Worlds of Design: Not-So-Friendly Fire

“Friendly fire” is not uncommon in real-world warfare. What are some pros and cons of including friendly fire in RPGs?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Oops!​

“Friendly fire” – when your side accidentally hits/kills its own troops/planes/ships – is not uncommon in real-world warfare. In the poor visibility and chaos of battle, it’s not hard to shoot at the wrong target (e.g., many night surface naval battles in World War II involved friendly fire).

Training and command coordination make a difference, but in the end, friendly fire is fairly random. For me, friendly fire is NOT fun. You get just as dead from “friendly” fire as from enemy fire.

In this context, I'm specifically focusing on ranged attacks that have a chance of missing. The fireball spell in many versions of Dungeons & Dragons may inflict friendly fire. I don’t know about you, but I get really annoyed when my character gets blasted by our own spellcasters. Undoubtedly, there are campaigns where this is impossible, either the expansion doesn’t occur, or it magically does not harm allies.

I don't recommend game designers add random occurrences of friendly fire in any game. Nonetheless, you can arrange RPG rules so that players can choose whether to risk friendly fire. If it’s their choice, that’s more of a gamble than a random unfortunate act.

When Friendly Fire Makes Sense​

One of the most blatant examples where friendly fire ought to be likely is shooting arrows into a melee. If you do this, you’re almost as likely to hit your own people as the enemy, especially if you’re shooting from behind your people. It depends on sight lines, on unexpected movements, and on the accuracy of the shot (die roll). Yet in some games, you somehow never hit an ally; in others a bad roll will cause trouble!

For me, games are best when they put the players “on the horns of a dilemma,” having to choose what to do and what not to do. The risk of friendly fire is an example. Shall I shoot into the melee between my guys and the enemy, or should I not? Other missiles, such as thrown daggers, axes, and javelins, can be similarly treated.

If a character is in a second line (fighting in a dungeon), I allow full-size characters to fire missiles over the head of the first liner when that first liner is short, most obviously a dwarf fighter.

Yet it would be odd to just say “you can’t fire missiles into melee." Because a character could TRY it. It might sound better if your rule is, when you fire into melee you hit your own guys, period. If you're trying to tell an interesting story, friendly fire can seriously mess up the narrative with a bad roll.

No Friendly Fire​

On the other hand, a game is simpler with no friendly fire. The online massively multi-player game World of Warships used to adjudicate friendly fire, but so many people got fed up with being hit by torpedoes fired by their teammates that the rules were changed. Now the torpedo quietly disappears without damage.

If you don’t bother with a board to show position and maneuver in combat (“Theater of the Mind”), it becomes harder to calculate whether there’s friendly fire, though you can still rule carte blanche that characters are not allowed to shoot into melee. I do not play Theater of the Mind; to me the game is a wargame some of the time and consequently requires detailed maneuver.

Fumble Fire​

Another option is to have friendly fire be the result of something really gone wrong, a "fumble." This is how characters in melee accidentally strike “friendlies" at random, but presumably at a lower chance than simply missing. This would be reminiscent of the fumble rules of some games, where you may hit yourself if your attack roll is really poor. Yet even in that case, the mechanism is related to what the character is doing, and seems to be less random. I don’t use fumble rules, to me it adds an element of unneeded randomness – though I do marvel that lightsaber users never hit themselves!

Implications of Friendly Fire​

If friendly fire is a real possibility, this changes tactics (and even strategy). If I let an archer or knife-thrower fire over the head of a dwarf just in front of them, but not otherwise, then players may want a dwarf in the party when otherwise they wouldn’t. Players will also have their characters take positions where they have lines of sight clear of their allies.

If you do allow friendly fire, there’s a prospect for new magic items. For example, an item that protects you from friendly fire, “friendly” as defined by people near you when you command the item. Or a more powerful item would ensure the bearer that they never inflict friendly fire on an ally, very useful for an archer or spell-caster.

Does the risk of friendly fire in some situations make everything feel more real? Does it help immersion, in other words? I think so, but your mileage may vary.

Your Turn: Do you allow missile fire into melee at risk of friendly fire? What about combat fumbles?

 

[Distracted DM]

I enforce cover pretty consistently- the only way to avoid a piece of cover is to be adjacent to it, and that includes if that cover is an ally. I forget where I took this from, probably a ttrpg but possibly some wargame. I haven't used a friendly fire rule in 5e, but a few suggested here make sense.

