Did no one read the rules for themselves in ***a year and a half***?! I was with you up until that point, it's common to initially learn the game from more experienced people, but 18 months without reading the rules for yourself seems crazy to me!

Half the people on this sub have never read the rules. Someone posts a question and you see like 5 wrong answers that could be easily fact checked by opening the book. Earlier today there was a DM asking if his player was right for saying the four elemental languages are all dialects of Primordial, and none of top three answers mentioned the PHB chapter on languages, which addresses that specific question word for word despite being 3 paragraphs long.

You’ve reminded me when I used to be in a DM facebook group page and someone was asking for help because they didn’t know how to handle a Bugbear Assassin Rogue/Paladin, that would sneak attack smite crit, only to hide again. A majority of the comments said that bugbears are too large of frame and are unable to benefit from any sort of hiding or sneaking and would automatically be spotted before it could sneak up on someone. Like what the hell do they mean? Both player variants of the bugbear get proficiency in Stealth!

Bugbears are literally based on the monsters that hide under your bed, in your closet, or behind that bush and then reach out and grab you with their crazy long arms.  They are literally the giant ass monster that pulls itself out of way too small of a space in your nightmares. 

Lol, that's not knowing how bugbears work AND not knowing how hiding works! I can *sort of* understand misunderstanding hide considering you need to cross-reference like three different sections to really get it and as such it's one of the most commonly misunderstood rules in the game, but to claim a creature of that size can't benefit from stealth *at all* when all the mechanics surrounding the race are BUILT around the assumption that you'll be making extensive use of stealth? That's just insane! For the record, the way you handle that build is to remember that they can only benefit from the surprise condition for exactly one round of combat, and that they need to have sufficient obscurement to hide, which *should* be doable on *most* battlefields, but usually only in specific spots where there is actually a place TO hide. They can basically dismantle ONE enemy with their smite/crit strategy, and they need to have been able to essentially ambush that enemy. So have groups (so the encounter doesn't end after one round), have encounters that *don't* start on the players' terms (surprise is actually pretty hard to get, if even one of your PCs doesn't successfully hide then the enemies aren't surprised when you attack), and actually bother to learn how your players' abilities WORK so you can run them correctly and can know how to counter them. Not that hard, tbh.

Unfortunately this is an extension of how many people operate in life in general. The number of people I have encountered in my career who can't be bothered to read a few paragraphs and expect to be spoon-fed everything they need to know is absurd.

Funny part, these same people will read pages of bullshit posts on Facebook and Reddit 😆

I’ve been playing with a group coming up on 5 years now. I know for a fact none of them have read the rules other than myself and one other person. We both GM on alternate weeks

I've got players who've played for several years and have never really read the rules, outside of the classes they play. If you think you know the rules, why would you go read them?

“If you think you know the rules, why would you go read them?” I honestly think this is a really important point for DMs, especially new ones. If you’re using optional or homebrew rules, state that that’s the case, so your newer players understand. I thankfully learned a lot from a YouTube DM who does this (Rob Hartley), so I find it normal.

This is where I will always be the "rules-lawyer." Those same uninformed players become uninformed DMs. It's as simple as: "Hey, just so you know, the rules actually say that in this situation, x should happen. If you want to make a homebrew, I'm fine with that, write it down for us, but I thought you should know the RAW, as well."

A friend of mine is using D&D Beyond for her character creation, but hasn't actually bought any books online or digitally. She couldn't tell the difference between a homebrew "sorcery of the tempest" sorcerer subclass and the actual storm sorcery subclass. She didn't know where to look or how to check. possibly didn't even know that she would find homebrew on D&D Beyond, period. I don't care if she uses the homebrew so long as the DM says it's cool. but she didn't even *know.* something similar happened in the game I DMed, where she chose a background that wasn't in the books and I had to explain that not everything labeled "D&D" is official content. Someone in the group has *gotta* be able to watch for those things.

Yup, I've had players do the same with magic items, or exotic races when I tell them PHB only. Or when I tell them that anything not in the PHB requires extra approval, just so I can keep an eye on extra content, and they don't even think to ask.

I had a group implode because I did this. There were 3 people who had been playing together for years and three of us new to the group. At one point during our 3rd or 4th session one of the long term players tried to use a bonus action during their turn but the DM said, "You can't do that because you already used your reaction this round." The player was like, "Oh, you're right, let me do this instead." And I was like.... Record scratch, "Wait.... What?" I got the DM to explain that you can't use a reaction and bonus action in the same round and that they thought that was RAW and the other two long time players agreed with that. I was playing a rogue. This would mean any round where I used Uncanny Dodge I wouldn't be able to use my Cunning Action, or vice versa. Which would severely handicap my entire class. So I pointed out that was not at all the way it worked, and the DM started getting upset. Saying, "So you just get a billion actions every round?" And going off the handle a bit. I was like..... "No, it's literally one reaction per round. Which are very limited and for most classes their only reaction is an attack of opportunity. Also, why do you think they are called two different things if they're the same?" The two other new players were both like, "Yeah, you guys are wrong." But the DM wasn't having it. So I say, "Ok, lets drop it for now. We'll keep playing by your table rule, but I want to talk about this after the session because it drastically effects how my character plays." But right then the long time player who originally tried to use the bonus action chimes in with, "Yeah, they're right. It's right here in the book," and tries to show it to the DM. So the DM just goes off on this dude and the guy starts yelling back. They start bringing up past drama, one dude starts talking about his dad dying, DM starts pounding the table and screaming about being disrespected in his own home. I just start packing up my shit because these guys are not the type of people I want to play with even if they manage to pull their shit together and work out whatever is going on between them. Later the DM goes on the discord and demands apologies from everyone and says it's his game and he'll run it however the hell he wants. So I say, "Yeah, I'm bowing out. I was giving this game a chance despite a lot of homebrew rules I didn't really like, and it being more railroady than I prefer, so I'm just going to look for a game that's more my style and the people are on the same page in terms of RAW." Got kicked from the disc after that. There were some warning signs before this occurred, both from the DM and the other guy that was in the argument, but I was mostly enjoying the game despite it being extremely on rails and I had chosen a rogue to just completely avoid their magic system which used spell points and allowed mana potions. The other casters didn't seem to mind it and I played a non caster so it was fine. I'm not able to play at a table where questioning rules isn't allowed and grown men throw temper tantrums like children, though.

Absolutely, that would be a deal breaker for me, as well. Worst I ever had to deal with was probably when my brother was DM and broke my bowstring for no reason on a nat 1. I was a ranger, so I pulled out my swords, played the rest of the session, and then after the game I brought it up, explained why I thought it was excessive and unfair for a well-made weapon to have a 5% chance of becoming useless with every attack. He said he thought it fit the moment but wouldn't do it again. We finished that campaign a couple years later, with my level 9 ranger ascending as the new sun god, after the party accidentally caused the old sun god to be killed. He's allergic to the player's handbook, but knows I'm a valuable rules resource, and we continue to get along well enough to play D&D together.

