Saturday 30 April 2011

One-Page Crits & Fumbles

I realized that since the first of my one-page graphic play aids got posted here, I'd developed a couple more we use in the Trossley game that I hadn't shared with the class. Both are based on a rough mapping of 2d6, take the lower, to anatomical results. Here's the first one: crits and fumbles, a further working-out of the system I shared previously.

The point of 1 page, 18 point is you shouldn't have to click to enlarge...
I find that neither natural 1's nor natural 20's should be apocalyptic in their results. If they add some craziness and unpredictability to combat, that's good.

The only dangling end is what happens when a missile weapon fumbles. I've been applying the results but it's clear that some of them don't make sense. It's hard to see how a fumbled bowshot could stun you about the head, for instance - leaving aside the incident last night where a notably hapless henchman had a fumbled sling wrap around his head and spent the next round untying it. Any ideas from those of you who use fumbles?

4 comments:

  1. Oh, I like this. I'm always looking out for a good critical hit/fumble table, and this is the best I've seen. Simple, effective, and it looks nice too. I'll give it a test-run in my next game.

    Thanks.

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  2. Nice.

    So the next thing is to make something 8.5 x 11 that has this AND a gazillion other house rules on it

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  3. @Simon - Thanks! Let me know how it goes ...
    @Zak - thanks - If I get about 3 more of these (for things the players should know in combat' the one-page encounter system is more for the DM) it would indeed make a neat 6-panel Powerpoint printout. Although at the table I tend to have full-page copies of the chart lying around, and it's useful to make it readable at a distance.

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  4. Most bow injuries in real life are self inflicted wounds dealing with loading arrows. An eye would could easily result from an arrow shattering as it's fired.

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