Can you miss on purpose?

[Squire James]

I think the pacifist cleric should spend less time trying to circumvent the drawbacks of his chosen feats and spend more time role-playing them. If it's THAT darned important that the rogue get his Sneak Attack in, the cleric can grit his teeth and take his divine punishment (i.e. the very low-duration stun effect) like a responsible individual! Right?

 

[Riastlin]

Uh... stuff catches fire?

As far as I'm concerned, Fireball presents no problem. It's all one attack; the fact that you have to roll that attack separately against each target doesn't change that. If you have a penalty on the attack, whether self-inflicted or not, it applies to all the attack rolls. So you can spare your allies at the cost of also sparing your enemies.

This is a lot closer to what I would do. I might allow a character to miss on purpose, but it would be an all or nothing deal. Either everyone is missed on purpose, or nobody is. Otherwise your wizard and invokers are going to be dropping area spells on their party without care since they can just choose to miss the allies. Likewise with Spiritual Weapon, if the weapon misses automatically, then I would say its not distracting the target either.

I am not familiar with Band of Brothers. However, I do see a problem with actually encouraging a miss and whether or not the party as a whole should benefit from it.

I still think all in all, though the idea of missing on purpose just seems off. As mentioned earlier, if you want to knock over the table dramatically without killing the civilians in the blast, just deal subdual. As the DM I would then have the civillians act as though they had just had the wind knocked out of them or something similar.

I suppose fireball and scorching burst might create a bit of an issue if you were trying to use them to set stuff on fire without actually harming your allies. I think that there are likely easier (and perhaps just as flashy) ways of doing this, but depending on how it was used I might allow it. Again though it would have to be all or nothing.

 

[The Human Target]

I think the pacifist cleric should spend less time trying to circumvent the drawbacks of his chosen feats and spend more time role-playing them. If it's THAT darned important that the rogue get his Sneak Attack in, the cleric can grit his teeth and take his divine punishment (i.e. the very low-duration stun effect) like a responsible individual! Right?

A single round of being stunned is terrible.

And its hardly trying to circumvent drawbacks.

For those of you considering missing on purpose, what happens when the Wizard drops a Fireball? Out of curiosity.

Two hugely different situations.

Saying you can miss with Spiritual Weapon should have no bearing whatsoever on fireball.

A question for the anti-allowing to miss people.

Say a pig farmer is dominated by a vampire lord and sent after your party. The group figures out this poor pig farmer is innocent and don't want to hurt him. So the fighter decides to try to use Tide of Iron to back the pig farmer into the closet without actually damaging him.

Would you allow it?

Is it not a creative and interesting use of a power?

 

[thewok]

The power´s flavour text says the contrary:

an miss actually is the desireable outcome. But in this case, i would just allow the opponent to accept the hit, to cancel the effect...

Maybe a rewrite as a stance, that allows a bluff check or something would be even better....

A hit doesn't cancel the Effect. If the warlord hits, the effect still takes place, and the warlord's allies adjacent to the target make their attacks.

I might do the following: The warlord can make a choice. If he misses, he can choose to have the effect go off, in which case the power is considered used and is expended. If the warlord chooses to hold off on the effect, then the Reliable keyword kicks in and the power is recharged immediately.

I'd say it's all or nothing. A miss should never be desirable. Or, rather, a Hit should always be more desirable.

 

[thewok]

A question for the anti-allowing to miss people.

Say a pig farmer is dominated by a vampire lord and sent after your party. The group figures out this poor pig farmer is innocent and don't want to hurt him. So the fighter decides to try to use Tide of Iron to back the pig farmer into the closet without actually damaging him.

Would you allow it?

Is it not a creative and interesting use of a power?

I would. But, the rules do say that if an attack will drop an enemy to 0 hp, then the attacker can choose to make it so the attack knocks out the target. Thus, the fighter would use Tide of Iron to knock out the pig farmer, then lock him in the closet.

Trying to use an attack power without "damaging" the target is an exercise in futility. They are called attack powers for a reason. If he wants to do it without damaging the pig farmer, he could try to grab him and slide him into the closet.

 

[Dausuul]

A hit doesn't cancel the Effect. If the warlord hits, the effect still takes place, and the warlord's allies adjacent to the target make their attacks.

But a hit does expend the power, so the warlord can't do it again next round (and again, and again, and again until she rolls a natural 20). That's why the target might choose to accept the hit.

