Having batteries in parallel is not to be recommended. Yes, I know it is done, but the ability to cross charge a duff cell, as noted above, can produce a lot of heat and perhaps a fire.
Going to have to take issue with that "blanket" statement.
Before lithiums, this was one of the most common and recognizable battery packs for models:
This is a 3s2p pack, meaning there are
3 "cells" in
Series, but those "cells" are actually
2 cells in
Parallel thus
3S2P
cells are put in parallel all the time at the "Factory" and as long as they are reasonably "matched" this can and has worked well.
And YES, if one cell goes bad, basically if it develops an internal short (if it goes open not much danger)... then things can go wrong.
There is a LOT more to this, but let's watch the overall statement of having batteries in parallel is not recommended.
There is a huge amount of knowledge here, but perhaps it would have been better to say:
don't put batteries in parallel YOURSELF unless you understand them well, and most likely have some overcurrent protection.
There's as much "old wives tales" about batteries as there is fuel for track power vs. battery power.
Greg