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?

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Love WHFRP!

 

[Blue]

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.

Well, luckily if you are doing it correctly, your setting assumptions and your genre match.

If they don't, you're already doing it wrong.

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

So it is your opinion that you can insult my opinion and that's fine, but if you find my opinion insulting that's not okay? Talk about entitlement.

I'll continue to continue my free speech, and accept the consequences of it - if you want to block me because you can't handle what I'm saying, I'm okay with that.

Actually, considering the last couple of interactions we've had were you've been some degree of hostile, I should just take my own advice.

 

[GMMichael]

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.

This makes sense until you look at it a bit. If an archer is directly* targeting an opponent (in the first place), he probably has a line of sight on the target. That rules out the interposing targets. Since friendly fire rules are applicable, that opponent is probably in close combat with an ally. This range is the range at which swinging/stabbing your weapon is likely to hurt your opponent, so the opponent's other allies are likely not within this range, in order to keep from stabbing each other. That rules out adjacent targets. What remains is targets behind the target opponent, which probably have some amount of cover from the untargeted ally who is in close combat range with the target opponent (that the archer just missed).

I can see a d6 doing some deciding here - miss your target, and you hit your ally on 1-2, someone behind her on a 3-4, or nothing/deflection on a 5-6.

I might use a confirmation roll to decide what happens - you missed? Roll against what you just rolled. If your confirmation is below that (extra bad), yeah, you probably hit your ally. If it's above that, then you hit whatever's behind your target.

*An archer using indirect fire doesn't need the line of sight, but shouldn't be playing by melee combat rules, anyway.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I run "doubling down" rules; on a Natural 1 the player may reroll. If the player does then if they hit they hit. If they miss it's a critical fail (DM's choice). Which is frequently Friendly Fire.

 

[Lucas Yew]

I weigh verisimilitude much heavier over gamism, so would readily include FF despite its cons...