Improve your GMing: Fumble - Let your players come up with their own misery

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Foreword: D&D lacks good fumble rules. In the Dungeon Master's Guide House Rules are proposed for what happens if someone fumbles but I was not able to find or come up with rules to my liking. They either discriminate characters with many attack rolls since more rolls often means more fumbles. And/or they are rather boring because they are pure 'board game' mechanics and their effects are always the same and add nothing to the roleplaying component of an encounter.
When we started playing D&D a creature granted combat advantage whenever his player rolled a 1 on a attack roll, a rule which falls in both categories mentioned before. I eventually got feed-up with this House Rule and removed fumbling all together from the game.
Some GMs have created their own fumble charts or Paizo has published a Fumble Deck (which is very brutal) to add some randomness. But nothing did really appeal to me until I heard from the following concept.

Details: On The Exemplary DM Podcast Session 2 Episode 1 (at around 36 min. in the podcast) a simple but yet good way to handle fumbles is presented. Whenever a player rolls a potential fumble (a 1 in case of D&D) he chooses whether he wants his character to fumble or not. And if so, he comes up with what happens and he receives some kind of reward. The GMs in the Podcast give away Drama Points which can be used as re-rolls.
The combination of these components make the concept so appealing to me.
First of all if the players can choose whether his character fumbles or not and therefore no type of character is discriminated. Controllers in D&D for example which are area attack heavy, roll many attack rolls and are therefore more likely to fumble if a 1 on an attack role always meant a fumble.
Second of all if the player sets up with his own misery nothing is pressed on him and he will have more fun.
Third of all players are encouraged to be creative since they receive a reward if the select the fumble and have to come up with what will happen which hopefully will make encounters more unpredictable and make it more fun for everybody.
And finally the reward reimburses him for for his bad luck and the dire consequences he might face.

Advice: Be cautious whenever a player comes up with a fumble that effects other players in a negative way. Check whether the players idea is OK with them and do not be shy to say no if it is no fun for somebody.

House Rules: Minions Military-Style

Minion Commander

The Minion Commander might inspire his comrades by his bravery or they might fear him more than death itself. Indifferently of the reason why his presence lets them fight on when they normally would have turned and run away, but when the commander falls their will to fight is crushed. They have lost their teeth and will be overcome more easily.

The Minion Commander does not have to be a minion itself but should be at least a Two-Hit Minion. Treat all (other) minions as Two-Hit Minions while the Minion Commander has 1 hp or more. When the commander is reduced to 0 hp all minions return being normal minions with only 1 hp. Bloodied minions stay as they are and are not removed from table automatically.

When a Minion Commander is part of an encounter make sure that he sticks out of the crowed. Let him bark commands, shout insults and such. So that the players get the idea that he is special and if they take him out while minions are still standing describe their reaction to the death of their commander.

If you want to speed-up combat think about using Diceless-Minions but the difficulty of the encounter will increase quite a bit and might even unbalance it.

Minion Warband

Did you as a GM every wanted to send a whole unit of soldiers against the players or wanted to have an encounter where units fight against each other?

Even if the soldiers would only be minions it becomes quite time consuming to move all minions involved and to resolve combat rolls. Try using the following rules to speed-up the encounter.

Select a type of minion you want to have a large number of in the encounter. Then choose whether the minions should form huge or large Warbands.

A huge Warband starts as a huge monster (9 squares) which has the same values (defenses, auras and attacks (including number of attacks and damage output), etc. ) as the selected type of minion. It has a range 1 aura and all enemies which start their turn in the aura take two times the damage the minion normally would do on with his standard attack. When the Warband takes two hits replaced it by a large Warband.

The rules for a large Warband are the same as for a huge one except that it is only large (4 squares) and its aura does only the same amount of damage the minion would do on a hit. When the large Warband suffers two hits it is replaced with a normal medium-sized minion for which normal minion rules apply.

Since area attacks are devastating to groups of minions a successful area attack deals 2 hits and a miss still causes 1 hit to the Warband. A huge mob therefore instantly is replaced by a large Warband when hit by an area attack.

