So after our 5e session tonight, my friend brought up an issue he has with a variant rule of ours: if you fire into a melee combat, and miss, there's a chance you might hit someone else by accident. So you roll another attack to see if you hit someone nearby instead.
He thinks this is anti fun because it basically makes ranged characters useless at firing into melee combat. That was kind of the point of the variant rule because it's immersion breaking in my opinion to basically take a gun and shoot into a crowd and not ever hit anyone by accident.
So that leads me to my question: as far as I know, in earlier editions, rules like this were in effect. So what did people do in those situations to have ranged attackers still be useful? Or is it that you're just supposed to attack that you can't fire into a melee and look for other ways to help out?
3.5: Feat tax the fuck out of every ranged attacker into taking Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. Ranged is still better than melee because of full attacks and 110 feet on a composite longbow.That's a familiar magic circle.
4e: No feat tax at all, enjoy being a ranged character, powers were balanced around this.
>>46725843
Some games intend to simulate the reality of an adventure by rolling dice for random elements of the game world.
Other games are intended to facilitate a dramatic story around the characters the players create.
Maybe you like one of these kinds of games over the other? Maybe that player enjoys a game that facilitates a better story for his character, and maybe you favor a game that more accurately simulates a realistic game world.
>>46725843
Well, not hitting your target doesn't have to mean that you hit a friendly, but may simply hit another enemy. Which is, imo, annoying, but not per se bad.
If that's not enough, play around a bit with hit chances to make hitting your actual target more likely. Perhaps to such a degree, that a ranged attacker has a (slightly) better chance that melee fighters, with the tradeoff of a small chance to hit friendlies that comes with not hitting your target (ie. the archer has a 20% better chance to hit an enemy, because they can't parry/dodging is hard or something like that, but on the other hand has a 10-20% to hit a friendly.)
>>46725843
Remember the time Legolas accidentally shot Gimli in the back?
Me neither.
>>46725927
That's definitely one part of it. I think of it as silly for someone to just take a shotgun and fire into a crowd because it demonstrates an immersion breaking lack of concern, but the flip side of the coin is wanting to be heroic and being a part of the battle.
>>46725937
Yeah what I meant was, a chance to roll against someone nearby. It's just in this case that in practice it's almost always an ally because everyone swarms around one tough enemy and then everybody else fires into the melee anyway.
>>46725843
Instead of rerolling just use the original roll, if it missed the monster it'll probably miss the friendly, but there's always a small chance.
>>46725843
It was always a bit of an optional rule, afaik. Usually there's more than one possible target in fights, but if there aren't they can change to a numerically inferior melee option.
>>46725971
>Yeah what I meant was, a chance to roll against someone nearby. It's just in this case that in practice it's almost always an ally because everyone swarms around one tough enemy and then everybody else fires into the melee anyway.
My point was less that that's how it should work, and more how it could work. You know, adjust your combats a bit to make use of the rules, rather than being restricted by them.
>>46725843
>if you fire into a melee combat, and miss, there's a chance you might hit someone else by accident. So you roll another attack to see if you hit someone nearby instead.
The thing I find weird about this is if you repeat the attack with all the same modifiers, it means that a character who is a great marksman, when they do miss, is going to be way more likely to accidentally hit their buddy than the half-blind incompetent is. That seems wrong to me.
>>46726036
Maybe roll the 2nd with Disadvantage?
The place I got this variant rule is basically a deduction of how the actual rules work.
If you're fighting in a melee, you're supposed to count the other person as "cover." And the rules dealing with cover state that if you miss the attacks within a certain range, then it hits the cover instead.
Somehow that turned into rolling to attack twice, maybe I need to take a closer look at that again.
>>46726036
Choosing one target at random and letting him make a reflex save against a static value wouldn't be a bad idea. Or even let everyone not attacked make reflex save and whoever failed the most (had the highest difference between save diff and his roll) is hit and if everyone saved, the arrow fully misses. The test could be really easy, so it happens rarely, but more often when shooting into larger crowds.
Obvious drawback of such system is of course micro-management hell: making all these rolls after every missed shot. I personally wouldn't bother.
