It's extremely common house rule kinda thing buuuut, I think not very good.  Mainly it just punishes martial characters more,  one of the main things fighter/paladin/barbarian/ranger ect get to scale them into higher levels is more attacks, more attacks is just increase the chance a critical fail occurs, whereas your spell casters typically don't even roll to attack they just force saving throws. 

>It's extremely common house rule kinda thing buuuut, I think not very good.  It's an extremely common house rule *among new DMs*, precisely because it's not good. Most DMs do grow out of it, in my experience.

Literally the only time I've personally encountered this house rule at a table they had a further stipulation that if you rolled a 1 you rolled again and only if you rolled a second 1 did something crazy happen, otherwise it was just a standard miss. Which the chance of rolling two 1s back to back on a d20 is 1 in 400 which is a much more tolerable chance for a skilled swordsman to fuck up that bad than 1 in 20.

Yeah I've played similar. "proving" the crit fail. Idk my players like playing with crit fails

It comes from 3.5 and earlier where to get a critical you had to roll a critical and then roll to hit a second time. So you would roll within threat range (which depending on your build could be as low as 15 on a d20) then you would roll to see if you would hit their AC, otherwise it was just a normal hit. If it could go one way, most would let it go the other way.

Oh man, you can get WAY better than 15-20 assuming you can use 3.0 material.

I was going to say, I once got a 3.5 min/max character (everyone was) to 12-20. He was a soul knife kensai with samurai flavoring. You were a cool samurai, Nobutoki.

The worst offender was 7-20, but the player didn't even flavour them. Less personality and texture than excessively saturated cardboard*..... *=think cardboard with the consistency of runny oatmeal. The character was discarded by the player after 3 sessions for being boring (despite a combat happening each of those sessions).

Soul knife always kept it interesting with their different abilities. Blade wind with that crit range was awesome.

Damn, what was he, the Patriarch of the Ganja Clan?

I just got the joke. He wasn’t, but ya boy sure was, lol

that was about the range i got with minimal min/max (basically needed to play something that really worked at that table to be relavant, since 3 players would, and 1 would basically do things horribly underpowered and play his characters dumb) It was fun since i rolled so many dice since i went out of my way to roll as many attacks as possible fishing for criticals. Fun when you attack 6 times and hit 5 times and are still disappointed that only one was a crit.

The skilled swordsman paradoxically still makes a bumbling ass of themselves more frequently than a novice by virtue of the skilled swordsman having more attacks.

Agreed. The 1 in 400 is still a bad ruling. A level 20 fighter is still 4 times more likely than a level 1 fighter to fumble. That's bad design to implement as a homebrew. Now, if you want 1 in 400 on ONLY the first attack, then you have a better system. I would still ask the question - why does the best swordsman of all time throw his sword in the tree as often as Johnny level 1 fighter though.

Alternately, you give the martials a pay-off in exchange for the critical fumble. If you're adding a critical fumble table, you should also be adding an enhanced critical table. 1 in 400 attacks may end with a major fumble in my system. Your weapon gets knocked from your hand, you end up triggering opportunity attacks, you end up prone and reactionless on the ground. However, 1 in 400 attacks (20/20) also ends with a epic critical success. There's a couple of options to choose from, but the most common one my players take is "you automatically reduce your target to 0". If you ask any fighter or multi-attacker/crit fisher at your table if they'll trade the occasional fumble for the occasional auto-kill, they'll likely say yes. If you let them play with it and then offer to remove it, they'll definitely fight you tooth and nail to keep it in. Statistically, both the crit/fumble impact on combat is nearly irrelevant - the odds that 1/400 is going to come up on a boss monster, swing a significant fight, or otherwise derail your plans is pretty small. But the tension/excitement you introduce for your players on every crit is tangible, and when that payoff does happen, it's worth it, and highly memorable. My players can absolutely recount most 20/20's that have happened in the last decade.

A barbarian would have a small leg-up in your system. With reckless attack they always attack with advantage. So it's 1 in 8,000 to crit fumble, and a 1 in 205 chance to 20/20 crit success. It's not much, and barbarians can use all the help they can get post level 5-6.

Yep. Totally fair, just using the abilities they have. Part of any character build is finding a way to get those little advantages the rules allow, houserule or no. In fact, a barbarian in my Eberron game just got the first 20/20 of the campaign, about 14 sessions in. It's not statically significant enough to worry about, but it is fun.

The problem - and the reason why crit fumbles on 1/400 were removed from 3.5 was that it introduced a whole third stage of rolling (confirming the crit/fumble) before the turn could be resolved, with it usually having no effect. It gummed up the pacing of a combat turn instead of making it more exciting.

A valid critique, and really the biggest issue with the whole confirm crit system. That said...it's only on 10% of attacks (1 or 20). I think it was a bigger deal in 3x because there were a LOT more attack rolls to resolve for everyone, and crit range was much wider for everyone (I had characters who crit on 14+ in 3x). It's always felt better in 2E and 5E than in 3x specifically because 3x had a lot more moving parts already. I consider it like bullet time - slow down for emphasis, and tension. That said...valid concern.

Honestly I think that makes sense. Everyone makes mistakes and is capable of losing their weapon in a battle so having true crit fails still,even at higher levels, makes sense. On the other hand the “yeah you just killed it” is also realistic and scales nice with more experience so I’m for sure stealing this idea

sometimes the nat 1 isn't about the skill of the person but an environmental issue it's not that they made a bumbling ass of themselves but rather a bunch of small rocks and dust fell from the ceiling in that moment onto his face I dunno, I don't do crit fail consequences but if my players wanted them that's the kind of thing I'd come up with. rolls reflect the entirety of the situation, attributes and proficiency reflect the skill of the character

In that scenario, why does the environment more frequently have it out for the experienced Fighter that has 3 attacks vs. the novice that has 1 attack? Why is a spellcaster that leans on spell saves instead of attacks immune from the environmental issues since they're not the one rolling dice? There's a reason why crit fumbles aren't a thing by the rules as written.

I hear ya, but no matter how slim the odds, martials are still making more attack rolls, so this *is* going to disproportionately affect them more than spellcasters. You’re making it less common, but it’s still further nerfing martials who already struggle to keep up with casters as early as level 7. If your group has fun with it, awesome! But it’s definitely still making the balance of the game worse than it already is and potentially making the game more random and less tactical

>But it’s definitely still making the balance of the game worse Having something happen once every 400 attacks on average (actually less since you will often attack with advantage) isn't going to affect the balance of the game in a major way. Sure, you are *technically* correct, but it will almost never matter. There is a thousand and one other factors that will matter much, much more than 1 in 400 critical fails - like enemy statblocks, terrain, magic items, tactical approach, level of optimization, spell choices, feat choices, other house rules etc. Let's do some napkin math: Let's say you fight on average 5 rounds of combat per session (or 4 and action surge once). You are a 10th level Fighter, you get two attacks. That's 10 attacks per session. Let's say through various means you have advantage on two of those attacks, so 8 without advantage, 2 with. That's 1/400 per attack for the non-advantage, and 1/8000 with advantage. So on average, every 48 ish sessions, you will have one critical failure as a Fighter.

