broken foot.

[Person_Man]

Let this be a lesson to you. Always "Take 10" on any check that is not threatened or rushed.

[razorback]

it was a DC5 check, and i rolled a 1. for my critical fumble check, i rolled a 2

I do not support skilled warriors having a full 5% to fail trivially simple tasks and sustain lasting injuries. 0.5% perhaps, or less, but 5%?)

A 1-in-20 failure chance actually sounds about right to me for kicking down a door with your foot

It was a 1 in 20, or 5%, to see if he potentially failed.
There was a second roll, 1 in 10, that he did.
Maybe a math wiz can give the actual percentages, but that would seem to be .5% on the surface. Even if it was 5 or less on the second die (which is what I use for fumbles), that should be about 1.25% chance.
In a realistic, even for fantasy game, that seems to lean towards being generous even if it isn't RAW.

[ericgrau]

1 in 100 is still too often. If people injured themselves that often in any occupation they'd be out of a job in short order. You need osteoperosis for numbers like that. It's not a problem that a strong person should have to worry about.

Even considering a collegiate athlete with constant heavy violent activity the rate of injury is 3.2% per year. Per year. After thousands and thousands of actions.

This is why fumble rules tend to suck. They take a hero and turn him into a clumsy injure prone stooge. Pretty soon he spends much of the campaign in frustration. It seems fine for 1 roll but after 100 rolls it just isn't worth it and it's time to switch to whatever class doesn't have fumble rules. After all if this injury lasts 100 rolls then he might get another by the time it's up.

[Urpriest]

I can't tell: is this written for humorous irony, or quite serious?

3.5 has been out of print for a long time, I tend to assume that anyone DMing these days has ironed out the kinks in a sensible manner until proven otherwise. Sure I'm pretty often proven otherwise, but this seems a more charitable position.

[Axier]

The ONLY time I would use a fumble chart of any kind would be when using a Bell Curve roll style, when the chances of a critical failure are 0.5%, roughly 1 out of every 200 rolls.

As a side note, I also love the Bell Curve system for critical hit builds, because investing into critical hits offers a building increase in the probability of scoring a critical hit. You will score a critical hit MOST of the time if you can get your threat range anywhere near 10-14.

[Chess435]

Player: I rolled a 1. Bah.
DM: Roll a d20 to see how bad it is.
Player: Another 1!
DM: OK, that's "hit self instead of target", let's roll a d100 to see exactly what happens.
DM: Hmm, a 37. The hammer bounces off the door and into your face. You die.

Epitaph: Killed by an unlocked door.

I bet that exactly that has happened to someone playing Nethack.

[Knaight]

Policemen are generally in excellent physical shape, but they still use a Portable Ram on doors instead of their steel-toed jack-boots.

This isn't because they are in any danger of breaking their foot, but because the ram simply opens the door better. Feet aren't that fragile.

It was a 1 in 20, or 5%, to see if he potentially failed.
There was a second roll, 1 in 10, that he did.
Maybe a math wiz can give the actual percentages, but that would seem to be .5% on the surface. Even if it was 5 or less on the second die (which is what I

Putting aside how we don't know what the actual second minimum was, though 5 seems more likely than 2 given the DC of the door, .5% is the absolute lowest, with 1.25% being probable. Now, lets say that one kicks a door once per day for a year. That creates a 84% chance of breaking one's foot at least once at the .5% level, and a 99% chance of breaking one's foot at least once at the 1.25% level. This is with deliberate kicking of a door, in which one's foot is placed in much better position to not get injured than when, say, stubbing a toe. This is wearing shoes at the very least, and quite possibly wearing armored boots. The rates over one year are completely absurd.

[dextercorvia]

I'm guessing this fails the critical failure test. I forget who came up with it, but it goes something like: Line up 10 1st level Warriors next to 10 training dummies. Have them train for 1 minute. If anyone is maimed, unconscious, or dead at the end of that time, the DM has to eat a copy of the critical failure rules.

[hennasmith]

The way we play with my group, something similar would have happened with rolls like that. Probably not broken bones though. More like, foot slipped as you were kicking and you fell face first against the door, or fell on your butt. Something embarassing perhaps, but a bit more realistic.

Generally, with us at least, the only time crit fails for stuff like this result in injuries is if you're using a weapon, or doing something dangerous (like running naked through a thicket of thorns ).

[HunterColt22]

The way we play with my group, something similar would have happened with rolls like that. Probably not broken bones though. More like, foot slipped as you were kicking and you fell face first against the door, or fell on your butt. Something embarassing perhaps, but a bit more realistic.

Generally, with us at least, the only time crit fails for stuff like this result in injuries is if you're using a weapon, or doing something dangerous (like running naked through a thicket of thorns ).

