Enemies and allies are a crapful definition term.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Seriously, this is way too confusing. Here's how it should be.

There is no such thing as 'enemy' and 'ally' anymore. There are only effects that let you selectively exclude targets, such as mass cure light wounds or weird. If something has a dual effect to it, like a spell that curses enemies and blesses allies, it has two sets of targets one after the other. Anyone can voluntarily automatically fail a saving throw/AC roll/defense roll against certain effects, in case you don't want to blow a chance for your ally to take 5 hp away from you for them to gain 30.


There. Was that so fucking hard? Sheesh.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I totally agree with you. Enemy and Ally are arbitrary terms. Who's to say as of this round I don't consider the Goblins my allies and my former party members my enemies.

Effects where I gain power from enemies attacking me are BS, as are the DM Guide's attempt to say "No, you can't use this power intelligently"

[Amra]

You've still got the Bag o' Rats problem though; if you are able to selectively designate "whoever you want" to give you bonuses to [whatever] by launching bullshit attacks in your direction, we're no better off. All class abilities that do something on those lines still need revisiting, which either means coming up with some meaningful definition of "enemy" or throwing them away altogether.

As I once put it during a ToB review I did for my gaming group:

******

Pearl of Black Doubt - Level 3

It's a +2 dodge bonus to your AC (cumulative as usual) for every melee attack that misses you, which lasts until the start of your next turn.
Summon a whole bunch of low-level opponents who couldn't hit you in a million years and have them flail away ineffectually at you whilst your AC goes into the stratosphere. Do this even when you are not in melee with anyone other than your summoned creatures and your armour class will be higher than a hippy at Glastonbury. That's not abuse, it's common sense.

I have never seen a more pressing reason to adventure with 50 blind 1st-level commoners who are all two-weapon fighting with rolled-up newspapers.

******

Throwing away the definitions of "enemies" and "allies" doesn't help with this kind of shit, nor with spell effects that give cumulative bonuses or penalties based on a number of enemies or allies. It just makes them all easier to abuse. I mean, "apply common sense to".

[Murtak]

Pearl of Black Doubt - Level 3

It's a +2 dodge bonus to your AC (cumulative as usual) for every melee attack that misses you, which lasts until the start of your next turn.
Summon a whole bunch of low-level opponents who couldn't hit you in a million years and have them flail away ineffectually at you whilst your AC goes into the stratosphere. Do this even when you are not in melee with anyone other than your summoned creatures and your armour class will be higher than a hippy at Glastonbury. That's not abuse, it's common sense.

Even assuming a sensible definition of allies and enemies existed this power would still break as soon as you face the Dread Lord Girkush and his army of kobold minions. The BBEG should not be weakened by having multiple weak allies. It is fine to have powers which make them irrelevant, but it is not ok if they make him weaker.

The same goes for the bag of rats. Great Cleave should really state that you get to full attack one target and to whirlwind everyone else. Allies and enemies being undefinable is just the band-aid on top of a band-aid of a festering wound. Fixing either band-aid won't help.

[Amra]

Um, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. You either have to throw away all the powers, spells and effects that grant bonuses or penalties based on numbers of opponents, or you've got to fix every single one of them on a case-by-case basis. In the case of Pearl of Black Doubt, you'd probably amend it to "you gain a +2 dodge bonus to your AC until the end of the encounter against every creature who makes a melee attack against you and misses", which is more in keeping with the title of the thing in any case.

I was just saying that there's no general rule to fix this type of power, at least not that has occurred to me.

[violence in the media]

So your new Pearl of Black Doubt rewrite only affects creatures with multiple attacks? If they've already missed, what do you need an additional +2AC against them for?

[Username17]

So your new Pearl of Black Doubt rewrite only affects creatures with multiple attacks? If they've already missed, what do you need an additional +2AC against them for?