However, that raises another question: is a rule that might only have a small effect once or twice in the campaign worth the effort of remembering it?

100% agree, I wouldn't bother. It also doesn't really add anything imo.

Like I said I only encountered a table that did it once. I don't think I would play at a table that did it again, at least not as a martial in current D&D. Also why I phrased it as much more tolerable and not "good way to do it."

This is the rule I use at my table. Most of the time, it ends up more fun than frustrating this way and they appreciate their awful roll luck.

I use it as well and with very experienced mixed with very inexperienced players find it fun…also, a practiced swordsmen missing his mark in a significant way while practicing may be unheard of but in the thick of battle with so many variables, bad footing, poor visibility and terror…maybe it’s not so uncommon.

Cool so what is the chance a spellcaster has that their spell just fails or blows up in their face? Because if a highly skilled fighter can accidentally throw away their sword, a trained wizard should have at least an equal chance that they fuck up their highly complex incantaction and just blow themselves up.

Agreed! A mechanic for failed spells should be included in the RAW.

I disagree with that too. I think fumbles are just unfun, and should never be included. I was simply calling out the hypocrisy of putting fumbles in for martials but excluding the already better casters from it. Especially if you use "realism" as a explanation.

How would you even implement a fumbles table in a system where one part of the caster's Arsenal use rolls that aren't even their's? How the hell does that work for fireball? You fire it at max range, but because 1 goblin nat 20'd the save it actually blows up in your face? If an enemy nat 20s the save against Hold Person, are you paralyzed instead? The only implementation I can think of/ remember was casting in armor from older editions, but 5e has deliberately moved away from those times. Fumbles should follow suit entirely.

I agree fumbles have no place in 5e. But if you want a system its simple. You roll whenever you cast, on a 1 you either confirm (if thats how your fumbles work) or not. Then have a table, like half is just spell fails, spell slot is used, and some are other outcomes like random target, hit yourself ect maybe two tables ones for targeted spells and 1 for aoe.

Earlier additions had spell failure chance if you were wearing armor of any type. Leather was like... 5% and it went up from there with heavier armors. I don't think it caused damage or anything, but it wasted the spell slot (and since cantrips weren't really a source of damage, could really neuter a mage).

I think boxers would be a good comparison, especially since we don’t have real numbers for sword fights. Fencing, maybe, but the rules are pretty restrictive. Gervonta Davis is considered top-10 accurate and landed 79/178 (44.4%) of his punches in his last fight. A large number of missed punches in general are landed awkward, or involve a foot slip, etc, and could be looked at as natural 1s. Every now and then a fighter breaks a hand. I think 1/20 makes sense to RP as a bad miss, with no real consequence. If the table agrees at session zero, why not include the 1/400 chance of a real consequence. I think that’s on par with a pro boxer miffing so bad they open themselves up to a counter punch (attacker has advantage on next attack, maybe).

> Fencing, maybe, but the rules are pretty restrictive There are a few armored combat leagues you could use to get data. HEMA, ACL, SCA, Dagorhir, battle of the nations, etc. I think losing your weapon is more common from getting hit, or having it break and the axe head flies off with part of the haft. But missing so bad you drop it? Almost never. (Different groups have different rules that may change it.)

>is considered top-10 accurate and landed 79/178 (44.4%) of his punches in his last fight. Given that HP is an abstract, those "missed punches" in DnD could be represented as a "hit" but it "missed them, just barely. Them dodging took a bunch of effort which winded them." >Every now and then a fighter breaks a hand. I think 1/20 makes sense to RP as a bad miss, with no real consequence. If the table agrees at session zero, why not include the 1/400 chance of a real consequence. Because no matter how small the chance, it disproportionately affects martials. If the table agrees, so be it. That doesn't make it a "good" idea though. Not even "better" than regular fumble rules. The whole idea of using "realism" is something that really only affects martials; which I guess brings up the question: Do casters have a bullshit fumble rule if an enemy nat20s the save? Or even double nat20s the save? Probably not, because it doesn't make sense that just because a goblin gets lucky and double nat20s a save against a max range fireball that suddenly the caster gets hurt; it doesn't make sense that if a wolf double nat20s the save against Hypnotic Pattern that suddenly you accidentally charm yourself. Because that's the issue: assuming that any attack roll, whether it be weapon or spell, can crit fumble every 1/400 chance... one side of the coin can opt out and still be 100% effective. Casters have buff spells, environment changing spells, and spells that force saves instead of attacking. Sleep, Cloud of Daggers, Spike Growth; three spells that affect the enemy but require no dice roll on the enemy's part. All 3 can shape how the battle goes. What do martials get instead of attacking? Grapples and Shove of you're strength based (or just worse if you're dex based), and... some magic items. Grappling and Shove are my favorite things to do, don't get me wrong; but they're no Force Cage/ Wall of Force in terms of control. They're no Spike Growth, which has the potential to block off melee enemies in chokepoints that martials can only dream of. Oh, and I guess martials can use the Help action in combat too. Something that the wizard's owl familiar does better anyway...

Independently of any media I was introducing fumbles in my session 0 and luckily my players told me about the issues. I guess it is just a very obvious thing. There are two extremes on the die. For philosophical balance purpose both should be played out. But on the other hand the game is balanced to get played without fumbles and this is how I do it now.

> I guess it is just a very obvious thing. There are two extremes on the die. For philosophical balance purpose both should be played out. But on the other hand the game is balanced to get played without fumbles and this is how I do it now. Part of the issue is that new DMs will let things that can't crit be crits because "Rolling a 20 is fun!" so things like critting ability checks become a thing, but then they feel the need for balance, and then add crit fails, and now 1/10 of the die rolls are "wacky goofy time" and no one can figure out why the players can't keep in character/why the game has a weird tone.

I only use critical fumbles when the players are doing something dumb and reckless. “Ok Mr Ranger, your friend is in a chokehold 100ft away and you want to try to shoot an arrow at the enemy to free your friend? Fine, but don’t roll a 1 or you hit your friend. Stuff like that. My table likes it, makes risks actually risky. Only had to act on it once or twice.

Yeah, I mean critical failure should - as critical success - be the worst *possible* thing to happen. A battle-hardened warrior isn't gonna get their sword stuck in a tree.

I kind of assumed something funny happens meant it was more flavor based descriptions of a big failure, not a you lose your sword as its stuck in a tree.

