Criticals and Fumbles in TFT

[ecz]

Fantasy trippers,
Straight to the point:

In the RB there are only four possible effects for critical and fumbles, double/triple damage and drop/break weapon.
Nothing special for Wizards and Spells critical successes or failures.

It works in its basic semplicity, but it is easy add variety and fun just rolling just a further dr.

In my games I have tried a more complex approach using a table for crits and fumbles that is checked when a 3,4 or 17,18 is rolled.

Basically in case of 3 roll d6-1; in case of 4 roll d6+1 on the Critical Hits table (listing 8 entries from 0 to 7) . Thus a Crit hit can still make triple or double damage (even bypassying any protection in case of 0,1,2), but also lesser or different results, to add variety to the combat. Nothing expecially lethal, but it adds new elements in the battle.

Same for Fumbles.
with a 17 the (N)PC rolls a 1d6-1 on the Fumble table, with a 18 the roll is 1d6+1.
As usual an higher dr leads to worst effects, so if the Chracter rolls 18 in a attack and 6 on the table, he gets the worst possible effect : he hits himself! Harsh but, after all, it happens only in one case on 1296.
For example a weapon that drops can now land in the owner hex or at 1-6 hexes away in a random direction and so on... there are 8 possible different effects ranging form the lighter penalty to the worst possible. The GM can create his onwn table including the basic effects of the rules (double/triple damage, drop/break weapon) and also a special table for HtH combat.

Same for wizards.
Spells could be cast at no ST cost or give positive side effects in case of a very good critical effect, or - in case of 17-18- lead to a disaster. For example The ST cost doubled and the spell fails, or - the worst possible event - 1/1296 (i.e. 18 and a following 6) a Lesser Demon appears and attacks the wizard!

The idea is to modulate the effect based upon a modified dr following the critical success or failure. Any GM can invent the bizzarre or fun results he likes or also create more sub-tables.

I have playtested for years these tables and we had a lot of fun. The important thing is keep things simple, with effects of the table clear and immediate and not too lethal, but the extreme results.

Anyone experimented a change of the TFT rules on crits/fumbles?