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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 6673493" data-attributes="member: 2525">So you'd houserule opportunity attacks now too? All to deal with this theoretical possibility of a player wanting to misuse an optional feat in an unusual way? Wow, that's a lot of juggling behind the scenes to adjust the rules to fit an unlikely scenario.  I still think it would be a heck of a lot easier to simply come up with an explanation for why some things only work against hostiles.  A LOT of spells specify it too, and monster abilities.  Are you going to houserule all them as well?Right, which is why I said certain feats and abilities. Here, maybe this explanation might work better than all these houserules, and still maintain verisimilitude within your game world:"A lot happens in 6 seconds of battle, and the hit or misses rolled are simply representative summaries of the entirety of the action going on sometimes, the feints and glancing blows and blocks and dodges and other maneuvers.  When something is triggered due to the actions of something hostile to you, it's because it represents something about the nature of the clash happening in those six seconds which is unique to fighting a foe - an opening in the sparing, a moment of direct targeting with a spell, a lapse in defense due to a misstep, etc..  These are things that only involve a battle with a foe.  Even if it's a reaction to a foe's movement, it's really just a last stab or attack in that 6 second series of back and forth attacks, sort of a tail-end of that series of clashes.  This is something you've learned over time in battles with foes - you've studied it, it's become instinctual for you, you're operating on muscle memory to react to an opening in a foe's defenses.  Those sorts of things don't happen with allies - you have not focused your battle instincts to react that way, your eyes are usually not focused on allies and their movements, your body position is usually foe-directed for defense, and all your general experience is focused on facing and fighting enemies while in battle.   So even in the rare instance where you might want to react to an ally with something that specifies hostile, your honed battle skills just don't react in time because you have not gained the muscle memory and instincts to attack your allies like that.  These elements of the game which specify "hostile" are themed on those openings and back-and-forth battle and instincts which are particular to fighting foes."There, that should cover 90%+ of the instances where anyone would care about using it on an ally (and an Athletics or Acrobatics check might help with the other 10%).  You no longer need literally a dozen or more houserules (because that's how many times "hostile" comes up as a keyword in this game, and that's just in the player's handbook and not even looking at all the monsters with abilities that trigger off hostiles, and probably magic items too in the DMG).  I am betting your players, who you said previously are pretty reasonable, will be fine with that explanation.</blockquote>

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