D&D 5E Should standing up from prone trigger opportunity attack?

Mrodron said:

Unless I am mistaken, given two attacks, it is always better (for the fighter) to attack twice than (try to) shove a target prone and attack it once with advantage. Standing up from prone consumes half of ones movement. Therefore, standing up is kind of moving, and movement does provoke attack of opportunity within the threatened area otherwise. If the prone target chooses the stand up, the fighter would kind of get his/her second attack back (with advantage!). Is this even overpowered? I am trying to make this option more worthwhile and more commonly used.

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I have used the house rule allowing AO on getting up from prone unless you take the disengage action in a 5e campaign fir sbout 18 months and it worked fine. It played for and against both sides and while mostly it wasnt overpowered it did create a lot of decent situational play.

How about this for a houserule: Make a Dexterity(Acrobatics) check in order to stand from prone without triggering an opportunity attack.

Mrodron said:

Therefore, standing up is kind of moving, and movement does provoke attack of opportunity within the threatened area otherwise.

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No.

Mrodron said:

Unless I am mistaken, given two attacks, it is always better (for the fighter) to attack twice than (try to) shove a target prone and attack it once with advantage.

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You are mistaken. (Sorry, couldn't resist after the starting line of "Unless I am mistaken...").

But the statement that it is always better is wrong.

For just damage, two attacks are better than one with advantage (assuming no bonus that only applies to a single attack).

However, that looking only at damage the fighter deals. Let's unpack that.

First is "looking only at damage". There are times when denying an opponent half their speed is a huge benefit. An escaping foe with a faster move you are slowing down to stay within range. Heck, one of your speed that you're slowing down so the rest of the party can catch up. More speed allowing the foe to interact with hazards, or get to cover, or back among defenders or other safe place. Those are situational, but any situation where they come up breaks the "always" part of the assertion.

But more importantly, D&D is a team game. Assuming random distribution of initiatives (and a fighter can easily capitalize to make this favor the PCs even more), half your party will go before the proned foe. If there are more melee attackers, they will also have Advantage. Making the shove much more damaging to the opponent.

Mrodron said:

Standing up from prone consumes half of ones movement. Therefore, standing up is kind of moving, and movement does provoke attack of opportunity within the threatened area otherwise.

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This is also wrong. Only movement OUT OF your threatened area provokes an attack of opportunity. A foe can dance around the 8 squares adjacent to a PC, moving freely without triggering attacks of opportunity.

Mrodron said:

If the prone target chooses the stand up, the fighter would kind of get his/her second attack back (with advantage!). Is this even overpowered? I am trying to make this option more worthwhile and more commonly used.

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This is massively unbalanced.

Without shove: 2 attacks, no advantage.

With shove: 1 attack with advantage. Allies attacks with advantage. Reaction opportunity attack with advantage. Allies opportunity attack with advantage. Foe denied half their move. Even without allies it's going from two attacks without advantage to two attacks with advantage plus halving their movement. When you include even one ally who came to pound on the fallen foe they are getting a full attack an an opportunity attack, all with advantage.

Blue said:

You are mistaken. (Sorry, couldn't resist after the starting line of "Unless I am mistaken...").

But the statement that it is always better is wrong.

For just damage, two attacks are better than one with advantage (assuming no bonus that only applies to a single attack).

However, that looking only at damage the fighter deals. Let's unpack that.

First is "looking only at damage". There are times when denying an opponent half their speed is a huge benefit. An escaping foe with a faster move you are slowing down to stay within range. Heck, one of your speed that you're slowing down so the rest of the party can catch up. More speed allowing the foe to interact with hazards, or get to cover, or back among defenders or other safe place. Those are situational, but any situation where they come up breaks the "always" part of the assertion.

But more importantly, D&D is a team game. Assuming random distribution of initiatives (and a fighter can easily capitalize to make this favor the PCs even more), half your party will go before the proned foe. If there are more melee attackers, they will also have Advantage. Making the shove much more damaging to the opponent.



This is also wrong. Only movement OUT OF your threatened area provokes an attack of opportunity. A foe can dance around the 8 squares adjacent to a PC, moving freely without triggering attacks of opportunity.



This is massively unbalanced.