A lot of people are saying that this only punishes the melee characters, because it's they who are getting hit... when I was young we'd fire into melee without a care, but nowadays, I think after some maturation over the years, folks I play with would consider risking friendly fire to be a penalty to EVERYONE because it hampers the team's effectiveness if you're harming your allies instead of the enemy.
They'd probably avoid it as much as possible, not fire willy-nilly into the melee as is being suggested here.

I'd consider negating friendly fire chances if you're adjacent to the combat- say it's you-ally-enemy. That puts the archer in danger since the enemy could potentially attack them, but negates the friendly fire concern.

 

[Argyle King]

Some people were claiming that friendly fire rules somehow add to the balance of a game. To me, an arrow or a bolt effectively not stopping unless it hits a target (friendly or otherwise) is potentially a pretty big increase in combat capability for an archer. Large number of enemies approaching? Just fire in their general direction, you're going to hit something. Which under certain circumstances is what people actually do. Doesn't mean it makes combat more balanced.

Long ago I did try a friendly fire option, but it didn't have anything to do with fumbles. First, because if you're a really good archer you're going to get multiple shots off in a round; it makes no sense that you're more likely to hit an ally when you're 20th level than when you're first. But that's an issue I have with fumbles in general, the better you supposedly are the more likely you are to roll a 1.

Second, if you really fumble, who's to say the projectile went anywhere near your intended target?

So what I did was say that if you miss your target by the amount of the cover penalty, roll again to see if you hit whoever it was providing the cover, going from target closest to the target. That way if the wizard using NPC fighters as a shield, you may hit that NPC standing directly in front of them, but you still have to roll to hit. If you miss by more than the cover penalty other creatures provide, you just miss.

It was something I tried for a little bit but it just wasn't worth the overhead.

For whatever it's worth, the other games I play that have rules for stuff like that don't have them in a vacuum. How combat works in general tends to be noticeably different from D&D.

You're right that it is a viable tactic to spray ranged fire into a group of enemies. That's part of why crew-serve machine guns and pinning fire are so effective on a battlefield.

The drawbacks include things that are typically not covered by D&D combat. (Which is not a negative comment - simply expressing that D&D typically doesn't model those sorts of things)

 

[MNblockhead]

I rarely did this in D&D. If circumstances were such that it seemed exceptionally reckless to fire into a group to hit a target, I would set a low DC and if their attack roll missed AND was below the DC, a random nearby person or item would be hit, determined by a dice roll.

I'm currently running Warhammer Fantasy Role Play 4e and this is backed into its fumble mechanic. Warhammer is crunchier than D&D 5e and a bit more simulationist (hit locations, weapon and armor damage, etc.). When you do have a critical miss, you roll on a random table and one of the results could be that you hit an ally. If I was running the game pen & paper, I might have streamlined things a bit, but since I'm running it in a VTT, the VTT takes care of the random rolls automatically. So it doesn't slow down the game and adds some nice flavor.

 

[Lanefan]

The fumble rules I use is a two-step. On the roll of nat 1, roll again. If you miss with the 2nd roll, then it is fumble. It really cuts down on the chance of a fumble - at 1st level usually somewhere in the neighborhood of from 1 in 20 to somewhere about 1 in 50 or less. The higher your hit bonus generally the less chance of messing it up because that second roll often abates it. And for the most part that fumble just opens you up to an opportunity attack, so the opponent still has to land a successful hit (and you have no way to mitigate it, which is more likely at high level, frankly)

We have it that fumbles have to be confirmed by rolling 1 on a d6, which reduces the standard* fumble chance to 1 in 120; and (if in melee) slipping so as to give your foe a free attack is possible result.

* - if something external is putting a minus on your roll e.g. shooting into melee or an opposition Prayer effect (or Bane against you, same thing) then the odds get a bit higher.

And because the Wizard player pointed it out, I do have a fumble/crit for saves, with a chance that if the individual makes a nat 20 on the save they could entirely negate (as if they had Evasion) or might reverse the effect back to the caster/attacker (mitigation system similar to above). Had a (PC) fighter once bat an enemy wizard's fireball (while it was still in pea form) back at him...

While cool, the bolded would seem to break the rule of a fireball going off on hitting (or in this case being hit by) a solid object.

