There as a rule like this in 3.0 but it was too complicated so it was removed with the switch to 3.5 The rule was, you hit the cover if you miss by less than the cover bonus, except if the cover's dexterity bonus is higher than the difference you miss by, then you miss completely. All clear? :)
There is no such rule in the Pathfinder RPG.
What he said.
"Hitting your allies by mistake" is no longer part of the game,
there's only the -4 (or -2 vs. Large Targets amongst smaller ones) penalty for shooting into melee (taken away by Precise Shot)as well as Soft Cover bonuses for shooting THRU other characters' squares, but that just makes you MISS, not hit somebody else by mistake.
If you want to house-rule it, try this:
Unless you have Precise Shot, your attack accidentally targets an adjacent character (rolled randomly) if you miss your Target's *TOUCH AC* by the total amount of the penalty (-4/-2 for into melee & Soft Cover if applicable) or less. The 3.0 approach was wierd, because the type of armor your intended target was wearing affected whether you hit someone else by mistake. This approach would make it so that given the same attack bonus, a bow and a ray result in exactly the same chances to hit an ally by mistake... If that makes sense. :-)
IIRC;
Firing into a melee has the -4 imposed upon it due to you having to take extra care to not hit your allies. as long as you have the -4 (or have precise shot i guess) you have no chance of hitting you ally....with one caveat
If your ally is providing cover, that is if you shoot through your ally's square to strike your target, then your ally is providing cover (+4AC IIRC). If you miss your intended target by 4 or less then it is assumed that you strike your ally (Ouch). Presumably you have to beat your ally's AC to actually hurt him though.
The two penalties combine though. If Horus is firing at Seth, through Sobeck's square, while Sobeck is in melee combat with Seth, then Horus takes the -4 and treats Seth as having +4 AC.
One more reason not to fire into melee. No one likes taking an effective -8
Batts
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I allow my players to forgo the -4 penalty for firing into melee with the following condition.
If the attack hits there is a 20% chance you hit someone other than the intended target. funny enough no-one has taken the risk so far and while this question hasnt been brought up yet since I have been running pathfinder I'll likely use the same rule.
The rule stems from the grappling rules from 3.5 which had you attacking the wrong target when others are involved with a grapple. I can't seem to find a rule for this on the PRD though.
If you miss your intended target by 4 or less then it is assumed that you strike your allyIs there a map ... er rule for that?
looking through pathfinder SRD I don't see a rule per se (but I did find that people count as 'soft cover'. Interesting.
a quick peruse of the 3.5 players guide also doesn't give me any love. I would have guessed that failing to stike the target meant striking the cover (IE the ally) But i see no specific reference to it...how odd. I must seek a reference.
Batts
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The house rule I run with is if you do not have Precise Shot, fire into melee and miss by 5 or more, the player needs to roll against the AC of one ally (randomly determined if more than one ally is in the melee). If the new roll hits, it hits that ally. The thinking here is that precise shot is geared towards combat use of a bow, whereas having the skill to use a bow is great for hitting a target, but not so much for shooting into a fray.
Thanks for the responses. I guess I can keep my fingers crossed that a decent rule for this situation might appear in the Gamemastery book, or in the Advanced book. (Hint to Paizo...) :-)
-JS3
Consider carefully before you hope too hard for this rule.
Bows suck at killing things in this game. I have yet to see any archer build (maybe excepting arcane archers) who can dream of dishing out the damage a fighter the same level can.
Sure, they're safer, not being on the front ranks. And they can definitely deal more damage at long range than a dwarf with an axe. There are reasons to have archers or other ranged combatants in the party.
But HP for HP, bows suck at dealing damage.
If you did have a party with a fighter who specialized in melee and another fighter the same level specialized in archery, the melee fighter will dish out much more damage, and the archer will feel weak and unappreciated.
The archer has to spend a two feats just so he can attack anyone he wants with no penalty. Nobody else has to do that.
Sure, an archer specialist won't mind taking those feats. But a wizard who likes ray spells, or a cleric who wants to be moderaly tolerable with his crossbow when he's not spellcasting, etc., will be sorely pressed to afford two feats.
Which means ranged combatants are already two feats behind everyone else.
That's a huge penalty.
So they do less damage and they are behind in the feats department.
That's two strikes. One more strike and they're out.
Then along comes a new rule, or houserule, that says they run a chance to hurt their allies. Worse, that means more damage dealt to the party as a whole, which means more chance that someone dies and means more certainty that the healer will need to waste extra resources healing this extra damage.