Nah, it's per encounter in Amra's writeup, so it makes it harder to kill you the more they fail to kill you. It has the advantage of being unbreakable with bullshit minor summons or whatever, and also does the probable intended thing of encouraging you to fight defensively early in the combat to be able to let loose later on.

-Username17

[violence in the media]

Ah, my mistake. I didn't catch the encounter phrasing. That makes much more sense.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Seriously, this is way too confusing. Here's how it should be.

...

There. Was that so fucking hard? Sheesh.

Agreed.

[Manxome]

There do exist games with fairly reasonable abilities intended to be used on enemies that are abusable if usable on allies. Guild Wars example:

Iron Mist: For X seconds, target foe moves 90% slower, but is invulnerable to all damage types except lightning.

Now, you can excise all such abilities from your game. Or you can balance their costs based on the assumption that players will use them to become invulnerable instead of using them to slow down enemies.

But if you want to have a game where it is both possible and strategically sound for players to toss these sorts of effects on their enemies, you probably need a definition of "enemy" that doesn't allow you to treat your allies as enemies whenever you want.

An argument could definitely be made that that isn't worth the burden it imposes on a tabletop RPG, but to say that such definitions should never be used in any game is severely overstating your case.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But if you want to have a game where it is both possible and strategically sound for players to toss these sorts of effects on their enemies, you probably need a definition of "enemy" that doesn't allow you to treat your allies as enemies whenever you want.

I decide who my allies are and when, not the game system.

[Manxome]

But if you want to have a game where it is both possible and strategically sound for players to toss these sorts of effects on their enemies, you probably need a definition of "enemy" that doesn't allow you to treat your allies as enemies whenever you want.

I decide who my allies are and when, not the game system.

That's a goal, not an argument. And depending on exactly what types of games are within the scope of this conversation, it may be an extremely dubious goal.

I'm really not sure what you are attempting to communicate.

[Gelare]

An argument could definitely be made that that isn't worth the burden it imposes on a tabletop RPG, but to say that such definitions should never be used in any game is severely overstating your case.

Your example is from Guild Wars, an MMORPG, with, in my opinion, a little less RP and a little more face-stabbing. At any rate, that's a computer game, where obviously your choices will be limited by the computer. But in a tabletop RPG, you're playing an actual character, with his own thoughts and sympathies and motives, and - here's what I'm going to go with - a definition of enemy and ally based on who your character supposedly likes at the time is a terrible one, and I believe that's what Lago was arguing against. There's simply no reason your character can't just turn around and say, "I like this guy I was just stabbing now, and that guy over there who was covering my back is, in my opinion, a doucheface."

You can totally base those things on other factors - for example, a "teammate" is anyone with whom you bonded during the Ritual of Swords at the mission's start - but psychological details? Forget it.

[Kaelik]

Maxome, the whole point is that enemy and ally shouldn't be rules of the game system, because people can and do change their mind. Additionally, rules should not be based off of those terms since that is the case.

As for Iron Mist. Yeah, don't make that ability because people will use it. Solid Fog does nearly the same thing, making people immune to lots of attacks, but slowing them down.

On the other hand, there's that damn spell that puts people in stasis, we use that on our allies all the time, it's called pokeballing.

[Manxome]

Your example is from Guild Wars, an MMORPG, with, in my opinion, a little less RP and a little more face-stabbing. At any rate, that's a computer game, where obviously your choices will be limited by the computer.

Lago's case could certainly be made better than it is if he made it more specific, yes. He's just kind of ranting at the moment.

Limiting it to "tabletop RPGs" is still probably not good enough, though. Not when mind/emotion control are common tropes. I can easily imagine an RPG where charm effects are a major system feature and they constrain your actions by forcing you to consider various other people as allies or enemies, thereby limiting what set of powers you're allowed to use on them.

Even if you're making an open-ended game with a major emphasis on roleplay, you still might decide that the additional tactical landscape opened up by enemy-/ally-restricted abilities is worth the headaches it creates. Guild Wars is an MMO, but there's no reason that Iron Mist can't exist in a game more like D&D if the designer decides it's worth it.