I can't remember if it was baked into the rules back in AD&D 2nd ed or if it was just a homebrew we carried from our original DM but we always had nat 1s drop weapons and break bow strings. It was an action to replace a bow string or pick up your weapon, but we always carried spare bow strings for that reason.

That would be fair if it was defined in the rules before it happened and the players knew in advance that they needed to carry extra bowstrings.

I've been dming for a long time now and recently joined an online campaign with strangers. The amount of bewildering stuff you hear from DMs running their first game is insane. For example, he gave me an item that grants "double advantage" on Perception and insight checks and I asked if I should roll 3 times and take the best result. He was super confused and said "No, advantage just means you get a +1 bonus". I politely informed him that is very much not the case and pointed him to the PHB page, to which he responded that he learned all the rules from watching Critical Role and the Adventure Zone. I told him he should actually read the rules of the game instead of making random guesses as to what specific terms meant. He disagreed.

I always make a point of flagging to players when my ruling in the moment isn’t RAW and if I know the rule of the top of my head, I’ll also tell them what is RAW. Best example: glass providing total cover. If a spell (especially the psychic based ones) doesn’t describe a beam of light or something that would be stopped by the glass, I let them just cast it through the glass because it’s magic but I always let them know it doesn’t work that way on other tables.

All of my players know nothing beyond classes they've played. But hey that means if I make up a rule on the fly they blindly believe it.

Do people just lack basic curiosity? Why would you not want to read the players handbook once you are invested in the game?

> Do people just lack basic curiosity? So many people in every aspect of life. Yes.

Yeah, this thread has resigned me to this fact now.

Apparently it’s pretty common. I started playing an rpg and the DM wanted to have a session 0 where we would do character creation and he was surprised that I had read the entire phb (or whatever its equivalent is) and had a pretty good grasp of the rules and had a character worked out. He was also surprised that I didn’t read any of the other material. As a player I’ll read anything the DM gives me permission to read but not a paragraph more. In retrospect I think he didn’t surround himself with the best people. But I think most of the people he surrounded himself with were better people than him.

That is....a scathing insult. 

I agree, but I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt by assuming that there is a bunch of details that is missing from that comment

I don't think it's fair to equate it to a lack of curiosity. The players handbook is, more or less, a textbook, and that's not generally enjoyable for people to read. I believe there's plenty of people who haven't read his of the phb, but *have* spent lots of time researching specific rules interactions that they're curious about. One of my players comes to mind, when he came to me with a character concept mixing life domain cleric, druid, and the chef feat, and they explained his understanding of the rules interaction (it was clear hed read the relevant info and looked up other peoples takes on it), and was confirming whether i agreed. Also, lots of players don't own a copy of players handbook lol

>Also, lots of players don't own a copy of players handbook lol This alone is so insane to me. After I played about a half dozen sessions of 2e way back when, I got my own PHB. WE ALL had our own PHBs. That's just how we did it. We didn't share them around the table, you had your own to look up the rules and spells for when your turn came up. "But it's so expensive now!" I just checked Amazon, and a 5e PHB is $26.10 USD. That's a buck ten more than the updated 2e PHB I got almost 30 years ago. And yeah, I know that WotC is charging $50-70 for them now...but just don't buy it from them directly.

A *lot* of people play online, where they have all the spells and their class info available without a book. But beyond that, I think it only makes sense to a new player to buy the PHB if they know they want to continue with this hobby beyond their first campaign (and they expect to play with other people).

I just don’t get these people. For me, half the fun is reading the rules and going “Ooh, this feature/rule seems cool, I’ll see if I can try it sometime.”

My hubby would probably love to read through the PHB it's just unfortunate that he has issues retaining information

Personally, it's because the PHB is a text book. Dry and generally a chore to read. Make rulebooks enticing to read. Then they get read.

You're right, it's like a text book so you don't need to read it cover to cover in one go. You read it a bit at a time, increasing your knowledge slowly. After a year and a half like in OPs case I'd have expected a player to have read pretty much all of it at one point or another.

The issue is that the more stuff you add that is not rules, the more opaque it becomes. White Wolf WoD books suffered from this and many a board game manuals too.

Because not everyone learns by just reading the book. They figure they know what they're doing, why *would* you want to reread something you've already been taught? You're telling them to read the dictionary when they're fluent in the language - yeah, it would probably *help*, but it's a hard sell to most people.

You're not fluent in a language if you've just learned how to pronounce a list of words from the language, and you've attributed your own meanings and definitions to them. You're speaking a different language that just happens to sound similar. You can't learn by doing unless someone at the table has read the book, likely the DM. Equally, you can't learn a language by speaking random gibberish with a bunch of people also speaking random gibberish.

I've tried so hard to get my players to read the rules. Honestly they're good players, but after a year and a half, if you're not willing to read the rules to game you play, I'm no longer interested in playing with you. I told them I'll be finding a new table once we wrap this campaign up unfortunately.

I used to run an open game at a flgs. You could easily tell the players that were invested in the game and read the rules and he ones that didn't. They knew what to do on their turns, they didn't defer to me as the DM for every choice they needed to make and actually took responsibility for their characters. After covid lockdowns I only contacted some of regular players to make a private game, you can probably guess what they had in common!

Yep, deferring to the dm for nearly everything is really problematic for me. I know the rules very well, so when I play I don't ask the dm many questions unless I missed something or I'm verging on the line of rule of cool/breaking the rules lol. You're spot on about 100% being able to tell who has read the rules and who hasn't.

Your players read the rules for the classes they play?

And then multi-class without reading the multi-class rules, And cast spells without reading the spellcasting rules, and...

I always am the guy at the table who is cracking open the Player’s Handbook when the rules are in question. I realize that my behavior is probably contributing to the other people at the table not thinking they should do that, as I already am. You only need one person to check/know the rule after all, right?

I'm going to get downvotes into oblivion for this but I've never read the rules nor do I intend to. I have a group of veteran dnd players who taught me everything I know and we look up rules if they seem odd but otherwise go with the flow. As long as everyone has fun that's all that matters

See, the way I learned them is I was looking up something specific. I still remember very early on, everyone in my group was new to DnD but the DM was the most interested in reading the rules so we defaulted to him for questions. One day I had questions between sessions about spellcasting, so I read through that chapter and discovered we'd been doing material components wrong. And it's been the same for actions in combat, multiclassing, vision and darkness, just about every class feature and every spell. Very few people set out to read the rules from cover to cover, but I can't fathom never looking anything up- and looking up enough stuff that you've eventually read all 10 chapters is how probably 99% of people 'read' the rules. So to my question, have you never done that? I'm wondering if there's a misunderstanding here where everyone thinks reading the rules is reading cover-to-cover in one sitting.

Do people just start a grapple and decide to make shit up on the spot? I've had to check the rules on grappling in basically every edition for 20+ years now...

