I don't get firing into melee

[Particle_Man]

From a realism point of view, it does seem strange that if you are trying to sneak attack one person in meelee, but accidentally hit the other, you do sneak attack damage to the other, with no chance of "merely" doing normal damage w/o sneak attack damage.

 

[KarinsDad]

From a realism point of view, it does seem strange that if you are trying to sneak attack one person in meelee, but accidentally hit the other, you do sneak attack damage to the other, with no chance of "merely" doing normal damage w/o sneak attack damage.

The same could be said of the optional rule in the DMG for hitting soft cover. In the situation of PC A attacking NPC C past PC B:

A..BC

If B is more heavily armored (4+ more) than C, A can never hit B if he rolls in the cover range.

If B is more lightly armored than C (same or less), A will always hit B if he rolls in the cover range.

If B is slightly more armored than C (1 to 3), A may or may not hit B if he rolls in the cover range.

There is no "oops" case if B is heavily armored. There is no "whew, I missed" case if B is lightly armored (hence the reason for my re-roll rule in my house rules suggestion above) if the cover range is rolled. But from a realism point of view, it should be possible to accidentally hit anyone standing in your way. Maybe not often, but not never or not always either.

 

[Nail]

From a realism point of view, it does seem strange that if you are trying to sneak attack one person in meelee, but accidentally hit the other, you do sneak attack damage to the other, with no chance of "merely" doing normal damage w/o sneak attack damage.

I agree.

...but in this area (like many others), I've found that "ease of rule use" trumps "realistic rule fix" in terms of playability. Making the combat go more smoothly and quicker is often better than encumbering the ruleset with extra mechanics for corner cases and exceptional circumstances.

 

[Harmon]

In my current campaign, one player has a habit of refusing the -4 to hit because he "doesn't care who he hits". He has yet to miss though. When he does, I will require him to make an attack roll against his friends. We'll see.

Given that situation I think I would tell him this-
Me - "you need to hit an 18 AC, you are not taking the -4 for shooting into a fight with your friend so... you roll between a 14 and an 18 and you will hit your friend. Oh, and I will have you roll for to hit on your buddy if you miss your intended target."

Its kinda a hard call, but I think there should be some... chance that he should hit his "friend."

 

[Felnar]

The same could be said of the optional rule in the DMG for hitting soft cover. In the situation of PC A attacking NPC C past PC B:

A..BC
...

what happens when you add a D?

A..BCD

no matter how bad A misses C, can D ever be hit?

 

[mvincent]

I would say if you ignore the -4 to hit penalty, then roll randomly to see which opponent might be hit

Agreed.

 

[Felnar]

I would say if you ignore the -4 to hit penalty, then roll randomly to see which opponent might be hit, then make an attack roll vs. that opponent's AC (the two die rolls (well three if you include damage) could all be made at the same time). If you feel ambitious, the size of the various opponents could affect how likely they are to be targets on the initial random roll to see which opponent gets hit.

so the 20th level character and the 1st level character have the same chance to attack the wrong opponent?

 

[mvincent]

so the 20th level character and the 1st level character have the same chance to attack the wrong opponent?

If they don't care which opponent they hit? Yes, that seems reasonable. If they do care, they can take the normal -4 (which a 20th level character could probably handle).

 

[KarinsDad]

what happens when you add a D?

A..BCD

no matter how bad A misses C, can D ever be hit?

In a straight line scenario like above, yes and no (according to my house rules above).

If A is firing carefully (or has precise shot), he takes the -4 (-0 with PS) and can accidentally target B (as soft cover 20%), but he can never target or hit D.

If A is firing carelessly, he does not take the -4 and can accidentally target B or D. His chances to target B are greater (30%, 20% cover plus 10% firing into melee) than they are D (10% firing into melee).

Granted, this can never solve all problems. But, it is slightly better than missiles going through a crowd and only having a chance to hit the intended target: everyone else is immune.


If just using the optional rule in the DMG, then no, D could never get targeted.

 

[JustinA]

As for not caring if you hit your ally or not, I cannot recall if it is spelled out in the rules, but I think that the general rule is that if your shot misses due to a targets cover bonus (ie, your target has AC 15, 19 with cover, and you roll a 17, than the shot hits the cover instead).

That was the rule in 3.0. The rule was dumped into the DMG as a variant in 3.5, IIRC, largely because it makes no sense when you actually start analyzing the numbers. (So I'm less likely to get hit if I'm standing in front of someone wearing plate armor than I am if I'm standing in front of a naked guy? How does that make any sense?)

Attempts to fix this oddity just make things worse. I wrote a lengthy Usenet post about this awhile back, let me see if I can find it on Google Groups... Here we go:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.dnd/msg/7d64c467621194b9

I seem to recall discovering a math error in there somewhere, but I can't remember what it is now. The overall point remains valid in any case.

There's really no good way to handle this without adding a lot of new rules and new resolution points (most likely with new dice rolls). Every single solution I have ever seen proposed simply shuffles the location where the odd and unintuitive results crop up.

So, as much as I would like to have a system that could model accidental friendly fire (for reasons of both realism and dramatic conceit), I've come to the conclusion that it's better to have a simple system for handling cover than a more complicated one which provides unsatisfcatory results.

(Of course, I still use the 3.0 rules for determining degree of cover because the minor addition of that complexity gives me much more satisfactory results.)

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net