I don't get firing into melee

[Legildur]

(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.)

As do we.

 

[Slapzilla]

If we change semantics for clarity, and say the -4 is not because you are trying to avoid your friend, but it is because you are trying to be careful and pick your target. If you don't care (disliked/well protected Paladin or orc vs. goblin) you don't have a penalty, but have a risk. If you do care, and don't have Precise Shot, then you have a penalty, but no risk.
For being careful and missing by 4 or less, I personally think it's dumb that a relatively near miss would miss by five feet and unfailingly veer towards my ally and risk damaging him/her/it. I know... the swirl of combat and all, but I don't quite buy it. Cover is different, and I only enforce the -4 when the target is given cover by someone/thing the shooter doesn't wan't to harm or is trying to specifically avoid. Otherwise, the soft cover rules apply. Limits the coolness of Precise Shot, but... I don't feel bad.

 

[danzig138]

I had a player do that in a d20 Modern campaign. He had a sniper rifle. He was 1st-level so he didn't always hit. He accidentally shot another PC for ... a lot of damage.

The last few months I've been running a couple different games - Stargate, and a post-apocalyptic game, both using the same modified d20 rule set that accounts for the chance of hitting allies when firing into melee.

At this point, I'm thinking about calling the system "Friends and Fire". Yeah, they're hitting each other a lot, and I swear, every time, it ends up being for the most damage rolled in the session.