>>46725843
>Be a group of adventurers
>Our warrior-philosopher is a handsome trickster that fights with a berserker fury with his two-handed swords. Once, he wrestled down a Glabrezu, took it by the horns and tore its head clean off with a mighty roar.
>Our arcane expert, an elven ambassador from the strange and exotic lands of the Fey, is capable of twisting reality into strange and unreal shapes and colours to confound, terrorize and entertain. With a word, he can render moot the machinations of hostile spellcasters and with a gesture elemental chaos bends to his will.
>Amidst our group is also a songsmith, a beautiful young artist who is equally good with steel and violin. Her song can dispel evil and enchantment and her steel bites against threats that her voice cannot. She once saved us all when the despicable illithids had us ensnared by letting our an unworldly scream, like that of a Banshee, that broke their hold on us and allowed us to fight ourselves free.
>And then we have the sneak! He is a man like a living ghost, appearing and disappearing as he wills, without sound. Though loyal and good companion, he is a merciless and deadly foe who can strike from the shadows with brutal efficiency. No place crafted by mortal hands has ever restrained him nor barred him entry.
>Then there's Moonbeam, the wood elf. He shoots a bow and 50 % of the time shoots one us in the back. Don't know why we keep him around.
>>46725843
This is what 'critical failures' are for. You cleave past foe and into friend, your misplaced shot lands in an inopportune spot, your spell fizzles dangerously.
Rolling again is a shit way of doing it. If you want it to be more common than a critical failure, I'd say missing and rolling an even number should hit an adjacent target that the original attack would have hit, ordered from closest to furthest from the ranged attacker.
Personally, I'd be making spells fizzle on any even totals while I'm at it, because fuck wizards too, right? Fighters are the only acceptable way to play and since I'm the DM I'm wholly justified in pushing that opinion on my players.
>>46726296
>This is what 'critical failures' are for.
Don't exist by RAW.
>>46726296
>Rolling again is a shit way of doing it. If you want it to be more common than a critical failure, I'd say missing and rolling an even number should hit an adjacent target that the original attack would have hit, ordered from closest to furthest from the ranged attacker.
What do you mean by an even number hitting an adjacent target? You just roll d20 and if it's a 2 or a 4 or a 6, etc., then it hits the next closest guy?
I've been thinking of adding a mechanic like this to my current homebrew. It will make Precise Shot worth taking, for one.
Think of it like this:
When you attack a square, you have two options: Take -4 to the attack and no chance of hitting an ally who's in that threatened range, or ignore the -4 and you instead make an attack roll against that square, then roll a percentile die to see who the attack roll is actually against. If the roll beats their AC, you've shot them instead of the dude you were aiming at. Players now have a harder time of definitely hitting the target, but an easier time of maybe hitting the target. Unless they take Precise Shot, in which case they can just shoot whoever they like.
>>46726432
I don't know, why would you ever just not take the -4 penalty unless you genuinely don't care who you hit? For that matter, how does that make precise shot worth more?
>>46726367
Correct. Using the original roll even, so you don't actually have to roll again, which will make it significantly faster once the group is familiar with the rule.
>>46726310
>extremely commonly known houserule is disqualified from being better solution to houserule situation by dint of being a houserule
8/8 replied
>>46725843
>Or is it that you're just supposed to attack that you can't fire into a melee and look for other ways to help out?
You don't fire into melee because it is a retarded thing to do. You fire before melee gets going. Seriously.
>>46726036
I've always had it that if a creature is blocking your line of view they provide the enemy with a cover save. If you miss by the difference of that save then you hit your ally.
You can't hit an ally/enemy adjacent to your target if they don't block line of sight. Missing when you're trying to shoot through your buddies arm is one thing, missing by five feet for an expert marksman is another.
>>46726750
>extremely commonly known houserule
It's also a shit house rule.
>>46725843
>anti fun
I really hate this "I can't do what I want, so this isnt fun" bullshit. I'd tell this guy once to use his fucking head and stop complaining, and if he can't swallow his autism, I'd throw him out.
