So I have this player that hasn't gone down the melee/lightsaber path, and uses a repeating blaster.

So when he shoots, he has 4 yellow dice. That's pretty wizard. Now when he shoots while a friend is in a combat and rolls that red despair he hits them - and does a whole bunch of damage because he is such a good shot.

What?

So when he told me he was going to forego aiming because it might do even more damage to his buddy, I realized that this is inherently broken. Why would a 4 skill point person have the same chance of hitting their mate as a 1 skill point person? Does a trained Navy Seal really shoot his melee-fighting friend as much as a drunken blind man? And also, when they do hit, why does the trained soldier do more damage to the person they are NOT trying to hit?

Anyone have a good house rule to this one? I was thinking of letting Triumph cancel Despair or something. I like the threat of hitting your teammate, I just think it needs to take your awesomeness into consideration.

Or just grab Warleader.

There are 2 ways to aim. One grants a boost die, or the other allows you to target a specific body part or attended object with 2 setback (you can aim a second time to reduce that down to one setback), you could allow the 2nd method to aim specifically for the enemy.

It's never a problem in our game, the melee users let the ranged guy go first or attack a different target.

Hit and Run tactics work well for the melee character who has an Gun Monkey behind them.

I allow advantage to mitigate damage if you hit your ally. I use threat to trigger weapon effects. So your 4 yellow dice guy might do 13 dam but his 4 advantage means he only does 9. But if he does 13 dam and gets 2 threat then I trigger his linked or a crit.. etc.

If they get a Triumph I often allow them to split the damage between the ally and the enemy..

So, I have a similar problem in my game, and I've been trying to devise a slew of house rules to affect shooting into a melee. They're still in progress, but since I GM "by feel" a lot, I don't need anything super concrete; my players really don't mind.

How I've been doing it is having advantages and such reduce the damage a friendly player receives from a the attack. The player is good with a rifle (even having the Hunter-specific added Force die!), so when a Despair comes up, I rule the advantage as having it be a "close miss" on the opponent that grazes the PC in question. The few times there haven't been enough advantage for this to be an acceptable explanation of events has been against potent enemies I claimed pulled or somehow coaxed the PC into the way of the shot.

Have you thought about making it so that the gun just does the base damage instead of taking the successes into account? This would be a way to drop the "I am an awesome shot so somehow hit my ally for more damage" problem.

If you did that combined with advantages reducing damage I can see that being a solid and easy house rule. It would reward more skill while keeping the risk intact.

Do you like the chance of a shot hitting allies, but specifically object to it not being mitigated by skill? What if instead of triggering off of despair it triggers of a set amount of threat instead? Despair isn't counteracted by a skilled roll, but Threat is.

Yeah, that's really the objection. I want Captain Mal to have a good shot at someone's head without killing the hostage.

Threat is a good idea, I would like to think of a way to do Despair/Triumph so it worked as well. Since by the rules they don't cancel, it might make sense to split the damage or damage both like Zypher suggsted.

I just simply ditched the part about how a Despair must be spent to hit somebody other than the intended target when shooting into a melee containing an ally, mostly because 9 times out of 10 it's just the ally and the intended target.

Instead, I just treat the "hit somebody else in the melee" as another potential option that the GM can opt to spend the Despair on, and one that I use very sparingly, especially if it's a PC doing the shooting. If anything, I'm more opt to use it if it's a fairly important bad guy that's shooting into a melee, having them take out a lesser adversary (especially if the fight isn't going in the PCs favor for no reason other than the PCs having sub-par dice rolls).

This has been one of my least favorite rules for a couple reasons.

First, as you mentioned, there's no way to mitigate the chances of it happening. There will be a 1/12 chance minimum of hitting your friend regardless of the skill of the shooter.

Second, the check was a success! Why does the despair cancel out the success?

The way I like to play it is by increasing the difficulty of the check, and spending three threat on a success to do base weapon damage to the ally while handling damage normally against the original target. If the check misses and a despair is rolled then I add un-cancelled failures to the weapon damage and have it hit the ally.

I like the rule because it inspires a risk vs reward conversation.

In my mind, I picture the success to be that the shooter hits the point in which they were aiming, but the despair means that the engaged target moved at the last second and another target gets in the way of the blaster fire.

With that being said, I can certainly see why so many people have a problem with this rule. In the end, Dono's suggestion is by far the simplest and easiest to implement.

Second, the check was a success! Why does the despair cancel out the success?.

