D&D 5E A Simple Flanking Rule, What Do You think?

[dave2008]

Oh but right in 5e the casters are 10x more important than others
(without them adventuring would be 10x harder)

Not sure what this is in response to, but we play mostly without casters and have no issues. It is definitely not 10x harder.

 

[Garthanos]

If that is something you want, and you don't have full DM& Player trust, codified rules are superior.

I did Amber Diceless and as a DM I wanted more codification more handles for the players

DMing where you are doing huge amount of deciding is more work to me.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The rule:

"If a creature is within 5 feet of two hostile creatures of its size or larger, it is flanked. A flanked creature has disadvantage when attacking a target that is not also flanked."

My conceptual justification is that flanked creatures would need to invest more effort in being defensive and, therefore, have more difficulty attacking. My hope, mechanically, is that it makes positioning more meaningful but not overpowering.

Do you like the rule and, if not, what rule do you use instead and why is it preferable?

Thinking on this some more, I don't think this is a good rule unless you want slower combats.

This makes it fairly easy for many of the combatants on the field to have disadvantage. Even in a common 2v2 fight where everyone is standing adjacent to each other, everyone has disadvantage. That's likely to cause encounters to drag.

I've played with the DMG flanking. I don't think it is necessary (the DM actually stopped using it halfway through the campaign) but I do think it would work better than this, because advantage at least makes combats go faster.

 

[dave2008]

Yep, that is one area were 5e OA improved

First phrase.

OK, I miss-understood your previous comment then. It was an improvement for me as I had a hard time visualizing excessive reactions happening in 1 round (similar to why we house extra attack in 5e). When you can do to many things in the 6 second time frame it stops being a combat story for me and becomes just a game. I like D&D when it is game intertwined with a story.

 

[Garthanos]

Not sure what this is in response to, but we play mostly without casters and have no issues. It is definitely not 10x harder.

Lack of codification works in favor of spell casters especially when the game has included player and dm facing text indicating the above 10x harder it also becomes a designer excuse to make over powered spells.

 

[dave2008]

I did Amber Diceless and as a DM I wanted more codification more handles for the players

DMing where you are doing huge amount of deciding is more work to me.

I don't know what that is, but if that is what you want, then 4e is definitely a better system for you than 5e. Personally, my latest fusion of the two is to let my 5e players select 4e powers instead of a feat.

 

[Garthanos]

OK, I miss-understood your previous comment then. It was an improvement for me as I had a hard time visualizing excessive reactions happening in 1 round (similar to why we house extra attack in 5e).

And to me that is a corner case extremely rarely actually happens even if it can in my experience (its a threat to overcome via various smart abiity uses) too many other things which modify it based on choices and powers and ahem its a known danger.

 

[dave2008]

Lack of codification works in favor of spell casters especially when the game has included player and dm facing text indicating the above 10x harder it also becomes a designer excuse to make over powered spells.

Again it depends. I find spellcasters are locked into their spells and as a DM I am wary about house ruling spells. However, I let martial characters try and do all kinds of crazy things, because I intuitively understand martial characters. Again, I think it comes back to DM / player trust. We are all working together, so my players know I will do my best to adjudicate their craziness fairly and accurately (both the 4e and 5e DMG have good tables for adjudicating improve), so they don't limit themselves.

So it works a bit the opposite direction for us.

 

[Garthanos]

I don't know what that is, but if that is what you want, then 4e is definitely a better system for you than 5e. Personally, my latest fusion of the two is to let my 5e players select 4e powers instead of a feat.

Hmm context it is A game with extremely extremely loose guidelines about conflict resolution It was actually very interesting because it was still tactical but at the same time it was a lot of deciding by the DM and I wanted better language between the player and DM.

 

[dave2008]

And to me that is a corner case extremely rarely actually happens even if it can in my experience (its a threat to overcome via various smart abiity uses) too many other things which modify it based on choices and powers and ahem its a known danger.

I agree, I don't remember it actually ever coming up in the 4 years we played 4e. But I am a designer by nature (and profession - but not games), so it bothered me from a design perspective. It didn't bother my players, that is why we never house ruled it.