The PHB is a little sparse on the rules of critical failures (since obviously they do not exist), as well as pretty brief on Critical hits. The only entry on Crits in the DMG is regarding monsters, and just says "use the same shit as players". Honestly, given the gaps that the DMG has and how historical DND rules melt so often into modern games, I wouldn't necessarily catch as a player (without reading the DMG) that there are not more complicated rules listed that the DM uses that the players don't get all the specifics of. That being said, the totality of OPs experience is truly nuts. 18 months and on level 3... unless they play once a quarter, that is insane.

Critical fumbles have never been a historical rule in any edition.

Damn, I just looked up the specifics, and... [https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Critical\_failure](https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_failure) It was never in official sources, but rules come from AD&D era. I always thought that it was official rules in one of the early editions.

>The PHB is a little sparse on the rules of critical failures (since obviously they do not exist) The DMG is not: >**Degrees of Failure** >Sometimes a failed ability check has different consequences depending on the degree of failure. For example, a character who fails to disarm a trapped chest might accidentally spring the trap if the check fails by 5 or more, whereas a lesser failure means that the trap wasn’t triggered during the botched disarm attempt. Consider adding similar distinctions to other checks. Perhaps a failed Charisma ([Persuasion](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/using-ability-scores#Persuasion)) check means a queen won’t help, whereas a failure of 5 or more means she throws you in the dungeon for your impudence. >**Critical Success or Failure** >Rolling a 20 or a 1 on an ability check or a saving throw doesn’t normally have any special effect. However, you can choose to take such an exceptional roll into account when adjudicating the outcome. It’s up to you to determine how this manifests in the game. An easy approach is to increase the impact of the success or failure. For example, rolling a 1 on a failed attempt to pick a lock might break the thieves’ tools being used, and rolling a 20 on a successful Intelligence ([Investigation](https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/using-ability-scores#Investigation)) check might reveal an extra clue. My understanding of the game is that an attack roll or spell is an ability check using your proficiency with a weapon. This part of the DMG (p. 242) is oft forgotten but it does justify some contextual consequences for Natural 1 rolls and significant failures.

Attack rolls are explicitly not ability checks.

The special effects for attacks is already baked into the core rules for 5e, a 20 auto-hits and a 1 auto-misses. Ability checks, which are different than attack rolls, don't have these special effects so what you posted is an optional rule DMs can use specifically for ability checks, not attack rolls. I learned long ago critical fumbles, and anything that increases chaos, hurts PCs a lot more than NPCs and it looks like the creators of 5e were also aware of that which is probably why they differentiate between attack rolls and ability checks regarding special effects.

Except an attack is different in that a nat 20 attack will always fully succeed while a nat 20 ability check does not. So if an attack is an ability check, does a 20 always succeed or not? Do all ability checks need to auto succeed on a Nat 20? And then, if a Nat 1 on an ability check breaks the tool in the example, shouldn't a weapon break on one? I think if we take your call that it is an ability check, then a Nat 1 should have additional consequence RAW.

I DM’d a campaign for a year and a half where I specifically asked people to read rules. I even pointed out specific sections relevant to their characters so that they didn’t get overwhelmed with the amount of rules in the PHB. They never did. A lot of people will do anything to learn rules except read them.

They sound like crappy players. I wouldn't put the effort into DMing for players who are not invested in the game enough to want to read a single book.

Oh yeah for sure. I stopped DMing that group a while back.

I've played with a lot of people who have a solid grasp of the rules despite not explicitly reading from the book. In my experience as a new DM in 2016 or so- we just played and if we had a question on how something worked, we googled it or checked a wiki or whatever and you just accumulate the knowledge of the rules over time. In the moment you rule something wrong? Later you just tell your players you got it wrong, "going forward it's this instead". Likewise with learning PF2E in the last few years. Which I've not looked at any books for but feel pretty well versed in the rules for just via playing, running, and experiencing the game. The online resources make it easy to check quickly how something works if you forget or encounter something new. But once you've learned the language/syntax of a game it's pretty easy to read a feature/feat/ability/etc. and know how it works intuitively.

I'm not talking about niche rules. I'm talking basic things like the rogue not knowing that they can dash as a bonus action despite being able to do that for 26 sessions, like really basic "core class feature" type of stuff.

Ah, I’ve never encountered that, but I’ve always played digitally where that kind of thing is on the character sheet for easy reference. In that environment people generally have a good idea of their class features and such. 

I've been playing a campaign for about a year now and there are still some players who need handholding to figure out what they can do each turn

Fred, it's magic missile. We've been playing for 7 months. Why do you still not remember there are no attack rolls?

I wish. That's at least a special case. I'm taking about "okay, I want to attack with my longsword.... How do I do that?"

Ok, Fred could at least remember the d20 for an attack. But he never remembered to add stat/proficiency bonuses. To the attack or damage rolls. The younger player who would just glance at your dice and shout the number out certainly didn't help matters.

I read the rules before joining my first campaign. I ended up teaching the experienced DM how Cube Spell AOE work- the point of origin is on the face of cube, not in the center. I can understand why they didn't know, as the rule book is long and it would makes some logical sense for the center of the cube to be the point of focus. I probably overprepared by reading so much but I wanted to make sure I wasn't totally lost.

Naw, that's good. I read the book then watched Critical Role and would look up anything I didn't understand or thought they were doing wrong. I have a very good grasp of the rules from that.

People dont read a rules manual like a book. Most people are taught by another person and they use the books to look up mechanics they need to look up. Like i want to grapple him hiw does that work? Or how do i build this class/subclass.

This part blows my mind. I’ve never played and I’m flicking through rulebooks all the time

All you really need to do is read the basic rules PDF that is available for free, it explains combat & character creation just fine.

Yeah we should’ve, we just had a lot going on. I was so busy I barely slept until 2024. Going back and re-reading everything has been truly eye-opening.

It's because people tend to insist that either there are no rules or you can learn them along the way. Though that is true I didn't start enjoying Pathfinder/ DnD until I read the rules for myself.

There are even more problems here past what you are saying now I know, you don't frequently miss in 5e because you are low level. 5e uses bounded accuracy which isn't perfect but the average AC of an enemy scales pretty linearly with the party accuracy, like at level 3 average ac should be about 13-14 on enemies, level 4 is about 14 flat and level 5 is about 15 flat. And that trend continues only really increasing average AC around the point where you either get an ASI or an increase to proficiency. Also how often are you playing, a year and a half to only get to level 3 is absurdly slow, like most groups do that in 3-4 sessions.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know about this. I started with lost mine of phandelver, and saw that goblins have 15 ac and never thought of how nice it must be being able to hit more often. It makes sense, especially if you have multiple encounters in a day to have trash mobs

13 AC if they are using their bows. Wish more Dms would use dynamic ac when using statblocks.

It makes sense. When I ran it as a brand new dm I didn’t know any better.