That's my biggest point of the contention with the rule, and has been since Day One of the EotE Beta.

It's the only instance where a Despair result cancels out a successful roll, something that the sections on interpreting dice rolls says shouldn't be done in the first place.

You guys do understand that you as GM choose what the despair does right?

Besides and this is something you need to grasp no matter how skilled a shooter is when a group of people are in close proximity and moving around there is a pretty decent chance you will hit the wrong guy.

Rule that the attack does base damage only? Your game, your rules...

You guys do understand that you as GM choose what the despair does right?

Re-read the section on shooting into a melee where there's an ally engaged with your target.

That's the one section of the rules that says the Despair must be spent in a specific way, in addition to potentially overriding the "you succeeded!" portion of the combat check if there's only one adversary (the intended target) and one or more allies engaged with that adversary.

Thats just it really. When people are moving in unpredictable ways in combat, even the most skilled marksman can make a mistake that would cut the fight short. It's part of what should make a melee character really dangerous in close quarters; if there is a guy engaged then the shooters could end up gunning down their own friends instead of the target. But the other advantages/trumphs can be used to make the terrible result more bareable. Such as inflicting damage to both, knocking prone e.c.t

If the player rolls a success but also a despair rather than having them hit the ally how about have it clip the ally meaning they lose either their manoeuvre or action from their next round whilst recover.

However if you fail the check (ie miss) then you still hit the ally with a normal hit?

wow! I'd have never thought (nor did i notice) that the rules says you MUST spend the despair that way. I feel like this is counter intuitive to the spirit of the game, though it is obviously not a typo to be errata'd.

I'm house ruling, and suggest a house rule that as with just about everything else, that is a suggestion and if it doesn't make any sense for the narrative, despairs may be used in other ways. Though hitting another character in the melee is certainly still viable as an option.

Reading over what everyone has said, for me a good house rule would be you only hit the friendly target on a failure with Despair while adding number of failures to the base damage.

Obviously everyone has freedom at their table to run the game their own way, for some of you its clear this does not sit well with you, for me though i like the rule as it is. In a real life situation there is now way i would be heading into melee if i knew there was a chance someone was going to shoot at my foe. The idea of standing right next to someone else, engaging in a melee with them, then someone else trying to shoot that person scares the absolute hell out of me! There is no way i would go anywhere near that!

The other thing i cant imagine doing is trying to shoot at a foe while my best friend is actively trying to fight them in melee. Why on earth would i even try to do that! its just plain crazy, the risk of shooting my buddy is just way too high. For me the rule gets that message through to the players, the risk is low, but the result is massive, just as if you shot your best friend...

There are ways to avoid the problem too, its not like the PC's have no choice but to attack, especially with the flexible initiative system. The melee character can act last in a round (or at least after the ranged PC), then first next round, allowing them to engage, aim, hit, then aim, hit, disengage, all between the shots of the ranged PC.

Im assuming everyone uses the same rules for NPC's shooting at engaged PC/NPC groups too? spending the despair to for the NPC to hit the NPC? I feel like thats a great chance for PC's to flip a DP knowing that if the NPC rolls despair its going to completely mitigate the damage. (Edit: I say "Knowing" because for me my PC's know the Despair MUST be spent on hitting another engaged target, therefore they know i cant choose not to use that option, its a safety net to protect them from me being a Class 1 D***)

richardbuxton, you summed up my thoughts quite well.

You guys do understand that you as GM choose what the despair does right?

Re-read the section on shooting into a melee where there's an ally engaged with your target.

That's the one section of the rules that says the Despair must be spent in a specific way, in addition to potentially overriding the "you succeeded!" portion of the combat check if there's only one adversary (the intended target) and one or more allies engaged with that adversary.

I've read it and feel that the section covering Despairs in combat makes it very clear the GM can choose what to do with despairs including making up what ever he wants.

You guys do understand that you as GM choose what the despair does right?

Re-read the section on shooting into a melee where there's an ally engaged with your target.

That's the one section of the rules that says the Despair must be spent in a specific way, in addition to potentially overriding the "you succeeded!" portion of the combat check if there's only one adversary (the intended target) and one or more allies engaged with that adversary.

I've read it and feel that the section covering Despairs in combat makes it very clear the GM can choose what to do with despairs including making up what ever he wants.

I'm not talking about the general "Despairs in combat" section, but the specific rule for a Despair under shooting a target who is engaged with an ally, which has it's own entry in the combat chapter.

And I'm telling you the general section overrides it.