In 3.5 if you fired into a grapple you had to roll the percentage dice.
is there an official ruling on the risk of hitting an ally while firing into a melee?
As Martin says, no, there's no chance to hit an ally with a standard ranged attack.
Thrown splash weapons have a chance to miss, and the direction is random, so it's quite possible to splash your allies (or yourself) with an acid flask or alchemist bomb, etc.
A ranged character should be familiar with the rules for Shooting or Throwing into a Melee (Which is not the same as Soft Cover, both may apply).
Nope! In 3e, there was. It was an extremely complicated process to fairly adjudicate it, and I think it took 3 or 4 paragraphs to explain just that.
It was explicitly dropped in 3.5 because of how hard it is to fairly determine if you hit an ally.
We run a houserule that if you miss by 5 or more then you have to roll again to see if you hit your ally as if you were aiming at them (still with the -4 into melee etc as well as any other modifier)
OR miss by 10 or more if you have Precise Shot.
There's a feat that can make it happen:
Reckless Aim (Combat)
Your lack of regard for others proves a boon when you fire projectiles into melee.
Prerequisites: Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot.
Benefit: When you shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee, you can choose to take a –1 penalty to your AC and gain a +2 competence bonus on your attack roll. However, when you roll a natural 1 on a ranged attack roll made with this bonus, you automatically hit a random adjacent creature that threatens your intended target.
As others have said. Your ally may grant soft cover to your target vs your ranged attacks, but there is no mechanism for this causing you to shoot your ally accidentally. If this is a mechanic that you really want for some unfathomable reason, the 3.0 rules for it should work as well as they ever did.
Martin that is not 100% true, assuming you are a Firearm/Archer/Crossbowman who is firing into melee without Precise Shot, you suffer a -4 penalty to hit your target, many GM's will say that if you miss by 4 or less you will hit your ally instead.
That may be a fairly common house rule, but it is not RAW.
Martin that is not 100% true, assuming you are a Firearm/Archer/Crossbowman who is firing into melee without Precise Shot, you suffer a -4 penalty to hit your target, many GM's will say that if you miss by 4 or less you will hit your ally instead.
No, it is 100% true. What the GMs change for their games is there choice, but it makes it no less true.
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Martin that is not 100% true, assuming you are a Firearm/Archer/Crossbowman who is firing into melee without Precise Shot, you suffer a -4 penalty to hit your target, many GM's will say that if you miss by 4 or less you will hit your ally instead.
That is the 3E rule but it is no longer an "offical" pathfinder rule. I don't miss it as it FORCED all archers/spell ray users etc to take point blank and precise shot or risk shotting your friends inthe back quite often.
EDIT: Ninjaed by 12 and 54 seconds. :)
I've never understood the "miss by 4 or less, and you hit your ally" idea.
You mean no matter the ally's AC, I'm going to damage them? Even if they have 80 AC, and I rolled a 23 against the enemy's AC of 24? Alright, that's a strange houserule. Can I declare the guy next to my high AC target as a friend so I can shoot against him who I have a chance of hitting, and hope I miss by 4 or less to hit the enemy?
Oh, you're going to use the ally's AC to adjudicate it? Ok, does my arrow have the -4 to hit against that as well, since the whole point of that -4 is me taking a penalty to avoid hitting my friend? It's not him inherently being there. It can't be that, as it only works when shooting into melee with friendlies threatening the target. What happens when the ally's dodge bonus to AC was high enough that it would've caused that arrow to miss? Obviously the ally wasn't blocking the arrow in that case. He was able to dodge out of the way! So now the arrow hits the enemy, as it originally would've?
My desire to speed gameplay along is far greater than my desire to fairly figure out if the ally was hit.
And besides, the whole point of it is to take a penalty to hit to avoid hitting your ally. That's why this rule only comes into play when friendlies are nearby. If you attack a goblin with another goblin next to him, and you miss by 4 or less, do you hit the other goblin?
It's just craziness all around, and it's either too complicated and will slow combat down greatly, or unfair to the ally.
Our house rule is if you miss by X then you roll to hit the ally as if a new attack.
It's not an auto hit ally if miss bad guy.
If there's any chance at all of hitting your ally, you'd better be removing the -4 to shoot into melee. The whole point of it being there is to ENSURE you're not going to be doing that.
