My group's spellcasters have gotten very quick to throw Fireballs and other area of effect spells, counting on their ability to precisely aim them such that they fry the bad guy, but have no effect on their buddy a couple of feet away who's banging on it with his sword. I know that based on RAW, this is perfectly legal, but I still have a problem with the idea that, in the heat of battle, with everyone lunging around, possibly impaired visibility, etc., you can position a magical blast a long ways off with pinpoint accuracy. Meanwhile, an archer shooting at the same target suffers a -4 penalty.
So here's what I'm considering for a House Rule: When a spellcaster wants to precisely aim an AOE spell (i.e. when he needs to avoid hitting something adjacent to one or more targets), he needs to make a Reflex save (DC 15?). If he fails, the spell origin gets offset by 5' in a random direction. If friendly fire isn't an issue (enemies off by themselves), we'd forgo the checks. Feats like Precise Shot would also add bonuses to precision casting rolls.
Thoughts?
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If you want them to have to do a check to hit properly, don't do a save. Do a touch attack roll against a base AC of 0. Most of the time this means it takes a nat-1 to fail, which is why they don't bother making casters roll this except in unusual circumstances. Alternatively, have them pass a simple perception check to determine the correct square to aim at (DC 0, +4 if someone's in the way, distance penalties matter) and keep the attack roll automatic.
Honestly though, I feel any such change will increase bookkeeping, nerf an already not-very-good aspect of casting (blasting), and result in little more than players never using most area of effect spells outside of siege situations that they knew about ahead of time. None of which are particularly interesting or fun results. Then again, I tend to err on the anti-bookkeeping side. Things that have <=5% chance of happening essentially every time get relegated to story moments.