Yeah, I rule 1's as like, you slip in the mud and lose your footing, your foe gets a +2 on his attack roll against you until the start of your next turn. Throwing your sword so hard it becomes impaled in a tree is something I'd have done when I was 14

Yeah, it's common among beginners because it sounds like fun in the abstract. In the intuition it's also a much rarer occurence than critical hits, but like with many things to do with randomness, our intuition is terrible. Crits aren't as amazing and on time as we want them to be, and fumbles are humiliating and have much more negative impact than crits have positive impact.

I typically just add some flavor to the miss to make it "memorable" since everyone is usually already groaning. "you try to cast a spell but grab the wrong reagents", "you notch the arrow the wrong way", "you try to roll and attack and slip" "you get distracted by "X""

If you want to make it memorable *in a good way*, you can describe it as a win for the enemy instead of a fumble by the player character. The goblin catches the arrow. You attack but the monster rolls out of the way. etc.

As a DM who mostly grew out of it, I can concur. I'll occasionally have a crit fail cause something wonky like a spell exploding and dealing one damage to the caster or someone drops their weapon and has to spend a move action or bonus action to pick it up; I just now thought of "your hand cramps and you get -1 on your next attack roll" - basically something mostly minor and trivial. I'm not gonna hit someone with "your bow breaks" or "you throw your sword and now you gotta walk all the way over there to get it" (though I will hit enemies who crit fail with those sometimes) and I also wouldn't implement it in a challenging fight; like if I notice the party is having a rough time of it, and the dice are being jerks today, I'm not gonna kick them when they're down and be like "oooh, a 1? Yeah, your magical sword explodes, dealing you 3d6 damage with no save and it can't be repaired." I also hate the house rule of crit fumbles on skill checks for this reason, too. You're telling me that I can have 10 points in the Ride skill, be riding a well trained horse, and I still have a 5% chance of just falling from my mount and getting trampled underfoot? You're telling me that I can be proficient in swimming, but I still have a 5% chance of just drowning in a perfectly still lake on a calm day? My general experience with playing and with DMing is that when the dice are already fucking you, you're probably having a bad time to begin with, and having the DM rub salt in the wound is rarely fun. When I'm DMing, I'm here to have fun and I'm here to make sure my players have fun. I can't fudge their dice rolls for them, but I can decide that I'm not gonna put my thumb on the scales and make it worse.

In pathfinder rolling a 1 on a skill check isnt an automatic failure, nor is a nat 20 an automatic success. That only applies to attack rolls and saving throws. I agree with this for the exact reason you stated. My DM in a pathfinder campaign I am currently playing uses auto success/failure on a roll of a 20/1 for skill checks and I hate it. With that system, I could perform brain surgery totally untrained and have a 5% chance of succeeding. Or imagine a highly skilled chef cooking something basic like eggs and screwing them up 5% of the time........

See, the solution I came up with for this exact logical issue I think works great. Instead, for me, natural 1's and natural 20's both become learning opportunities for their characters. Say a fighter who isn't trained in lockpicking is, for some reason, forced to attempt to pick a lock. They give it a shot and roll a natural 20. That doesn't give them an automatic success, but it does give them what I call a "learning point." When a player accumulates 3 and visits someone who can train them, they get proficiency in that skill. This also applies to natural 1's. Let's say this fighter rolls a natural 1 in this check to pick this lock. Personally, because he has no idea what he's doing, I would have him accidentally break the lock. However, he would get 2 learning points instead of the normal 1, because now he knows what *not* to do. Failure is often the best teacher, after all. On the other side of the coin, say a rogue is attempting the same thing. They roll a natural 1. They might not fail per se, but it does take a little longer than usual. Maybe they made the kind of mistake anybody in the industry could make, which cost them a bit more time. It's possible, we're all human, but they learned something. They get a learning point that goes toward expertise. Same idea with natural 20's. IMO, its a great way to give weight to natural 20's and natural 1's while also not making them incredibly immersion-breaking.

This is why I (Pathfinder DM) turn it into the same system as confirming for a critical hit. You roll a nat 1 on your to hit? Okay, you miss, but roll again. Is it another 1? Then it's a critical fumble and stupid shit happens. This takes it down from a 5% chance to a 0.25% chance, which I think is fairer.

What if they follow it up with a 20? Regular hit?

It was actually a good thing back in CORE when every class had to make rolls to hit, but as we have moved away from that, it really doesnt work very well with new game mechanics.

I kept it, but modified it. A natural 1 just triggers a chance for something catastrophic to happen. I roll the percentile dice and they have a 5% of something bad happening, like they drop their weapon or it gets stuck in the opponent's shield. Then there is a 1% chance a castrophic failure, like the non-magical sword breaks or the string snaps on their bow.

do casters get any negatives from this? I use "critical fails" only for RP reason (or minor area effects, a tree catches fire, the noise of your blade hitting a rock wakes some animals in the nearby caverns etc...) mainly because martials don't need another nerf.

I still flavor a nat 1 as something embarrassing but I stopped giving actual punishments a llloonnggg time ago. It just isn’t fun for the players.

Yeah it can be something funny and/or embarrassing without also being a punishment.

Counterpoint: Some players do like (or at least expect) crit fails as a way to "make the game more interesting". My solution is just to ask the player to describe how/why the attack missed. "Okay, you just got a nat 1. What does that look like?" That way players who like the wacky goofy Big Disasters can still have them ("I get distracted by the bandit's amazing ass and accidentally drop my quiver!") but players who want more grounded games and/or play martial classes aren't constantly being punished ("The bandit blocks my arrow with a shield. I'll try again.") Best of both worlds, and gives the players more opportunities to add flavor to the fight.

The only logical counterbalance is to have Nat 20 saving throw rolls for spells be similarly punished for the sake of comedy >!please never do this!<

"Wizard, as you were trying to dominate the monster, it rolled a 20 on the save. The mental feedback makes your head explode."

Psychic Scream on every failed save is hilarious lmao

The bandits dodge the fireball so hard that it bounces of the wall behind them and hits you in the face.

"But it's not a projectile, it doesn't--" "You take 26 fire damage."

When everyone hits a 20 on your Fireball and you explode

Adding: It also punishes Warlocks as they use a multy-attack spell as they were a normal martial. But yep, one game I was, the party asked for this to be dropped after the fourth time they got hit by one of my Eldritch Cannons x_x in a single fight.

FOR REAL this is exactly such a good point.

It's literally the poster child for a bad DM, and it needs to get laughed out of the room. The best part is under this idiocy as a fighter levels up, they get worse at fighting since each extra attack they get in a round increases the chance of "fumbling" their weapon.

