacemaster Privateers is down right nasty.

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 24, 2023, 08:57:22 AM

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.

Yes, a level 1 fighter making 1 attack a turn will fumble 4 times less often than a fighter with 4 attacks a turn.

I don't play any games that allow 4 attacks a turn so forgive my ignorance.
Seems the same logic would apply to two attacks around though so the point is taken.

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 23, 2023, 09:21:40 PM

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.

If you have the skill to half-sword, it won't damage; the trick is to grip tightly so the blade doesn't slip.

There's always a chance of self-injury in the sense of a pulled hamstring any athletic proposition, adventuring included, but to harken back to my original comment, the problem is that a microscopic chance of that is universal to practically every adventuring activity, so you either have to increase the odds enough to break your immersion or waste time and effort with a mechanic which is almost never relevant. Hence my conclusion; unless you are going for slapstick, it never makes sense to implement fumbles.

Half of my problem is this thread is filled with copium. Hit points are a bookkeeping device which savvier GMs interpret as a mix of endurance and meat points, perhaps. But the idea that an "attack" in any of these games is an exchange of several blows and parries goes out the window as soon fighters get multi-attacks.

So what, they're attacking several times...several times?

These mechanics exist because the D20 and hit die mechanics that D&D in particular is built on do not scale well and they do weird things when you push them, not because they represent anything in particular.

Well, you could always remove multiple attacks existing and compress them all into one big attack.

My preferred baked in crit/fumble system comes from Twilight:2013.  Every roll has them baked in because you add your margin of success (how much you exceed a successful roll) or margin of failure to the outcome. Additional successes (issa dice pool system) add 2 per additional success to the margin.  A margin of more than 5 is an obvious success and a margin of failure of more than 5 is catastrophic.

So - for example when you roll to hit ( let's say your skill level gives you 3 d20s) and you need to roll under 12 to hit against a certain opponent, and you roll 14, 8, 6, 18. You have two successes. The lowest (6) gives you a margin of 6 and the 2nd adds 2 more. Let's say your weapon does damage of 4 -  so your damage is 4 plus the 8 from your margin of success.  There is no 2x damage from crits likes in D&D, but the fact that your margin was more than 5 effectively results in 2x damage and additional successes bumps it up further.

Likewise, let's say you're trying to bribe a guildmaster and you need a 7 or lower but your roll is a 15. You effectively fumble so not only is your bribe not accepted, but they report you to the city watch.

Quote from: Fheredin on September 24, 2023, 09:39:17 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 23, 2023, 09:21:40 PM

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.

If you have the skill to half-sword, it won't damage; the trick is to grip tightly so the blade doesn't slip.

In a controlled sparring situation, where neither person is trying to kill the other, sure.
But what about a situation where the other guy is actively trying to kill you? Where you might trip on a rut and fall on your sword? Where you're pumped full of adrenaline and afraid for your life?
I'm not into fencing or martial recreations, but I can easily believe that an earnest fight to the death is a very different environment than a friendly spar. One with far more opportunities for "fumbles" that can harm the attacker.

Quote from: Persimmon on September 24, 2023, 10:13:56 AM
Also, if you're worried about fighter types being too penalized at higher levels, you can have some kind of spell failure system for casters.  We have this and it works okay but you can of course allow for the caster to make a save or attribute check to avoid it.  This works well in Castles & Crusades where the built-in Siege Engine lets you do pretty such anything seamlessly.  So if the foes rolls a nat 20 on the save or spell resistance negates a spell, the caster makes a siege check and if they fail that, the spell failure roll applies.

Alternatively, I could not punish anyone for playing the game and using their character's abilities.

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 22, 2023, 09:21:44 PM
Criticals and Fumbles area a chance to add spice to combat, so its not just two guys beating on each other.
I have Criticals give the player a free stunt in addition to their damage. Player Fumbles give enemy a free stunt.

No part of this is a problem that crits / fumbles are needed to solve, nor are they a particularly good solution in the first place.