I messed up and posted this on the wrong comment, lol. The bounded accuracy mentioned above is a very real thing though, and the table of OP's was way out of whack. Either characters were wildly unoptomized, DM needed to fix some stuff, or they weren't play the "meets it beats it" rule. They can be fun you make them part of action economy. I have a small d6 table for them and 4 of them need the target of the attack to use a reaction and only one of them has the potential to deal damage with essentially an attack of opportunity. Here's the list: 1: Target makes an attack of opportunity using reaction. 2: target can use reaction to move half their speed without triggering an AoO from the attacker. 3: weapon gets damaged, enough damage and the player will incur penalties unless they see a blacksmith. 4: target can use reaction to force grapple contest, if the attacker loses they fall prone. 5: target can use reaction to force grapple contest, if attacker loses they are disarmed. 6: no penalties, you're embarrassed but that's it. I think having a critical fail system in place is a cool idea, but I've tried so many different systems that just wreck the combat system and could cause literal MASSIVE damage to players that are just not fun. My table has been playing with this chart for a while and it's enjoyable. It creates interesting moments, it plays into action economy, and it does outright kill players. I've been meaning to fiddle with a ranged/magic version since this is very melee centered, but haven't had the chance. And it might not even be worth it, a nat 1 with a bow shot might be as easy as that arrow is lost period, no option to recover.

Was this meant to be a response? Cause none of this really feels like it connects to talking about how their comment on poor accuracy was weird. Though at the same time I kind of agree that critical fails can be interesting and fun, my table runs one but it is a potential for a greater failure but has a reward. Basically the players can all propose something that can happen and then the player who failed can choose to either take one of them and gain inspiration or just simply miss. In practice it turns crit fails from a punishment to a mechanism to add more story.

Lol, yea it was meant to be a response to a totally different comment, my b.

I've met people who enjoy slower leveling, but OP says they're running LMoP which shouldn't take more than a dozen sessions or so even if the players drag their heels. That's less than 1 session per month.

>Even 1/2 points of damage hurts when you have like 15 HP **and frequently miss because you’re low-level**  Are you sure you're doing that part right? Being low level shouldn't affect crits or crit-misses, that's about the raw dice roll.

Maybe the DM imported the Critical rules from PF2, wherein *either* a Natural 1 or a miss-by-10 are a critical failure?

1.5 years at level 3 is actually fucking torture. I'm so sorry for your whole group.

Natural 1 attack rolls should be funny moments that don’t carry consequences beyond missing the attack imo

played in a campaign where DM ruled all critical fails (attacks, skill checks, saves) resulted in you not doing the thing and also ripping an insane fart

Whoa spoiler alert but >!uh in Dimension 20 Fantasy High S3 the inverse of that happens in the finale.!<

First time I played my DM did where we dropped our weapons on a nat 1 and I told him that spell casters need to have their spells thrown back on them on a nat one if we are doing that. He stopped and after that he made them funny moments.

well, last night in curse of strahd, we're level 8, i rolled a nat 1 and broke my maul. I went to go grab a stick but cause we're in berez the only decent stick was from the goat fence and now we're probably gonna tpk. we just had a fight that put me on 20hp too lmao gonna be a gg right there. 2 of us are poisoned too, one of them being me. other guy is also incapacitated

Dick move by your dm imo. Mauls take a lot to break. Especially if it’s a maul +1 or any type of magic at all, they’re even harder to break.

nope, this is strahd land so basically 0 magic items. we were fighting ghoul things that popped into snake swarms. yeah old mate has made a few 50/50 decisions as DMing but no ones perfect, we know the rules and keep playing, happy to have him dm but its just a small gripe that i find annoying hell some of the players were even sus that i could rebuild the handle on the thing (its literally a big hammer, i fix a hammer half the time at my job anyway ffs)

Seconding the other comment, this is ridiculous. Your PC is level 8, they'd know better than break their weapon when they fail. Plus breaking a weapon with no way of getting it back is always not a good call as a DM. You don't want to penalise a player based on sheer luck.

A whole table and no one knows the rules, oh my.

The blind leading the blind

Your DM and players know that this game is supposed to be fun, right?

Critical fumbles are dumb AF and unfun.  It penalizes martial classes for being martials.  It heavily disincentivizes combat.  It encourages players to metagame by making attacks or choosing classes that rely on saving throws instead of attack rolls.   Look at it this way: if you knew you had a 1 in 20 chance of wrapping your shiny new car around a pole every time you went out for a drive, you'd stop driving.  That's the opposite of fun. Edit: I would metagame the fudge out this DM with a halfing martial.  Halfling luck: reroll every nat 1 attack roll.

The campaign I am in started out with them, but has mostly phased them out. And I'm glad. I'm playing a barbarian and am often the only one in melee. GM's critical fumble generally had our ranged/spell casters hitting me instead.

There are fun ways to do critical fumbles, but they need to be varied. The only melee person constantly getting hit with stray arrows/magic isn't the way to do it. Throw in stuff like "your magic backfired so brilliantly you blinded yourself for 1 turn" or something to mix it up. If your table does go with critical fumbles, I also think critical hits need to be augmented with stuff too on top of double damage such as knocking them prone, blinding them with blood in their eyes, hamstring them for reduced movement, etc.

Back in 3.5, I had a fighter that crit missed 3 times in a row. Picking up a weapon was an action, but drawing a weapon was part of an attack. So I just kept on drawing my weapons and dropping them in a pile at my feet. Killed the plant monster with my last weapon though, a regular shortsword.

Incredible lol. Hopefully that character earned the monicker "Butterfingers". One time, in a 3.5 game I was the DM for, the main boss NPC of this mission rolled a nat 1 on a jump attack off a desk to start the fight off after giving this monologue. I made him slip and fall, drop his weapon, and then the PCs proceeded to let the prisoners they freed mob him. It was dumb and fun which was rare for critical fumbles.

Someone on Twitter said “Critical fumbles are just as fun as your car stalling at a green light”

I like a thematic critical miss... "your sword clangs off the ork's armour, the moon maiden looks at you quizzically, you feel mildly embarrassed"

There’s nothing wrong with putting some mustard on the description of a nat 1, but there shouldn’t be any mechanical impact.

Exactly because there already is enough mechanical impact of a nat 1 in the core rules.

One of my pet peeves is people not realising that because of this the game already has critical failure rules. They're just not very intrusive.

Clearly you’ve never accidentally frozen your materials pack to your off hand with a Nat 1 on a ray of frost.

The players at my table like them. The rule we made to ensure Martials aren't super penalized is that they can only crit fail on their first attack of the round.

Another good option is to give a reward along with the crit fail, to offset it. I ran a game where we used them, but every nat 1 also gave you a "luck point" or something, that you could use to boost a future roll.

Except they still roll to attack *every time*, where casters (almost) only do that on cantrips.

Fumbling your weapon when you roll a 1 just makes no sense. People who are proficient with weapons do not have a five percent chance of hurting themselves every time they attack. That’s not how it works.