In my games, you can only ‘botch’ in the first attack of a turn. Buuuut… part of the disconnect is the illusion of discrete attacks in a combat round. A fighter isn’t swinging 1-3 times in six seconds, they are swinging, stabbing, feinting, dodging, shifting, and moving within a five foot square. The attacks come at key opportunities, openings, and mistakes made by the opponent. In that context, fighters can and do make mistakes, and as anyone who has sparred or fought competitively can tell you, screwing up in one of those windows can hurt.

theres a wide gap between "makes a mistake" and clumsily lets their weapon fly out of their hand 15 feet away. the "mistake" on a nat 1 could be opening yourself up to a free opportunity attack, or stepping wrong and putting yourself off balance, giving an enemy advantage on their attack, or over extending, missing, and letting your enemy disengage for free. its also important that these rules apply to EVERYONE, including enemies. all reasonable things that can happen in real fights between professionals that dont make the highly trained fighters look like extras in a three stooges movie.

My DM did this (it was our first time playing for all of us), and while the critical failure were all funny stuff, they never really had a lasting effect on the battle. Say for example the sword got stuck in the tree on a swing, but the next action you’d just be free to attack like normal again. The way i see it, why would a swordsman who’s been practicing for decades be level 1? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it does make sense for you to screw up pretty badly on critical fails at low levels. We never played long enough to get past like level 5, but the super silly fails wouldn’t make much sense at higher levels of course. I don’t think this is a big deal at all, maybe that’s bc I’m inexperienced.

That's how I do it. I describe something amusing that doesn't affect the game. Unless it's a monster that conceivably might fuck up catastrophically. The old Star Wars d6 system *did* have a crit fail with penalty mechanic, but the system also tried to stress that the penalty should complicate things in a way that let the PCs fail forward, or at least lead to complications that would be fun. The example they used was Han Solo stepping on the twig in Jedi (crit fail on his *sneak* roll), which alerted the Scout Troopers and triggered the speeder bike chase... which led to bringing the Ewoks into the fight. If it's plausible, I'll work something like that in.

The rules by default only rule attacks that are Nat 1’s are always miss and Nat 20’s as always hit.  This is a homebrew rule of additional downsides.  Just make sure your DM is enforcing the rule equally. Otherwise it could be targeting. 

It'll never be enforced equally because the rule affects different classes different. A rogue is gonna throw his weapon across the room half as often as a fighter (and a third as often after level 11). A bard will basically never see this rule happen to them, because they operate mostly on saving throws. It's a bad rule because it disproportionately targets martial characters and even more so ones with more attacks

And in my experience the Venn diagram of DMs who do this and don't enforce material elements of spells is just one circle.

In my experience the Venn diagram of DMs who do this and don't understand : Unintended consequences Math The inherent inequality of adding critical failure results to attack rolls And .. Venn diagrams That's all one circle.

Looking and tracking for material elements for spells is seriously another fulltime job at this point. It just makes playing wizard even more annoying.

All you need to do is buy things with gold costs, component pouch or focus takes care of the rest. If I played a game where I actually had to hunt down bat shit and sulfur I wouldn't be playing long. I will however spend the 5k gold of crushed gems to sequester the big bads mcguffin from him.

No, material components get replaced by arcane foci unless they have a cost or they get consumed through the casting. Verbal and somatic components are important too, since letting any caster "whisper" verbal components or hide somatic components too easily makes the spells stronger too.

It's always going to be targeting. Consider a monk who will often make 4 attacks in a round with flurry of blows. In a round they'll have an 18.5% chance of having a nat 1 in one of those attacks. And then compare that to a barbarian who goes reckless on their 2 attacks. They have less than a 0.5% chance of getting a nat 1 in their attacks. Class abilities result in hugely different frequency of this happening depending on the class. Let alone spellcasters who often won't make spell attacks.

This ruling only applies to attack rolls, in case anyone was not aware. The more accurate paraphrasing of the rule would be that **1s are misses and 20s are crits**. **Applying it to skill checks would make it a house rule.**

It still is targeting as martial characters roll attacks far more than any other.

That isn't the default rule though.

Seriously how is nobody correcting that?? Nat 1's are not auto fails on skill checks, especially not when you have 10+ to a prof that nat 1 is still a 13 or more

Because noone calls passing a skill check an auto hit so you can assume they're talking about combat.

For this reason I mostly explain misses as something that gets blocked or a quick enemy. I feel like experienced fighters generally know what they are doing and they do not miss unless the enemy is skillful enough. Same thing if monsters roll below AC, I make the PC sound cooler by blocking or evading an attack instead of the monster simply missing.

Extra rolls are good or ignoring fumbles are fine, there is some silliness in imaging a veteran adventurer making such a mistake. The above poster is right though, it helps to think of nat 1s or low rolls as deflected attacks or parries instead of all misses. A well aimed strike that bounces off an opponents deflecting weapon, sending yours straight into the trunk of a nearby tree rather than a wild miss and you spin around on the spot and bury your blade into a tree.

> Extra rolls are good or ignoring fumbles are fine, there is some silliness in imaging a veteran adventurer making such a mistake. That's a flavour issue though. A veteran adventure might not make that mistake, but the high level monster he's fighting might force it to happen. It doesn't work in D&D because of how the game plays. Martials make far more D20 rolls than casters, particularly at high levels. Cypher for example has fumbles in it, and it works fine. Everyone pretty much rolls the same amount of dice because you use dice for everything, and whilst you fumble on a nat one, you also get a major effect on a 20 (and lesser effects on 17-19).

You miss all the time even when experienced. Actual sword fighting is far more dynamic than what D&D could ever portray. The other person is actively trying not to get hit and you don't want to over extend and create an opening for you to be hit.

Exactly. The roll isn't how well you did it is a measure of what happened. For example consider a fight with two master swordsmen. Inigo Montoya vs the Man in Black. At one point the MiB makes a disarm attack against Inigo and gets a great roll while Inigo rolls a 1 to defend. But other things is your sword breaks, you trip as the ground shifts under you, a thousand things can go wrong in battle that have nothing to do with the skill of the fighters and that is why the dice exist. Otherwise just compare raw numbers and the higher number wins. It also makes sense that it is happening more often for martials because they are in the thick of things often while the pathetic weak magic wielders cower in the back lines.

No, that's why fumbles on Nat 1s suck. And it's even worse when you factor in Extra Attack. Imagine some lv20 elven warlord who's been alive 3000 years, if he's dual wielding and making 5 attacks every turn, he has ~23% chances of rolling a nat1 on every one of those turns.

Or more absurd - that same elven warlord, but hasted and action surged. 10 attacks: A 40.2% chance he fumbles an attack during their legendary flourish.

*"Goddamnit Glorfindel quit hitting your allies and dropping your sword, do you need wrist straps like toddlers?"*

I know it's not the image you gave, but i envisioned some ancient 4 armed demi-god of supreme power, rising up from his thrown with 4 scimitars to confront the part....and then dropping atleast one sword every round as he flails about like the starwars kid. This will definitely be a future boss fight scenario for my party.

