A classic: Allies blasted by Friendly Fire

[Henry]

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.

It wasn't quite DM fiat, but it was pretty nasty. In a ranged-into-melee situation, if you were fighting an enemy the same size as you, you pretty much had even odds of getting shot as the enemy did. It was better if you were fighting big monsters, like giants, but if you were mixing it up with a single bad guy of medium size, you were pretty much screwed 50% of the time.

(Mediums count as 1, large count as 4, and you add up the total of participants in melee, and rolled the closest die to that size. It was a total crap-shoot, as they say).

 

[TheYeti1775]

For us it was a -4 to hit the guy, then if we missed, in a circle going clockwise from the archers perspective in a 10ft radius was your number.
Then roll that dwhatever.

 

[frankthedm]

Back in 2nd ed, when our party was mostly crazed Glantrian wizards...

There are sane Glantrian wizards?

I say replace Rad with Yog-Sothoth for some really fun times.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

There are sane Glantrian wizards?

I say replace Rad with Yog-Sothoth for some really fun times.

Well, there's the ancient evil ones whose world-destroying plots take hundreds of years to come to fruition. They're still crazy, but they're a lot more methodical about it.