A huge Warband is weaker than 9 individual minions of the same type would be, but it is easier to keep track of and it speeds-up combat, since only one instead of 9 moves and attacks have to resolved. The auras are meant to reimburse for the fact that mobs have only one attack which causes the same amount of damage a normal minion does.

The concept of Dicless-Minions could easily applied to a minion Warband. And since it has only one attack it will not unbalance the encounter but it will also hardly speed-up the encounter.

Random Findings: Two-Hit Minions

Ameron from Dungeon'sMaster.com has a less radical approach to make minions more dangerous than the diceless-minion: The Two-Hit Minion. I like the idea, especially that critical hits or hits with damage types the minions have vulnerability will outright kill them.

Riddle: Stone Disc Riddle

This is a handout for a riddle I made for my gaming group two years ago. The characters found a construct of four stone disc stacked upon each other. A symbol was engraved on each disc and the discs could be turned independently not unlike the lock of an old safe. The numbers 1 to 7 were engraved around the discs with an equation of symbols beneath.

Each symbol represents a number and in order to solve the riddle the players had to determine which symbol stands for a certain number. This had to be done by solving the equation and by turning the discs in such a way that the symbol on each disc points to the number it represents.

Example: If the star would stand for the number 3 the red disc must be turned so that the star points to 'III'.

The riddle was solved within 15 minutes, if I remember correctly. The solution and a .jpg for download can be found here (Miscellaneous).

Download: Faction Tracking Cards

And here is my the third and last type of tracking cards I have made so far (NPC tracking cards were the first and the location cards the second). A PDF version with 9 cards per page can be downloaded here. As with my other tracking cards they are only meant to hold just enough information to distinguish the faction from others. Detailed information would have to be recorded with another method. A special thanks to Jovana Gaspar for sharing the font A Lolita Scorned and Derek R. Audette for the texture I used for the background of the cards.

In the upper right part of the cards are two places for symbols or shortcuts. I intended the first space to specify an identification for the faction which other cards can refer to. So if a NPC belongs to a certain faction the identification specified on the faction cards could be found on the NPC's card. The sample NPC card I have posted previously, has 'BC' as a faction identification to indicate that it belongs to the Bloodgore Clan.

The second space I intended to use to specify the location the faction is most active at.

The column Faces is meant to hold the known members or the main faces of a faction.

Random Findings: Drama Cards

If I had not already bought and introduced the Plot Twist Cards from Paizo to our game I would have used the Drama Cards from 1d4 chan (free for download!). And I am still ponder upon replacing the Plot Twist cards. Why?

Do not get me wrong, I like the cards from Paizo and they would be my first choice if we would play D&D 3.5E. But we play 4E and my players have not really bought into the concept on taking over the narrative with the use of the cards and hesitate using them. I was hoping that the non-narrative effects proposed on the cards would encourage their usage. But the proposals are for the 3.5E rules even if easily adapted to 4E.

The Drama Cards are 4E specific and basically fall into two types. One type is giving advantages or effects in combat quit like the Fortune Cards from Wizards of the Coast. And the other type opens narrative opportunities. Even if those cards always state that the effect falls into the DM's discretion I would always ask for a proposal of the person playing the card. My favorite card that falls into the second category is 'Parley' which changes a combat into a social encounter. Another thing I like is that the Drama Cards are divided by 'strength' into four groups. The non-narrative effects of the Plot Twist Cards do not defer to much by power level.

If you do not like giving your players any narrative control you still could use those that have in combat effects. Which basically would turn them into a free set of Fortune Card.

I did not yet had any Fortune Card in my hand but from what I have seen in the internet I am not so fond of the concept and I find the cards rather expansive (3.99$ for 8 cards). And they do not give any real narrative control to the players.

The opportunity to either use cards to hand over narrative control to the players or if they do not like to do so to give them a advantage in combat was the reason I introduced the Plot Twist cards to our game in the first place.

Random Findings: Condition Cards

Somehow I have missed this. The best D&D 4e Condition available on the internet have been updated a while ago: Weems updated condition cards.