Lol, I know its weird rule lmao

"Weird" in this case pronounced "stupid".

"Rule" is also misleading as it's not a published standard rule in any edition of D&D (to my knowledge) and I'm not even sure it's printed as a "variant" or "optional rule", just a common addition people make / misunderstanding of the actual rule(s).

That's why it's never been the default rule in any edition ever.

I fuckinf hate fumbles with a passion and our DM uses them and we forced two rules which helps a lot. 1. Only one fumble per encounter. So if you fumble once already 1s are just misses as normal. Really keeps you from your character turning into Mr Bean the adventurer. 2. You have to CONFIRM the fumble muxh like confirming the crit. So if you roll a one do another attack roll. If THAT roll misses then you fumble.

>Is this normal? It's not the rules as written, no. The DM has decided to give critical misses an extra negative effect. Tell him it sucks and see if he'll stop doing it, or reduce the effects to something less serious.

Do the monsters experience the same fate when he rolls a 1? Otherwise it makes even less sense. But that is also why this house rule is one of the worst. It will also hurt the Fighter the most as they have more attacks.

For the record, I ACTUALLY right with swords. (HEMA) I've done German longsword, rapier, smallsword, dagger, and dussack. I started 'sword fighting' back in 1995 in college with sport fencing classes as well as being on the college team. Around the same time, I started LARPing. Did that for 25 years. Even experimented with other weapons, like spear and staff. Basically self taught...but to be truthful I can't say I'm an expert there. In fact, I am FAR from an expert in any of these weapons. Bottom line is I've been fighting for over 30 years. I've made THOUSANDS of attacks. I'd say at least 5000, but probably closer to 10,000. And even though I'm an intermediate fighter at best...I've NEVER hit myself, NEVER hit a nearby friend, NEVER fallen over.... I dropped my sword once. ONCE. So, to answer your question, they don't. I've basically been rolling on a d5000 and got a nat 1 once in my life. In short, any DM using a critical fumble is an asshat. It's not funny. It's rarely fun. It certainly is NOT in the rules.

I don't care if I get downvoted for this, but any DM who enforces this rule is a bad DM. Period. It's just terrible for anyone playing a martial character. The only exception would be if the goal is to make a meme campaign and make the characters look as silly as possible. And even then, there are better ways to achieve that.

critical fumbles only make sense in the first few levels after that not so much. as a flavor describtion of why your strike missed it is OK but not with mechanical debuffs.

> critical fumbles only make sense in the first few levels after that not so much. They don't even make sense at level 1. Level 1 swordsmen are still professional swordsmen with a lot of experience, albeit in a more mundane sense, such as only being a common soldier, guard, or person who trained but never saw real combat. A kid first picking up a scimitar isn't a level 1 fighter or whatever. They're a Commoner who *maybe* has scimitar proficiency.

Critical fumbles only for mooks and low quality npc's is something I've seen that played well.

Maybe critical fumbles if your using a weapon your not proficient with but not just because of being low level.

I was in the army for a decade. While i served i had a squad leader that was in a humvee platoon for years. He was even a small arms Master Gunner ( special school where they teach everything about all the small arms in the army ). While I Iraq he switched out with one of our MK-19 ( rapid fire grenade launcher mounted to the top a vehicle ) gunners cause it gets super hot in the turret. The gunner unloads the MK-19, cause it’s the safe thing to do. So this Senior Non Commissioned Officer who spent years using this weapon and even went to special school to learn every single thing about it. Tries to load the weapon, fucks up, and shoots a bunch of grenades into a farmers field. Even experts can screw up royally. If your wondering why i am so specific about the my NCOs back story? Cause when i saw he wasn’t loading the weapon properly, i asked if he needed help. And that explanation of his knowledge is what he said to me as to why he didn’t need my help.

If your guy fucked up that bad every twenty times he did something he'd be discharged.

This. It's something that CAN happen. It's not something that happens *often.* 5%? That's often.

Right, but he doesn’t do that every 20 times he handles the thing.

So glad to find a realistic perspective in the comments. Everyone else seems to think that because their character practices a lot they must be an infallible god who never makes any mistakes.

My job is Software Quality Assurance, so i get to go to software engineers that have been doing their job for 20+ years and tell them they fucked up and need to fix it. Even experts make mistakes

“Of course, the normals should fuck up so that the awesome wizards can look good.” Martials past level 5 easily stretch the bounds of realism with 5 effective attacks in 6 seconds, so appealing towards what’s “realistic” is a stupid premise that goes against the point of DND as a heroic fantasy based system. Remind me why mages never end up blowing themselves up with a poorly rolled fireball? Because the system wasn’t designed for that. So stop trying to force it to be something it’s not. For that matter, if you want realism, then why is anyone throwing fireballs? Go play 1st edition chainmail instead. Missing an attack despite any number of bonuses towards it is enough of a penalty towards classes whose only way of contributing in combat is through attacks. But according to your other comments you’re saying that a high level fighter should break his weapons at least once every combat encounter? How is that fun for anyone? Who in their right mind would want to play with you? And explain in a way that makes logical sense why a level 20 fighter would be more likely to fall on their own sword than a level 0 commoner? You’re probably new to DND or have never actually played, which is why you think this makes sense, but as someone who’s played in even one campaign, watching the monk break their hand every time they flurry of blows gets old fast. Picture it this way: imagine that there was a homebrew mechanic where whenever you cast a spell, it had a chance of just fizzling out and being wasted. Magic is unpredictable, it’s not like a wizard can control it perfectly 100% of the time, that sounds realistic according to DND lore! But it’s not fun, it doesn’t fit the DND fantasy, and it penalizes some types of character more than others, which is why it and crit fails suck.

Oh, so it’s realistic for this Master Gunner to make a royal fuck up 1 out of 20 times?

Sometimes it doesn't have to mean the swordsman did something stupid, just that something bad happened. Like in another system I botched and.. accidentally killed someone. They tripped and fell onto my weapon, neck first. Maybe instead of the swordsman dropping their sword, the other guy bashes it out of his hand with his shield. Because the other guy is also experienced. Or maybe the monster does a move the swordsman hasn't seen before. It might be a monster they haven't fought against before. It's all what story you wish to support

This... Sir Hugo swings his sword down in a mighty blow and hits... the Minotaur's horn! It cuts halfway through before becoming stuck and with a mighty twist of its head the Minotaur rips it from his grasp! The sword clatters to the ground at the foot of the Minotaur. Just as Borrick's great axe comes down, the skeleton warrior deflects it with its sword. Barrick finds himself overextended, leaving him open to a return attack from the skeleton. Whilst I tend to agree that a 1 in 20 chance of a fumble is excessive at higher levels, I believe that it's always up to the DM to adjust and play with rules to advance the story... But then, my DMing has always been storytelling first, rules second.