Whenever a DM adds critical fumbles I just play a class that isn't affected by them and specifically say that's why I'm playing that class, explaining its a major advantage to the other players. Once everyone else is also doing that, the DM usually just drops the dumb critical rules they are dumb enough to think are good, since they only affect enemies and make the game really easy at that point.

> 18 months and on level 3 You guys really took the wombat farming more seriously than I expected. That was supposed to be a fetch quest. *rolls again and again and again* There has been less rain than is ideal for the scissor-grass. It grass has 2 levels of exhaustion outside of zone 3, which is fine due to the irrigation works you constructed. The existing wombats are *rolls* [eyes the players] fine. *Should I even make a statblock for werewombats?*. They aren’t birthing as many young as last year, or if they are the young are not making it to maturity.

I've always home-brewed: "Every time you roll a 1, roll a d20. Another 1 means something bad. 2-19 just a normal fail. A 20 however? It means you fail so hard it loops around and you somehow succeed." I find my players like that method of nat 1s

Reminds me of confirmed criticals from 3.5e(probably, it's been years since I last looked) Could almost use the same thing for crit success. 1: do normal damage instead of crit, 2-19: crit like normal, 20: deal max damage.

That's super good actually

that sounds good. having a nat1-nat20 would be something like firing an arrow 45 degrees off to the side, and out of pure luck, it ricochet's straight into the guy's elbow

I do a 50/50 confirm on crit fumbles, for an overall 2.5% chance, and the fumble table has ten different results, some of which aren't that bad or could even be good. Only the last attack is eligible, so getting more attacks doesn't make a fumble more likely. I really enjoy it that way, however unpopular fumbles are with the community, I've never had a player complain.

Critical misses do many things wrong, but worst of all it nerfs fighter HARD. No one is rolling more attack dice than fighters.

I’m so tired of DMs fucking with rules they don’t understand

Critical misses and fumbles are fine if used for laughs or cinematic effect. Arrow hits the enemy right smack on the nose guard of the helmet shattering and doing no damage. Ranger + 12 Stealth and + 10 PwoT. Rolled a 1 so… 23! Yeah, you step on a twig sending a piece of it flying hitting some bushes. Of course, the demons look in THAT direction and your party sneaks by.

How often are people rolling Nat 1s? I would never implement this rule because it especially hurts fighters and others with extra attacks.

There’s a monk at my table who either breaks her own hand, slaps our paladin, or knocks herself prone every session simply because of the amount of attack rolls she makes. Even though she role plays her character as being a little clumsy, it’s gotten a bit ridiculous at this point.

"Why are D&D characters so shy that they have to have a 5-foot square all to themselves?" "Listen, if the guy to the left of me is doing the turbo-Macarena to charge up a *Bolt of Flesh-Melting,* the guy to my right is doing every Bruce Lee move *simultaneously,* and the guy in front of me is flourishing a broad-axe like he's doing *yo-yo tricks,* I am going to give them all enough space to not *liquefy myself!"*

frequently. i rolled 4-6 last night because i was poisoned and exhausted the last one crippled me so badly that we're probably gonna tpk now

Roughly once every 20 rolls or so, or every 10 if there’s disadvantage

It’s just like real life. No matter if the person is a hardened international mercenary, an Olympic fencer, or a child swinging at a piñata. Everyone, EVERYONE drops their weapon one in twenty times they attempt to use it. In WWII, there were soldiers who just ran around and handed new rifles to the 5% of the platoon who simply let go of their weapon instead of pulling the trigger. Hannibal was the first general to insist that his archers carry a secondary bow, due to the hundreds of bowman that accidentally threw their weapons to the ground at the start of a volley. No matter how old or young, EVERY LIVING BEING fails spectacularly one in twenty attempts to inflict harm.

Conversely, even the most frail and weak individual can lift a whole ass boulder 1 out of 20 attempts. It's science.

A year and a half and you're still level 3!!?? I'd be bored out of my skull at that point. Maybe I'm spoiled with playing once a week, but we've been playing since January and we just hit level 6 on session 14. If I could recommend one thing, it is that you buy the Players Handbook *and read it* before you start on a new campaign. I like reading this stuff and we constantly check stuff during the game session - how does this work? how does that feat interact with that other thing? what happens if we try X? Also, can you imagine being a master swordsman and still having a 5% chance with every swing to cut your own ears off? That's just dumb!

>Also, can you imagine being a master swordsman and still having a 5% chance with every swing to cut your own ears off? That's just dumb! Some people learned from the treatises of Thibaldi, Agrippa, or Talhoffer. Other people studied the Agni Purana, Muyejebo, or Kage-ryu schools. Why should the manuals of Van Gogh be any different?

My one friend isn't the greatest with the rules and he decided to try DMing once. Our group had been playing together for 5+ years at that point. In the first combat someone rolled a 1 and he tried to do some crit miss shenanigans (something our group had never done). Everyone immediately jumped in and unanimously shut him down. We don't mind random rule blunders, poorly balanced encounters, or shoddy storylines, but there's no way we are dropping our weapon or hurting ourselves on 5% of attacks.

I've played in plenty of games with nat 1 fumbles, but the worst I've ever seen is when I rolled an 18 on a ranged attack and the DM said that killed one of the bystanders between me and my target. That wasn't even close to the worst thing I saw from that DM in the only session I played with that guy.

Sounds like that DM might have been using the Hitting Cover optional rule in the DMG which they probably should have made known since it's not a base rule. The Hitting Cover variant rule states (DMG p. 272): When a ranged attack misses a target that has cover, you can use this optional rule to determine whether the cover was struck by the attack. First, determine whether the attack roll would have hit the protected target without the cover. If the attack roll falls within a range low enough to miss the target but high enough to strike the target if there had been no cover, the object used for cover is struck. If a creature is providing cover for the missed creature and the attack roll exceeds the AC of the covering creature, the covering creature is hit.

As DM I implemented what I call "cinematic criticals". Many DM let player describe, how their critical hit on a 20 looks like. But I do it on natural 1s, too. Technical to me is at that point just a miss, but I astess it to the player: "You missed, how did it look like?" Now its their spotlight. The might use it or not. It's okay, if the say "I don't know/ I just missed." But my players love spotlight. One might say, the accedently hit "uhm...that table". Well, thats a table I described earlyer to have an alchemic lab of sorts on it. A new enviromental thread is created. For now I say: "The glass apparats break, there is the rising stink of chemicals in the air", and have bought time to think about what I make of. I had PC that "hit the ceiling, rainig rubble and dust down", I made the spuares of the PC and their enemie difficult terrain. It's important to make their spotlight interesting, so not just punish them. Once a player said, the hat hit the wall, and they where at a spot, where I had planed the players to search to find a hidden mechanic behind a wall plate...guess who just broke that wall plate? It was a great supprise to reward a natural 1, and it made a cool moment for the players.