I wouldn't do it. Not shooting your friend's head off is far from the most unreal thing that goes on in the game.
And having anything that misses by 4 or less hit the ally is just plain wrong. Not only for the auto-hit. Also for assuming it was that which caused the miss, prioritizing it. What if that enemy had +4 armor and a +4 dex bonus? Why the hell do you default to assume that the reason that shot missed by 4 is because of the fire into melee penalty and not either of those? To do so is to give an insane amount of additional importance to that one source of AC.
My own house rule is :
If you decline to take the -4 and miss, you make attack rolls against any and all targets on the line of attack, starting with the closest to you and working your way out from there.
If you take the -4, then you only have a chance of hitting someone if you critically fumble the attack. In which case, you roll again to see if you hit each ally in melee. If you miss them all, then you missed spectacularly and bounced the arrow off your friends with no harm.
I have had someone critically fail the attack, and critically succeed at hitting their friend. It was decided by unanimous acclaim that the victim was shot right in the butt (he was floating 3 feet up on a tensors disk) and it hit a 'vital spot'. :)
I think the 4 or less is more appropriate if your ally is providing soft cover. In that way, if you missed because of said cover, you must have hit it ... the cover ... your ally.
A common version that sometimes gets used (not in my games)relates to the Soft Cover rule, which is that if the miss occurs because of the cover, recalculate the attack roll without the cover modifier, and if that result is sufficient to hit the character providing the cover, they take the hit and damage.
Nope! In 3e, there was. It was an extremely complicated process to fairly adjudicate it, and I think it took 3 or 4 paragraphs to explain just that.
It was explicitly dropped in 3.5 because of how hard it is to fairly determine if you hit an ally.
Not really. It was just a 50% chance if a grapple was involved.
Martin that is not 100% true, assuming you are a Firearm/Archer/Crossbowman who is firing into melee without Precise Shot, you suffer a -4 penalty to hit your target, many GM's will say that if you miss by 4 or less you will hit your ally instead.That is the 3E rule but it is no longer an "offical" pathfinder rule. I don't miss it as it FORCED all archers/spell ray users etc to take point blank and precise shot or risk shotting your friends inthe back quite often.
EDIT: Ninjaed by 12 and 54 seconds. :)
Le sigh. When we say what a rule is we are assuming "official" rules, even when quoting 3.5 rules so no it was never an official rule.
By official I mean-->not a house rule.
I think the 4 or less is more appropriate if your ally is providing soft cover. In that way, if you missed because of said cover, you must have hit it ... the cover ... your ally.
Or the foe dodged out of the way of it at the last second.
Or it struck him, but at an angle such that it glanced off his armor harmlessly...
Why "must" it have been the cover that did it?
And having anything that misses by 4 or less hit the ally is just plain wrong. Not only for the auto-hit. Also for assuming it was that which caused the miss, prioritizing it. What if that enemy had +4 armor and a +4 dex bonus? Why the hell do you default to assume that the reason that shot missed by 4 is because of the fire into melee penalty and not either of those? To do so is to give an insane amount of additional importance to that one source of AC.
Just playing a bit of devil's advocate here. I personally am glad theres no chance to hit your friend.
But the 4 or less kinda makes sense.
If you roll a 13+7-4 for 16 total, vs an 18 AC, then without the friendly being there, and everything else being the same, including the targets armor and dodging etc, that 13 would have resulted in a 20 and be a hit.
Of course, you can also say "Well without the +4 armor it would have been a hit, even if the friendly was standing in the exact same spot".
So I guess I just defused my own argument here :)
As I said, I'm glad there's no actual offical rule like that :)
My own house rule is :
If you decline to take the -4 and miss, you make attack rolls against any and all targets on the line of attack, starting with the closest to you and working your way out from there.
If you take the -4, then you only have a chance of hitting someone if you critically fumble the attack. In which case, you roll again to see if you hit each ally in melee. If you miss them all, then you missed spectacularly and bounced the arrow off your friends with no harm.
I have had someone critically fail the attack, and critically succeed at hitting their friend. It was decided by unanimous acclaim that the victim was shot right in the butt (he was floating 3 feet up on a tensors disk) and it hit a 'vital spot'. :)
Um... just to be sure but if an enemy was on that line they could potentially be hit too right?
Say I fumble miss my ally then there was an enemy between me and another ally before my actual target?