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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6855608" data-attributes="member: 6777454">Fun?... Hmmm.. I'm not sure, I guess it depends on whether you find challenge fun or not. If there is a chance of hitting your own team because, realistically, what the characters are doing is going to put their own allies in as much danger as the enemies (i.e. engulfing the whole battle in front of the caster in flames), then it creates a level of challenge-- that may be a potent weapon, but it would be best not to use that in this particular situation, instead choose another strategy.In fact, that should encourage players to make sure they build their characters in a way that different strategies are an option rather than maximizing their ability to do one trick and one trick only because the more you pour your character build into performing that one trick, the more that one trick is likely to be an instant-win strategy when used. If the counter-balance of 'you won't always be able to use that trick' exists, it fixes that.And that counter-balance DOES exist for melee characters-- inherently so. If a target is too fast for the melee character to catch or can fly or otherwise put themselves outside of range with the melee character having no way to close that range either by dashing or jumping, the melee character is forced to sit there completely helpless even if they can do 200 damage a turn to any single target in melee range and noting has more than 110 hit points.So if that challenge exists for some classes, it doesn't inherently seem wrong that there should be situations where a ranged character can be told "yes, you could kill all the baddies if you could do that, but if you do that you are just as likely to kill your friend so you can't do that right now."EXCEPT, of course, for the poor sap being hit by the attacks by their own team. It isn't fun for them. Because you have a different person controlling each character as opposed to one player controlling the entire team, it is a different person who receives the consequences of the person choosing to take the action that can result in friendly fire. Which is what leads to arguments and groups breaking up as people tend to feel the person killing the other characters in the party is being quite inconsiderate all for personal glory of dealing the most damage while the person who has the powerful ability they can never use because by the time their initiative comes around, the rest of the party has moved into unfavorable positions for them to use it and so they feel endlessly frustrated until they decide "aw, what the hell-- it is sure to do more damage to the enemies anyway" and decides to use it.Now, some people don't mind when their characters die because the wizard threw a lightning bolt that bounced off the wall and shocked the whole party who were already down on hit points or the Ranger's powerful volley hits them in the back just as they were about to take down the storm giant... but, generally speaking, those players likely don't put much effort into making up their characters at all-- just a bunch of stats and a name that is likely a pun or something taken from pop culture or not even sensible for their race in the world and an alignment that never really comes into play anyway.But... you know... within the world itself, the characters cannot possibly know that the physics of the world are designed in such a way that a party member's arrow or acid cloud cannot possibly harm them no matter what, that they have a special invulnerability to such things, so if from the character's perspective it SEEMS like what is being done is recklessly disregarding their safety, the character should react as though their safety is being recklessly disregarded.</blockquote>

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