D&D 5E D&D 5E Does flanking grant advantage ?

[Ruin Explorer]

I agree with ad_hoc, the main problem with the flanking rule is that advantage doesn't stack.

I'm pretty sure that's the main problem with Advantage-related stuff in general myself. It's very easy to get into a situation where you have a giant stack of Advantage and gain nothing beyond the first, or worse, have like three+ sources of Advantage and one Disadvantage, and you're rolling normally. Of course the, er, advantage with Advantage is not tracking a bunch of +X, -Y modifiers, but I do feel like a tiny bit more nuance could be involved without negating that.

In fact the +2 to hit someone suggested earlier would actually be arguably more unbalanced than the optional rule, because unlike that, it stacks with Advantage.

 

[MagicSN]

We had the problem that with no flanking rule getting "overwhelmed" was in no way punished which felt "unnatural". With the Advantage on Flanking Advantage was too easy, and other stuff was "taken out". Also Flanking rule tended to lead to the "dance around the mob" to be in EXACT opposite position which sometimes felt more like playing chess than a RPG. So we ended up with "+2 bonus, if adjacent to you are at least twice as many of the other party than your party" (for example 4 players vs. 2 enemies). Worked pretty well. And yes, it can scale with Advantage.

 

[SkidAce]

A character getting "overwhelmed" is punished by the fact that all those people next to them can attack. Its true that mechanically they are no worse off, but they are about to get slaughtered if the foes are a viable threat.

Thats enough for us.

 

[Curmudjinn]

I'm not a fan of scaling/additional modifiers. Enemies are already easy enough to bit without two-on-one-ing every baddie to get another bonus on top of advantage.

Even something as simple as Flanked Targets may not gain Advantage, or are at a Disadvantage when attacking while Flanked.

Stacking positive modifiers can quickly break down an encounter.

 

[cmad1977]

We had the problem that with no flanking rule getting "overwhelmed" was in no way punished which felt "unnatural". With the Advantage on Flanking Advantage was too easy, and other stuff was "taken out". Also Flanking rule tended to lead to the "dance around the mob" to be in EXACT opposite position which sometimes felt more like playing chess than a RPG. So we ended up with "+2 bonus, if adjacent to you are at least twice as many of the other party than your party" (for example 4 players vs. 2 enemies). Worked pretty well. And yes, it can scale with Advantage.

Any time my creatures 'overwhelm' a PC I use one of them to grapple/push/shove/something. Helps make the numbers advantage mean something when the fighter gets tackled and the orcs are now pouring through the line at the wizard(who is suddenly dribbling pee).

Your house rule seems fine too.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not a fan of scaling/additional modifiers. Enemies are already easy enough to bit without two-on-one-ing every baddie to get another bonus on top of advantage.

Even something as simple as Flanked Targets may not gain Advantage, or are at a Disadvantage when attacking while Flanked.

Stacking positive modifiers can quickly break down an encounter.

Yeah, I'm toying with the idea of flanking causes the flanked target to suffer disadvantage. The ease with which the target can move to negate this makes it less damaging until they get surrounded. Still looking at the angles, but that's at least sounds interesting in the way that getting advantage so trivially from flanking doesn't.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, I'm toying with the idea of flanking causes the flanked target to suffer disadvantage. The ease with which the target can move to negate this makes it less damaging until they get surrounded. Still looking at the angles, but that's at least sounds interesting in the way that getting advantage so trivially from flanking doesn't.

That's interesting. Giving flanked targets a choice as to whether to be on the defensive (disadvantage on attacks but not attacked with advantage) or the offensive (no disad but attacked at advantage) might have legs. I'd have to see it in play.

 

[zaratan]

I like the idea of only the ally that is attacking from behind get advantage, and the enemy can use the reaction to face that one to avoid this. Make advantage with flank not so easy, burn some reactions and make things like slow spell more interesting and help with movement around.

and some monsters can't be flanked, like a two head giant, oozes, or criatures with different senses.

 

[Rhym]

While in reality getting ganged up on from opposite directions really is a really bad position to be in and the optional flanking rule might even be realistic, I find that the it just all over the entire 5e system.

-Got a group with few frontline fighters, or even worse, one tank? Hope your fighters like eating dirt because their armor doesn't matter anymore. Tanks suck under this system, unless the majority of your party is melee.
-Do you play a ranged character/spellcaster? Remain at the normal power level while melee fighters have constant advantage. Hope you didn't get closed in on by two enemies after your single tank got wrecked cause now you're dead even faster than normal.
-Did you build your character to generate advantage? Waste of resources/class features, everyone has advantage anyway.
-Bounded accuracy? Haha oh you... +5 for everyone!
-One big bad boss? Everyone has advantage against him, throwing his current CR right out the window.
-Encounter consisting of many small creatures? Their CR is now way off.

If one were to consider the +2 to hit flanking rules from previous editions to be balanced, what does that say about a the 5e version?

-You can freely rotate around melee fighters unlike previous editions, making gaining advantage trivial.
-Given an average chance to hit, you essentially get a +5 bonus to hit.
-Bounded accuracy increase the value of each point of + to hit even further.

A balanced flanking rule (compared to the value gained in previous editions) would give something like +1 to hit, not advantage.

Don't play with the optional flanking rule, it's dumb and you're breaking your game.

 

[Reynard]

I don't care much for the math behind the game, but I wonder how the Help action stacks up as being useful. In other words, you have two goblins attacking a PC. They can either make their normal hit rolls and possibly both do damage, or one can give up his attack to grant the other advantage, which increases the chance to hit but reduces the potential damage by half. Anyone able to give a quick analysis of that?