Forced Movement trhough one's ally's space

[Nichwee]

Townsfolk you just met? Probably doesn't trust your powers. Enemy. Saboteur who plans to stab you in your sleep? Ally.

Not sure I'd agree on that one completely.
If a Fighter had a "Close Burst 1 - Target: All enemies in burst" I wouldn't force him/her to attack a villager just because the villager has no clue who they are and is therefore unwilling to accept a power from the Fighter. The Fighter's opinion that the villager is a "poor victim" should allow the Fighter to chose to consider the villager as "not an enemy" and therefore not target them.
Basically, imo, someone can be considered your "ally" if you chose to exclude them from the "enemies" catergory when your powers allow that differentiation. Of course thsi doesn't mean they have to agree, and they may refuse to be affected by an "ally buff" power from you if they don't trust your intentions, but that doesn't stop you choosing to "not target" when you have a choice on who to target (as is implied in an Enemies Only effect).

 

[Aegeri]

I agree with Draco's logic generally, except that a villager isn't automatically an "enemy" by the rules either. 4E expressly allows for things to be absolutely nothing. A villager is not a meaningful target or threat, so you can't hit them to get an effect from a power (this is, expressly what the bag of rats in the DMG is set up to prevent). In fact in the above situation, the fighter doesn't have to care about the villagers at all if they aren't a threat. A enemy targeting burst can ignore them.

Now something that targets creatures doesn't care at all and will hit whatever it feels like.

 

[eamon]

tl;dr: Narrative is irrelevant, if the saboteur is willing, he's the pc's ally, if the pc is unwilling, he's the saboteur's enemy, and at no point does this require attacks or blood be spilled to define.

Whew, that's easy - i'll just be the willing recipient of all those powers that narrative enemy is using. They're probably mostly "enemy-only" hostile powers which saves me a bunch of hits, and better yet, if he's got some leader aura or whatnot... yeah, come and get it!

Of course, once rules start talking of unwilling allies, it gets a little more messy.

For the record, I don't think a clean solution exists that can use the 4e rules unmodified for both plain us-against-them dungeon crawls and spy-story's and three-way combats.

 

[Nichwee]

Exactly Aegeri.
All tho the game rarely points it out there are really 4 catergories of creature:
1) You
2) Ally
3) Enemy
4) Non-threat/Bystander/Unknown
All are creatures - so all get hit if you target "creatures" but 3 are missed if you only target enemies.

Of course those in the 4th catergory can easily move into catergory 2 or 3 depending on how they interact with you and your powers.

However, as D&D is still a RP game, going from catergory 3 to any of the others takes a lot of work, going from catergory 2 to 3 is easy (backstab an ally = enemy) and going from catergory 2 or 3 to category 4 takes time (enough for those involved to forget each other and meet as strangers once again). Category 1 is really hard to join or leave (but I'm sure some weird magic effect/mental psycosis may manage it once in a while).

 

[eamon]

I agree with Draco's logically generally, except that a villager isn't automatically an "enemy" by the rules either. 4E expressly allows for things to be absolutely nothing. A villager is not a meaningful target or threat, so you can't hit them to get an effect from a power (this is, expressly what the bag of rats in the DMG is set up to prevent). In fact in the above situation, the fighter doesn't have to care about the villagers at all if they aren't a threat. A enemy targeting burst can ignore them.

Now something that targets creatures doesn't care at all and will hit whatever it feels like.

The bag-of-rats rule only speaks of limiting beneficial side-effects that rely on hitting (or dropping or bloodying) meaningful threats.

Other cases (such as effect lines, miss effects, etc) are not explicitly mentioned - let's not call them bag-o-rats to avoid confusion.

I'm not sure I would permit an enemy targeting burst to avoid villagers. It would depend on the power . Is the power letting you identify the enemies? Or is the power punishing those hostile towards you - or some mixture? It's not really defined.

 

[eamon]

All tho the game rarely points it out there are really 4 catergories of creature:
1) You
2) Ally
3) Enemy
4) Non-threat/Bystander/Unknown
All are creatures - so all get hit if you target "creatures" but 3 are missed if you only target enemies.

Is that common sense or an actual rule? Category 4 makes sense to me, but I don't think I've actually seen that included in the rules, ever... Do you have a reference?

 

[abyssaldeath]

Is that common sense or an actual rule? Category 4 makes sense to me, but I don't think I've actually seen that included in the rules, ever... Do you have a reference?

That is not the rule. Here is the rule on enemies.

“Enemy” or “enemies” means a creature or creatures that aren’t your allies (whether those creatures are hostile toward you or not).

If they are not your ally then they are your enemy.

 

[Nichwee]

I see Catergory 4 as a corrolory of the "Not Ally = Enemy" and "Bag of Rats" rules.

A Bag of Rats don't count as a true enemy for any "If you hit an enemy" rules but they are not your allies either - so they are Catergory 4.

Not a stated rule, but one that comes out of the rules that are stated.

 

[eamon]

I see Catergory 4 as a corrolory of the "Not Ally = Enemy" and "Bag of Rats" rules.

A Bag of Rats don't count as a true enemy for any "If you hit an enemy" rules but they are not your allies either - so they are Catergory 4.

Not a stated rule, but one that comes out of the rules that are stated.

Bag-o-rats is best used sparingly. If you hit an puny creature, and the bag-o-rats says no effects trigger based on that hit, do you deal any damage? It's a reminder to use common sense; that the powers were written based on the assumption that the hit creature matters. It's not something I'd invoke unless it's absolutely necessary because it's easy to apply it inconsistently.

So in a specific scenario, bag-o-rats may be needed, but as a general rule to inspire other general rules... well, it's really vague and you can reasonably expect significant table variation.

 

[pemerton]

This creates the situation where Chuck is Darlene's enemy, but Darlene is Chuck's ally... and yet Darlene is the one who's supposed to backstab!

How is this possible?

Because 'ally' and 'enemy' when refered to in game elements do not mean the same thing as ally and enemy in a narrative sense.

This is all well-and-good . . . but don't the flanking rules assume that "ally" is a symmetrical relation?

The PHB, p 285, says:

To flank an enemy, you and an ally must be adjacent to the enemy and on opposite sides or corners of the enemy’s space.​

Under your reading, does "ally" here refer to someone that you are allied with (so Chuck can't flank with Darlene, but Darlene can flank with Chuck) or someone who is allied with you (so Chuck can flank with Darlene, but Darlene can't flank with Chuck)? At least to me, the rules don't give any guidance on which reading I should go with. For narrative/verisimilitude reasons the second reading (Chuck can flank with Darlene but not vice versa) makes more sense than the first, but you've told me not to use those sorts of reasons to interpret the game rules.