reduce the chance of pointless death
I am always searching for methods to evade that, and one very important are fumbles, I have seen deads for fumbles, and it is not much serious, possible but it should be avoidable and not depends only on luck.
Fortunately we have 1 solution in book for weapons, the swashbuckling (is written well?) skill, you roll and if success you evade the fumble.
Now I am searching for spell fumbles, it is not much professional IMO that an archmage dies because of unavoidable result as UMR are, and depends only in luck and not some in your own skills.
And about this point, the spell fumble avoid, it is not an avoid but I think the spell bonus could be used to substract it to the fumble roll, so a good caster can minimize fumbles damage.
For avoid it, an SCSM could be made after a fumble for UMR, with the proper modifiers.
Which one could be better?.
I've got my game down to about 30 skills, and that's where I like it. No offense meant, of course. The flexibility is one of the great things about RM, whatever version you play.
But...taking your idea, why not consider something like swashbuckling's fumble avoidance as an integral part of the weapon's skill, rather than a separate skill? This could also be applied to Spells.
Take number of ranks in the skill or list. Roll 2d10. If the result is below the number of ranks, the fumble is avoided. This does make it much more likely to avoid a fumble. With 20+ ranks, you always avoid a fumble, or you could rule that a roll of 20 on 2d10 always fumbles anyway.
You could come up with all kinds of mechanics based on the skill ranks. Skill ranks x 5, plus roll; if over 101, no fumble. Roll is open-ended, so opportunity to roll very low still exists for players with high ranks. Skill ranks x 2 for a much lower chance, about 1 in 5 at 20 ranks. Etc. Many options using the number of ranks.
Personally, I don't really use the fumble results, unless it is a critical situation. If the player is attempting something really dramatic with significant consequences, I might consider a fumble result. If they're in the middle of a standard encounter, or typical use of a spell, I just consider it a miss.