Without shove: 2 attacks, no advantage.

With shove: 1 attack with advantage. Allies attacks with advantage. Reaction opportunity attack with advantage. Allies opportunity attack with advantage. Foe denied half their move. Even without allies it's going from two attacks without advantage to two attacks with advantage plus halving their movement. When you include even one ally who came to pound on the fallen foe they are getting a full attack an an opportunity attack, all with advantage.

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Sorry but once you start adding in "the others" how about including others for both sides.

As I said, I would and did allow AO for standing up from prone in melee range if you did not spend the disengage action.

But it also meant teammates would help downed folks get to their feet.

Does the ally coming to pound on the fallen get AO themselves for moving over past the fallen's friends? Does an ally of the fallen give them aome obscurement, allowing them to stand because AO require seeing your target?

As a further refinement to the house rules around prone-ao, does the GM allow a help action to allow the downed character to bypass the AO?

I agree that a simple AO whrn get up from prone with no exceptions seems overly simple and unsatisfying but examples of many-vs-one often fail to reflect accurately results.

Since shove us a skill vs skill contest, an ability check, it's often in my experience much less reliable and circumstantial than an attack.

5ekyu said:

Sorry but once you start adding in "the others" how about including others for both sides.

As I said, I would and did allow AO for standing up from prone in melee range if you did not spend the disengage action.

But it also meant teammates would help downed folks get to their feet.

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At the loss of an action? That's not comparable to half of their movement.

5ekyu said:

Does the ally coming to pound on the fallen get AO themselves for moving over past the fallen's friends? Does an ally of the fallen give them aome obscurement, allowing them to stand because AO require seeing your target?

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I demonstrated that it was unfair even before adding in allies. So debating allies won't change the stace I laid out. They are just extra.

That said, there will be times that allies can get there without OAs. There are plenty of times when it's worth it to suck a single OA in order to focus fire with advantage. So it's already imbalanced and allies make it more so.

With melee attacks it's pretty hard to add in obscurement with just your body.

5ekyu said:

Since shove us a skill vs skill contest, an ability check, it's often in my experience much less reliable and circumstantial than an attack.

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I would put forth that a PC will likely be able to gauge which opponents they can shove easily. Don't try it on an ogre or dragon, prone that pixie, caster, giant rat, or whatever looks like Athletics is not it's forte.

Plus rememebr the lessons we learned from 3.5, where if an effective mechanical trick exists people can and will optimize for it. Expertise in Athletics is already useful for grappling builds, gotten through rogue 1, bard 2, or human Prodigy racial feat. All barbarians get advantage on STR checks while raging. This is not hard to optimize for if it exists as an exploitable option.

I feel like some here are only looking at the case where you succeed at the prone attempt. When you flat out fail it’s a single attack no advantage.

FrogReaver said:

I feel like some here are only looking at the case where you succeed at the prone attempt. When you flat out fail it’s a single attack no advantage.

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But then, if you miss your first attack, you're still left with a single attack with no advantage - so, no worse off, really.

MarkB said:

But then, if you miss your first attack, you're still left with a single attack with no advantage - so, no worse off, really.

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The weighted average damage of making X attacks is just X*chanceToHit*Damage

The weighted average of using your first attack to attempt to prone and making X-1 attacks is:

chanceToProne*X*(1-(1-chanceToHit)^2)*Damage + (1-chanceToProne)*X*chanceToHit*Damage

Unless X is really high our your chance to prone is much greater than your chance to hit etc. Unless those kinds of things are true then you are better off attacking than attempting to prone.

The below image is for X=4

FrogReaver said:

The weighted average damage of making X attacks is just X*chanceToHit*Damage

The weighted average of using your first attack to attempt to prone and making X-1 attacks is:

chanceToProne*X*(1-(1-chanceToHit)^2)*Damage + (1-chanceToProne)*X*chanceToHit*Damage

Unless X is really high our your chance to prone is much greater than your chance to hit etc. Unless those kinds of things are true then you are better off attacking than attempting to prone.

The below image is for X=4

View attachment 113697

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Makes sense,

But what if there's a rogue or paladin (or both) standing next to you, that you know will attack before the target? That would make trying to knock them prone significantly more appealing, no?