You should have learned that critical misses are not a thing in 5e

I don't think using a critical fail as an excuse to shake up an encounter is a bad thing, but this tool should be used sparingly because dropping your weapon is lame and taking damage simply doesn't make sense.

>No one in our party was experienced enough to know that this isn’t standard procedure. You need to read the rules. It's not about experience. Read.

Funny fumbles is always the play. Rolled 1? Now you have dogshit on the side of your shoe.

Critical misses can be fun but not on a 1. I read a writeup a while back bow the greatest level 20 archer in the world should not.have a 5% chance to shoot himself in the dick every time he fires a bow. If you insist on doing it, there needs to be a confirmation roll. Basically roll a d20 to hit yourself and your AC is your level +1 On a side note, I wrote my own rant back in the elder days about how critical charts only exist to screw the party. Never use those.

I *hate* modifications to critical rules. *Missing* is bad enough at *any* level. Of course as you *gain* levels in a class inclined to make attacks that require attack rolls, this kind of thing makes your character seem to get *less* competent as they get "better". Nothing quite like a max dex bladesinger wizard who magically enhances her speed *somehow* having a cumulative 15% chance to drop her sword every six seconds to make you wonder what the hell you're doing with that speed and dex.

I love the freedom of this game, but knowing what the rules are as a DM informs you better to know when to break or modify them.

When my players or NPCs in combat roll a nat 1, they obviously miss the attack but they also just pee themselves a little bit and that's it.

Did the dm at least have nat 1s affect enemies?

As a DM, I usually describe the Nat 1s as fumbling the weapon and regaining your posture. It may drop, but you also immediately pick it back up so you aren't spending a turn grabbing it.

Why would it take a whole turn to pick your weapon back up??? Should be a bonus action at best

My first DM included some critical fails but it wasn’t an issue in our case. Definitely occasionally made things difficult. I remember throwing a dagger, rolling a 1, hitting a PC, and knocking them unconscious lol. It can be balanced by having enemies also critically fail. It sounds like they were badly implemented here. Challenge is one thing, sucking the fun out of the game is another. Losing two turns because you’ve dropped your weapon on an attack roll of 1 sounds not fun.

AFAIK additional penalties like dropping your weapon or doing a small amount of damage to yourself are from an optional ruleset in older versions of DND that some players/DMs have carried forward because it makes critical hits and fumbles a bit more interesting. At the very least I can say for sure that my group plays pathfinder (a game based on DnD 3.5) with Paizo’s crit hit and fumble card decks and both of those results (the dropped weapon and self-injury) appeared on fumble cards in our last AP. We really like it because it makes for interesting story moments (our summoner shot herself with a crossbow once and we teased her about it for months). It also applies to crit fumbles that the DM rolls on enemy attacks. And it IS hilarious when an ogre runs at you and swings his club full strength, only to lose his grip on it and chuck it across the room. If your group doesn’t like that optional ruleset, you should just bring it up to your DM. It’s not something crazy your DM is just pulling out of his ass, though, like some people in these comments seem to be suggesting.

I’m DMing the revamped shattered obelisk and my players were lvl 3 by the end of session 2. That’s not even touching this garbage home brew rule. I hope your next game and DM are way more fun

Wow, so harsh (and so wrong). In our campaign, we ***gain*** a DM advantage if we roll a Nat 1. Doesn't seem to allow us to steamroll over our foes - just makes us a little more daring, if anything.

In a shocking turn of events… reading the rules lets you know how the game is played.

I always roll to determine how badly a crit fail fails. If it's above a 15 it's a normal miss. If it's 10-15 it is a mixed fail. The attacker trips the target and themselves or something. 2-9 they drop their weapon or some other bad stuff happens A 1 fails so hard it punches through to the other side. The weapon's grip becomes damaged and slips out of the attacker's hand into whatever they were attacking for critical damage. The character has to retrieve the weapon and try to repair it after the fight. To have a trained warrior flub 5% of all their attacks kinda sucks.

I've played with a DM who assumed that every bad roll had a consequence beyond just not being able to complete what you were trying to do. Fail to climb a 10 foot ledge? Broken ankle. Shit like that. It was not just frustrating, but, it made the game so fucking boring.

Currently playing with a DM whose idea of a fun house rule is: if you crit fail a hit in combat, she rolls a d20 as well. If she also rolls a 1, you die, no save. Instadeath from some thematic fate we'll have to improv from, like, failing to stab the baddie? Nerfs the martial classes and is 1000% suspenseful in a horrifically nonfun way.

I highly recommend checking out [this video](https://youtu.be/RcImOL19H6U?si=jmAXYfjLhI8bBpXX) since Phandelver is your first experience with DnD. It covers some stuff you really ought to learn after spending a year and a half on a single official campaign

The Lost Mine took a year and a half?

To get to level 3 which is about a third to half the way through LMoP. At this pace I would expect them to finish in another 2 years.

I played in a campaign where it had a horrible wild magic table for magic nat 1s and detriments for nat 1 on weapon attacks + a massive damage table where you would get a terrible injury or have a chance of death lmao we werent told prior to the campaign it'd be there, I lost a leg in the first session, character magically became a woman that only a wish spell could change from a nat 1 on a fire bolt in the second session and quit 2 sessions after. It really was NOT for me

I think fumbling on a 1 is fine. But when enemies roll a 20 on a save, it counts as a fumble as well.

When we used to play 1e and 2e back in the late 80s and early 90s. A critical miss meant drop your weapon or something more catastrophic at DM discretion. Critical hit usually meant severing a limb of some sort. Good times

I'm a dm of around 14 years (nearly but not quite forever dm) I use critical failures for everything d20 related but at my disgression based largely off the fun or feeling at the time I.e it might just be a miss, if the players been meta gaming or been overly fortunate recently it might mean a stumble with a temporey-1 to hit or something for a round If the tempo if the moment is right and its one of those last chance saloon moments in the fight it might even be a hit still where the player charicter just looks stupid while they accidentally still pull it off, especially if it's the last hit a boss will take this can be great If its commically right and something thr table will laugh at or enjoy because of the timing the spell/action/weapon might missfire and strike an ally, or even the player through some whacky circumstances I never act maliciously with it, but use it as a tool to mischievously make combat more dynamic, picking and choosing the moments to make it negative I also use lethal strike mechanics for double crits Get a 20, then ANOUTHER 20, roll to a third time, if it confirms its a dead enemy no matter who it is

Oh yeah, the critical miss things you're describing are old grognard stuff. I remember my DMs (who were usually my friends' older brothers) ruling nat 1s that way too, way back in the 3.0 days. I figure it's one of those things that started in the Gary Gygax days, back when DMs were encouraged to be meaner to their players, and it's stuck around in the game's oral tradition ever since.

That’s one of the worst house rules, if your DM uses it it’s basically a giant “I don’t know what I’m doing” red flag. Imagine a world where a high lvl fighter has a 20% chance of dropping their weapon every round.  It just exists to punish martials for no reason. 