I don't agree with Domina, but that actually sparked a thought.  What problem do crits/fumbles fix?  The problem is that, especially in 1E, combat is boring as a martial class.  Hit, damage, hit, damage, all day long forever.  Nothings else every happens.  (yes, I know that's an exaggeration, but not a big one)  Crits and fumbles at least give variety to the experience.

Quote from: Mishihari on September 26, 2023, 12:47:43 PM
I don't agree with Domina, but that actually sparked a thought.  What problem do crits/fumbles fix?  The problem is that, especially in 1E, combat is boring as a martial class.  Hit, damage, hit, damage, all day long forever.  Nothings else every happens.  (yes, I know that's an exaggeration, but not a big one)  Crits and fumbles at least give variety to the experience.

Yes.  However, if done well (I know, a big "IF"), then they can serve another purpose: They can bridge the gap between escalating hit point protection and fear of death in the system.  They aren't the only way to do that, but they do provide another lever.

In a system, I typically do not want either the "death at any moment from almost anything" vibe (no matter how realistic, nor the "jump off a 50 foot high bridge onto rocks because I've got the hit points to survive" vibe (no matter how much it hits the big damn heroes thing).  I want something in between, with "good enough" simulation of the world, some emulation of the fantastical heroes--where death is rare but it can still happen unexpectedly.  Which is why, like a lot of people, I enjoyed AD&D the most in that level 5-7 range, with some forays a bit lower or higher depending on which way I wanted to tip the scales.  I also want relatively simply handling in the mechanics, so that casual players can enjoy the game, with some appreciation of the odds, and thus have a bit of that fear that they could die, and act accordingly. 

If you are running fantasy Vietnam with low-level B/X or AD&D in a dungeon, then adding critical hits are piling on.  The system doesn't need it.  The players are already expecting to die.  If you tack them on to a game with 3 get out of death free cards and hit points out the wazoo, then they are just fake death sugar--pretending the game is more deadly than it is, but none of the participants believe it.  A happy balance somewhere in the middle is where critical hits can shine.

   

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 26, 2023, 01:29:15 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on September 26, 2023, 12:47:43 PM
I don't agree with Domina, but that actually sparked a thought.  What problem do crits/fumbles fix?  The problem is that, especially in 1E, combat is boring as a martial class.  Hit, damage, hit, damage, all day long forever.  Nothings else every happens.  (yes, I know that's an exaggeration, but not a big one)  Crits and fumbles at least give variety to the experience.

Yes.  However, if done well (I know, a big "IF"), then they can serve another purpose: They can bridge the gap between escalating hit point protection and fear of death in the system.  They aren't the only way to do that, but they do provide another lever.

In a system, I typically do not want either the "death at any moment from almost anything" vibe (no matter how realistic, nor the "jump off a 50 foot high bridge onto rocks because I've got the hit points to survive" vibe (no matter how much it hits the big damn heroes thing).  I want something in between, with "good enough" simulation of the world, some emulation of the fantastical heroes--where death is rare but it can still happen unexpectedly.  Which is why, like a lot of people, I enjoyed AD&D the most in that level 5-7 range, with some forays a bit lower or higher depending on which way I wanted to tip the scales.  I also want relatively simply handling in the mechanics, so that casual players can enjoy the game, with some appreciation of the odds, and thus have a bit of that fear that they could die, and act accordingly. 

If you are running fantasy Vietnam with low-level B/X or AD&D in a dungeon, then adding critical hits are piling on.  The system doesn't need it.  The players are already expecting to die.  If you tack them on to a game with 3 get out of death free cards and hit points out the wazoo, then they are just fake death sugar--pretending the game is more deadly than it is, but none of the participants believe it.  A happy balance somewhere in the middle is where critical hits can shine.

Yeah; this is pretty much my position.  I like them to keep things interesting and dangerous.  As an example, last year we were playing Castles & Crusades and all the PCs were 6th-7th level.  They were pretty much cruising through the adventure until a 2nd level foe got lucky and inflicted a pretty vicious critical.  It didn't kill the PC, but it was definitely a wake-up call.  Additionally, crits can greatly speed up combat, especially against higher level foes, where, at least in old school D&D, it can just become a long drudgery of hit point attrition as your fighter is doing d8+4 or whatever against foes with over 100 HP.

