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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 6367260" data-attributes="member: 6778044">Of course I do. And all interpretations of the rules/house rules are open for discussion in my campaign. If they don't work for the players, then we find a variation that does.To me, the purpose of the rules is to support the storytelling. In this case I want characters to think twice about firing into melee. It should be tougher than firing prior to melee, which is why in most cases real combatants don't fire into melee.Having said that, I also think that there should be some amazingly talented (and rare) individuals who will fire into melee, and hit the majority of the time. So let's think about this - 1/2 cover imposes a -2 penalty (+2 to opponent's AC), 3/4 cover -5. Disadvantage is equal to about -5. So the penalty here is about -7, or a little more difficult than 3/4 cover. Is that too steep? Perhaps.But here's my campaign's 4th level Ranger. Proficiency bonus of +2, Dex bonus +3. He has the Archery fighting style granting a +2. So far a +7 bonus. With the Sharpshooter feat, he ignores the cover. So now it's effectively a +9 bonus in relation to my rule about firing into melee. His chance to hit is now the same as a 1st level character with no Dex bonus and no special abilities firing at somebody not in melee.What I didn't mention, is that we just take the second die roll as is. In other words, it's an off shot so we're not adding the normal to hit modifiers for your character. If we did, that would be an effective +14 which is very high. Instead, the roll to hit the opponent is about a +5, and that's only if you miss on the attack against your target.That doesn't sound that bad to me. It makes it difficult to do, but not impossible. And as the character increases in level, he'll be much less likely to worry about it altogether. If he has some Inspiration to spend, then he can eliminate the disadvantage as well. Again, I think this plays well into the storytelling aspect. It makes the character think twice before subjecting his allies to the possibility of being on the receiving end of friendly fire. Another alternative if you feel that firing into melee is easy, would be to impose the cover penalty only. Then if the attack is a critical miss (natural 1), they hit one of the other combatants. The other alternative I've seriously considered was that if the attack missed by the 2 points of AC provided by cover, then that combatant is hit instead, as long as the roll is high enough to hit it. But that means that as long as your allies have a high enough AC, they'd never risk getting hit. So then I moved to rolling a second attack roll to see if that hits the other combatant. That just adds more rolls.But if you want the penalty to be less, and the chance of hitting a different combatant to be more than 5%, then the third option would be a good choice.We may change our approach ourselves as we find that one method is too tough or too easy. That's why I love these rules, each campaign can find the rules that work for them.Randy</blockquote>

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