>>46726460
You might not take the -4 penalty because you really can't rely on the natural 20, or because... I dunno, it's a bad option, but as DM you sometimes have to give players the bad option because when they go for it there's always lots of delicious chaos.
And it makes precise shot worth more because instead of making a fairly uncommon situation easier to deal with, it now makes an uncommon situation with no good options totally easy to deal with.
>>46725965
Legolas had the requisite feats for that.
>>46725843
My group had a similar varient where the angle of the shot affected the odds of hitting either friend or foe.
>>46725843
You can't play a game/campaign that revolves mainly around combat and both have people who want immersion/realism and people who want balance. Those are always going to clash.
One guy wants accidents to happen when you shoot into a swirling melee, because it makes a certain amount of sense.
Another guy hates that rule because he feels it makes him less powerful, and that's more important to him than dickslapping someone else's immersion.
People who expect a videogame without graphics are always going to clash with the people who want to pretend like they're a person in a living breathing world that they interact with.
On one hand I hate making balance a priority in imaginary cooperative adventure time, but on the other hand I do not play combat heavy campaigns. I can sympathize with someone who shows up for dungeoncrawlmurderfest and then feels like he's being penalized because immersion is applied to the rules in a lopsided way.
Fine, he might shoot a friend if he fires into melee. That makes sense.
But have you applied any houserules to melee combat or magic to make those make more sense too? If not, you're kinda being a dick, because no chance of hitting people in melee is not even close to the most glaring illogical thing in the 5e rules.
>>46726892
>And it makes precise shot worth more because instead of making a fairly uncommon situation easier to deal with, it now makes an uncommon situation with no good options totally easy to deal with.
In either case it's a difference of -4 penalty to attacks. If anything, it makes precise shot worth LESS because even without it you can opt to not take the penalty and chance hitting an ally instead.
>>46725843
That's a daft rule. Way I tend to do shooting into melee is:
Shooting into melee imposes a penalty to your roll to hit. If your attack misses due to the penalty (ie, it would've hit had the penalty not been in place) then your attack hit an allied combatant. If it's a 1 on 1 fight, you hit your ally, if it's a 2/3/4 vs 1 fight, roll a die and allocate the hit.
>>46725843
>So that leads me to my question: as far as I know, in earlier editions, rules like this were in effect. So what did people do in those situations to have ranged attackers still be useful?
As >>46726795 points out, we didn't fire into melee in 1e or 2e because it was a BAD FUCKING IDEA. In 3e, people still did it after paying a massive feat tax, just for the pleasure of doing 1d8 damage while the wizard was turning reality inside out.
>Or is it that you're just supposed to attack that you can't fire into a melee and look for other ways to help out?
That is exactly how things went down, at least back before 3e. Playing a hyper-specialized character was frowned-upon, so you always had some way to contribute other than firing a missile weapon. However, missile weapons also got a big bonus on initiative, so you were pretty much guaranteed to be able to fire off a short (or two or three, depending on your weapon of choice) before everyone closed to melee range.
I'd say that if your DM wants to use this houserule, he should compensate ranged characters by giving them a +10 bonus to initiative in the first round if they have an arrow nocked. That would be in keeping with the spirit of previous editions.
>>46725843
I do something similar.
If there's a "risky" ranged attack- like shooting at a bad guy holding a friendly hostage, or shooting into a melee- there's a chance that on a bad roll, it'll hit an intervening character. Basically, if you roll poorly enough, below a level dependant on the situation (read: my mood), you roll an unmodified d20 vs AC to hit the target inbetween.
But I don't care about all the complaints ITT, because:
>attacking from range with impunity is better than wading into melee against most enemies
>it makes players think about positioning and alternative options
>my players aren't powergamers and enjoy it
We do the same thing for risky melee attacks, but those only on a natural one because it's easier to control a thing still in your hand, and risky melee attacks aren't as common.
>So after our 5e session tonight, my friend brought up an issue he has with a variant rule of ours: if you fire into a melee combat, and miss, there's a chance you might hit someone else by accident. So you roll another attack to see if you hit someone nearby instead.
You always have to remember that if you start doing this shit, then you have to apply it to enemies as well.
