D&D 5E Firing into Combat

[Wrathamon]

I only Hit someone on a miss if the player rolls a 1 and there is a friendly in the way blocking combat. Its rare and fun on occasions but if it occurs all the time, players stop using ranged weapons and they get bored because now they can t play the cool archer. I would make it rare that you are hitting blocking targets. It also sucks if you hit them on a near miss. Make it only on a 1 or only on two 1s if they have disadvantage if you want it to be more rare.

 

[Tormyr]

I only Hit someone on a miss if the player rolls a 1 and there is a friendly in the way blocking combat. Its rare and fun on occasions but if it occurs all the time, players stop using ranged weapons and they get bored because now they can t play the cool archer. I would make it rare that you are hitting blocking targets. It also sucks if you hit them on a near miss. Make it only on a 1 or only on two 1s if they have disadvantage if you want it to be more rare.

This is slightly off topic (Sorry!), but I generally don't do anything with fumbles with one exception. I "reward" them if they have advantage or disadvantage and roll 1's. Someone in range / reach gets targeted and the player gets one more attack roll to see if it hits the randomly chosen target. You would think it would not ever happen, but it has happened maybe once every 3 months.

 

[Nebulous]

I kind of like the hitting an ally on a 1 or 2. Simple, clean. Won't happen too often.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I don't like putting my players in blue-on-blue situations much. If one of them is playing an awesome-cool Ranger who likes to deal death with his longbow it's a buzzkill for him if he puts arrows into the party's Barbarian and Paladin as often as an enemy. I don't run annoying 'fumbles' either. I've already put hard challenges in my game, why compound them with additional, purely-dice dependent complications that hardly add any fun?

 

[Tormyr]

I don't like putting my players in blue-on-blue situations much. If one of them is playing an awesome-cool Ranger who likes to deal death with his longbow it's a buzzkill for him if he puts arrows into the party's Barbarian and Paladin as often as an enemy. I don't run annoying 'fumbles' either. I've already put hard challenges in my game, why compound them with additional, purely-dice dependent complications that hardly add any fun?

I can understand that. There are a couple of options here, including the Ranger taking the Sharpshooter feat (or whatever its name is). Then the cover bonus to AC goes away and he doesn't have to worry about hitting the ally. Or you can just skip it as you already are.

At my table, a lot of the best moments come from failure.

The TWF dex fighter rolling double 1s and closing her eyes and swinging her swords wildly as she passes the wolves invoking opportunity attacks.
The Half-Gnoll Paladin throwing a javelin at extended range and rolling double 1s on disadvantage, then critting the Tiefling Wizard with the errant javelin.
The Tiefling Wizard accidently placing the corner of wall of fire on his new cart.
The Human Cleric getting a 3 on his persuasion check to stop a raging half-orc from fighting anymore (actually the half-orcs failure; he rolled a 2).

Of course, a lot of great moments come from success as well.

An evil wizard uses telekinesis to lift the Half-Gnoll Paladin 20 feet over the entrance of a 40 foot spiked pit trap and lets go. The Halfling uses her reaction with a granted inspiration point to run up and cannonball the Paladin of course so he doesn't fall in the pit.
The TWF dex fighter double crits and turns tough zombies into flying bits.
The Dragonborn sorcerer rolls almost max damage on a lightning bolt that skewers two invisible stalkers.

As long as the fumbles/failures are few and far between and fun, my group seems to have a good time with failure.

 

[AmerginLiath]

The best idea that I've seen regarding fumbles is to rule that they come into play only when you're trying something out of the ordinary.

Swinging a sword to hit the goblin and rolling a 1? You auto-miss.
Leaning over and swinging your sword to cut the chain on the chandelier to drop it on the monsters below and rolling a 1? You slip over the rail and are now either hanging from that chandelier, or else bring it down on the enemies with your own body weight!

As for penalties for firing into combat? If it's a standard combat, I think penalties like we saw in 3.x both complicate the math and make ranged combat less fun (remember the feat taxes involved?). Taking that penalty out in normal circumstances just makes everything flow better and makes the player who opted for an archer have a better time. I could see ruling some penalties if you're firing into a whole crowd to try and hit someone (think of how many movies have a gunfight in a crowded city street, now use an archer instead!): you'd naturally have partial cover to involve Disadvantage anyway, plus there'd be likely elements of the Stealth rules already baked into the system that could be used without coming up with new penalties.

Now I just want to play an urban Ranger Hunter or Rogue Assassin with the Spy background going all Jason Bourne...

 

[Nebulous]

Dungeon World had a neat system for degrees of failure or success. You don't really flat out "fail", but mucking up badly has attached consequences.

 

[Cannyjiggit]

Hasn't come up in my current campaign but we generally go by the rule above whereby if cover grants +2 and the miss would have hit without that adjustment then the interceding object gets in the way. However (assuming its a friendly or enemy creature) at that point, the archer rolls again to hit with just their standard modifiers (ignoring any special feats etc which may or may not include proficiency in 5e as we have yet to come across the situation to decide) to hit that target. If the second roll is a miss then the missile deflects off the obstacle rather than causing damage; If its a hit, its a hit.

This gives a lot of tension but very little actual blue on blue damage, the friendly becomes a target only 10% of the time and then probably gets hit a maximum of half of those cases so only 1 in 20 really will cause damage.

For situations where the direction of a missile complete miss may be important, we roll a d12 to determine direction and simply arrange it as a clock face.