Best Version of DnD?

[BlazingTornado]

Yeah "roll to confirm" is a pretty terrible concept IMO, you either crit or you botch. Then again I think improved crit-ranges are also a silly thing.

Another thing I loathe is botch rules where a player who wasn't rolling at all is affected.

 

In my game a crit is as described in the PHB, a "roll twice your amount of damage dice" (one extra dice if you're a half-orc), and a botch is just things going a bit bad for you. Your spell minorly backfires on you, your weapon slips out of your hand and lands some 10 feet away, you trip and fall prone, or your weapon bounces back in your face... sometimes a weapon might break, and any damage caused as a result of a botch never really goes over a 1d4 roll.

It's an inconvenience, it puts the player in a temporary position of weakness, but it's never a thing where "there's a 5% chance the entire encounter, or even the campaign itself, is about to be elfed up the astral plane hole".

[Unruly]

11 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

You do realize that any spell where you need to roll to hit also has a chance of both criticals and fumbles, yes?

 

And that the blast radius spells kind of have fumbles built in  - ask any character that has been caught in his own party's fireball. (It happened a lot in 1st edition AD&D, where the fireball filled a specific volume....) So, instead of having the wizard drop the template where he wants, ask him how far he is throwing it.

 

Some folks are really good at guessing ranges, others... not so much.

 

If you look at the rules for fumbles in Pathinder - fumbles have to be confirmed in the exact same way as criticals.

 

So, if you need a 10 to hit, but rolled a 1, you roll again, and it is only if that second roll is less than 10 that you fumble - if you need a 15 to hit, roll a 1, and then get less than a 15 on the second roll, then it will be a fumble.

 

The harder it is to hit a target, the more likely it is that you will confirm the fumble, and the less likely it will be that you will confirm the critical.

 

It is not an automatic fumble as soon as you roll a 1, anymore than it is an automatic critical when you roll a 20.

 

And the official rules only allow a character to have a single fumble in any single battle.

 

And yet, the spells that are most valuable in combat are almost always Save-Or rather than to-hit, or they're buffing the party. Black tentacles, Fireball, Color Spray, Create Pit, Blindness/Deafness, Grease, Glitterdust, any of the Illusion/Image spells, Haste, Fly, Enlarge Person, etc. I could effectively play a caster without ever putting myself in a situation where I could fumble on casting a spell, because I can be a perfectly capable caster without any spells that require an attack roll. The worst that can happen is someone will save against a spell, which is basically the same as the fighter missing on their attacks. And that doesn't even start to touch the fact that as martial characters get stronger, they become more and more likely to fumble. Even with having a rule that you can only fumble once per battle, a fighter with 5 attacks still has a 1 in 5 chance of fumbling each round as opposed to the person with 1 attack only having a 1 in 20 chance. And while requiring a confirmation for a fumble helps level that out, it's still statistically more likely for the high level fighter to fumble than it is for the low level one because they'll be put in the situation of needing to confirm it much more often.

 

1 hour ago, BlazingTornado said:

Yeah "roll to confirm" is a pretty terrible concept IMO, you either crit or you botch. Then again I think improved crit-ranges are also a silly thing.

Another thing I loathe is botch rules where a player who wasn't rolling at all is affected.

 

In my game a crit is as described in the PHB, a "roll twice your amount of damage dice" (one extra dice if you're a half-orc), and a botch is just things going a bit bad for you. Your spell minorly backfires on you, your weapon slips out of your hand and lands some 10 feet away, you trip and fall prone, or your weapon bounces back in your face... sometimes a weapon might break, and any damage caused as a result of a botch never really goes over a 1d4 roll.

It's an inconvenience, it puts the player in a temporary position of weakness, but it's never a thing where "there's a 5% chance the entire encounter, or even the campaign itself, is about to be elfed up the astral plane hole".

 

See, in older editions, the two I bolded were pretty damning situations. Your weapon landing 10ft away from you meant that to recover it you would provoke either an AoO from moving away from an enemy, an AoO for picking up an object, or both depending on where it landed. And then you'd have lost your whole turn, because you'd have had to use your move action to go over to your weapon, and your standard action would need to be converted to a second move action to pick it back up. Falling prone gave anyone in melee with you a nice bonus to their attacks while penalizing yours, and you provoked an AoO if you tried to either stand up or crawl away. In 5e, at least, they fixed those both somewhat. Standing up no longer provokes an AoO and only eats half your movement speed, and picking an item up both is no longer an action and no longer provokes an AoO.