I have printed a set for each of my players and encourage them to put the cards on a little plastic bases in front of them whenever their character is effected by a condition. We use bottle necks for conditions as well, but I do prefer using the bottle necks for the bloodied condition and monsters only. Thus reducing the colors of bottle necks needed and keeping things less confusing.

Download: Location Tracking Cards

In addition to tracking NPC with the help of cards I wanted to have reminders for locations my group visited. The cards I made are generic enough to be used for all the different kinds of locations such as cities, shops, taverns, temples and so on. A pdf version with 9 cards per page can be downloaded here. Again special thanks to Jovana Gaspar for sharing the font A Lolita Scorned and Max F. Williams for the texture Minas Tirith.

Here is a sample, how I use the cards:

The concept is similar to the NPC tracking cards. The cards are only meant as a reminder. In the upper right part of the cards are two places for symbols or shortcuts. I intended the first space for an identifier specifying where the described location can be found at and the second to define the shortcut used on other cards to reference this location. The first shortcut of the sample is 'SF' which stands for the Shadowfell, the plane Whaleburg is located in. And the second shortcut 'WB' stands for Whaleburg. If I would make a card for a shop in Whaleburg I would use 'WB' as the primary identification.

The sample NPC card I have posted previously, has 'WB' as a location identifier to indicate that the NPC can be found in Whaleburg.

Download: NPC Tracking Cards

Because I was not able to find any NPC tracking cards that satisfied my needs I made some on my own. A pdf version with 9 cards per page can be downloaded here. Special thanks to Jovana Gaspar for sharing the font A Lolita Scorned and Max F. Williams for the texture Nargothrond.

Here is a sample, how I use the cards.


The tracking cards are not meant to contain very much details about a NPC but are rather intended as a reminder of what made the person stick out of the crowed. I also wanted a quick way to get an overview which person belongs to a certain location or a faction. I therefore added two spaces at the upper right portion of the card to hold a symbol or one or two characters as a identifier. In the given sample I used 'WB' for the city of Whaleburg which my players did explore a while ago and 'BC' for the Bloodgore clan.
The identification is also on the Location and Faction cards I have made and which I might upload another time.

Speed-up Combat: Diceless-Minions

Essence: Each minion nearly takes up as much time to resolve during a round as a 'full' monster but without really influencing the outcome of the encounter. Let minions hit automatically to speed up combat and adjust the fixed damage amount by the attack modifier to uphold tactical depth.

Details: To be honest I do not like minions in D&D 4E. The idea behind minions is good but I find the execution of the concept lacking. In every encounter involving minions I played in they were no fun. They either got discarded before doing anything meaningful or they were ignored by the players because they did not see any real threat in them.

Due to the low damage output (at least of the minions from the MM1) some people on the web proposed that minions should spend their standard action on aid another for brutes or such.

But I had enough encounters were the minions did not have the opportunity to help 'full' monsters. And doing aid another for other minion does not really make sense. So I normally keep attacking with minion. And minions tend to come in big numbers. As a result whenever minions are involved you roll many attack rolls for a minimum of damage which drags down the speed of combat.

Therefore let minions hit automatically and adjust the fixed damage amount by the attack modifier. So if a character has cover the damage of the minion is reduced by 2 and if the minion has combat advantage increase the damage by 2. And if you do not mind it to be a bit more complicated, think about letting minions do the fixed amount damage + attack modifier per tier ( 1* attack modifier for heroic, 2 * attack modifier for paragon and 3 * attack modifier for epic tier).

The modification of the fixed amount of damage reintroduces the tactical depth which is lost due to the automatic hit. Without it characters seeking cover before minions or minions attempting to flank characters would not make any sense.

If you compare this concept of a 'diceless' minion to the 'traditional' minion the difference really concerning the amount of time resolving a minions turn is a die roll and, if your game is anything like mine, a following GM's question such as: 'Do I hit you with a 19 vs. AC?'. Not much broken down to one minion but, as already stated before, minions tend to come in larger groups.

The automatic hit makes the minions more powerful. But since the damage output of minions is rather low to begin with I think the balance is not pushed to far and the little bit extra damage lets players think twice before ignoring the next group of minions.

With this approach I am even thinking about a minions only encounter, a thing I have dismissed until now.