And that's only looking at positive reasons to have a strong enemy/ally distinguisher, not reasons to reject Lago's suggested replacement. For example, Lago's system requires the player to ennumerate every single target you want a relevant spell to affect (which imposes a logistical burden), it prevents you from having discriminatory spells that work on targets you're unaware of (with all of the ensuing arguments about mistaken identities and people that you can't see but that you "know" are there), and I'm sure it's got plenty of other drawbacks of its own if you choose to pick it apart. Some of those are undoubtedly solvable, but not without making things more complicated, which kind of undermines the point of someone who ends the presentation with a rhetorical "was that so fucking hard?"

Maxome, the whole point is that enemy and ally shouldn't be rules of the game system, because people can and do change their mind. Additionally, rules should not be based off of those terms since that is the case.

Saying that something shouldn't be a rule because it isn't 100% faithful to reality is a really bad argument. We make all sorts of completely arbitrary approximations and simplifications in the interests of making a better or more manageable game. Making enemy/ally status a completely deterministic rule of the game might be worth the trade-off in some cases. It depends what things you want the game to focus on.

Not to mention that "reality" is sometimes different in the setting we are representing. People can and do change who they consider their friends all the time in real life. But you can have a setting where that's not the case, like F&K's Beholder empire.

You also seem to be ignoring the possibility of having rules that allow players to change their enemies and allies. There does exist a middle ground between "these are determined automatically and you have no control over them" and "these change to suit your whims at any given moment."

[Lago PARANOIA]

Limiting it to "tabletop RPGs" is still probably not good enough, though. Not when mind/emotion control are common tropes. I can easily imagine an RPG where charm effects are a major system feature and they constrain your actions by forcing you to consider various other people as allies or enemies, thereby limiting what set of powers you're allowed to use on them.

This isn't actually better, because under a system where people frequently changed their allegiance a targetting system that wasn't sure which side people were on would actually enhance the drama.

I mean, really, would bless be the new detect evil?

Even if you're making an open-ended game with a major emphasis on roleplay, you still might decide that the additional tactical landscape opened up by enemy-/ally-restricted abilities is worth the headaches it creates. Guild Wars is an MMO, but there's no reason that Iron Mist can't exist in a game more like D&D if the designer decides it's worth it.

Why not? As people pointed out we have 'you can't move, but you're pretty much invincible' spells in the game already. Hell, even 4th Edition has a few of them in the core book.

For example, Lago's system requires the player to ennumerate every single target you want a relevant spell to affect (which imposes a logistical burden),

Then instead of saying 'I target Bob, Dave, Alice, and Linda' you say 'I target all of my buddies in the party'. You could even go 'I target everyone with my Discriminatory Fireball except for Bob'.

it prevents you from having discriminatory spells that work on targets you're unaware of (with all of the ensuing arguments about mistaken identities and people that you can't see but that you "know" are there),

You can't do this anyway with the current system nor any system that has effects that have any sort of discriminatory targetting. And even then, if you're not sure about the position of the rogue but you want to fire off a mass cure light wounds, you just go, 'I target everyone who is not an orc or Dark Lord Howard'.

and I'm sure it's got plenty of other drawbacks of its own if you choose to pick it apart.

Lots of drawbacks. Plenty of drawbacks. Loads of 'em. More drawbacks than back hair.

Some of those are undoubtedly solvable, but not without making things more complicated,

We won't KNOW if they're solvable or not unless someone actually brings up some problems, rather than going 'there are plenty of drawbacks we haven't thought of yet'.

which kind of undermines the point of someone who ends the presentation with a rhetorical "was that so fucking hard?"

It took me less than a paragraph to have specific solutions or dismissals of the problems you brought up; no hidden overcomplications here!

