A Little Help Here?

CM · Oct 15, 2014

You see it all the time in sports, where teammates help each other stand up after diving to the ground, yet D&D rules never supported it. My group had this houserule in 4th edition (where being prone was fairly commonplace) and I thought I'd port it to 5th. Thoughts?

New Action: Help Up
If you have a free hand or are wielding a two-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to help an adjacent creature of your size or smaller stand up. This provokes opportunity attacks. The creature can then use its reaction to stand up.

W_K · Oct 15, 2014

I think this is a perfectly reasonable house rule. It does, however, skew more toward benefiting people with bonus actions to spare, but that probably wouldn't be much of an issue. The only question I have is who provokes the attacks? You might want to clarify whether the person aiding, the person standing, or both are provoking.

Khaalis · Oct 15, 2014

I'm actually not sure this is an advantage in 5E as it costs one of the more precious action slots. I'm also not certain it really needs the restriction of free hand. Even someone wielding a shield and sword can help someone up. Additionally, I'm not sold on the Opportunity Attack. In the RAW to date, the only thing that provokes OA is moving out of reach without using Disengage (or Teleport). I'm not sure I'd want to start stacking on corner cases to that. The argument can be made that even though you are aiding an ally, you are using an action to do so while remaining wary of your surroundings (similar to the Hide/Perception rules in combat). With that said, in 4E Stand Up required a full Move Action, while in 5E it only takes Half your Move Speed. I might rework this slightly to keep within the same resource expenditure.

Help Up (Action)
As a bonus action, you can help an adjacent creature of your size or smaller stand up from prone. Doing so reduces the creature's movement cost of standing up to 5 feet. However, the creature still cannot stand if their speed is a 0.

Thoughts?

DMZ2112 · Oct 15, 2014

W_K said:
I think this is a perfectly reasonable house rule. It does, however, skew more toward benefiting people with bonus actions to spare, but that probably wouldn't be much of an issue. The only question I have is who provokes the attacks? You might want to clarify whether the person aiding, the person standing, or both are provoking.

There's no such thing as having "bonus actions to spare." Everyone only ever has one. Or do you mean that this rule favors those characters /without/ bonus action abilities? Because I can see how that would be. The rogue is going to be cheesed off if you fall over near him.

By the wording of the ability, it is the helper that provokes the AOp, not the helpee. The bonus action of the helper does not actually move the helpee; it just lets them subsequently use their reaction to stand up instead of half their movement, and standing up does not provoke. That said, I'm not sure why the helper provokes; the RAW is pretty lenient about combat actions not provoking AOps. Perhaps [MENTION=18340]CM[/MENTION] is referencing house rules?

...Man, I like bonus actions and reactions in D&D5 but I hate explaining them. Something so simple ought not be so complicated.

A Little Help Here?

CM

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W_K

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Khaalis

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DMZ2112

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