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There’s a house rule I run into a lot in D&D groups that a natural one on a d20 roll results in either some horrific result, rolling on a table for fumbles, or even simply giving the enemy an Opportunity Attack against the attacker.
While I enjoy fumbles and craziness in some game environments, I don’t find that modern D&D games as a whole mesh well with the gonzo aesthetic of the crazy fumble and critical charts from Rolemaster or Dungeon Crawl Classics. In fact, the fumbles in DCC (along with the swinginess of spellcasting) is one of the main reasons that while I love the game, I wouldn’t be content to play it as my only fantasy RPG system.
But there’s always people asking about people’s critical fumble tables. So here’s my new 5e critical fumble table for combat (roll 1d8 whenever you roll a 1 on an attack roll).
Because really… fumbles belong in comedy games – and a top efficiency fighter in 5e can have as much as a 33% chance of fumbling in a round of combat, assuming said fighter is not under the effects of a haste spell, which would increase the chances another 10% or so.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
We play a house-rules version of Microlite20; it morphs as we go along. I would have to say that the fumbles in DCC along with the swinginess of spellcasting is one of the main reasons that I LOVE playing DCC and look to adapt some of the epicness from that ruleset to enhance our games. Some of the best moments in our gameplay have come from either the PC or NPCs rolling criticals (miss and hits). While I try to use more interesting actions during encounters, there is nothing like a critical roll to build tension and raise the bar. Maybe I need to be a better DM and ensure I don’t rely on criticals to make for interesting game-play…
Unless I’m missing something, it’s impossible to roll a 0 or 13-16 on this chart. The only roll with negative modifiers, 2d4-1, still lands on at least a 1 – and 1d6x2 and 1d4+16 leave a few numbers in between you can’t get to.
You miss nothing. In fact, all the possible results that don’t result in a re-roll have one thing in common.
{snork} Brilliant.
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
Interesting chart! I’ve never liked crits, either hits or misses/fumbles. Just not my style of play. The closest I get is a holdover from Junior High: Double damage on a natural 20.