 

I'm just really not a fan of fumble rules in D&D. Until spellcasters have equal opportunity to fumble in their standard combat actions, and until being better at your job doesn't make you more likely to fumble, I won't be a fan. They just seem like a way to spit in the face of a bunch of classes that already have problems keeping up in the late game to me. It's like kicking a man when he's already down and unconscious. So to me, if you're going to run fumble rules for melee attacks, any and all spells, even the ones that don't require an attack roll, should have to roll a d20 and on a 1 they fail just like everything else.

[BlazingTornado]

3 minutes ago, Unruly said:

In 5e, at least, they fixed those both somewhat. Standing up no longer provokes an AoO and only eats half your movement speed, and picking an item up both is no longer an action and no longer provokes an AoO.

Yeah, I should also clarify my players are all prepared enough that they all carry at least one back-up weapon.

 

And these aren't determined by a roll table, I usually go by what feels right for the weapon used, the environment, the target, etc, so there's no random determination of this that can result in something horrible (ie a PC falls prone AND HE'S SURROUNDED BY FIVE GHOULS WHO HAVEN'T HAD A TURN IN INITIATIVE YET).

[Unruly]

4 minutes ago, BlazingTornado said:

Yeah, I should also clarify my players are all prepared enough that they all carry at least one back-up weapon.

 

And these aren't determined by a roll table, I usually go by what feels right for the weapon used, the environment, the target, etc, so there's no random determination of this that can result in something horrible (ie a PC falls prone AND HE'S SURROUNDED BY FIVE GHOULS WHO HAVEN'T HAD A TURN IN INITIATIVE YET).

 

That's another thing that 5e sort of fixed. Backup weapons are now actually viable again, as opposed to 3.x where martial characters were forced to specialize pretty heavily, and so if their main weapon suddenly vanished for whatever reason they were severely gimped. Either that, or you carried around a golf bag full of swords to cover every contingency. Sure, may have found that +4 Warhammer, but since you took weapon specialization and greater weapon specialization in longswords, you actually got better results from that +1 Longsword you already have...

[Sylverthorne]

Most of those spells you list have a chance of being completely ineffective, though; a rogue (or, really, anyone with Evasion) can completely ignore most of the AoE spells on a good reflex save. Oh, you dropped a fireball? *dodge* ... Anything the party's rogue can do? The enemy rogue can usually do too. Ahh, Evasion...

This may not be true in 5e, but I would be willing to bet that there are other things that make those spells less effective if the opposition has had time to prepare.

Our casters tend to prefer Summon Monster/Nature's Ally and buff/debuff type spells to pure damage.

 

Weapon cord will sort a thrown weapon, although it makes it hard to change weapons fast.

Full of trade offs.

 

Myself, I like the fumble/crit cards. They're a little less 'WTF just happened!' than some fumble/crit charts I've seen.... (coming from the player who has accidentally had a character light her own pants on fire, and the GM who has watched a character self-decapitate... YMMV).

[Dilvish the Deliverer]

Meh, I got crit/fumbled out back when I played Rolemaster.  I just go with the crit on a twenty (confirm if playing Pathfinder) and a 1 is an auto miss.

[TheAuldGrump]

The problem with that is that it makes the uncommon too common, and makes it just as likely that a wizard with a STR of 8 is going to get a Critical while bopping you with his stick as a fighter with a STR of 18 while wielding his Mighty Axe of Sliciness. (It slices! It dices! And look what it does to this tomato!)

 

The main point of the confirmation roll is to make it so that the combat types are more likely to get a critical hit and less likely to get a fumble.

 

But, and this is important - it is your game - folks have been using 1=Fumble, 20=Critical since long before there was any official method for having criticals or fumbles at all.

 

I think that it may be the first house rule that people come up with, over, and over, and over again..