I might do the following: The warlord can make a choice. If he misses, he can choose to have the effect go off, in which case the power is considered used and is expended. If the warlord chooses to hold off on the effect, then the Reliable keyword kicks in and the power is recharged immediately.

I'd say it's all or nothing. A miss should never be desirable. Or, rather, a Hit should always be more desirable.

With this principle I strongly agree. I would add the corollary that a Reliable power should never have an "Effect" line of any significance.

 

[Riastlin]

A single round of being stunned is terrible.

And its hardly trying to circumvent drawbacks.



Two hugely different situations.

Saying you can miss with Spiritual Weapon should have no bearing whatsoever on fireball.

A question for the anti-allowing to miss people.

Say a pig farmer is dominated by a vampire lord and sent after your party. The group figures out this poor pig farmer is innocent and don't want to hurt him. So the fighter decides to try to use Tide of Iron to back the pig farmer into the closet without actually damaging him.

Would you allow it?

Is it not a creative and interesting use of a power?

Actually, they are not really all that different. Knocking an ally unconscious is terrible, heck, in certain situations it could even lead to said ally's death (which is much worse than being stunned for a round).

As mentioned above, there are options for dealing with the pig farmer. Just declare the damage subdual. Heck, the rules even allow you to declare subdual after the attack has been resolved. Odds are said pig farmer would even be grateful for the PC's actions in that situation.

In the OP, the cleric is indeed attempting to get around the drawback that comes with the otherwise very powerful feat. Given the situation, as a DM, I wouldn't have a problem with him asking the question (I think its fair to ask), but I wouldn't allow it. If I allow that, I would have a difficult time convincing the wizard that he can't intentionally miss his allies that are in the area of his attacks.

 

[Dausuul]

In the OP, the cleric is indeed attempting to get around the drawback that comes with the otherwise very powerful feat. Given the situation, as a DM, I wouldn't have a problem with him asking the question (I think its fair to ask), but I wouldn't allow it. If I allow that, I would have a difficult time convincing the wizard that he can't intentionally miss his allies that are in the area of his attacks.

*shrug* The way I see it, the cleric could do things like using a nonmagical holy symbol (lose the enhancement bonus), shutting his eyes (blind, -5), sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling LA LA LA (deafened, -2), falling prone (-2), and so forth. So one might as well cut out the middleman and say, "You can apply a penalty to your own attack roll."

What would happen if the wizard did the same thing? Pretty simple: You get the aforementioned penalties, but they hit all your attack rolls for a given AoE attack. If you throw a Fireball encompassing an ally and an enemy, there's no way for you to shut your eyes* for the attack roll versus the ally but open them again in time to hit the enemy--they're simultaneous.

[size=-2]*Also, technically speaking, blindness doesn't affect burst and blast attacks. I typically house-rule that it does, though, because it's the easiest way to simulate the difficulty of aiming a burst when you can't see; the alternative would be to try to write rules for randomizing the burst location, which is IMO more trouble than it's worth.[/size]

 

[Nytmare]

*shrug* The way I see it, the cleric could do things like using a nonmagical holy symbol (lose the enhancement bonus), shutting his eyes (blind, -5), sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling LA LA LA (deafened, -2), falling prone (-2), and so forth.[SIZE=-2][/SIZE]

I'm am absolutely astounded that you don't see that as ridiculous.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm am absolutely astounded that you don't see that as ridiculous.

I do, in fact, see it as ridiculous. But the reason it's ridiculous is that I'm forcing the cleric to jump through a lot of silly hoops to justify imposing a penalty on his own attack roll.

To take a less extreme example, suppose the cleric decides to run someplace while ordering the spiritual weapon to attack. I point out that running imposes a -5 penalty on the attack roll. The cleric's player shrugs. "I don't care if I hit, I just want to provide flanking for Stabby McRogue while I get to a safe spot."

At this point, I can try to divine whether the cleric's player is acting primarily out of a desire to acquire a penalty or primarily out of a desire to get somewhere, and allow CA or not based on this guess (which is a recipe for discord at the table). Or I can make a sweeping new house rule that you can't provide CA while running. Or I can just shrug and accept that the cleric is going to be attacking at -5 while still granting CA. The latter seems like the obvious solution to me... but it means it's now fairly trivial to attach a big penalty to your attack rolls.