[Kaelik]

Saying that something shouldn't be a rule because it isn't 100% faithful to reality is a really bad argument. We make all sorts of completely arbitrary approximations and simplifications in the interests of making a better or more manageable game. Making enemy/ally status a completely deterministic rule of the game might be worth the trade-off in some cases. It depends what things you want the game to focus on.

Not to mention that "reality" is sometimes different in the setting we are representing. People can and do change who they consider their friends all the time in real life. But you can have a setting where that's not the case, like F&K's Beholder empire.

You also seem to be ignoring the possibility of having rules that allow players to change their enemies and allies. There does exist a middle ground between "these are determined automatically and you have no control over them" and "these change to suit your whims at any given moment."

WTF three paragraphs about reality. You might notice I never said anything about reality.

Here's how this works. Should the Gnome be able to decide who is or is not his ally? Yes. Can he change that at any time? Yes. The end.

It is an essential part of the game of D&D, and pretty much every tabletop game that the player be able to determine who is and is not his ally. Therefore, any distinction in the what can affect who is useless, because I will change my mind seven times a turn if that's what it takes to use an ability correctly.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I can easily imagine an RPG where charm effects are a major system feature and they constrain your actions by forcing you to consider various other people as allies or enemies, thereby limiting what set of powers you're allowed to use on them.

That is a cool idea, although the simple solution using Lago's proposal is to have the character designate the relevant allies and enemies at the time of casting (subject to the restriction of mind control effects).

Some of those are undoubtedly solvable, but not without making things more complicated, which kind of undermines the point of someone who ends the presentation with a rhetorical "was that so fucking hard?"

So how do you designate allies an enemies in your restricted system? By guild? By setting a 'hostile' flag?

[Manxome]

This isn't actually better, because under a system where people frequently changed their allegiance a targetting system that wasn't sure which side people were on would actually enhance the drama.

I mean, really, would bless be the new detect evil?

Sure, if for some reason you define it to affect everyone who considers you an ally instead of everyone that you consider an ally. But I can't imagine why you'd do that.

Then instead of saying 'I target Bob, Dave, Alice, and Linda' you say 'I target all of my buddies in the party'. You could even go 'I target everyone with my Discriminatory Fireball except for Bob'.

Sure, but you're opening up yourself to some pretty bad worst-case possibilities--if you want to target a not-easily-describable 140 orcs out of a crowd of 300, you're screwed. And if you happen to be playing a game that operates in real time (probably but not necessarily a computer game) then even "I target everyone except Bob" is almost certainly going to be a problem.

Again, you have yet to make any attempt to restrict the scope of this conversation to any particular subset of games, so I don't know what you're actually trying to argue.

it prevents you from having discriminatory spells that work on targets you're unaware of (with all of the ensuing arguments about mistaken identities and people that you can't see but that you "know" are there),

You can't do this anyway with the current system nor any system that has effects that have any sort of discriminatory targetting. And even then, if you're not sure about the position of the rogue but you want to fire off a mass cure light wounds, you just go, 'I target everyone who is not an orc or Dark Lord Howard'.

Ah, but now you're not specifying targets, you're specifying an algorithm for determining targets. You never said you can do that. And if you allow it, you have to put restrictions on it, or players are encouraged to target "whatever subset of possible targets makes me most likely to win this fight" and stupid shit like that. Heck, you could target "everyone who would otherwise attempt to harm me sometime in the next year" or "everyone who has lied in the last minute" and you get free divination. So now you need a whole series of rules about what sorts of targeting criteria players are allowed to use and what they're not.

We won't KNOW if they're solvable or not unless someone actually brings up some problems, rather than going 'there are plenty of drawbacks we haven't thought of yet'.

It took me less than a paragraph to have specific solutions or dismissals of the problems you brought up; no hidden overcomplications here!

I did "actually bring up some problems," which you specifically admit in the next freaking sentence. I'm not allowed to point out that I stopped listing them after two because I got bored and not because I gave up on finding more?

