3 Character Flanking

[Blackbrrd]

If three guys are attacking one guy, they should be able to shift a little so that when its your turn to attack you can either just attack with flanking and then shift, or shift to be able to attack with flanking.

In other words, ABC are attacking M.
A and B are flanking (A attacks)
B and C are flanking (B attacks, and shifts)
C and B are flanking (C attacks and shifts)
etc...

 

[Branduil]

Just houserule that a flanked enemy grants CA to all allies.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I use far different flaking rules, since I don't like to mess with placement of characters for flanking and the allies/foes are always in motion.

For small foes, you always flank the foe yourself.

For medium foes, you flank the foe with you and an ally.

For large foes, you flank the foe with you and two allies.

etc...

 

[trespassers]

For some reason I thought 3.x did away with the concept of facing altogether, and I haven't seen anything in 4e that indicates it's come back.

I remember hating it when I first learned about it because it meant that horses were no longer 5x10 but 10x10 and who needs a super-fat horse?! It was explained to me that horses are not facing a certain way in 3.x but are considered to be "wheeling about" and that's why they were 10x10 now, not that they needed to go on Atkins.

Of course we're not measuring squares in feet any more either.

If you give up the assumption of facing, the flanking rules make more sense, but if you're trying to simulate battlefield conditions ... well, you're going to have a lot more work ahead of you than just figuring out flanking.

 

[Burr]

C /
MC
C \

The above should give only the opposite characters flanking. Look at them as two groups of two. I've added diagonal sight lines to show how the monster shifts his gaze between those two groups. When the monster is looking northeast, only the southern character is out of sight. When the monster is looking southeast, only the northern character is out of sight. The eastern character is never out of plain sight.

_C
_M
C C

In this example, there absolutely need to be flanking. If you make this the only exception, then it shouldn't complicate things too much.