It’s not as simple as a tennis match as someone suggested earlier. In tennis you have a large springy paddle hitting a light soft fluffy ball. In medieval combat you are swinging a 3-15 pound object very hard at someone who is likely to be trying to counter that by also swinging a 3-15 pound object or deflecting it with a shield. Maybe you lose it because you are disoriented from the fight or a hit, maybe it is because your footing slipped while you were swinging and you started to use your hand to maintain balance or somehow lost focus on your grip, maybe it’s because your hand hit his shield on your swing and your hand goes numb for a moment. It’s not that hard to believe that in a medieval combat situation with all the variables going on that even an experienced warrior is going to lose his weapon some time… but very rarely. Here is our solution to this house rule.

If you roll a natural 1 you get to make another roll that is d20 + Dex Modifier + Weapon Focus (if applicable) + Weapon Enhancement vs DC 10 Recovery. At level 1, a big brute fighter might have a +2 to retain his weapon while a nimble rogue might have a +5. At level 10 a fighter with a +2 weapon might have a +5 bonus while the rogue might have a +7. By level 20 any combatant should be at least a +8 making failure only on a natural 1. There are 4 possibilities to come out of this. (Odds based on a +5 bonus)

1. Roll a natural 20: Critical recovery! You quickly realize the situation and regrip your weapon (regain your footing for natural weapon users) during the attack so that no one is the wiser and you retain the rest of your attacks. (1:400 odds)

2. Beat DC 10: You successfully retain possession on your weapon (or retain your footing for natural weapon users) but in a manner that your foe realizes your mistake and goes on the offensive. You retain the rest of your attacks but have -2 to hit and AC til the end of your next turn. (1:27 or 15:400 odds)

3. Fail DC 10: You successfully keep your weapon (footing) but it requires your entire concentration to do so and manage to fend off attacks. You lose the rest of your attacks for that round and suffer a -2 AC until the end of your next turn. (1:133 or 3:400 odds)

4. Roll Natural 1: You are in danger of losing your weapon/footing in such a manner that it is going to fly away (completely slip). Make another roll using the same DC as before. (1:400 odds)

5. Beat DC 10: Revert back to choice number 3. (1:500 or 16:8000 odds)

6. Fail DC 10: You have completely botched your attack. Not only do you lose the rest of your attacks this round but next round as well and suffer the -2 AC. You do manage to hold onto your weapon unless you willingly let it go, if you choose this option it is assumed you think that you are better off being defensive and you no longer suffer the -2 AC and are free to draw another weapon next round (providing another bonus to quick draw). Roll a d8… weapon flies 1 square in that direction starting from the square directly in front of him and rotating clockwise. (1:2667 or 3:8000 odds)

7. Roll a natural 1: The weapon’s gone and you didn’t even know it was going to happen. You are shocked at the departure of your weapon (footing/overswing) that you lose the rest of your attacks, but you do not suffer the penalty to AC. (1:8000 odds)

That’s our system and none of it is too drastically bad the PC in the unlikely event that they fail THAT bad. You have to remember too that when you are a legendary warrior… you are also fighting legendary monsters and NPCs and not those orcs you slaughtered as a child… they know how to press the advantage as well. There’s only a 0.05% chance that you could lose your weapon and a 0.70% chance you lose your attacks for the rest of the round. And that’s for just moderate warriors and it only gets harder to epic fail as you level. Complicated? Maybe… but so is combat.

My line of thinking is that if I completely screwed up just 5% of what I do at work, I’d definitely be fired. It’s just not realistic.

Now I do incorporate bad things happening, but it’s usually when someone fails a skill roll that would already have a bad consequence. Even then I only do so if the roll fails by 10 or more.

(Not to say that death shouldn’t be without it’s troubles: we usually play with a ‘temporary’ negative level (can’t be removed with restoration, etc.) that goes away when you next level up rather than the permanent negative level. That way, there’s still a strong penalty for death, but after a while the penalty goes away, letting you play at the same level as the other characters again. (In older editions, where XP to level was more exponential, this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem (even if you *gasp* had to start at 1st), since although you’ll have a rough time for a little while, you will quickly re-level to where you were before in the time it takes your friends’ characters to level maybe once. Just an observation I’ve heard related to me, not actual personal experience.))

I’ve no objection to fumble tables providing there’s a nice sliding scale of penalties on it with the least/most detrimental penalties being the least likely roll. A job for 2d6 or variable margins on a d100 maybe?

@Wyvern:
Sure, everyone is as likely to fumble as everyone else and the more attacks you make during a round, the more likely one of them is going to result in a fumble. Under your GM’s house rule and at levels 1-5, a fumble is only ever worse than a miss for dual-wielders, rapid-shot archers, flurrying monks and multi-attacking creatures all of whom could miss out on an attack (or two).

That said, consider situations where PCs are outnumbered significantly but are at a slightly higher level and you’ll see that one of the opponents fumbling is less detrimental to the group of opponents than a PC fumbling is to the group of PCs.

Example: For a group of 4 PCs vs 20 orcs (an easy encounter for 7th-level PCs). Let’s say for a moment all of the PCs are in martial classes, have taken improved two-weapon fighting and have necked Haste potions so will have a total of 5 attacks each a round.

An orc fumbles an attack. This has no baring on the rest of the orcs’ attacks. In fact, as group, regardless of the number of fumbles rolled, they make 20 attacks a round.
A PC fumbles an attack and, under your GM’s house rule (which is more reasonable than a fumble resulting a dropped weapon), loses between 0 and 4 subsequent attacks. As a group, the PCs will only make between 16 and 20 attacks in a round where one of them fumbles and may potentially make only 4 attacks if they all fumble on their first attack.

Saying that fumble rules are more likely to affect the PCs than their opponents is misleading. What matters is not how often it happens to any individual opponent, but how often it happens to the opponents as a collective group.

A blind archer firing into melee vs. concealed opponents who rolls a 1, however, will most certainly hit the wrong target ;)