D&D 5E Optional Combat Rules from the DMG - yay or nay?

[MonsterEnvy]

Cleaving is also a good rule and should be added. Makes fighting swarms of weak enemies more manageable for melee.

 

[Satyrn]

We used flanking for one or two sessions and tben got rid of it. It makes getting advantage far too easy to be fun.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Cleaving is also a good rule and should be added. Makes fighting swarms of weak enemies more manageable for melee.

My players love that rule, and the mob attacks rules too.

Used in conjunction they enable us to have combats against dozens of opponents without taking up much more time than an encounter against a few tougher enemies, and without losing predictability or sense of threat to any considerable degree.

 

[The_Gneech]

I thought I would miss facing and flanking when I switched to 5E, but I don't. Oddly, the fewer options there are, the funner combat seems to be. I think that's because your turn comes around a lot more frequently, because people finish their turns sooner.

What Prakriti said! And with the combat itself moving faster, you can take the time to punch your combat scene a little by thinking up a few bits of interesting terrain or even just some monster/foe personality details to toss in. The fun and interest comes from the richer narrative, rather than tracking lots of granular modifiers.

-The Gneech