That's strike three.
Ranged combat is already hard enough. Making it harder, making it waste party resources, making it run the risk of killing an ally, will weaken the concept to unplayability.
I get it though. It is certainly more realistic. Firing an arrow past your buddy's ear to hit the orc while they're both hopping around in melee should run a risk of hitting your buddy. It's actually fairly insane, or at least psychopathic, to even take that shot if there is any alternative.
But, I hear lots of people suggesting screwing ranged combat by allowing a hit-ally rule, but nobody ever seems to suggest screwing melee the same way.
There should be a chance that Fred the Fighter might hit Dave the Dwarf by accident when he swings his greatsword while the two of them stand side-by-side fighting an orc. There should be a chance that Fred might hit Carl the Cleric with his backswing when Carl is dashing up to heal him from behind. God forbid Ronald the Rogue tries to move through Fred's space and tumble through the orc's space - they should have a chance to accidentally hit him with a random parry or thrust or swing of their big old weapons, even if Ronald doesn't provoke any AoOs.
None of that is in the rules.
I strongly advise not to put this burden on the already weak ranged combat. Nobody will want to do it if you do.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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I would have guessed that failing to stike the target meant striking the cover (IE the ally) But i see no specific reference to it...how odd. I must seek a reference.
Unless I'm severely mistaken, you won't find one in 3.5/3.p rules. There was brief mention to this effect in 3.0 allegedly, but this is more in the philosophy of other games (like Gurps) than D&D.
D&D is more about team work, and what makes people walk away from the table is things like Critical Failures, Friendly Fire, etc. So rules that penalize a player on failure should be avoided when performing an action. Now this doesn't extend to risky behaviour like jumping a trap, fireballing the party, etc.
Consider carefully before you hope too hard for this rule.
And lots more sensible stuff..
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Totally agree with you.
This is a Roleplaying game not a Wargame. It isn't meant to be 100% realistic, its not even 50% realistic!If you start penalising ranged attacks like that then the ranged specialised player has the right to question that houserule and expect melee combatants to be penalised as DM_Blake pointed out. Unless you have Precise Shot you're -4 to hit then you're possibly another -4 thanks to soft cover. Now people want to rule in a chance of hitting a friendly. Ranged specialised are already struggling up hill.
Would people be happy if melee had a mechanic which gave a -8 to hit?
On the other hand, while I'm unwilling to penalize ranged combatants any more by implementing a hurt-your-ally rule, I do usually say things like:
"Your arrow ricochets off of the paladin's pauldron" or "Your scorching ray singes the monk's sleeve and the heat from it curls some of his hair." or other stuff like that.
I do this whenever the ranged attacker misses with a roll that would have hit the enemy's AC without cover, but misses because an ally gives cover.
No damage is done, no mechanical penalty is applied, but everyone at the table knows that a risky shot was missed by a very narrow margin (even if they metagame and know there was no real danger).
It's a kind of fluffy danger.
What it says to the player is "Hey, that shot would have hit if you would have simply moved to the side before taking the shot, so that your ally didn't give cover any more."
Sooner or later the players learn to do that, and these little descriptive near-miss hints tend to help it sink in.
I have been known, when it doesn't sink in, to scale up the near-misses:
"Your arrow whips past the fighter's head, slicing a deep cut into his ear causing 1 point of damage."
Yeah, definitely not RAW, but they've had the easier fluffy warnings and are still ignoring them, and 1 HP at this point won't change any battles, but it sends a firmer message.
Sure, they're safer... but... The archer has to spend a two feats just so he can attack anyone he wants with no penalty. Nobody else has to do that.
The archer has to spend two feats, just so he can attack a monster that his allies are in melee with, and still remain immune to any counterattack if that monster is a troll, an ooze, a rust monster, a displacer beast, or 75% of the other things that adventurers fight on a day-to-day basis. No one else has to do that, except the melee guys who need to spend 3 feats, not two, on Dodge, Mobility, and Spring Attack -- which leaves them with only 1 attack, not iteratives and Multishot and the like.
Consider carefully before you hope too hard for this rule.
Bows suck at killing things in this game. I have yet to see any archer build (maybe excepting arcane archers)...
etc. etc. etc.
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I definitely agree that there doesn't need to be a rule penalizing ranged combatants, but I do respectfully diagree with your take on the effectivenes of archers as a whole. Archery Combat Style Rangers can lay the smack down.
