D&D 5E Move and Attack question

I

iatesand

First Post

• Aug 10, 2015

• #1

Looking for clarification or impute on the following:

If 2 players have a monster flanked as per the flanking rules in the DMG, and a third player, in this case a halfing, uses 10 feet of his move to engage the monster. Can he momentarily occupy the same square as one of the 2 flanking players so that he can attack with the flanking advantage then uses the rest of his move to continue out of the player occupied square?

One side says that stopping long enough to make an attack qualifies for the "you can't willingly end your move in its space" as per page 191 of the PHB.
the other side says you are not ending your move in the space and you are using Breaking Up Your Move rule in page 190 of the PHB

The compromise was to allow the attack but not the advantage for flanking, witch is the same thing as disallowing the move due to the fact that the player in question was just looking for the advantage flanking gave him.

 

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Jester David

Hero

• Aug 10, 2015

• #2

I'd rule it as ending it move before resuming its movement. The intent of the rule is to prevent two people occupying the same space. You can move though a space but cannot stop there, even for a second.

 

Hriston

Dungeon Master of Middle-earth

• Aug 10, 2015

• #3

"Your move" is your total movement taken on your turn, so if you attack and continue your move out of your ally's space, that's fine.

 

R

ranger69

Explorer

• Aug 10, 2015

• #4

I would rule that if the move/attack/move was continuous then no problem.

 

cmad1977

Hero

• Aug 10, 2015

• #5

I suppose id allow it, but deny advantage due to cramped conditions.

 

J

jrowland

First Post

• Aug 10, 2015

• #6

I mostly play Theater of the mind, so I am more lenient with flanking. In your scenario, any creature that is being "flanked" by 2 allies is automatically flanked by a third or more allies. I can see in a 4E-style or figures based game this might not be preferable, but I find it doesn't overly change the game in practice. The rationale (beyond my DM fiat, "let it be so") is that once you are compromised in battle to try and defend yourself from two sides (flanked), defending from 3 or more sides is at the very least, just as difficult. It's not RAW, but it works for TotM and could easily work for figures.

 

C

Coredump

Explorer

• Aug 10, 2015

• #7

If you look on p.190 where they talk about breaking up your move, it refers to "move 10'" then attack, then "move 15'".

Those are listed as two separate moves, thus you start a move, and end that move; then attack; then start another move. Otherwise the rule would be "you can't end your turn" instead of "you can't end your move".

 

Hriston

Dungeon Master of Middle-earth

• Aug 10, 2015

• #8

Coredump said:

If you look on p.190 where they talk about breaking up your move, it refers to "move 10'" then attack, then "move 15'".

Those are listed as two separate moves, thus you start a move, and end that move; then attack; then start another move. Otherwise the rule would be "you can't end your turn" instead of "you can't end your move".

Click to expand...

Those aren't moves. Those are instances of using the verb "to move".

 

Jeff Carlsen

Adventurer

• Aug 10, 2015

• #9

Hriston said:

Those aren't moves. Those are instances of using the verb "to move".

Click to expand...

I can't see how they aren't moves. There's no such thing as a move action. You use some of your movement speed to move from one location to another, and we call that a move. If you have remaining speed, you can take an action, and then move again.

 

DEFCON 1

Legend

Supporter

• Aug 10, 2015

• #10

In this merging of 5E's movement plus a recreation of 4E's flanking bonus... there's two ways I can answer this for myself.

One the one hand, I was never so strict on flanking in 4E such that if two people already were flanking a target, a third could come in adjacent to one of the two and also get the flanking bonus. Thus, when you merge in 5E's movement rule, the third person in the OP's question would never need to stand in the same space as one of the two allies anyway to also gain advantage on the roll. Thus, the third character would have Advantage as well.

But seeing as how this takes into account my own personal houserule on 4E flanking... if I was to do a stricter ruling on this, I think I'd probably go along with what [MENTION=6791950]cmad1977[/MENTION] said above. The third person would technically get Advantage from the flanking... but they'd also be fighting while under the Squeezing Into A Smaller Space situation (since they are sharing a 5' space with another character) and thus have Disadvantage on the attack too.

With Advantage and Disadvantage cancelling each other out, the third person would get no bonus on the attack. Thus moving and attacking from the flanking position is unnecessary, and they can instead just move to wherever they were going and attack from there.