Instant catheter. On subject though I agree crit fails apply in combat due to the fact that is far more common place, and when you botch, someone or something is going to break. Things like kicking a door in... Eh it should be more you get demoted to tired, or strength of a sponge status for that try.

[Lord Tyger]

I'm guessing this fails the critical failure test. I forget who came up with it, but it goes something like: Line up 10 1st level Warriors next to 10 training dummies. Have them train for 1 minute. If anyone is maimed, unconscious, or dead at the end of that time, the DM has to eat a copy of the critical failure rules.

Let's see. We know that his rolls were a 1 and a 2. To start with the 1, there's a five percent chance of that happening on any roll, or, one might expect it to happen once every twenty rolls. Level 1 warriors will presumably be making one attack a turn each, each turn, assuming they're not also practicing full defense or anything like that. One minute is six rounds, so that's a total of sixty rolls, and three expected critical failures. But we don't know the actual table to determine what happens, so it's hard to say.

[Keld Denar]

One minute is 10 rounds, or 100 man-rounds, so statistically, there would be 5 fumbles. If there is a 20% chance to confirm (a roll of 1-4), then only one of those fumbles would confirm. A common human soldier with 10-11 str and con deals 1d8 with a long sword and has 8 hp. That's only a 1-8 chance that he will stagger himself and be in danger of bleeding out. He would have to hit himself more than once to knock himself out, unless he could fruit himself, which would be even less likely.

No, it would take a bit more than 10 guys and a minute, depending on the exact nature of the rules. Or it could happen to all 10 guys in the first round. Dice are funny like that.

[blazinghand]

One minute is 10 rounds, our 100 man-rounds, so statistically, there would be 5 fumbles. If there is a 20% chance to confirm (a roll of 1-4), then only one of those fumbles would confirm. A common human soldier with 10-11 str and con deals 1d8 with a long sword and has 8 hp. That's only a 1-8 chance that he will stagger himself and be in danger of bleeding out. He would have to hit himself more than once to knock himself out, unless he could fruit himself, which would be even less likely.

No, it would take a bit more than 10 guys and a minute, depending on the exact nature of the rules. Or it could happen to all 10 guys in the first round. Dice are funny like that.

The idea of 10 swordsmen all striking themselves with their weapons in the first 6 seconds of sparring with scarecrows is hilarious.

Either way, critical fumble rules hurt some characters a lot more than others. If you're playing a high-dexterity rogue with two-weapon fighting, you might be pumping out 4 attacks per round (when you can full attack) at level 10, 5 if the party mage casts haste on you. In a 4-5 round combat, you're likely roll a 1, though you probably won't "confirm" by missing the target's AC. If you're up against a high-AC enemy and are spamming attacks in hopes of rolling a natural 20 and getting through to his juicy HP, though, you might end up confirming a high percentage of your attacks and punching yourself with a dagger for 1d4 damage, or stabbing yourself in the foot, or whatever the rules entail.

In terms of fumbling house rules, they should be designed to be fun and sensible. If we're talking about making an ability or skill check in a situation where you can't take 10, like trying to swim away from a horrible monstrous octopus while wearing breastplate armor, the consequences of failure should already be dire enough. No need for a critical fumble, failing your check IS a fumble.

If we're taking about a situation that would otherwise be harmless ("I search the bookshelf"), I don't think adding a critical fumble where you fall and the shelf falls on you, brutally rushing your arm 0.5% of the time... I don't think a 1 out of 200 chance to get maimed when performing a mundane task adds anything in terms of fun. If you enjoy the house rule and your DM does as well, that's fine, but fumbles typically increase the odds for random badness to happen.

[Kantolin]

I've found that critical fumble tables greatly encourage people to avoid them as much as possible.

If 'attacking more often' tends to result in a fumble, people tend to avoid making characters who swing a bunch of times, avoid taking more swings, and in the case of mostly casters, tend to avoid that nasty kills-you d20 as much as possible.

So the wizard will cast fireball (Or hold person, or glitterdust, or wall of whatzit) as much as possible and let the mundanes be the ones who trip into their faces and stab themselves every few minutes.

Otherwise you get random time outs. Although to be fair, I have played in games where the death count was ludicrously high, and they dealt with it the same way I've dealt with critical fumbles: By losing 99% of the interest in my character. I mean meh, you can just make a new character.

Aaaanyway! I believe a heal check should work - that's the kind of thing you'd presume the skill is for. So check to see if that's sufficient.

[Kantolin]

A common human soldier with 10-11 str and con deals 1d8 with a long sword and has 8 hp.

Actually, don't NPCs have half max for first level, thus the common soldiers would have 4hp and thus a ~50% chance of becoming unconscious if they did strike themselves?

Not to mention taking 1~3 damage when you have 4hp is pretty serious. Nobody likes losing 1/4 of their hp in one action.

