Shooting into Melee

[Maliki]

How is this handled in BFRPG? For example a fighter is engaged in melee with three orcs, his buddy the thief wants to help out, but doesn't want to get into melee, so he uses his longbow to shoot at the orcs. Does he attack normally? Randomly target one of the 4? Take a penalty to his attack roll? Or something else?

[SmootRK]

p.47-48 Missiles That Miss... and it is a rather odd process in my mind (but it works well in practice).

The basic gist is "a miss" means that the GM rolls an attack against any applicable ally... until all such allies are missed or until one is hit doing normal damage.

Seems strange, but the theory (as this was discussed before) is that a MISS should not have an inadvertent positive effect by accidentally striking one of the other opponents... instead such a miss must have a chance of screwing up your allies. While seemingly wonky, I like the rationale of a miss having a negative consequence (or a likely such negative consequence).

[Maliki]

Not bad I guess, at least you only have a chance of hitting you ally on a miss. I've seen other systems where even on a successful attack roll, you still had a chance of hitting an ally.

[Hywaywolf]

That makes no sense to me, if your attack was successful then it hit what you aimed at. My personal opinion is that if a miss has a chance of hitting up to three allies, it should have a chance of hitting an enemy, but I didn't write the rule so I play it by the book. The same goes for firing at a bunched up enemy. You would think you should be able to hit something in a mass of bodies. I sometimes get around that by throwing flaming oil. That works even if you miss.

[Dimirag]

I remember Solo said it is about the game being gamist instead of simulationist. That rule is made that way to discourage shooting at melee without giving any bennefits while shooting at an enemy group. Yo can rule that independently and combine the effects

[Solomoriah]

Exactly so.

[Joe the Rat]

That does lead to some odd situations. Like firing into a crowd, and not being able to hit anyone because they're providing each other with cover. Out of curiosity, how would you handle shooting an arrow into a group of enemies, not caring which one gets hit? (Let's assume no allies in melee range.)

(I was in a round of Car Wars where someone used this as a strategy: A semi with a flat bed full of people armed with AV rifles. You couldn't spray the crowd with a machine gun... or a flamethrower. You had to pick one to aim at, and likely miss. Area Effect weapons for the win.)

[Dimirag]

If you play btb you choose an oponent and shoot at it. If you miss, you misss, period. There are lots of options for determing who gey shoy... you can roll a 1 in 6 chance and increase that number depending on the amount of oponents... or determing it befire the shoot is made

[Maliki]

Also, a miss doesn't have to mean you completely missed, just that you failed to cause damage. His armor may have stopped the arrow, or something similar.

[Dimirag]

Exactly. I remember this was discused some time ago and to reflect that the 1 in 6 rule was selected as a possible game rule.