Softly catching the bead in a bare hand and then throwing it back might work, however...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've played in games that include it and games that don't. Overall, I find the reduced headaches worth the slight loss of "realism." Especially since there's still usually a cost--e.g. disadvantage for firing into a crowd. "Wasting" an action is generally more than enough reason for people to try to avoid this sort of thing, and is a big part of why I'm so happy they've turned Warlock pacts into invocations. I can mix it up in melee or ranged as needed, and it takes a pretty big battlefield for me to be out of range entirely.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I run two different D&D 5e games and have been DMing for mumble*mumble years. I remember in 1st edition if you fired a missile weapon into a melee cluster the DM would randomly roll to determine who in the cluster was potentially hit.

Today, I don't follow that approach, although I do understand the justification for it. I feel like it unduly burdens players who have chosen to play a ranged character. The percentage of the time that a ranged character will be attacking a target that is in melee with one or more of the character's allies is probably quite high, so by implementing a friendly fire house rule you are basically punishing anyone who chooses to play a ranged character.

There are already ways within the existing 5e framework to add a burden to ranged attackers. It would make sense for a monster group to send one or more attackers up into melee against an archer standing back and picking off their guys. That forces the ranged character to either switch to a (presumably lesser) melee attack or accept disadvantage on their attack rolls.

Additionally, the rules for line of sight add either half or three-quarters cover (i.e., +2 or +5 to AC and Dex saving throws) to defenders if a ranged character is firing through allies. To me this represents the difficult of firing through allies while trying not to hit them.

D&D 5e is not a combat simulator. It's an abstraction. I generally try to approach it with that mindset when I DM.

I disagree. If you choose to fire a ranged weapon into melee, you are choosing also to take the risk, however said risk is determined, of friendly fire. It is not a punishment; rather, it is a consequence of your choices.

And D&D (any edition) is absolutely a combat simulator. By rules content, combat has always been the most prominent part of D&D, no matter how much some versions claim otherwise. The degree of abstraction within that combat simulation has varied greatly, however. How much is "right" is very, very subjective.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I use friendly-fire, but sparingly. The goal isn't added 'realism'. It's to give the player an interesting choice. When PCs shoot without a clear line of fire there'a a chance they hit an ally. I smile, remind them of this, and say, "don't roll low".

For me the goal is attempting to make events in the setting make a modicum of logical sense.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One option not discussed is to lean into the genre assumptions of the game. For example, many D&D tables are Heroic Fantasy. In these cases, the heroes won't end up initiating friendly fire unless:

1. It's a comedy moment.
2. It's a big deal and someone who should has consciously put themselves in harm's way - say for a volley of arrows from an army, or a fireball.
3. They are incompetent with the particular object, like a hermit light cleric with a trebuchet or a rogue reading a scroll.

But in Heroic Fantasy, the expected competent heroes won't accidentally cause friendly fire with what they are good at.

Other genres will have other expectations. I think tailoring things like friendly fire to lean into your tables genre expectations will strengthen the feel. Don't do it for verisimilitude, that's shorthand for "I don't understand my genre so I'll substitute real world and point out how realistic it is if anyone gets grumpy", though doing it because your genre demands it, like a gritty world war game is just fine.

I'm sure many people would enjoy that, but I don't believe in making genre assumptions a top priority. They're not more important than setting consistency, to me.

Also, I find your opinion of verisimilitude insulting. Please try to respect the opinions of others.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure how "the melee guy gets hit more" is a mark in their favor.

What irritates me about many friendly fire rules is that the arrow just magically knows who your friend is and hits them, rather than any of the other hostile targets which may be adjacent or interposed.

I agree that "friendly fire" shouldn't distinguish between reasonably equal targets based on what side they're on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The fumble rules I use is a two-step. On the roll of nat 1, roll again. If you miss with the 2nd roll, then it is fumble. It really cuts down on the chance of a fumble - at 1st level usually somewhere in the neighborhood of from 1 in 20 to somewhere about 1 in 50 or less. The higher your hit bonus generally the less chance of messing it up because that second roll often abates it. And for the most part that fumble just opens you up to an opportunity attack, so the opponent still has to land a successful hit (and you have no way to mitigate it, which is more likely at high level, frankly).

And because the Wizard player pointed it out, I do have a fumble/crit for saves, with a chance that if the individual makes a nat 20 on the save they could entirely negate (as if they had Evasion) or might reverse the effect back to the caster/attacker (mitigation system similar to above). Had a (PC) fighter once bat an enemy wizard's fireball (while it was still in pea form) back at him...

Those are good rules. I might steal that.