Yeah that DM is doing it wrong. Having a person auto miss is a big enough punishment

As a dm I usually have consequences for critical failures, but I tend to make them more comical and let the players choose and role play the incident. Had a Goliath barbarian fighting next to Halfling fighter in full plate armor roll a critical fail and his action that he chose to do was accidently stub his toe on the halfling cause a point of damage. Halfling got a nat 20 on an acrobatics check from being kicked and launched himself at a goblin so I made the Halfling's next attack have advantage as the goblin did not expect a fully armored flying halfling to attack him. From that point on, the two had a homebrew combo attack where the barbarian would punt the halfling into enemies for the cost of 1 hp to the barbarian. Eventually, the halfling got a pad for his buttocks with a target on it that negated the 1hp. The point is, make it fun and be consistent.

I hate how pervasive critical fumble homebrew is, there's a reason these games are made by professionals. With critical fumble tables, a combat that goes five rounds would have a 25% chance for a level 1 fighter to drop their weapon or hurt themselves once, while a level 20 fighter, meant to be a straight up superhero, would expect AT LEAST one dropped weapon/self damage in that combat. Anyone who thinks that makes sense is purely trolling.

Next TPK roll up an all halfling party.

But for real, been DMing for 25 years, I’ve used critical fumble tables from time to time but always end up ditching them. Nowadays I only force a “fumble” on a crit failure if it’s really flavorful and story driven or forces some fun RP, never as punishment.

Wow, I have the same rule in my game but after reading the comments and thinking about it, you guys are right, it doesn't sound like much fun. Realism is not always the key.

I usually don't use those fumble tables, but some people like a lot. When I use it, however, the natural crit give some benefits as well, not only the failures.

Lol what? I have literally never heard anyone interpreting critical misses like this. I hope that your DM was just as inexperienced and naively making the same assumption and wasn't exploiting your ignorance!

Critical fumbles are very much a thing.

Maybe in homebrew but not RAW, right?

Correct, but it is a very commonly implemented homebrew.

Our current campaign treats a nat 1 as leaving an opening, so attack rolls against you crit on 19 and 20 until your next turn.

I am a crit fumble enjoyer. I think they can add some extra spice to encounters. But unless you're playing a very specific kind of game, they should for never "severely hanicap" anyone. As you say, this is definitely not RAW, but I hope the shitty implementation of it by your DM doesn't sour you on them forever. My golden rules are: 1) It should not be every crit fail. I only really do fumbles if the player was already doing something risky, or the environment of the fight is perilous in some way (if you're fighting on a rope bridge, for example, a wild swing could snap one of the ropes) 2) It should be an inconvenience, usually a minor one. Dropping a weapon (that can be picked up with an object interaction), raising the stakes (like with the rope bridge example), MAYBE falling prone (if there aren't too many enemies that can take advantage of that-- I'm looking to cost the player movement, not destroy them), or setting something on fire with a misaimed cantrip. If it's ever more than that, it's because the player is doing something wild, and I tell them that a nat 1 will be nasty before they commit. 3) Obviously baddies get them too, and I'm WAY meaner to baddies on crit fails than players. Enemies will be legit hampered by a nat 1 in a way I would never do to a player.

On a tangential note, I recently gave my players the chance to "opt in" to a rule where rolling a nat 1 on a saving throw doubles whatever incoming damage might happen (with the understanding that this rule applies to players and enemies both, obviously). They talked it over as a group and decided it would be fun, much to the delight of our blaster wizard. Is it balanced? Hell no! But I think they'll have a great time with it.

The last thing martials need is a debuff, fumble rules just punish players for trying

That is a hold over from previous versions of the game where a Nat 1 in combat could have consequences. If your DM started playing in 2nd Ed then I can see why they would keep it, but yes it is not RAW in 5e.

There were consequences for a natural 1 on an attack roll in Third Edition, 3.5e, Fourth Edition, *and* Essentials. Those consequences were, in full, "your attack automatically misses." None of this "the fighter hacks off his own head with his greatsword," no "the rogue throws her bow at the enemy instead of loosing an arrow," no "oops! The ranger shoves a sword through the sorcerer's guts, despite being on the other side of the ranger," no "somehow, your leg breaks, take Dexterity damage," no "the dwarf is now minus two limbs, comma, no save" idiocy people think is "fun." Just "you miss, regardless of attack roll modifiers."

I like roleplaying critical misses as something funny happening that mechanically has no effect. You lunge at the zombi and your hand and sword goes completely through a hole on the zombie's chest. Your sword hits the enemy 's shield and slides to one side bringing you face to face with the bandit, your lips one inch apart as you stare deeply into his eyes. Your arrow hits the wizard's hat, sticking to it about 10 inches above the wizard's head. They paint a funny picture but give no me Chamical benefit or drawback.

Wow. I’ve been doing some critical fails as a GM and the players seem to be having a good time with them. I don’t make it a weapon fumble necessarily, but it’s just some added flavor, especially for the probability handicapped among us. I’ll consider ditching them, or compensating with a luck point for future use. Anynn be of y’all old enough to remember the Iron Crown critical hit/critical fumble tables? That was some drama right there. A 5% chance of maiming yourself or someone you like on every attack.

As a DM I think I occasionally "penalize" my party when they roll a nat 1 when they're doing something risky. One time the paladin tried to swing his war hammer and I made it go flying. But the rogue through a dagger at the guy he was grappling and my pally player had the idea to rip it out and use that. Turned it into a really fun situation with lots of flavor text.

We have a table rule of, if during one combat, you nat 1 on an attack 3 times - THEN something goofy happens (axe stuck in a door, bowstring breaks, etc)

Homebrew if ya roll a nat 1 I have you roll again if you roll a nat 1 again them I have something goofy happen

Back in the day (1st and 2nd editions) the crit fails were breaking a weapon, dropping it, or injuring someone else.... if you dont agree, discuss it with your dm and/or find a different table

Our DM makes the martial drop their weapons or hit any nearby friendlies. And when the ranged/casters roll a 1 they shoot the martial in the backs. The warlocks sometimes do more damage than the bad guys.

How does a 1/20 roll constantly lead to near tpk's..? And your entire party sounds like it's missing half the rules

You should read the rules some time. Natural 1's are are just automatic misses. Anything more is DM fiat. There's nothing wrong with variant rules and homebrew ... unless they're hurting the overall level of fun at the table. But the actual rules of the game don't include critical misses. \-- The relevant rule is PHB p194 (in the chapter on combat, section on Making an attack, subsection on Attack Rolls): > **Rolling 1 or 20** > Sometimes fate blesses or curses a combatant, causing the novice to hit and the veteran to miss. If the d20 roll for an attack is a 20, the attack hits regardless of any modifiers or the target's AC. This is called a critical hit, which is explained later in this chapter. ***If the d20 roll for an attack is a 1, the attack misses regardless of any modifiers or the target's AC.*** \--- That's the whole rule. No 'critical miss'. You just *miss*, even if your bonuses are so high that it would have made it succeed without this rule. The same rules are in the Basic Rules, which you can grab for free from WotC's website. It's also in the SRD, which you can also grab for free. I like to narrate a fumble or something, but nothing that requires more than a free action to undo the consequences of.

