Hey, welcome back to the podcast, the Evil Dungeon Master Universe Podcast.

I am your host, Evil Dungeon Master.

Vince Monday.

It's time for a new podcast.

Hopefully you're doing well out there today.

We got something great for you.

I was looking through some old Dragon magazines and picked up this article on dragon #39 it's called Good hits and Bad misses.

You ever wonder what happens when your sword swing goes from epic to oops?

This episode we're going to take a look at Dragon magazine #39 and Carl Para Greco's critical hits and fumbles.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous, actually, in my opinion.

But my opinion is my opinion.

Maybe you'll like it.

I'll put these two pages in the website right up on the evildm.com so you can check them out.

Or you can go grab Dragon 39 from Internet Archive, where you can find all these magazines and more.

So the evildm.com is my website.

Let's see here.

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With that all out of the way, let's talk about this article.

It is on page 34.

Critical hits and fumbles are probably the most 2 controversial subjects in D&D.

The most common procedure is for a 20 to represent a perfect hit and one through a represent a perfect miss or a critical hit and a fumble respectively.

This is an overly simplistic system and I think it actually works just great to be honest, in my opinion.

But that's not what this article's about, and this seems to be the main problem.

The problem is less severe with a 20s A character strength and dexterity bonuses, along with any magical help coming from a sword and the leg often combined to modify the die roll to or above the magic score of 20.

It doesn't matter in my opinion.

If you roll A20 on the die, that means you get a critical hit.

Dirty 20s, as we call it in my group.

Or over 20 doesn't mean it's a critical hit, it just means you hit better or above, or whatever you need to hit anyway.

Stronger characters have relative better chance at reaching this score.

So do higher level characters, but only because higher level characters will presumably have more powerful magic swords.

Unfortunately, the problem is that the character who can only hit his or her opponent on the role of 20 will get a critical hit as often as one who only needs a 10 or better.

No, wait, it it gets better.

When applied to fumbles, the simple system really falls apart.

A role of a 1 is a fumble.

Period.

Well, yeah, that's true.

An 18/OT00 Strength, an 18 Dexterity, and a + 5 sword.

None of it will help you, or if these will help you then what's the point of having a rule since all one needs is a + 1 dagger to boost any rule of a + 1 up to a + 2 and your worries are over.

No they're not.

This person I don't think understood what the whole thing was about.

Regardless of what your bonuses are, if you roll A1 on the die it is a fumble.

If you roll A20 it is a critical hit.

So they're way overthinking this.

And if there's one is always a fumble, the character will fumble 5% of the time whether he or she is first, 5th, or 15th level.

Yeah, correct.

That's how it works.

The following variance system allows swords and Dexterity to increase the chance for critical and reduce the chances for fumble without eliminating them entirely.

Basically anyone, sorry.

Basically, any swing that hits can be critical, and any swing that misses can be fumble.

Yeah, that's not going to fly.

This is this.

Oh boy.

The higher the die roll, the better the swing and more likely it will be critical.

The system works as follows.

The character rolls the die normally to determine if he or she has hit.

If the roll is a hit, then the minimum score necessary to hit is subtracted from the roll and the result is the percentage chance of it being a critical hit.

If the swing is a miss, the result is subtracted from the minimum score it needed to hit, and that is a chance of a swing being a fumble.

Example if Ferdinand the orc punter with A2 probably probability due to his strength to hit a 2 sword needs a 10 or better to hit a sorghum orc.

He swings and rolls a 14 + 2 for string, +2 for the sword with the final result of an 18 that is a hit.

The chance of it being critical is 18.

The final result -10 the minimum score needed, which is 8, the percentage chance of it being critical.

I'll let you let that sink in for a moment.

So it's an 8% chance of it being critical.

Roll there.

See if you get your 8%.

And then there's a lot.

There's some charts here.

I won't get to those charts in a moment.

Samson, and this is example #2 Samson, numberfinger numfingers has a plus one probability to hit and a + 1 dagger.

He needs an 11 better to hit a bugbear.

He rolls a 4 + 1 + 1 = 6 a miss.

Chances he will fumble is 11 - 6 which is a 5%.

This system is nicely symmetrical and works well.

If the percentages seem too high, you can always half them.

I don't like this system whatsoever.

And why add the more chances of fumbles or hits?

I mean it's just going to overcomplicate an already bogged down system at times.

Which I like combat to go fast.

I don't like to spend too much time on combat and I wouldn't want to do this every single roll.

I'd rather just be a 20 or a one.

Though I will get into my system at the end of this how I handle things.

Which doesn't make it too much complicated, it actually makes it a little bit of fun.

My group likes it.

The tables below are for various kinds of critical hits.

The first table is a primary for swords, but can also be used for polo axis, ox tongues, and other large cutting weapons that pop up occasionally.

The second table is for maces, which with other fun things such as falling rocks being rolled for here if desired.

The table for critical hits against animals is used for all weapons.

The missile fire critical hits table is also for thrusting as Spears and daggers.

The fumble table is also used for all weapons.

Most result in minors, such as losing 1's balance or dropping a weapon, but even the nastier ones such as Hit Self aren't unreasonable to allow for.

If you ever see the SCA tournament, you probably understand how it can happen and how you can probably accidentally hit yourself.

They're not trained.

The SCA is not trained like people back who actually held and wield the sword every day.

But anyway, I I respect the SCA totally because that's pretty badass to be out there in that leather and armor and everything and trying to beat the crap out of each other.