As far as a comparison of hard numbers, using only full attack actions, yes the melee fighter will come out ahead in the average damage done/round column. This scenario may hold true in your standard cramped dungeon crawl. If that's the style of game you're playing, archery will definitely fall behind.
But when you look many other scenarios, such as outdoor encounters, encounters with lots of difficult terrain, and encounters in specially tailored bbeg strongholds, the archer has a clear advantage with the right feats. He is going to get the chance to full attack many more times than the melee fighter.
And don't even get me started on an Archer in a situation that allows him to make use of the Mounted Archery Feat. Moving 100' per round and still taking full attacks (even with the -4 penalty) is awesome.
Hi Blake,
I get what you're saying, but I have a few counter-thoughts:
1. Your scenario with Fred the Fighter accidentally hitting Carl the Cleric sounds like it's more in the realm of a critical fumble, which is a common optional house rule.
Maybe. But I would make the same argument against allowing critical fumbles that hurt your allies.
Furthermore, fumbles only happen on a natural 1. 5% of the time. You're talking about hitting your allies any time they would hit cover, that's 4 chances in 20, or 20% of the time.
4x as often.
And most fumble tables/decks have much less devastating things, like you're dazed for a round, or drop your weapon, etc. So even if they do include a few options for hurting yourself or allies, those don't usually happen on every fumble.
So now you're talking, maybe, 10x as often as the fumbles that actually damage allies.
It's a whole different league of risk and party resource destruction.
2. I don't think it's terribly unrealistic for an archer not to do as much damage as a melee fighter. Archers are most effective in large numbers from a distance (historically, anyway). In my game, I'm not worried about dissuading people from making archer builds; those players aren't expecting to be on the front lines next to the sword-swingers anyway.
Fair enough. Why should a little 4 oz. piece of wood do as much damage as an 8 lb. sword?
But remember this is a game. Some players might actually want to be archers. They might think it sounds fun. They might be OK "not being on the front lines".
But 8 levels later when the fighter is doing 40 points of damage in a round and the archer is doing 15 points of damage in the same round, they won't think it's so fun anymore. Or OK. Not at all.
They'll feel useless. They'll feel like they made a bad choice and they've been screwed by the rules. Regardless of whether they're OK not being on the front lines, they'll be quite upset that their archer is a waste of space in the party.
3. I would have no problem with a rule that allows for hitting the wrong target when you attack a creature that is grappling. This applies for ranged or melee attacks against the grappled creature.
Such a rule would make monsters that automatically grapple, monsters who are built to grapple successfully, instantly far more deadly than their CR would indicate.
Those monsters are supposed to grab and win the grapple checks. It's what they do. Then they squeeze and constrict and damage their victim while the rest of the party tries to hack them free. Many such monsters haul the victim in towards their body or their mouth. The victim's party tries to killt he monster before it kills their buddy.
But if the party is occasionally doing extra damage to their buddy instead of the grabby monster, it's dead buddy time.
Instead of a CR-appropriate challenge, this rule turns those encounters into PC-killers.
I don't want to make the game 100% realistic (or even 50% realistic), but I would like to help my players suspend disbelief. Not being able to accidentally hit your buddy when you're firing into a combat, or swinging at a grappled foe, is the kind of thing that makes the _players_ stop and say, "Hey, are you sure we can do this?"
What's so hard about the disbelief? In fact, I don't see that it needs much disbelief at all.
Player: I want to shoot that orc but I'm afraid I'll hit my buddy Fred.
DM: No worries, your archer knows how to aim away from Fred, time his shot for when he has a safe shot with no real chance to hit Fred.
Player: But Fred is right in the way. Look at the battlemat...
DM: Just because the plastic figures are standing still doesn't mean Fred and the Orc are.
Player: I still don't get it.
DM: Fred occupies a 5' space, and he's using all of it. Ducking, dodging, sidestepping, lunging. The orc has a different 5' space and he's using all of it too. There are plenty of times when the orc is on one side of his space and Fred is on the other, creating a clear line of sight.
Player: OK, I see. So I time my shot for when Fred isn't really in the way. Isn't that hard?
DM: Sure it is. That's why there's a -4 penalty because of firing into melee, and another -4 penalty (really +4 AC) because Fred gives the orc cover against your attack. -8 is pretty much the most penalized attack in any combat ever.
Player: Ah, so it really is a hard shot. But isn't there still a chance to hit Fred? Seems realistic to me...