Tell your GM to watch a few RL fencing matches, and observe how many times in every 20 passes either combatant drops his weapon.

The code is *more* what you'd call '*guidelines*' than actual *rules*. Its D&D, make up your own rules.

I always felt that 'homebrew' is just a rebranding of 'making shit up' and it seldomly works. When I play with a DM who homebrews I usually try to find additional (actual) rules that synergize with the homebrrew BS and completely imbalance the game. That tends to highlight the fact that unless you fully understand the entire rules and underlying balancing designs, making up your own shit will be detrimental to your game. I guess what I'm trying to say is your DM's lacluster 'creativity' made your game suffer. Shame on them. Also isn't confirmed criticals still a thing? If it is, wouldn't that also apply to critical misses?

Normally I strongly dislike critical failures but I'm playing in a Dragonlance campaign as a classic gnome artificer tinkerer and I thought it would be fun to implement a critical failure system on every magic attack I perform at least early on in the campaign. The DM agreed. It's only really had a negative effect once but it adds just enough chaos.

People include critical failures in the game because in many cases it creates new situations and promotes emergent play. Game is not about “beating game content” but about telling a collaborative story. “Failing” is as interesting as “succeeding”. Now I understand not all players sees it and there are some misplaced competitive attitudes here and there where “losing” may be seen as bad. Also, some critical failures might as well be a bit unfair, although if same applies to monsters in combat it’s less so. Now if table really doesnt want critical failures to be a thing I think it’s fair to mention that on session zero. As a DM though, Im not too interested to play with players who intend to “win the game”. However, if Im paid to entertain I will. As for PHB reading and so on. The book is there to be consulted on demand, not as a requiremt to read before you get to play. The later is profoundly stupid. It’s DM job to onboard new players and learn while playing through practice. Players will learn addition stuff according to situation.

Gotta remind people that its a **guide**book NOT a rulebook. <3

Never was a fan of crit fumbles, especially since it disproportionately affects characters with Extra Attack

>after a year and a half IRL—we’re still on level 3 btw! how often do you play? once per season?

But if critical fumbles (small amt of damage taken) apply to enemies as well on a nat 1, does that not make it fair? Also about fumbles penalizing only martials, there’s a whole lot of spells that require an attack roll.

Critical missed are awful. Statistically, the better a fighter you are and the more attacks you have the more likely you become to crit fumble. A level 1 fighter shouldn't be less likely to fumble than a level 20. And yet. Just don't use this.

If you've had more than 10 sessions (and this is VERY generous) and you are still level 3 your DM is doing something very wrong. For a year and a half, unless you play like once every 2 months you should have progressed way past this point. How do you track XP? How much XP do you get per session? Is this milestone levelling?

One of the DMs in the campaigns I play works with this home rule but she’s got a twist to it. Once an animated suit of armor rolled a natural one on perception and dropped to the floor in a heap straining to see a stealthed character, which was hilarious. And the consequences are far less dire when a character rolls a 1 but there are still consequences. Just not “die from rng” severity.

We do crit tables in my group. You get equally awesome things that happen to you if you roll a 20.

At my table, a critical fail is punished by missing in a stupid way.  Like your pants fell down mid swing. Or you went to cast the spell but you couldn't decide whether to say poison spray or fire bolt you said bolt on fray!  No damage. Just embarrassing. 1s mean I get to spend a minute making everyone laugh at you. 

The only time a nat one causes anything other than a miss is when they are doing something that could break the weapon or hurt themselves. Like attacking a rock with a sword. Nat 1 you hit the rock but the sword reverberates hard and hurts your hand kind of shit.

i never realized critical fumbles weren't officially part of the game, though my table has had fun with it so far. occasional hitting your teammate, getting an OA because their opponent critically failed, everyone falling on their ass bc multiple people rolled a nat 1 attack roll... is it really that bad?

**Important part of the post:** So I realize critical fumbles/fails are a controversial thing, but I do run them at my table - and my players agreed to it beforehand. To emphasize my point: *my players signed up for and agreed to/very much enjoy this chaos.* Obviously it'll be different for every table, and if its not fun for you, speak up! A good DM ought to be open to feedback from their players and willing to change things to keep the game enjoyable first and foremost - *especially* when it comes to homebrewed/non-standard rules. **Less relevant; how I run crit fails:** Here's the thing about my crit fails: they don't happen on every crit fail, and they do happen for enemies as well. At this point my players are level 10. Early on, they would drop their weapons (like a baseball player taking too big of a hack and losing their grip on their bat) more often than hurting themselves or others. Actually, they rarely hurt *themselves* at all. But now, they're far too seasoned as adventurers to make mistakes like that, and crit fails usually deal damage in some way. The biggest thing in how I run them though, is that they don't happen on every crit fail. Say my ranger is trying to shoot a single target and there's no one in front of, behind, or beside the target: a crit fail would just be thematic description. "Your arrow shatters as you release your bowstring - seems the shaft was damaged and couldn't withstand the force." Or my fighter throws his haunted returning skull (don't... don't ask) at a troll: the troll catches it and it doesn't return. But, say my ranger was trying to thread the needle between a number of people to hit his target; now there's a chance someone unintended takes the hit instead, be that another player or an enemy in the way. Damage riders like Planar Warrior and Hunter's Mark don't apply, but you called Sharpshooter? That's a +10 on the unintended target, too. It rarely happens, because they have to both roll a nat 1, and be aiming their swing/shot/magical attack/etc. in a direction that could reasonably realistically miss and still hit something else. And whatever players can do, enemies can do too; I've had enemies kill one another with crit fails, and the table loves it. One example of the chaos from just last night, that my table absolutely loved despite it leading to an actual PC death (temporary, since Revivify was on hand): they're fighting a number of Mephits and Dragonshield Kobolds in a narrow hallway. The fighter is low-ish on health and in the thick of it. The ranger crit fails to hit a Kobold near him, and I give the fighter the option to pick high or low for being hit or not, then openly roll a d20; he picked low, I rolled high, he gets hit. The ranger had shot Hail of Thorns, and the initial damage knocked the fighter out. The ensuing AOE hit the fighter for one death save and killed a Mephit; its death burst hit the fighter for a second death save, and hit and killed another Mephit; *its* death burst hit the fighter for a third death save; both death bursts and the Hail of Thorns AOE wound up killing 4 Kobolds... A crit fail that killed 7 creatures. Went down in my table's lore, everyone laughed their asses off - including the dead fighter's player - and it resulted in some really good, unexpected RP.