[robertbevan]

wow. i'm shocked at the amount of attention this has received.

yes, we're probably doing things wrong. our group consists of me and one other guy (the DM) who just picked up 3.5 again after not having played it for over a decade, and two more guys who hadn't played it at all before. since then, we've been playing for a couple of years, but still haven't gotten all the rules ironed out in our heads.

we drink when we play, and a lot of times we just make stuff up on the fly to keep the game rolling along.

someone above asked me why i didn't take 10 to kick the door in. that would be for the same reason i didn't try the knob first. my half-orc barbarian tends to be kind of impulsive. i rolled a one. i think at some point in the past, we figured out that critical fumbles don't happen on skill checks, but then we forgot again. it's more fun for us.

but that confirmation roll, now that i think back about it, shouldn't have confirmed. i have a +3 modifier to strength. i'll bring that up with the DM, and probably get it retconned. after all, breaking my foot came pretty close to the end of the session.

thank you all for your contributions.

[Keld Denar]

There is no such thing as"doing it wrong" if you are having fun. I personally don't think cut fumbles are fun, but if you do, awesome. Sometimes they can make for memorable stories like this one, and sometimes they don't.

[Gavinfoxx]

wow. i'm shocked at the amount of attention this has received.

Just remember: there aren't fumbles in this game. They were removed for this edition. Therefore, all fumbles are house rules.

A roll of a 1 on an attack is NOT a fumble. It is a miss. A roll on a 1 of a save is NOT a fumble. It is a failure to save.

[Knaight]

One minute is 10 rounds, or 100 man-rounds, so statistically, there would be 5 fumbles. If there is a 20% chance to confirm (a roll of 1-4), then only one of those fumbles would confirm.

A better way to look at it: Every person-round there is a 1% chance to fumble, assuming a 20% confirming check. The chance of absolutely no fumbles after 100 rounds is .99^100, or 36.6%. By five minutes, the chance has dropped to 0.66%. This means a 63.4% or 99.54% chance of at least one fumble, respectively. Even with the .5% chance minimum, there is a 40% chance of at least one injury in 1 minute, and a 92% chance of at least one injury in five minutes.

[Keld Denar]

Never said it wasn't possible, just that the odds of one guy in 10 killing himself in a minute is low. dextercorvia's example was a little bit of an exaggeration.

[robertbevan]

just ran it by the DM.

he said it wasn't a critical fumble. he said my first roll of 1 meant that i hit the door at such an awkward angle that i had to make a saving throw (an item saving throw on my foot), which i failed with my roll of 2.

the DC check to kick the door open was 5.
the AC of the door was 10.

i don't know. it's starting to sound a little wonky to me.

[Urpriest]

he said it wasn't a critical fumble. he said my first roll of 1 meant that i hit the door at such an awkward angle that i had to make a saving throw (an item saving throw on my foot), which i failed with my roll of 2.

That's the definition of a critical fumble.

[Keld Denar]

There are two different mechanics here that he is confuzzling.

Breaking the door is a straight Str check. You roll. You add Str. If your roll + Str is higher, you win, and the door opens.

Attacking the door is different. You don't make an attack roll (you can't miss, and even if you could, it would only have an AC of 5 (no dex)). You just roll damage. You subtract hardness (if any). You compare your damage to the HP of the door. If the damage is higher, you bust up the door in some significant way so that it isn't a door. If the damage is lower, you hit it again, subtract hardness, and total the damage together.

It sounds to me like you were trying to burst the door with a Str check. You failed, and your DM treated it as a "crit fail". You rolled again to confirm, which should be against the same DC of 5. You succeeded. That should be the end of the story.

Generally, significant failures with skill/ability checks are only when you fail by 5 or more. Like, for climbing. If the DC is 10, and you get a 7 total, you fail, but you don't fall. If you get a 3, you fall. If the DC is 5, then you'd have to roll a total of 0 to result in a significant failure. 1 isn't an auto fail for skill/ability checks.

[AlchemicalMyst]

i don't know. it's starting to sound a little wonky to me.

That's because it is haha.

I had a DM just like this once. I rolled a 1 on an attack and suddenly my heavily enchanted mercurial greatsword flew out of my hands and across the room impaling our cleric and nearly killing him. Some GMs just like causing players trouble

[Kantolin]

yes, we're probably doing things wrong.

Can't be if everyone's having fun. ^_^

If everyone is having fun, then you are doing it correctly. You are playing the game to have fun, after all - and this is true even if 'fun' for you implies being heroic, running from eldritch horrors, dying every two seconds from overpowered encounters, curbstomping all enemies in underpowered encounters, or indeed having your character break his ankle for kicking a door. I mean... however you play is absolutely great if you are having fun doing it.

and a lot of times we just make stuff up on the fly to keep the game rolling along.