In using the charts, some referees input is necessary.

When fighting an elephant with a dagger, it's not too likely that one of the elephant's legs will be chopped off by a critical hit, so the indiscretion is advised.

Also, a character who is missing an arm or two won't be very in very good condition and likely to bleed to death.

Still, there are instances where the character insists on fighting to the end.

In these cases, the character roll a System Shock check.

If the check is made, he or she can continue fighting, provided he or she has the necessary limbs.

Although one to three points of damage probably could take somebody out.

Let's see.

One to three damage of damage could take each round until something's done and banished up the wound.

Otherwise, you're going to pass out.

If the System Shock roll has failed, the character falls unconscious due to pain for one to 12 rounds.

So the critical hit edge table chart is a percentile chart that goes from double damage, triple damage to things like shield destroyed, eye removed, knee split, shield arm removed at the wrist, at the elbow, at the shoulder, weapon arm removed at the wrist, elbow, shoulder, abdomen injuries, chest injuries.

Let's see here, Throat cut, immediate death, decapitation, immediate death and decapitating.

OK, so the blunt table's a little bit smaller.

Double damage, triple damage, shield broken if there's a shield, weapon struck, arm struck, hit probability -2 to that person, and then head struck.

Dexterity down one to five points permanently it looks like.

Oh, this is 100%.

I apologize.

It does go up to 100.

You can actually crush the skull at 100 and kill whomever it is.

Imagine this table being used in your game and your players are using this table.

But then again, the MPCS are also using this table because whatever's good for the goose is good for the gander.

OK, that's fine.

Let's go to the fumble charts.

So you can kind of see the fumble charts.

Now.

This is a 1 to 100 percentile one through 19.

You slip, roll Dexterity or less than D20.

I'm sorry, less than Roll Dexterity or less than AD 20 or fall and stun for one to four rounds.

OK, that's not so bad.

And then you get another one, you know, roll dexterity, fall and stun for 1D6 rounds, strip and fall stunned off balance, Roll mostly roll dexterity, lose grip on weapon or no attack next round, blah blah blah blah blah.

Weapon knocked away 1D eight direction 1D10 distance away from you.

Weapon breaks, Hit yourself, half damage.

Hit yourself, double damage.

Hit a friend, half hit a friend, double critical hit, self critical, hit friend twist ankle half speed.

Helm slips, rolled dexterity or less to fix probability.

Hit probably -6 until fixed.

Helm slips, rolled dexterity.

No attack until fixed.

And then it has roll twice, ignoring 99 to 100, roll three times, ignoring 99 to 100.

So it's it's interesting charts here and the discretion.

I would never use these charts whatsoever.

Maybe the critical fumble, because that's kind of interesting and doesn't really do too much.

I would use it based on one in 20 and that's about it.

And there's a 5% chance that that happens.

So what I do in my group is I call when someone rolls A20I call it a gamble.

I say, do you want to gamble?

And they would say, all right, yes, I want to gamble.

So basically what the gamble is that you can get more damage, so you just have to roll again and you can't get a one.

If you get any other number other than A1 or A20, which I'll tell you in a second, we'll just do it first.

Any other number but a one, it's just normal double damage.

But if you get a 20 or a 19, it's 2.5 damage.

Now you can gamble again and should you get A1 or A2?

Well, yeah, you can't get A1 or A2.

You can gamble again because you now you have 2.5 damage.

If you gamble again, it now becomes 28201918.

With 321 you can get three times the damage.

You can gamble again 2019, 1817 or 4321 and you get 3.5 times the damage.

And you can kind of see the pattern here.

And I only, I only go up to four times the damage, SO1617181920 and then five, blah, blah, blah.

So The thing is here.

And if you roll anything but the numbers on one end or the other end, it just becomes whatever damage level you're at.

But if you roll let's say A12345, depending what level you are, you lose it all, all the critical hit that you had and your attack becomes an automatic miss.

So that's what I do in my group as far as rolling 20s and gambling, my group seems to like it because they like to gamble.

Not all of them do, but some of them do certainly.

I mean, the first roll is kind of like, all right, well, I'm not going to roll one.

There's no real chance of that happening.

So I'll take a chance because say, hey, there's a 5% chance on either end, so why not actually be more than that?

Because you can roll 19 if you do it, but and they seem to enjoy that.

I also implement the critical fumble one when you roll A1, you got a 5050 chance.

So I have to have them roll percentile 50% chance that you drop and or break the weapon.

And the other 50% chance is that you hit someone yourself or a party number.

And then I split that up into what D61 to three yourself and four to six a party member and the other end for the drop or end or break.

I will do 5050 on that as well.

That's pretty basic, I think I've seen plenty of DMS do that one in their campaigns, so I don't know.

Tell me what you think about this critical table method that Carl had come up with in 19 July of 1980 for Dragon Magazine, used in apparently his personal game.

I'm thinking and kind of reminds me in a sense of MERP Middle East role-playing, role master, how they have their critical hit charts and percentage chance to actually do this or that.

It kind of reminds me of a kind of a take on that in my in a sense.

I don't know.

You tell me in the comments below what you think about this and we'll talk about it.

With that said, I'm going to head out, ask the DM at the evil dm.com is my e-mail address.

Theevildm.com is my website.

patreon.com/the Evil DM is where you can support me.

So keep original, keep it old school.

Goodnight and God bless everybody.