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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6673952" data-attributes="member: 6787503">I don't think a distinction between crunch and fluff is particularly helpful as there is no clear line of demarcation in this "rules as guidelines" edition. The way I like to look at it is that the terms hostile and friendly used here are the same designations defined in the DMG under Starting Attitude. Two things are apparent from the DMG. First, it is up to the DM to determine what a creature's Starting Attitude is, so a player can't really change their character's attitude from friendly to hostile by simple declaration. Attitude in a character is revealed through actions. A hostile creature seeks to hinder the PC's goals, so if a character attempts to thwart another character's action, or is actually attempting to harm the other character, then that character should be considered hostile by the DM. The same is true if the character is trying to help another character. That character is friendly. Where this might be confusing is that the game is written with the assumption that adventuring parties are comprised of characters that are friendly to each other. This makes sense because the party is assumed to share a common goal that they are helping each other to achieve. However, this is not necessarily a static condition.That's because the second thing to take away about attitudes is that they can change throughout an encounter, sometimes temporarily. The game assumes that everyone on one side of a conflict is friendly with each other, and that they are hostile to the other side. But what happens when a character chooses to attack a fellow party member? The character's stated goal is to harm the other character, so the character is hostile by definition. The character being attacked now seeks to prevent the first character from achieving that goal, so it is now likewise hostile simply because the assumption is that a character will defend itself. This shift in attitude occurs before the blow actually lands, so the attack is possible.If, by contrast, the character's intent was to aid the other party member by buffing with a spell, then they obviously remain friendly to one another, and such an action could neither be considered an attack nor an opportunity attack.So, I think you're correct in not viewing this type of language as restrictive. But I think its more helpful when interpreting the rules to view these instances as defining certain actions as typical of a hostile creature, rather than to simply disregard the language as "not crunch".</blockquote>

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