This is also what most people do. Generally in my group when a rule question comes up, it.... okay generally it ends up annoyingly bogging things down, but in /theory/ it gets a quick reasonable-sounding ruling and then we proceed, and look at it in detail when we're not mid game.

That said, however, you may want to look at this rule. "I kick the door" => "You break your ankle for the forseeable future" doesn't sound like it particularly enhances the fun.

...I guess it means now your character has incentive to open doors rather than kick them open? I guess?

[Slipperychicken]

No, it would take a bit more than 10 guys and a minute, depending on the exact nature of the rules. Or it could happen to all 10 guys in the first round. Dice are funny like that.

I thought the original test was 50 level 1 Warriors lined up, attacking dummies for an hour.


It makes more sense that way. Then you can show your DM "Dude. Your fumble rules are so f***ing stupid that every basic training session would leave X people dead, Y people wounded, and Z people with broken limbs."

[dextercorvia]

dextercorvia's example was a little bit of an exaggeration.

Most likely. I remembered the idea, not the details. My Prob-fu is strong enough that I could have figured out the numbers to make it work in this case, but just picked numbers that sounded good instead.

Slipperychicken may have the right of it.

[TuggyNE]

just ran it by the DM.

he said it wasn't a critical fumble. he said my first roll of 1 meant that i hit the door at such an awkward angle that i had to make a saving throw (an item saving throw on my foot), which i failed with my roll of 2.

the DC check to kick the door open was 5.
the AC of the door was 10.

i don't know. it's starting to sound a little wonky to me.

It is wonky; as mentioned, the door's AC is not 10 at all (10 -5 Dex +0 size = 5 for Medium immobile door), and given that the only way you could fail a DC 5 check with a +3 modifier is by rolling a 1, there's no particularly obvious reason for making unusually horrible things happen on failure (which, also as mentioned, is the definition of a critical fumble, which this was). That is, if you have a task that is so easy you can do it 95% of the time with no difficulty, why would you suddenly have a substantial chance to injure yourself the other 5% of the time? It would be vastly more reasonable to assume that your foot just glanced off, you slipped and caught yourself, or something similar; even a 1 in 10 chance of actually injuring yourself on failure is high (i.e. 0.5% overall, my initial ballparked high end), but a saving throw implies maybe a 1 in 3 or 1 in 2 chance (or 2.5%), which is just not so.

And that's for relatively minor injuries like stubbing a toe or spraining your ankle. Actually breaking your foot on a door that easy is probably almost impossible; if you had anywhere near enough force to break your foot, it would have popped the latch first unless you were amazingly unlucky — we're talking maybe 1 in 10000, 1 in 100000 now. (Who seriously tries to kick a door open at the hinges?)

My Prob-fu is strong enough that I could have figured out the numbers to make it work in this case, but just picked numbers that sounded good instead.

Edit: My own and dextercorvia's initial mistaken estimates actually demonstrate an important reality: even someone decently good at probability is likely to mess up with random ballparked numbers unless they take the time to think things out. And someone who really isn't too solid at it? They're highly likely to pick random "plausible" numbers, and end up with something that doesn't make much sense at all. E.g., breaking your foot every 40th time you kick something.

[Dirka]

I am the DM in question. Generally the players have been able to kick open doors willy-nilly because they don't need to roll to hit; rolling to hit a door is pretty silly. However I purposely and pointedly stated that this door looked solid and sturdy. Said player decided to kick it instead of trying the handle ;-)

So I opted, due to the incredibly strong condition of the door, to have him, in this particular case, roll a DC check. He rolled a 1. If he hadn't rolled a 1 nothing would have happened. But okay, I decided that his foot should make an item saving throw DC 5. So the second roll was his item saving throw DC 5 (DC 2 +3 because of the extra force of his STR behind his foot). He failed by 3. So I made the DM judgement that he broke his foot.

I see that ericgrau is essentially enraged by my decision, so I must admit to 1) being confused since this is a game and 2) being glad that he is not in my group. And I want to address the rules rules rules talk on this page by asking why you play pad and paper instead of console or PC. Computer games are absolute sticklers for rules :-)

Anyways that's the story. If it is that horrible I suppose I'll just have to stick to the rules and never ever allow anybody to get hurt again. :-D

[Slipperychicken]

I am the DM in question. Generally the players have been able to kick open doors willy-nilly because they don't need to roll to hit; rolling to hit a door is pretty silly. However I purposely and pointedly stated that this door looked solid and sturdy. Said player decided to kick it instead of trying the handle ;-)

Busting doors open is actually a Strength check with a DC based on the door's quality. So they should have been rolling, but for a pretty high Str check, not an attack roll (unless they wanted to attack the doors, in which case they would have Hardness to overcome, and many attack/damage rolls to make).