D&D 5E Flanking, advantage, and opportunity attacks

[Xeviat]

One of my players also DMs. He's a much looser DM than I am. He uses the flanking advantage rule, while I don't, and this has been becoming a point of contention at our games lately.

I have found flanking to be too easy to attain in his games (especially since I play a cleric in his game and he let's me flank with my spiritual weapon). People just run around enemies willy nilly and flank all the time.

But, looking at how much value the DMG monster creator places on pack tactics (+1 attack), I'm wondering if the designers expected advantage to be more common. I'm considering trying out flanking advantage, but also making it harder to get into flanking by making OA's more strict.

Instead of provoking an opportunity attack when you exit a threatened area, you'll once again provoke from leaving a threatened square. I'll also bring back 5 ft steps as a move action, and acrobatics as a way to avoid opportunity attacks.

This way, positioning for flanks will take more work.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Blue]

We tried Flanking at a couple different level points and got rid of it. It made advantage too easy to get, and really trivialized features that granted Advantage.

(And this was a while ago - before Elven Accuracy which would be even more powerful, and the Samurai fighter subclass that would be mostly useless.)

I would much rather see a (small) static bonus than Advantage given out because of this if you want Flanking for the tactical aspects because you can only have it once so it invalidates a lot.

 

[jmartkdr2]

If you go that route, I feel like you'll bring back all the pros and cons of 3e flanking, but it'll still be much more powerful, so those effects will be a lot more pronounced.

In other words, IME, people will just get in to position and then never move again.

 

[tetrasodium]

One of my players also DMs. He's a much looser DM than I am. He uses the flanking advantage rule, while I don't, and this has been becoming a point of contention at our games lately.

I have found flanking to be too easy to attain in his games (especially since I play a cleric in his game and he let's me flank with my spiritual weapon). People just run around enemies willy nilly and flank all the time.

But, looking at how much value the DMG monster creator places on pack tactics (+1 attack), I'm wondering if the designers expected advantage to be more common. I'm considering trying out flanking advantage, but also making it harder to get into flanking by making OA's more strict.

Instead of provoking an opportunity attack when you exit a threatened area, you'll once again provoke from leaving a threatened square. I'll also bring back 5 ft steps as a move action, and acrobatics as a way to avoid opportunity attacks.

This way, positioning for flanks will take more work.

What are your thoughts?

It's a good idea. The flanking rules are definitely one of 5e's utterly inexcusable sins with no excuse for not having a UA or variant sidebar published after all these years. If you want to make getting flanking more important so it's not just moving everyone from almost guaranteed to hit over to almost impossible to miss you can add this Forget who I stole it from.

Decrease all NPC/monster HP by half (round down).
Bump AC for everything (including PCs) by 4 or 5. Personally, we started with 5, but 4 works better for us.
PCs get max HP and CON mod at level 1. After that, just HD, no more CON mod.

 

[fearsomepirate]

We tried Flanking at a couple different level points and got rid of it. It made advantage too easy to get, and really trivialized features that granted Advantage.

^^ same

If I were to bring it back, I'd bring back 4e movement rules as well. Move more than 5', take an OA. Might even make it +2 to hit again rather than advantage, which is just really powerful (effective +5 to hit and 2x crit chance).

 

[auburn2]

Bump AC for everything (including PCs) by 4 or 5. Personally, we started with 5, but 4 works better for us.

PCs get max HP and CON mod at level 1. After that, just HD, no more CON mod.

This is not really much of a debuff. Personally, in point buy a lot of my characters start with a 10 constitution, so this would have no effect on hp but give me an AC boost There are no Constitution skills so there already is little reason for anyone except melee characters to invest in constitution, if you take away the bonus there would be none. I think people would probably straight dump constitution all the way to 8 for most characters if you did this. For spell casters and concentration, the boost to AC would more than make up for the -1 to constitution saves.

This would make Rogues and Wizards far more powerful than other classes and make Barbarians in particular far weaker, to a lessor extent fighters as well.

 

[auburn2]

Having played both with and without flanking, I think it is better to go without it.

 

[Rabulias]

It's a good idea. The flanking rules are definitely one of 5e's utterly inexcusable sins with no excuse for not having a UA or variant sidebar published after all these years. If you want to make getting flanking more important so it's not just moving everyone from almost guaranteed to hit over to almost impossible to miss you can add this Forget who I stole it from.

Decrease all NPC/monster HP by half (round down).
Bump AC for everything (including PCs) by 4 or 5. Personally, we started with 5, but 4 works better for us.
PCs get max HP and CON mod at level 1. After that, just HD, no more CON mod.

That sounds like something @6ENow! has often posted.

 

[Charlaquin]

I do think the expectation was that advantage would be fairly easy to gain. The problem with flanking in 5e as I see it is not that it allows players to gain advantage every round, but that it allows them to do so with positioning alone. Basically, it removes the need to think creatively to gain advantage.

 

[DND_Reborn]

That sounds like something @6ENow! has often posted.

LOL that is pretty much what I've been advocating and using for months now.

@tetrasodium you stole it from me (formerly dnd4vr). But I am glad it seemed to make enough of an impression you remembered it.