Hi /tg/, I have kind of a silly question.
I remember playing d&d a long time ago and me and my brother had a running joke, where, if you rolled a 1 or some low value while attacking an enemy it meant, "ohhh you fucked up really hard" (even though the low roll didn't have a meaningful impact on the outcome of the attack because we weren't taking it that seriously.)
Now, I basically understand that you could contrive some way of determining an "extra-bad" outcome of an event if someone rolled poorly or made a series poor rolls for a skill check in some given context.
However, I was thinking of Arthur Dayne from GoT as an example, since I guess he's intended as "a really good swordsman"etc, and was wondering if you would as a ref allow him to make some incredibly clumsy mistake in a fight (like he accidentally flung his sword away and it hit his mother in the eye even though she wasn't there) if his character happened to roll poorly? Or, in other words, where do you "draw the line" for determining what's possible/impossible for a skill check given a specific context? Would you refuse to allow something like to happen if you felt it was immersion breaking? Or, on the contrary, would you go out of your way to make an outcome as outlandish as this seem plausible to your players?
Sorry if that's not clear at all or just stupid, I'm excited to hear your thoughts! Thanks!
/tg/ tends to hate fumbles on 1s (along with critical successes on skill checks).
Think of it this way. A trained but novice swordsman, making 1 attack per turn, has a 5% chance of rolling a 1 and hurting himself. And a highly skilled swordsman, making 5 attacks per turn, has a 25% chance of rolling a 1 and fumbling an attack? That's ridiculous.
>>47719457
This. Its already enough that the incredibly skilled swordsman already failed their swing against an easy target, but forcing them to stab themselves in the foot or whatever is just retarded.
So you would say, in that case, that rolling a 1 was (presumably) just an unsuccessful attack with no special significance attached to it?
>>47719457
>>47719499
Thanks!!! Although, I am curious (or have to think about more) of devising/learning about some system for rolling that would accurately (or at least plausibly) take into account extremely unlikely outcomes, because it seems that a 1/20 chance is too high in the first place, and as you say the "higher- rate- of- rolling- on- account- of- skill" causes the improbable outcome to balloon up to something ridiculous.
Depending upon the difference in skill between 2 characters, such as the novice swordsman fighting the highly skilled swordsman, I would either void any consequence of the skilled swordsman rolling a 1 entirely against the novice, or only have the skilled swordsman face an actual consequence if (in the event of rolling a 1) the novice rolled a 20.
My reasoning behind that is because individuals operating at a higher skill level do not often make mistakes and when they do, do not necessarily make them obvious to anyone lacking proficiency in their skill and/or are able to recover/learn from their mistakes quickly. The novice should benefit from being able to perceive and capitalize on the mistake made by a master.
Maybe roll another d20 to determine how critical the error was. A 1 on the second d20 could result in a disarm or worse depending on your GM.
>>47719370
3.5 is piece of shit edition, but because it's still a popular meme, let me illustrate why fumbles are retarded with it.
Classes with full BAB have 1 attack on level 1 and get 4 attacks on level 20. That means that on level 20 they are four times as likely to roll 1 and break their sword (or cut their hand off or something) as a level 1 character.
>>47719457
Stay in school, kids.
>>47719457
In that case, what should be done instead when a 1 or a 20 is rolled?
>>47720442
The attack doesn't hit. Game moves along. It's not any different to any other miss.
Or if you're playing a comedy shenanigans game the sword turns into a rubber chicken because of magic or something.
It's not rocket science, just do whatever's fun for the type of game you're playing.
You roll again on a nat 20, and if your roll is above their AC then you crit. Same for a nat 1, if you roll a nat 1 and then roll very shitty again, it's a crit fail. Still doesn't help explain why a higher level with more attacks would crit fail more often, unless you just make the fail confirm easier to pass for a higher level.
Also, in all likelyhood, failing an attack roll would just make you drop your sword on the ground, not fling it across the fucking room.
>>47720354
Thank you, I'm glad I wasn't the only one bothered by that.
>>47719370
1s should be auto you hit yourself, we have a custom d100 critical failure table for combat, just like instead of just X2 x3 dam we have a critical success table.
If you have multiple attacks you auto finish your full attack on that 1 and suffer the consequences eg drop weapon, have weapon stuck in door/tree ground as appropriate, weapon breaks, only on a 90+ are you stabbing a team member nearby or failing over. The tables have a lot of Leaway so the dm can add to the story appropriatly.
Critical failure and success are the crazy elements of fun that add variety to you attack you hit; deal damage.
>>47720442
Reroll to confirm critical hit or success :)
Doing two 1 or 20 in a row is much rarer than only one.
My group ignores fumbles and just treats them as a low roll.
To avoid iteratives messing people up I houseruled you needed more than half of your rolls to be 1s to be a crit fail.
The gunslinger still blew her own hand off in the grand finale with her three iterative attacks.Her second attack was a crit, which made the BBEG flinch for long enough to drop the world ending spell.
