LogFAQs > #970560708

Monopoman posted...

Part of the technique of playing a good spell caster is positioning spells well to make it so they hit 0 members of the party or at most 1. This is not like most video games where friendly fire is either turned off or hard to do.

I'd say the differentiation is in implementation. In a tactical video game or tabletop, you have time to deliberately line up shots and calculate how any given spell is going to hit, so the onus is more on the players to not cast at their allies and try to "angle" shots correctly. But in more action-oriented video games you're generally casting on the fly while moving (and possibly while a stupid AI is moving your allies around and directly into the path of your spells), so it's better to be a bit more forgiving and turn the friendly fire off.

Which is why you get games like Divinity: Original Sin where casting doesn't just hit allies, it also does environmental damage that lasts over time, which you have to tactically plan around. Because strategizing is a large part of the game.



Nichtcrawler-X posted...

Kind? That is just shitting on the School of Evocation, their entire stick is excluding allies from AoE spells.

And Sorcerers in general, who get Careful Spell as a Metamagic effect.

But it doesn't really matter all that much unless you've got players at the table using those abilities. If your group is three Rogues and a Necromancer Wizard, it isn't really necessary to strictly adhere to all possible aspects of class balance for classes that aren't even in the game.

The goal is to make the game more fun for the people who are actually playing it, not hypothetical players who aren't there. Even high-level DMs are willing to do this - professional DM and D&D dev Chris Perkins fudged things in his Dice Camera Action game so that the Sorcerer player was essentially getting the Evoker bonus from Careful Spell (when they shouldn't have been, because Spell Sculpting is actually more powerful than Careful Spell). Because he felt like it made the game more fun for the players... and because no one was playing an Evoker Wizard to contrast against.

It's like a DM house-ruling that prepared casters can act more like spontaneous casters. Sure, it craps on spontaneous casters, but that doesn't really matter if no one is playing a spontaneous caster. And hell, WotC themselves have been shitting on spontaneous casters lately, so it's not like anything is 100% sacrosanct even at the highest levels of play (or game design). If a given table finds it more fun to allow spellcasters to cast any spell they know (or even shitcan spell slots entirely in favor of point-cast MP/mana-style systems), that's up to them. If everyone playing is having fun, then the game is being played "correctly", regardless of the rules.

This is also the same sort of reason why some groups with ignore things like Encumbrance or Fatigue entirely (possibly because they want to run a more cinematic-style game), while others look for ways to make it even more punishing (likely because they want to run a survival-style game). Or completely ignore Alignment. Or ammunition requirements. Or spellcasting components. Or whatever else they think makes for a better game.

As long as the DM and players all agree, pretty much anything is fair game.