Along these lines I also like save or die mechanics and Con checks after resurrection magic.  It's nice to have real stakes.  I also dislike meta-currencies like fate points, luck points, etc., as I think most games already have that stuff baked into the mechanics.

Finally, this discussion has persuaded me to go ahead and pull the trigger on Rolemaster Unified.  While I don't think it will be our main game, I do love those crit, fumble and failure tables...

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 25, 2023, 11:20:52 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on September 24, 2023, 09:39:17 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on September 23, 2023, 09:21:40 PM

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.

If you have the skill to half-sword, it won't damage; the trick is to grip tightly so the blade doesn't slip.

In a controlled sparring situation, where neither person is trying to kill the other, sure.
But what about a situation where the other guy is actively trying to kill you? Where you might trip on a rut and fall on your sword? Where you're pumped full of adrenaline and afraid for your life?
I'm not into fencing or martial recreations, but I can easily believe that an earnest fight to the death is a very different environment than a friendly spar. One with far more opportunities for "fumbles" that can harm the attacker.

No, that makes no difference.

A bit of terminology. Half-swording is a technique where you grab your own sword blade and use it to gain precision when thrusting. There are also variants where you grab the blade with both hands and use the pommel and guard as a blunt impact instrument, so you can actually put a significant amount of force into a half-swording grip. Because you are the one holding your own sword, combat and non-combat makes no difference with this technique; you're either gripping the sword tightly enough or you aren't. It's possible the opponent will strike your sword and it will slide down into your hand, but that's not a fumble; that's the opponent landing a hit.

Commanding a sword is a technique where you grab the other guy's sword by the blade. I am absolutely sure that commanding the sword in live combat can result in significant injury, even if executed perfectly...but the entire point is to trade a cut to the hand (if you grabbed it after a solid parry, the cut is probably not that large) for a potentially fatal strike. Again, this isn't a fumble injury; it's a strategic trade.

The last thing to mention here is the chance of falling over. That's possible, especially on uneven terrain with branches and stuff on it, but fencing stances are more stable than walking positions because the feet have to be further apart. This is especially true for cutting swords; modern thrusting foils put you in aggressively oblique angles because that decreases your target area and increases your lunging potential. However, foil fencing is literally in a straight line; this isn't very realistic. Cutting swords need your feet to be at a shallower angle to develop power in a swing and to move in two dimensions.

In so many words, a saber fencing stance is more stable than a foil fencing stance, which is more stable than a walking stance.

I like crits both against players and when players do them.  I've never been happy with critical fumbles.  If you're playing a game where a critical hit means strict double damage, then a critical miss should logically erase your next hit.  Since this means you'll spend the next round doing something else, you could instead assign something like, -5 to hit until the end of the next turn.

But this never seems to be what critical misses turn into.  Frequently they turn into points to shit on the player characters, turning them into comedic points as they (5% of the time, mind you) stab themselves, cut their suspenders, become maimed permanently, etc.  If the game needs that mechanic, it needs two other things- 

1- A critical hit table.  This is so that 80% of the time you roll a 1, you get an effect substantially less than "you miss your next attack", stacking all the crazy stuff into that 20%.  You can modify this by several things, but if your goal is to make it so that every character on the field takes a small chance of wrecking themselves every time they attack, it needs to be much smaller than 5%.

2- Something that doesn't raw proc on attacks.  A wizard running an attack cycle for 1000 rounds should have the same or more critical failures as a fighter running an attack cycle for 1000 rounds.  If your fighter is dual wield short sword specialist with high base attack or however your game models that, his 8 attacks or whatever still need to generates the same or fewer bad results as the wizard over those 1000 attacks.  Because he's better with a sword, and most critical hit tables just almost guarantee that he tears himself several new assholes per round as he becomes supernaturally adept at rapid attacks.  So basically, the table needs to incorporate competency however that happens.