DM: The reason for those huge penalties is that you're being so careful that you would rather miss everything than take any chance on hitting Fred. You're aiming so far off to the side that Fred is in no danger, even though it means you'll probably miss the orc too with all those penalties.
Piece of cake to explain. I have never once had any player at all argue that this is unreasonable.
And once you explain that stepping off to the side so Fred isn't in the way eliminates the cover and makes the shot much easier, the player will be glad to know that. Then it's very easy to envision shooting at the "wide open" orc while Fred is off to the side instead of in the way, and still taking a -4 penalty for firing into melee because you're still trying super hard to aim away from Fred; you'd rather risk missing everything than risk hitting Fred, so you aim so far away from Fred that the only possible outcomes are either hitting the orc or a complete miss.
Then comes Precise Shot, mastering your sense of timing so well that you can squeeze that arrow into the tightest shots with perfect split-second timing. You're so good that you don't have to aim so far away from Fred anymore. You can aim closer and shoot the gap the instant there is one, eliminating the penalty entirely without increasing the risk to Fred. It's a feat, it takes lots of training and practice and nerves of steel. Not everyone can do it or even knows how, but you can. Much like many other feats in the book, you've learned to do something quite extraordinary that few others can do.
You see? What's so hard about that?
2. I don't think it's terribly unrealistic for an archer not to do as much damage as a melee fighter. Archers are most effective in large numbers from a distance (historically, anyway). In my game, I'm not worried about dissuading people from making archer builds; those players aren't expecting to be on the front lines next to the sword-swingers anyway.Fair enough. Why should a little 4 oz. piece of wood do as much damage as an 8 lb. sword?
But remember this is a game. Some players might actually want to be archers. They might think it sounds fun. They might be OK "not being on the front lines".But 8 levels later when the fighter is doing 40 points of damage in a round and the archer is doing 15 points of damage in the same round, they won't think it's so fun anymore. Or OK. Not at all.
They'll feel useless. They'll feel like they made a bad choice and they've been screwed by the rules. Regardless of whether they're OK not being on the front lines, they'll be quite upset that their archer is a waste of space in the party.
If you, at level 9, as a ranged character (whether fighter or ranger) are only doing 15 points of damage a round you've definitely taken some wacky feats and have very sub-par equipment.
My current ranger in our Council of Thieves campaign has just reached lvl 2. He now has 2 attacks each round with a +9 to hit e.g. Hellknight Armigers, +8 to hit humans in general and +6 to hit everything else within 30', doing 1d8+7 against e.g. the Armigers. That's at level 2!DEX: 18
Point Blank Shot
Precise Shot
Rapid Shot
Favored enemy: Humanoid (Human)
Masterwork composite longbow, str. +3
Traits:
Rich parents
Lost Nobility (Cheliax book)
[thread de-rail]
Any archer worth his salt not using Deadly Aim and/or Rapid Shot/Multi-shot with a Composite Bow geared towards his Strength score is purposefully doing it wrong.
A Human 4th level Archer/Fighter can have weapon specialization, deadly aim, and point blank shot... giving him a +7 on damage against targets within 30 feet... before modifying for Composite/magical bow. At 5th level you can get Weapon Training in your Bows just like a melee fighter can with his swords. (another +1 damage)
Use Rapid Shot (archer equivalent of two-weapon fighting) and you are easily on par with any melee fighter using two weapons.
[/thread de-rail]
Back on topic...
The whole point of the Precise Shot feat is that you will not hit your allies. (you are specially aiming not to hit them)
That said... I personally am not against allowing an archer to hit "soft cover" if it is another enemy as long as the shot would normally hit that secondary targets AC.
I usually run it thus...
For example: Say your PC archer is aiming at that enemy wizard behind the line of combat. If the shot passes through the wizards minions squares (following a situation that would provide soft cover) and then misses the wizard because of that soft cover it would hit the soft cover. If your to hit is not enough to bypass the minions AC, the arrow instead just deflects off that minions armor.
[thread de-rail]
Any archer worth his salt not using Deadly Aim and/or Rapid Shot/Multi-shot with a Composite Bow geared towards his Strength score is purposefully doing it wrong.
A Human 4th level Archer/Fighter can have weapon specialization, deadly aim, and point blank shot... giving him a +7 on damage against targets within 30 feet... before modifying for Composite/magical bow. At 5th level you can get Weapon Training in your Bows just like a melee fighter can with his swords. (another +1 damage)
Use Rapid Shot (archer equivalent of two-weapon fighting) and you are easily on par with any melee fighter using two weapons.
[/thread de-rail]
Back on topic...