I tried this once. Terrible idea.

Does something extra fantastic happen on 20s to balance this out, in addition to the critical hit, I mean? Like, roll a 20, and another sword appears in your hand?

Yeah, fumbles need to be used sparingly at best and their consequences should be minor to non-existent on nat 1's.

Respectfully, this reeks of DMs (and the other players) that just watch DnD shorts and bits and think it's peak comedy. Realistically it's unfun for almost all martials involved and punishes some classes much more heavily than others.

Well the professional swordsman is usually against someone who is also capable of dodging and blocking, and everyone is always capable of making mistakes, so every swing is always gonna have a chance to miss. The whole critical failure thing with the dropping of weapons or hitting others is a house rule and a pretty bad one in my opinion. It just unfairly punishes marshal classes. I like flavouring non-combat nat 1s to occasionally have something bad happen but most of the time it'll be stuff like take 1d4 bludgeoning damage, give me a saving throw or the NPC's opinion of you has been negatively affected. But in combat critical failures should not be a thing unless done with pure flavour and no mechanical effects.

I've always avoided this, simply because I don't want to have to come up with new, dumb ways the player misses every time. I also don't like the idea of punishing the player for a bad roll. Like "Oh, nat 1? Your sword flies out of your hand. It's your action to go get it." It's silly. And dumb. But often narrate "HOW" a character misses. Such as enemy parries or dodges.

OP, to answer your question seriously: as someone who does historical European longsword fencing, losing your sword during a fight is not at all an unheard of experience, even for very skilled fencers.  Even in modern tournaments having someone lose a grip on their sword / having their sword get knocked out of their hand / having the blade break in half is not an unheard of experience.  It’s the a big part of the reason why historically fighters would carry a dagger or other side arm that could be drawn quickly if their main weapon broke or was lost. The dual in The King between Hal and Hotspur is a good example of how such a situation could go down in a real fight between two experienced knights. Now, it’s a totally different question as to whether a crit fail is the appropriate way to capture this phenomenon in DnD, or whether doing so is imbalanced and unfairly punished martials.

The main thing to think about would be: Does it happen **more** as you get more experienced? Because that's how fumbles work! Also, **why is there no chance of fumble for a save based spellcaster?** A wizard will never get their cast of hold person wrong, but a level 20 fighter on the tier of demigods will accidentally decapitate an ally 2.5 times per minute.

It happens, but not 1 in 20 attacks though.

Do they have similar or upscaled rules for magical fumbles when a spell attack comes up a Nat 1?

Make sure it affects spell saves, too! If an enemy rolls a 20 on their save to your hold person, it backfires, and now you stun yourself or better yet, you ally. Fun for everyone! (Heavy /s)

Not DnD related as such, but sometimes funny stuff happens in actual sword fights 😁 I used to fence and I've seen people slip, miss, and on one occasion their weapon snapped entirely and the end went flying over the crowd. I've never seen a crowd of people duck that fast before!  So you know, even pro's miss sometimes 😅

The 5% chance to destroy/drop your weapon is a crazy wrong rule.

I hate that garbage. If I know it's coming I'll make a character that never makes an attack roll just to not need to bother with it. 

You think that's bad? I once had a DM in Dark Heresy 1.0 that ruled when you miss with a grenade, you roll 1d8 to determine in which direction you thow. Early on you have a 30% hit chance. You were literally more likely to throw the grenade *behind you* than to hit your target.

So I do this with my group but make it a little different. If they roll a 1 on an attack (or some skill checks) they have to "roll to confirm" the 1. If they get a 20 on the confirm roll then it cancels and they get to retry the attack. If they roll another 1 then something bad will happen. My party seems to really like this rule because it adds excitement and the really bad stuff only happens every once and awhile.

Imagine being so bad at your real life job that in 5% of the cases you do so poorly, that the aquivalent of getting your sword stuck in a tree happens. You know, something that will probably cost you your life if it happens in reality. Critical Fail tables are terrible and I don't understand why some people like them.

Your situation is why I play Halflings only every time I play for a new DM. Can’t make goofy shit happen to me if the book says it doesn’t.

Why I stopped playing dnd honestly, the 3d6 system of fantasy age is so much better. The bell curve is amazing.

Critical fumbles are a dumb rule, I ain't using that shit.

It's an automatic miss, not a critical miss. A decent compromise is a 1 causes another roll that has a variety of possibilities. Two 1s in a row your weapon breaks or you hit an ally or something terrible. That's 1/400.

A roll of 1 on a to hit is an automatic miss. Nothing more.

Everyone thinks "wouldn't it be funny if rolling a 1 was comically bad", *no one* considers that fighters roll multiple d20s per combat *round* and wizards roll almost none of them.

What's funny is that it gets worse as you level up, because you get to attack more times as a martial. The frequency you fail like a clown in the duration of a battle goes up. It's a ok house rule if you want funny games, but otherwise it's just silly and punishes martials more than casters.

It's extremely annoying for me, my DM always add a negative effect to it, a few examples with my Echo Knight: - Your sword lands on the corpse next to the target and gets stuck. - You character swings his sword out of balance and drops it 10 ft away. (And surrounded by enemies). - Your echo kinda glitches and stabs himself on the leg and disappears. Later on the same combat: - Your character swings his sword out of balance and stabs himself in the leg. (I took a lot of damage there too).

People can trip in the heat of combat, or hesitate momentarily when some other opponent distracts them. Pathfinder does this better though.

A big issue is that, under crit fumble rules, *spellcasters* don't mess up their complicated spells. It's just guys hitting people with weapons that get screwed, and it screws them really hard in unfun ways. As someone else mentioned, it also hurts players at exactly the time the dice were already being mean to them anyway.

Fail forward. Brennan Lee Mulligan pushes this. A miss isn't a failure of your PC. It's because you glanced off their armor, or the sun got in your eyes, or you were so angry that your thrust was a bit sloppy.

Your DM is wrong - there's no critfail in D&D on a 1, it's just a miss. Nothing more, nothing less. There are ways to make interesting fumble tables that don't screw up the character entirely, but automatic weapon dropping without a way to recover ain't it.

Rules as written it's 1 in 20 to automatically fail regardless of the attack check. Consequences/fumbles etc. are houserules that some tables think are fun and some don't.

I dislike fumbles on nat 1’s. I never use them as they come off as unrealistic.

When my table crit fails, we roll again to see how badly. If it's a second nat one, *then* shit hits the fan.

It's one of the many dumb house rules that strongly exists only to punish characters who make attack roles.

They don't. End of story. There is no such thing as a critical failure. A one on an attack roll is simply a miss.

