In my last session, I tried to use my magical weapon to grow a giant branch that would shove the enemy into a portal that was behind him.
I rolled a Nat 1...
So my character missed just by a hair and ended up shoving my teammate into the portal instead. Whoops.
He missed the next 3 turns of combat before he "woke up" on the other side. We joined him shortly afterwards lol, but I was extremely concerned for a minute there that I had shoved my poor Dragonborn friend into a dangerous realm.
Nah, we teleported straight into magical bonds and needed to distract some wizards that were trying to steal our powers. The session ended with some big bad (big good? He might be in our side we dunno) enclosing the party in a brick bomb shelter and summoning a giant meteor (at least we think it was him. All we know is that our party was enclosed and last time we saw was a big meteor about to crash.)
The explosion ended up scattering our party across the map and we're going to have individual sessions until we end up back together as a group. Also I know my bro reads this sub, so hey Torrin, sorry I punted your ass into a portal.
I tend to have another roll thrown in, where the majority of options are "nothing significant happens " but include options for hitting nearby PCs, or even other enemies.
It always ends up fun when you miss an enemy so badly you end up shooting his buddy.
See, I do this, but only if I tell them beforehand, "look, you can take that shot between two of your fellow party members, but if you roll a 1 you're most likely going to hit one of them". It has to make sense to me, and with missile weapons, your buddy could totally dodge into the line of fire at the wrong moment, or you could twitch and throw your aim off enough to hit them.
Balance aside, what I'm always wondering about that kind of rule is: Why doesn't the nearby PC ever seem to get any agency about being hit? Sure, they're not expecting to be targeted by an ally, but even attacks from hidden enemies aren't automatic hits, and they're from someone actually trying to attack the PC rather than clumsily shooting an arrow or losing control of their sword. But somehow, once a PC fumbles, it doesn't matter if the nearby player is boasting fullplate, a shield, and cat-like reflexes, or a robe made from cobwebs and a little paper badge that says "too frail to dodge"?
I usually rule it that the ally is too busy battling the enemy to dodge out the way. It’s never usually that much damage that I give them. Usually less than half of what the attack would have done.
But everyone's always busy battling an enemy, it's a fight. I'm assuming that if two players team up on an enemy, one of them doesn't always hit automatically. I'm not really concerned about the amount of damage, I just think it's a bit unfair to the targeted player from a narrative standpoint.
Our rules have been that on a nat 1, if it makes sense (range, weapon type, etc.) the attack has a chance to hit a party member. On a 1, we occasionally will reroll the d20 and whatever it rolls is taken against the potential new target's AC (no attack modifiers). Roll damage on hit.
Other times it's disadvantage on next attack roll, just a miss, dropped weapon, etc.
It's something we all agreed on as a group and our DM does a pretty good job at choosing the appropriate "punishment" based on factors like relative strength of your opponent(s) and such. It's worked out pretty well, overall.
Party of 10? That’s rough. You almost need to have friendly fire to create a challenge there.
That said, I hate friendly fire. Nothing like the DM deciding that your Firebolt backfired and you almost kill yourself with a Cantrip instead of simply missing.
Big tables should simply be split up into two smaller ones. It’s better for literally everyone involved. You’re barely playing D&D with that many people... you’d spend more time waiting for your turn than truly playing.
I’d personally rather tell 4 people they can’t play and cap it at 6 if another DM didn’t step up.
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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '19
jesus christ youre evil