You could certainly make a game using your proposed system and it wouldn't automatically suck. You could also make a game using hard rules for ally/enemy targeting and it wouldn't automatically suck. There are advantages to both. Unlike you seem to be, I'm not arguing that one option is irredeemably bad and the other is always and forever better.

WTF three paragraphs about reality. You might notice I never said anything about reality.

Here's how this works. Should the Gnome be able to decide who is or is not his ally? Yes. Can he change that at any time? Yes. The end.

It is an essential part of the game of D&D, and pretty much every tabletop game that the player be able to determine who is and is not his ally. Therefore, any distinction in the what can affect who is useless, because I will change my mind seven times a turn if that's what it takes to use an ability correctly.

If your point is that it's stupid to base targeting restrictions on a label that the player can change arbitrarily and at any instant, then we are not in disagreement.

I'm saying that there are valid reasons to have an enemy/ally targeting requirement that's based on something other than the player's whim. Like, say, maybe the character's intent, or the metaphysical laws of the fictional world.

I guess I didn't follow your comment about people being able to change allies at any time, but I don't see any way this can work for you. The conclusion you're apparently trying to reach is that a hypothetical, not-yet-defined game under discussion must necessarily allow every player character to change alliance arbitrarily and at any time regardless of the circumstances (even when unconscious, taken by surprise, under the influence of compulsion effects, etc.). What exactly is the reasoning to support this?

1) Because that's how the real world works. I already guessed that and you didn't like it. It's not really completely true anyway.
2) Because any other possibility is inconceivable. I've already given several examples of alternatives, so this is clearly false. I can give you more if you want.
3) Because that would be true of any world you care about. As I pointed out, even if that's true of the world, the mechanics might take liberties for various reasons. Your decision not to care about other worlds is also arbitrary.
4) Because you only want to consider games where that is the case. In that case, your argument is circular: you're saying that this must be the case because you are deliberately ignoring all the times when it's not.

What am I missing? I'm prepared to listen to an alternative line of reasoning, I just don't see how you can get there from here.

That is a cool idea, although the simple solution using Lago's proposal is to have the character designate the relevant allies and enemies at the time of casting (subject to the restriction of mind control effects).

If we're defining "Lago's proposal" such that it no longer specifically disallows "enemy" and "ally" as possible targeting restrictions, then sure, that's workable. Letting players target an arbitrary subset of legal targets still has some previously-mentioned issues associated with it, so you'd have to decide (as with every possible game feature ever) whether it's worth it for your particular game.

So how do you designate allies an enemies in your restricted system? By guild? By setting a 'hostile' flag?

I haven't proposed a specific system, though those would probably be reasonable choices in certain games. Some obvious options include:

• Anyone that targets you with a beneficial effect gets tagged 'ally' for the rest of the scene; anyone that targets you with a malicious effect gets tagged 'enemy.'
• Anyone flying your banner is an ally, anyone flying the banner of an organization you've declared war on is an enemy.
• You can tag anyone you want as an ally or an enemy, but once someone is tagged you can't change the status until X condition is met.
• Alliance targeting is actually based on some in-world fluff involving race or alignment or magic friendship bracelets and choice is not (directly) involved.

You could use multiple rules and put them in a hierarchy; for example, anyone that attacks you is an enemy for the rest of the scene, but until then enemies are just people who fly the wrong colors.

[Kaelik]

I'm saying that there are valid reasons to have an enemy/ally targeting requirement that's based on something other than the player's whim. Like, say, maybe the character's intent, or the metaphysical laws of the fictional world.

And I'm saying that there are no valid reasons to have enemy and ally be based on anything other then Player whim. The characters intent is wholly and completely a subset of the players whim, and cannot be in contradiction with it, and the metaphysical laws of the setting are not saying what is an enemy or ally, but only what is a red or a blue, or an outsider or a human, or an evil subtype or alignment vs good. And those are all valid targeting distinctions, but 'enemy' and 'ally' are not. (Actually, red and blue aren't either. Since I can choose to buff the undead trying to kill me if I want to.)