So not only do you get either defense from ranged attacks (Enemies not shooting because they might hit an ally), you also get additional damage in on your enemies whenever someone tries to shoot at you, and misses.
It also makes ranged characters FAR better at hitting groups of enemies, because this cannot feasibly only apply to enemies and friends in close proximity (AKA Close combat), but also to enemies standing in a close formation. So enemies standing in a shield formation, for example, would mean a miss SHOULD give you another shot at hitting one of the guys standing next to him, which would be a massive buff to shooting.
You can't just say that you have a chance of hitting allies, but not enemies. If you do this, then you are arbitrarily nerfing shooting, because then you are clearly not trying to apply logic to anything.
>>46725843
>roll 1 on a ranged attack
>DM: "Roll a scatter die"
>mfw
>>46725843
Your friend sounds like that guy. I'd say get a rug and a shovel
>>46725843
Pretty standard rule. If your player thinks it should be otherwise, explain the common sense of it to him. If he still whines, he's a douche.
Your rules are bad and you should feel bad. This is the same shit as critical fumbles which mean a high-level character has more chances to be a complete idiot and trip over their greatsword once every five rounds.
>>46726913
Pretty much every archer who wants to be useful as primarily an archer has to take the requisite feats. It is the default standard for playing an archer. That is not an interesting mechanical choice, so it may as well be rolled in. A choice isn't a choice if you have to take it to be functional.
That being said if >>46725843 really has his panties in a bunch about it, the Sharpshooter feat negates cover bonuses for ranged weapon attacks and the Spell Sniper feat does the same for ranged spell attacks. Problem solved.
>>46725843
Some Options you could use:
-Only happens on a 1, but always hits the ally when it does
-Give him the option of; normal -4 to hit when firing into melee, or he an choose to ignore the -4 but have to make the hitting an ally roll if he misses (the -4 being taking extra care not to hit the ally)
-add a few more foes that like to stay at range themselves (he gets more safe targets, and enemies start suffering the firing into combat, making him feel like hes less being punished)
>>46725843
You could just treat misses with the thrown weapon rules. Does 5e even have that? I used to be really into Pathfinder (sorry) and they had a rule for missed thrown weapons where you would roll a d8 to figure out which direction the bomb or whatever missed by, then a d4 for how many squares away.
So you could do that, and if someone is in the square the missed arrow lands in they just make a dex save or whatever with a DC=the result of your missed shot. If they fail they get hit, if they pass, they're fine.
That way, there is still a chance for archers to hit allies, but it won't be very often and your verisimilitude will probably be preserved.
If one absolutely must reintroduce a rule that has been taken out of the game then firing into melee should impose a penalty to hit to represent the attacker, who is almost certainly has received the proper training in the weapon he is using, taking extra care not to hit their allies.
Why are only ranged weapon attacks being penalized and not melee or spells? If it's in close quarters a sword swing could hit someone else just as easily as an arrow. A rule that causes one to fuck up and hit someone other than the intended target that only applies to one kind of attack and not all kinds is even more immersion breaking than none at all.
>If you roll a critical miss, randomly determine a nearby creature and roll to hit that
>If you roll 1 + [Cover provided by creatures in the way] or less, roll to hit the creature providing cover
>>46726310
Neither does the possibility to hit your ally by accident when you miss your enemy. But here we are.
>>46725843
>That was kind of the point of the variant rule because it's immersion breaking in my opinion to basically take a gun and shoot into a crowd and not ever hit anyone by accident.
Using a bow is astronomically different than leveling an automatic firearm and unloading.
Like, ridiculously unequivocal.
>>46726036
Nah, you should roll to miss on the second shot. Pass, and you control the shot. Fail, and you nail something random
>>46725843
Try to remember that a "miss" in D&D does not actually mean that you did not hit the target. Firing an arrow into the shield of an orc, slicing a hydra so ineffectively that it's regeneration heals the wound almost instantly, and having your hammer bounce effortlessly off of the golem's arm are all instances of a "miss" in D&D. Just because you rolled lower than the enemie's AC doesn't mean that you're aiming at your friend's back.