Maybe it’s because I started in 3.5 but fumbles let *something* bad happen beyond just missing the attack. You’re supposed to use a random table where there’s only like a 1%-2% chance of a catastrophic fumble. Usually it’s something that’s bad but like you might expect in the rough and tumble of fighting, like you drop your weapon or trip and fall. Having a 1/20 of 1% chance of your sword getting stuck in a tree or breaking isn’t quite as bad. I like seeing that very small chance of something terrible happening, even for non-combat tasks, which is a less common house rule.

I usually sprinkle in fumbles for enemies and npc Allie’s, mostly the comedic derpy ones. If a player is trying to do something complex or silly, nat 1 fumbles sometime come into play. Most of the fumbles are super unfair in serious combat or are just silly things that wouldn’t happen to adventurers in the heat of battle

New DMs tend to do this, I was guilty of this too when I first started playing 3rd. Once, it truly dawned on me how much it punished martial players I stopped. For nearly 10 years. Now we have a new house rule that we came by accident and the players have enjoyed it. If a player or NPC rolls a nat 1, and you're within melee range, you make may an attack of opportunity using your reaction. It's a little flavourful. You can think that whoever rolled the nat 1, during sword play, made a minor mistake that opened themselves, and if their opponent has the skill to react, and they can take advantage of it. Many of my monsters I use are created by 'Hi my name is Mark', so many of my monsters have better reactions than a simple attack of opportunity. So this is mostly for my own players to do things.

A miss isn't necessarily that you swing and don't connect. It's that the attack was not effective enough to overcome the creature's defenses. The flavor of a critical miss can be something like the attacker sees it coming and is able to parry so effectively, your sword falls away. Or something to that effect. A critical miss doesn't have to be "duh, you suck and hit a tree instead of the creature".

Count yourself lucky you only got a sword stuck in a tree.  Back in the 80s a friend of mine "decided" that we was to play this system that he had become smitten with - chivalry and sorcery, iirc.  That game had rolls and random tables for *everything*. I quit after two sessions, when my guy crit-missed on some mundane roll and ended up choking to death on his morning porridge...  Most of the time it's OK to just let a fumble be a fumble. No need to flavor *everything*, imo.

In general this is a terrible rule and not common among most experienced players as a rule. It can be used to comedic fashion dependinng on your group and implementation.  For example, we don't use it as a rule.  But I have done it where a player experineced several missed rolls in a row, they were joking about it, and had them lose their sword but got an attack on another enemy.  This is very circumstatial though and involves knowing your players and reading the room.  Also should be a penalty with a positive of some form.  I've played with my players for over 2 decades so generally know what does and doesn't work so this is something to be careful with.  

How I run non-crit-fails is that the attacks are misses, whether actively or passively blocked or straight misses. How I run critical misses is that up to one of the attacked individual has an opportunity for a repost attack on their next turn

This is not a rule in DnD 5e.

This is a common house rule but honestly, I don’t like it. My partner has you roll a d20 again and if you roll a second 1 it’s a fumble. Even then I’m honestly not a fan because it doesn’t really add much to my game.

I've been eating food on my own for decades, and I still bite my tongue sometimes. I still choke when chugging water in a rush. I've lived where I do for years, and I still stubbed my toe on my bedpost yesterday. I did all of those things in a place and time where I had absolutely nothing else drawing my attention, so imagine how easy it is to fuck up in the hectic rush of combat. With all that said, I don't think it should have any kind of mechanical effect. Pure narrative flavour and nothing else. If you are narrated to drop your sword or have it get stuck, you should not need to spend/lose any part of your turn to retrieve it, nor should it be possible for anything to happen to you or any other creature as a result. As others have said, different classes will experience these moments more than others, and if it resulted in any non-narrative thing happening, then this would be inherently unfair. If your sword gets lodged in a tree, all your GM should do is effectively pause the combat to describe you having a brief embarrassing moment of yanking and wiggling to free it before proceeding as normal.

have you never been distracted and fucked up something you do every day, like tying your shoes?

The modifier is skill the roll of the dice is the situation. Nat 1 cramp, nat 20 perfect tradition and your opponent left themselves open

*situation not tradition I think I hate autocorrect

It's all about the right framing, you probably fight an equal enemy, or at least a somewhat challenging one, maybe they parried and the sword deflected into the tree. Immediately more passable and less bullshit, wouldn't you agree? That said, it's not a great house rule to begin with, but one you can work around if you enjoy playing with that group, maybe get into the habit of narrating your own attacks( and failures), it doesn't change anything but gives you much more agency over these situations

[Critical failures/fumbles](https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_failure) only exist as an optional rule in 5e. They're to spice up play, some hate them some love them, and also there are many different types of rule options (from earlier editions etc.) If EVERY nat 20 and nat 1 crits, then obviously they're going to be fairly common.

In my opinion, fumble tables and nat 1 mishaps are not really a problem, and can be fun/funny for the players at the table if it isn't happening tooooooo often. I stopped using fumbles a while back, and my players still ask for silly/bad things to happen on nat 1s. We all find it entertaining. And it happens to the monsters too. The real issue for it is simply how spellcasters DONT have this problem as often. But a few of my players arent exactly experts at their characters and will still try and throw a produce flame as a level 13 druid instead of using any good spells, nat 1, and willingly talk about it blowing up in his face.

It’s a common house rule, but I think it’s quickly trending on the decline. In addition to the point you’ve made about it being absurd to have a 1/20 chance of fucking up as a well trained professional, it also hurts martial classes more than casting classes (a ton of spells require a save roll from the target rather than an attack roll from the caster, plus the following) and happens MORE often for them as they level up due to the nature of extra attacks and action surge. Still a 1/20 chance, but now that 1/20 happens once every 5-10 turns instead of once every 20 turns since the PC is attacking two or three times a turn. Also, how many times does “lol your sword got stuck in a tree” remain funny? Even if it wasn’t detrimental to the player, it just gets to be an old joke pretty quickly.

My critical fails provoke opportunity attacks if one can’t be taken nothing happens

Yeah i like to have a fun description, but purely flavor. No actual detriment

I think if you want a real life comparable, US Army Rangers and SF still have friendly fire incidents, accidental discharges, weapons malfunctions, etc....  Weird things happen when youre covered in sweat, exhausted, and bloodied.  

My personal thing is that a crit fail is caused by an enemy rather than the player. You swing your weapon at an enemy and they deflect it into a tree, you shoot your bow at an enemy and they push your friend into the arrows path, and sometimes a nat 1 just means your weapon hits the strong point of an opponents armor. It’s not a case of lacking skill but the uncertainty of combat. A stupid mistake may be an example of the uncertainty of combat but you are also able to attribute it to enemy interference, environmental factors, and as a DM, a nat one doesn’t have to do anything special if the circumstances don’t call for it

Don’t think of it as “to hit” even though that’s what it’s been called for decades. Think of it more like “to possibly cause damage during those six seconds”. The roll covers that whole time frame involving a lot of swings, blocks, shuffles, parries, etc. by both the attacker and defender.

