A classic: Allies blasted by Friendly Fire

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yesterday, our regular RP group played the last part of their exile on the icy lands of I'ix. During the very last encounter against a 17th level minion of Iborighu, the mojh mage blade decided to cast a Sorcerous Blast (Fire) in the room. Result: one PC reduced to -7 HP (Mandingo, the hummingbird totem warrior). He would die at -8 (as per AE rules) at the end of the turn. Then, the winter witch tries to stabilize him by using her Heal skill... and rolls a fumble, which kills the character.

This made me think of Fireballs/area-damage spells cast around friendly targets, resulting in their death. I fairly believe this is a classic, since I've seen this happen multiple times while playing D&D/AD&D. What are your own experiences about this? Did you see characters die because of friendly fire? How?

Anecdotes are welcome.

I remember my D&D equivalent of "dynamite fishing".
My Sorceror used a Sonic Orb against a Hag while we all were standing in waist deep water. Unfortunately, I missed. The Hag was still hit, but our Ranger (already low on HP, maybe even unconcious, I don't remeber exactly) was also i the area - and died. It wasn't exactly dynamite I used, and I didn't get a fish, but a ranger, but, well, we still refer to it as the "ranger fishing" accident...

Otherwise, we rarely have such accidents. Or, more precise, they aren't accidents. If we do it, we do for tactical advantage (or because we are desperate enough to try, though that happens rarely.)
We especially like to use spells like Holy Smite that have a lower effect on our characters than on enemies.

 

[Henry]

This very weekend, I played a high-level Druid who hit the party barbarian with splash damage from a Fire Seed spell. If people hadn't heeded my warning when a Lich appeared in a corridor, I would have gotten some of them in the Rock to Mud spell I dumped on him, too.

Part of it is intentional. I'm playing the character as being very concerned about animal life, but very detached about humans and humanoids, so she warmly greets the Ranger's awakened companion, but barely says "hi" to the Ranger himself. She forgets to heal the Barbarian with his own wand he purchased and gave the Druid, but screams bloody murder when her animal companion dog is killed and Word of Recalls his body to safety.

I forsee more friendly fire in the future.

 

[Jubilee]

My Saturday group, a party of 6 7th level adventurers, were recently attacked by 6 or 7 swarms of large undead mosquitos. The rogue yelled "get out of the way, I have something that can take care of them" - so those of us who could, moved to the edges of the room. The rogue's turn comes up and she throws a flask at the swarms. The GM asks what it is - and the rogue reminds him that she disabled a trap a few sessions ago and recovered the fire flask in it. The GM looks it up, does a little double take, and informs us that it's a 35 or 40 ft spread - and we're in a 30ft room - and it does 10d6 of damage! Talk about high-powered alchemist fire!

The ball also hit the rogue, but he managed to evade the damage. I think almost everyone saved, though it was a bit dicey for a minute with the warmage - thank heaven for close wounds!

The unfortunate thing is that in the next session, the rogue found another fire trap and managed to recover a similar flask. ug!

In a high level game, I was playing a water-elf monk and another player was playing a blasty-mage. At one point, she told me to watch out and cast fireburst (the one hits everything 10 feet around the character). My monk had a darned high reflex save, but was vulnerable to fire. I missed my save by 1 - because I had a penalty vs. fire, and then took extra damage. Grr! The other character's explanation was that she thought I was fast enough to get out of the way! I didn't come close to dying because of it, but my character never let his live it down.

/ali

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I cant think of a time when its happened from AE spells targeted on others, but twice its happened as a result of domination or frenzy.

Your totem warrior had an 8 Con? Thats sad. I wouldnt have felt too bad if I was the mojh, because that weenie shouldnt have been in melee in the first place. Why didnt you use the diminished (single target) version though? Or attack from within?

 

[Nebulous]

Part of it is intentional. I'm playing the character as being very concerned about animal life, but very detached about humans and humanoids, so she warmly greets the Ranger's awakened companion, but barely says "hi" to the Ranger himself. She forgets to heal the Barbarian with his own wand he purchased and gave the Ranger, but screams bloody murder when her animal companion dog is killed and Word of Recalls his body to safety.

i'm stealing this character hook for my dwarf druid. I really like it.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Once upon a time ago (back in 2E) there was a Fire Elementalist.
Once he got Fireball, the first verbal component was 'Duck'.
The Fighters learned quickly a quick volley of arrows was preferable to a mad rush in the first round.

This character was also they gave a choice when entering the philslogen in Spelljamming.
1. Tied Bound & Gagged during that portion.
2. Dragged behind the ship with a heavy iron chain.
He chose number 2 quite often and provided great entertainment for the crew with his experiments.

Yeti

 

[Rasyr]

Long long time ago, in a hybrid AD&D/Rolemaster game, I played a Kender Druid (Rolemaster Druid - who also had the Background option, Friendslayer - fumbled attacks hit nearest target other than me). I had my hoopak staff as my primary weapon as well (it was my Druidstaff).

The rest of the party got into the habit of diving for cover, no matter what they were doing, anytime I said "Oops". They could be in the middle of a melee battle against a much tougher foe and it wouldn't matter. They dived for cover as they knew something bad was about to happen to somebody/anybody standing.

The event that really made it hit home that diving for cover was a good idea was when we were fighting a Giant Carvnivorous Ape. I fumbled, and the sling bullet hit the bard (who happened to be one of two PCs in melee with the Giant Ape) in the back of the head, knocking him out. The Ape them proceeded to disarm the Bard (literally) and use the Bard's arm as a club against the other PC. Oops....

 

[Balgus]

I use to play a cleric that had that same problem. He had only a couple of spells prepared, one of which was flamestrike. Which my players called Hellstrike. I would use it like 3-4 time per encounter and then rest for the rest of he day.

My solution- Hierophant. My DM doesnt usually let PrCs into the game, but this was for the sake of the party. I learned to shape the blast around the melee fighters.

 

[werk]

It happens about once a week for us. The dwarf cleric goes charging into the fight making it so he's going to be in area of effect spells.

This is pretty much what happens to us. Hello...you don't have to charge on the first round dummy! Stay back here, ready to attack or receive charge, get buffs, avoid AoE spells. I know Int is a dump stat for you, but come on.

In the campaign that I run, the party Wiz got into the habit of casting web in instances where he would be casting fireball, etc, later on (largely because we had some newbie players). So the Dwarf cleric would run forward, then get totally stuck in the web when it was cast, and start swearing. The skinny elven cleric found say to him, "Just take note, dwarf, for soon this web will be fire and death." ...He didn't learn.

I recently had a CE BBEG nuke all combatants in a desperate attempt to stop the party...he dropped a couple of PCs, but pretty much wiped out his own forces.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Back in 2nd ed, when our party was mostly crazed Glantrian wizards, we used to make it quite clear to the warriors of the group that deadly magics were going to be unleashed on the enemy, and if anyone else was in the area, well, they had fair warning. They seemed to take the hint, after a couple of times.

Of course, we still had one wizard who insisted on doing things like firing lightning bolts in 10' rooms. Eventually we just gave him a wide berth.

On a similar topic, it seems like 2nd ed always had the wannabee archers who would shoot other party members in the back- typically me. This was especially a problem since it seemed like firing into melee was DM fiat back then. Thankfully, 3e gave some solid mechanics for it.

Seems like I took an awful lot of friendly arrows back in the day, though.