 

Tomorrow we have eight players in the kids game again, two have come back from vacation - so they are going to be taken as prisoners when the PCs are in their first boarding action.

 

And the local science museum is having a special event on pirates right now.... Focusing on The Whydah. (Slave ship turned pirate ship - sunk off of Cape Cod.)

 

 

Nerds - if the grown ups are as excited about a show on pirates as the kids are... odds are, you're surrounded by nerds. (Hey, I didn't say I wasn't excited too, ya know? ) 

 

The Auld Grump - Next Saturday before the game....

 

 

 

[Doug Sundseth]

I use the standard crit and fumble rules in Pathfinder and 3.5. Which is to say: 20 is an automatic hit, crit with ranges and confirmation, and 1 is an automatic miss.

 

This is largely for the reasons adduced above.

 

Frankly, there's a good argument against using crits at all, since PCs are much more likely to be subject to crits than any NPC* and they dramatically increase the probability of character death. Note: if you like raising characters or creating characters anew, the increase in character death isn't especially important.

 

* Every PC will be on-screen much longer than any NPC, so the probability of receiving a crit is inherently much higher, even for characters not on the front lines.

[TheAuldGrump]

4 hours ago, Doug Sundseth said:

I use the standard crit and fumble rules in Pathfinder and 3.5. Which is to say: 20 is an automatic hit, crit with ranges and confirmation, and 1 is an automatic miss.

 

This is largely for the reasons adduced above.

 

Frankly, there's a good argument against using crits at all, since PCs are much more likely to be subject to crits than any NPC* and they dramatically increase the probability of character death. Note: if you like raising characters or creating characters anew, the increase in character death isn't especially important.

 

* Every PC will be on-screen much longer than any NPC, so the probability of receiving a crit is inherently much higher, even for characters not on the front lines.

For games involving steampunk, pirates, or the far east, I allow characters that would have been killed by critical damage to instead opt to lose a limb or take other lasting damage. For genres where prosthetics are common, it is fairly handy - be they steam powered arms or wooden legs.

 

In the case of the far east, it is an opportunity to show how lethal their weapons can be - and with the magic available in most D&D settings, lasting damage does not necessarily last that long. (Though I have yet to see a character so foolish that, even though they may be missing an eye, they would pop the Eye of Vecna into an empty socket....)

 

The Auld Grump

[Jokemeister]

9 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

The problem with that is that it makes the uncommon too common, and makes it just as likely that a wizard with a STR of 8 is going to get a Critical while bopping you with his stick as a fighter with a STR of 18 while wielding his Mighty Axe of Sliciness. (It slices! It dices! And look what it does to this tomato!)

 

 

This personally never bothered me as a wizard with a STR of 8 doing a critical probably wouldn't even do as much damage as a fighter with a STR of 18 on a normal attack.  

 

The wizard attacking with a staff is doing d6 for damage.  Even doubled, the wizard is only doing 1-11 (2d6-1) damage.  The fighter on a normal attack with a d8 weapon (like a battleaxe) is going to be doing between 5-12 (1d8+4) damage with each attack.  And we haven't even gotten to the multiple attacks per round that fighters get.  

 

Frankly, with those numbers, I'm not concerned about the wizard stealing the fighters melee spotlight.

 

Bear in mind that I haven't played any D&D beyond 2e so all my experience is from an eon ago.

[BlazingTornado]

Besides, wizards are usually going to focus on spellcasting, so if they're going to every now and again bonk an enemy with a quarterstaff, and roll a nat 20, why can't he have the joy of rolling double-damage when the martials do it proportionately more frequently because they're swinging their weapons more often?

[TheAuldGrump]

20 hours ago, BlazingTornado said:

Besides, wizards are usually going to focus on spellcasting, so if they're going to every now and again bonk an enemy with a quarterstaff, and roll a nat 20, why can't he have the joy of rolling double-damage when the martials do it proportionately more frequently because they're swinging their weapons more often?

Well, I never said that the wizard should be bopping bonces with a bo, but....

 

He should have the pleasure - but nowhere near as often. Which is why I prefer the confirmation roll.

 

For that matter, some weapons in 3.X have a greater chance of criticaling - or a higher critical damage when it happens. Longswords have a chance of criting on a 19 or 20, and do double damage - but an ax needs a 20, but deals triple damage when it crits.