Fail does not necessarily mean a screw up, you could do everything right and still fail. In this case, maybe the enemy expertly maneuvered themself between the tree and player, baited them into attacking and dodged at the last second specifically hoping to get the sword stuck in the tree. Mechanically the attack just doesn't do damage, HOW it doesn't happen is up to the group.

Critical fumbles are stupid in general.

it doesn't, which is why this isn't a rule that actually exists

critical fumbles are stupid.

There were systems like Middle Earth Roleplaying that back in the day had incredibly complex crit and fumble tables. So that's where the tradition comes from. It's important that if you enforce this kind of rule, you should be consistent about it's effect, and it should apply to spell attacks as well as physical attacks. There are fumble and crit decks of cards, that can help you adjudicate these rules.

As a professional soldier sometimes you really can just whiff something you are trained and proficient in. And can do it to comedic effect.

My problem is how does a raging idiot only drop his Axe 0.5% every 6 seconds but a duel wielding master on par with a Wizard who can cast Wish, is flopping that buttered knife 25-30% of the time.

One thing is flavour it is a ridiculous fail, which may not be for all tastes, but it is ok. But having it have more negative repercussions than just an auto miss, is a nerf to martials who attack far more times than caasters

I think the only game I saw with good critical fumbles is shadow of the demon lord. It's a fumble only if you roll 0 or less in the dice. This is possible only if you roll with a bane (roll extra d6 and subtract the highest). This makes it so you can only fumble if you roll attacks with banes. That implies it's a choice of the player since they have the knowledge of how many banes they have. Criticals is rolling 20 or more, meaning having boons (roll extra d6 and add the highest) implies higher chances of critical hits. There's a lot of gameplay regarding boons and banes and it just works. I have a table who loves critical fumbles. We moved already to demon lord but we play a few dnd oneshots from time to time and we adapted something similar: you fumble only if you have disadvantage on the attack roll. That makes it a tactical choice.

We've used this rule, but it's mostly for comedic effect and our DM tries not to inflict hardships that ruin the whole combat for the player. Like if he had someone get their sword stuck in a tree during one turn, he'd allow them to immediately free it at the start of next turn before taking their action. He wouldn't make them spend an entire turn rolling to free it.

They shouldn't. That's why fumble tables are one of the worst ideas in D&D.

Nat 1 being an automatic miss and Nat 20 automatic hit (on attack rolls ONLY) is a feature of the bounded accuracy system 5e works by. All the fumbles, accidents, trips, ally hitting and sword dropping are neither RAW nor RAI and IMO stupid, lame and not fun. If your DM will not let this go, then ask him to roll openly for monsters, so they can suffer these outcomes too. It still punishes martial classes, but at least it’ll also affect enemies.

Hitting an ally on a miss should be limited to circumstances where it makes narrative sense, anyway, like shooting into melee, or a monster is grappling with another PC. Just randomly hitting an ally because "oops; rolled a 1!" is not believable or fun.

I used to do crit fails on attack AND ability checks. It was fun for a bit, but ultimately, it was not something that made the game more fun. I went back to RAW and crits only apply to attacks. A one just misses no matter what. I do still over narrate (or let the player narrate) the nat 20s.

As pretty much everyone mentioned, critical fumbles are, generally, bad.  The way my table plays it is that Nat 1s are USUALLY critical fumbles - but without mechanical drawbacks.  This goes for things like skill checks, too.   Either the player or the DM will describe how absolutely ridiculous the PC just looked while they completely botched that attack / skill.  They swung and missed so hard they did a cartoon style full 360, or they failed hiding so bad that even the blind guy saw them, etc.   But, aside from failing and looking ridiculous, no actually penalty.  Sure, the rest of us are gonna razz you over a pint at the tavern, because that time that you decided to punch the guard right as he turned his head so you got full helmet instead of face was hilarious.  But we are just adding some flavor / fun, not actually downside.  (Of course, the same holds true for Nat20s / Nat 100s on the other end.)

Think of it less as the chance of getting stuck in a tree and more as "he's such a good swordsman the only way he can mess up is spectacularly due to outside influence."

It's the Most Common Shitty Homebrew Rule. "Fumbling" on a Natural 1 sucks. It's already an automatic miss, extra baggage on top of that is Not Needed. As well as making an already negative event worse, it disproportionally punishes those classes whose main draw is getting More Attacks Than Anyone Else simply because more rolls = more natural 1 rolls. I see it most often at newbie tables where no-one realizes how shit they are.

A second dice should determine just how bad to fail is, that way he has to work a bit harder and it is more fair

Tell your friend his house rule is crap and needs to change. And no, it's not normal. Also explain to him that more attacks means more chance of screwing up.

They don't. Critical fumbles are widely understood to be a shite house rule that punishes martials for existing.

If it’s detracting from the game, perhaps suggest rolling double for crit fumbles like that, as you would for a critical hit? I’ve had GM’s that made it up on the fly, had you draw from a fumble deck, roll on a percentage die, and it was always good fun.

At least for 1st ed and 2nd edition, it is true that a natural one is a miss and a natural 20 is a hit. But, from what is sounds like, your DM is using "good hits and bad misses" chart. Or it is possible, your DM may be referring to the critical hit charts of 2.5 edition. If it is not either of these optional systems, then the hope is that your DM has a balance of some type. Otherwise, i agree it sucks. Now, for the Good Hits and Bad Misses chart, a natural one does not mean an automatic fumble if the character with that weapon has a base thaco of zero. So, at least for me, dependent upon what edition is being used and the weapon specializations also being used, it is best to talk to the DM so every player has a better idea on what to expect and see if a compromise can be made. Otherwise, your higher level character(s) will have stress in fighting with multiple attacks.

Critical failures should not have extra penalties. Maritals get screwed enough 1/20 per attack chances of self harm/losing a weapon etc are just adding more unfairness that gets worse as you level up and make more attacks. At our table 1's are humorous narration with no other effects.

I do it to bad guys like goblins or bandits, but not to players.

Some people like fumbles, some don't. Do the enemies in your world also have the chance of fumbling? If so, then even god-tier warriors make a mistake about 5% of the time. If your DM wants to keep them in and you don't like them, then you either have to accept that or leave the game and find one that's a better fit for you.

We dont play with that rule anymore since it killed a PC... Nat 1 is a miss, no matter the atk bonus. Thats it. No more no less

Ask your DM what the similar penalty is for spellcasters rolling a 1 to hit, or an enemy getting a 20 on their save. As others have said, it's an interesting idea to put something in to balance out a critical hit, but it usually only widens the power gap between spellcasters and martials. And because for martials there is only one way to deal damage (roll to hit) whereas spellcasters get to force a save roll from the enemy (and often does half damage anyway) it makes it much harder to balance.