ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I was playing a Sun Paladin and got to Dreadfall. The way I play, I set Retribution to activate whenever possible. I descend a staircase and get an escort quest. There's a monster adjacent to me, hits me for minimal damage, but my retribution was close to max, it detonated and killed escort. Boo.

As is, ideal gameplay is to shut it off when you get an escort and that's annoying. This makes sense thematically too, since the skill is called retribution - no need to blow up someone who's never tried to hurt you.

Yeah, that would be really nice.

Also Illumination not blinding & hurting allies, since you have no option to "undercast" even if you want to spare allies once you know it to level 3+.

Sun Paladin has a few talents that don't seem very Paladiny in their non friendliness.

After killing 3 escorts with Death Dance I set it to always request confirmation. It would be nice if the confirmation appeared even if I didn't set it up, something like "You are going to hurt allies. Proceed? Y/N"
Or maybe just change Death Dance to hurt hostile monsters only.

Friendly fire effects are part of game balance and there are relatively few offensive talents that specifically spare your friends (at least without specific investment in other talents).

Scenarios with friendly NPC's from the intro Reknor dungeon to escort quests to Limmir's fight are designed around the idea that you have to manage friendly fire. When you face such situations, you have to adjust your tactics or risk failing. Weighing tradeoffs (how much I hurt my enemies vs. how much I hurt my friends) is what makes these encounters extra challenging (and interesting in my opinion).

In the Sun Paladin/escort case, having to turn off retribution is a small price to pay for being one of the few classes that has a skill that can heal escorts.

Sandman25 wrote:After killing 3 escorts with Death Dance I set it to always request confirmation. It would be nice if the confirmation appeared even if I didn't set it up, something like "You are going to hurt allies. Proceed? Y/N"
Or maybe just change Death Dance to hurt hostile monsters only.

The simplest thing to do here is turn on confirmation when you get an escort and then turn it off when you're done.

I wouldn't be averse to seeing a specific prompt if our attack would hit a friendly target, regardless of 'confirm on use' on talent settings. I've nuked an escort because I entered a level, saw a group of nasties in a hallway, and promptly manathrusted teh lot. ....Skewering the poor escort who was apparently in front of me.

...What? Stop looking at me like that, what was I supposed to do with a hallway of enemies, NOT nuke them? <.<
>.>

A specific confirmation of friendly fire that can be set in the options menu (for all attacks, not a by talent basis) would be rather handy. Summoners might want to turn it off, and a few others like alchemist, but it would be profoundly helpful to prevent 'accidents'.

I don't see much of a problem - you need to be careful, but you have enough skills to protect you even without that. I once killed Subject Z with Retribution.