 

Elves, of course, have it easier - they can use a longsword or a longbow even when they are wizards.

 

Though in one of the few games of 3.0 where I was a player, instead of a GM, I had a wizard that was a true and deadly menace with a crossbow. (And way, way back in AD&D 1e, I had a wizard with an 18 STR and a 16 INT... as well as an 8 DEX.... He used his staff to bop people on a regular basis. And his fist. And a beer mug, once or twice....)

 

***

 

Got an e-mail from Iain, asking what the rules are for hitting somebody when you are swinging from a rope.... I told him that is what Spring Attack is for, whether on foot or swinging by like Captain Scarlet. (Assuming that a nine year old has any idea who Captain Scarlet is....) If you don't have Spring Attack, you have to stop your movement to attack.

 

Iain's character is a magus - he just got his weapon back last game, and we had no game at all, last week because of the 4th. He is planning to go Blade Bound at 4th level, if I remember properly - which means having him find a Black Blade.

 

(PCs are stripped of all their equipment at the beginning of The Wormwood Mutiny - they have to either earn or steal it back.)

 

So, before too long, I predict that he will be casting Shocking Grasp through his sword, as he careens wildly past his opponents.... (A Magus is a lot of fun to play... one with Spring Attack, even more so.)

 

The Auld Grump

Edited July 11, 2017 by TheAuldGrump

[TheAuldGrump]

Wow, glad I am running the kids game tonight - I was feeling pretty danged annoyed with the world (in particular USPS) and I just had a character trying to steer the person that he was strangling over the rail.... (Small character, who dropped down from the ratlines onto his victim....)

 

Put a smile back on my face.

 

The Auld Grump

[TheAuldGrump]

20 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

Wow, glad I am running th with a Combat Maneuvers roll - at -5e kids game tonight - I was feeling pretty danged annoyed with the world (in particular USPS) and I just had a character trying to steer the person that he was strangling over the rail.... (Small character, who dropped down from the ratlines onto his victim....)

 

Put a smile back on my face.

 

The Auld Grump

For the record - I handled it with a Combat Maneuvers roll - at -5.

 

In spite of the penalty, he came close enough that I gave it to him - sort of - He went over the rail with his victim. (Small character, average STR, vs a Medium pirate, with high STR - it was a good roll, but still a point shy of the target.)

 

He managed to make his way back onto the ship, just as the battle was winding down - and was given The Choice - he had cost the pirates a man, he could either replace the man he killed, or die in turn.

 

The character is a gnome alchemist - with the Pyromaniac racial Trait.... There is no possible way that things can go wrong with a character that throws firebombs on shipboard, is there? (Plus, Pathfinder has rules for adding Alchemist Fire as a material component for Fireball spells... it makes them sticky....)

 

The Auld Grump

[Cranky Dog]

On 7/10/2017 at 0:35 AM, Sylverthorne said:

 

Myself, I like the fumble/crit cards. They're a little less 'WTF just happened!' than some fumble/crit charts I've seen.... (coming from the player who has accidentally had a character light her own pants on fire, and the GM who has watched a character self-decapitate... YMMV).

 

We tried the crit/fumble decks from Pathfinder (even the Fate cards).

 

Though it did add some variety, we also found it slowed the pace of the game, particularly during larger battles. So we dropped them and kept to the basic rules.

 

On 7/10/2017 at 0:00 PM, TheAuldGrump said:

But, and this is important - it is your game - folks have been using 1=Fumble, 20=Critical since long before there was any official method for having criticals or fumbles at all.

 

On 7/10/2017 at 1:04 PM, Doug Sundseth said:

I use the standard crit and fumble rules in Pathfinder and 3.5. Which is to say: 20 is an automatic hit, crit with ranges and confirmation, and 1 is an automatic miss.

Anyone else had the recurring problem of treating *all* 1s and 20s as crits or fumbles? Most notably while using skills.

 

At least Pathfinder does mention that you can succeed on a skill roll of '1' if you have a high enough bonus, but it's not exactly a rules section that stands out. (I don't remember the details for D&D 3.x)