The whole point of the Precise Shot feat is that you will not hit your allies. (you are specially aiming not to hit them)
That said... I personally am not against allowing an archer to hit "soft cover" if it is another enemy as long as the shot would normally hit that secondary targets AC.
I usually run it thus...
For example: Say your PC archer is aiming at that enemy wizard behind the line of combat. If the shot passes through the wizards minions squares (following a situation that would provide soft cover) and then misses the wizard because of that soft cover it would hit the soft cover. If your to hit is not enough to bypass the minions AC, the arrow instead just deflects off that minions armor.
Exactly. Soft cover is covered by improved precise shot. They can now hit the succubus while she is making out with the Lud the barbarian with no chance for failure.
Feh, this happened to me in our game on Saturday even though the ranger had precise shot.
He did as much damage to me with that one shot as everything else that hit me did the rest of the evening.
Thank goodness for zombie meatshields.
Feh, this happened to me in our game on Saturday even though the ranger had precise shot.
He did as much damage to me with that one shot as everything else that hit me did the rest of the evening.
Thank goodness for zombie meatshields.
I assume you're referring to a house rule, as there is no rule for striking your friends unless you're using a critical/fumble deck.
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Actually you want a simple rule that doesn't penalize archers for firing into melee, here you go.
If you are firing into melee you take a -4 penalty on your attack roll. You may forgo this penalty, if you do so you risk a 50% chance of hitting an ally on a miss.
This gives characters without precise shot the benefit of firing into melee without a penalty and it makes it on their risk to put allies in danger. Characters with precise shot obviously never risk hitting their allies nor should they having spent two feats.
I assume you're referring to a house rule, as there is no rule for striking your friends unless you're using a critical/fumble deck.
*shrug* It was ruled that the zombie he was shooting at had partial cover due to two people being in front of it.
I just happened to get shot in the keister.
Literally.
Thanks for the responses. I guess I can keep my fingers crossed that a decent rule for this situation might appear in the Gamemastery book, or in the Advanced book. (Hint to Paizo...) :-)
-JS3
Consider carefully before you hope too hard for this rule.
Bows suck at killing things in this game. I have yet to see any archer build (maybe excepting arcane archers) who can dream of dishing out the damage a fighter the same level can.
Sure, they're safer, not being on the front ranks. And they can definitely deal more damage at long range than a dwarf with an axe. There are reasons to have archers or other ranged combatants in the party.
But HP for HP, bows suck at dealing damage.
If you did have a party with a fighter who specialized in melee and another fighter the same level specialized in archery, the melee fighter will dish out much more damage, and the archer will feel weak and unappreciated.
The archer has to spend a two feats just so he can attack anyone he wants with no penalty. Nobody else has to do that.
Sure, an archer specialist won't mind taking those feats. But a wizard who likes ray spells, or a cleric who wants to be moderaly tolerable with his crossbow when he's not spellcasting, etc., will be sorely pressed to afford two feats.
Which means ranged combatants are already two feats behind everyone else.
That's a huge penalty.
So they do less damage and they are behind in the feats department.
That's two strikes. One more strike and they're out.
Then along comes a new rule, or houserule, that says they run a chance to hurt their allies. Worse, that means more damage dealt to the party as a whole, which means more chance that someone dies and means more certainty that the healer will need to waste extra resources healing this extra damage.
That's strike three.
Ranged combat is already hard enough. Making it harder, making it waste party resources, making it run the risk of killing an ally, will weaken the concept to unplayability.
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I have a two fighters in my game. One's ranged and the other is sword and board. They both do roughly the same damage. Of course a two handed weapon fighters and two weapon fighters can dish out even more damage but bows compare well to sword and board fighters.
I wouldn't add that house rule either though. It would just slow combat down I think.
I assume you're referring to a house rule, as there is no rule for striking your friends unless you're using a critical/fumble deck.*shrug* It was ruled that the zombie he was shooting at had partial cover due to two people being in front of it.
I just happened to get shot in the keister.
Literally.
RAW he did have partial(soft) cover +4AC if you were between him and the archer.
Not RAW is the arrow striking you.
RAW he did have partial(soft) cover +4AC if you were between him and the archer.
Not RAW is the arrow striking you.
Oh, I was pretty raw about it!
Oh, I was pretty raw about it!RAW he did have partial(soft) cover +4AC if you were between him and the archer.
Not RAW is the arrow striking you.
two drumbs and a cymbal fell off of a cliff..
ba dum *ching*