I guess I didn't follow your comment about people being able to change allies at any time, but I don't see any way this can work for you. The conclusion you're apparently trying to reach is that a hypothetical, not-yet-defined game under discussion must necessarily allow every player character to change alliance arbitrarily and at any time regardless of the circumstances (even when unconscious, taken by surprise, under the influence of compulsion effects, etc.). What exactly is the reasoning to support this?

This hypothetical as yet undefined roleplaying game (I don't think that's an untoward assumption in this context) if it is to be worth playing is going to allow the player who is playing the character to make decisions about what the character thinks about other people in the world at all times where the character is thinking about those people and not encumbered by compulsion effects.

You keep resorting to a bullshit compulsion argument that makes no sense. Compulsion affects who you want to target, not whether you can target someone independent of if you want to. Your claim is that there is a situation in which some guy X wants to target an 'ally' or 'enemy' and that he shouldn't be able to with a whatever ability because of something fundamentally different about their 'ally' and 'enemy' status that is something different from his opinion about them and their opinion of him.

So please explain. Define ally and enemy in any possible way that creates more then these four categories:

You like them, they like you
You like them, they hate you
You hate them, they like you
You hate them, they hate you

Don't pussy out be resorting to degree or neutrality, since your contention is that something besides your feelings and theirs is involved.

[Fuchs]

There's no problem with being able to target an effect on people one wants to hit with it, enemy or ally alike. There might be a problem with a few spells, effects or powers (bag of rat, selective fireball etc.), but those can be handled on a case by case base.

[Amra]

Much as I hate to say it, a degree of MTP might be required here. Almost any rules-lawyery attempt to adequately define "allies" and "enemies" is likely to have holes.

Maybe the best we can do is to leave it to the discretion of players and DM, but to give guidance on specifics. Like "Any creature performing actions under your control, by magical means or otherwise, is considered an ally regardless of whether you order them to perform hostile actions against you."

I don't know, that probably has loopholes too, but maybe this is one area where the DM just has to say "No, you can't suddenly consider that person an enemy in order to make that power affect them unless they're actively trying to harm you or interfere with your goals".

[Kaelik]

I don't know, that probably has loopholes too, but maybe this is one area where the DM just has to say "No, you can't suddenly consider that person an enemy in order to make that power affect them unless they're actively trying to harm you or interfere with your goals".

Under what possible situation in which you want a power to affect someone, they want it to affect them, and they are an otherwise valid target would you as a DM say, "No you can't have it affect the Crusader because it would increase his Delayed Damage Pool!" ?

Or anything else like that. If they want to be affected and you want them to be affected then they should be affected.

[Amra]

I don't know, that probably has loopholes too, but maybe this is one area where the DM just has to say "No, you can't suddenly consider that person an enemy in order to make that power affect them unless they're actively trying to harm you or interfere with your goals".

Under what possible situation in which you want a power to affect someone, they want it to affect them, and they are an otherwise valid target would you as a DM say, "No you can't have it affect the Crusader because it would increase his Delayed Damage Pool!" ?

Or anything else like that. If they want to be affected and you want them to be affected then they should be affected.

Any power that is designed to be used on enemies, specifies enemies in the text and is abuseable if you allow a player to consider an ally to be an "enemy". Or vice-versa for the whole lot. I'm not saying these come up a great deal, just that if we are reaching for a definition of "enemies" and "allies" then there's probably no better way of doing it.

Note that I'm not pushing the position that the definitions are required, just that if they are then you're probably on a hiding to nothing trying to do it with proscriptive descriptions.

[Username17]

Any power that is designed to be used on enemies, specifies enemies in the text and is abuseable if you allow a player to consider an ally to be an "enemy"...

...should not exist. Seriously, those powers have no place in an open-ended story telling game. Once you leave the realm of computer and board games, you have to make things more resilient to out-of-the-box thinking. If a power is abuseable if the players use it, then you shouldn't write it!

-Username17