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

[Garthanos]

Not sure what you mean, it has been to long since I played 4e.

It means starting from base line allowing skills which are presented as much more powerful than they are in 5e IMO to improvisationally tweak even magic is not something I saw as a problem. Its not the same as going damn lets come up with a ritual to solve this problem but it means they arent quite "locked" down.

 

[FrogReaver]

Flanking IMO should be +2 to hit. AC values on everything should increase by 1.

flanking is not a rule to decrease focus fire. It’s a rule to further incentivize it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

My group seems to be pretty happy with the optional flanking rule from DMG. It's dead simple but adds some tactical interest.

 

[aco175]

You are taking away advantage on the monsters side and placing disadvantage on the players side. This appears to be doing the same thing. If 2 monsters are attacking the fighter, then he has disadvantage, slowing down the fight. Once the PCs gain up on the remaining monsters, then the monster dies quicker since it now has disadvantage and the PCs now have normal attacks. You cut down on the total number of attacks since now the fighter gets attacked with 2 dice instead of 4 while flanked which is countered by the reduction at the end of the fight when the PCs now get less dice.

I would also caution against players needing to roll with disadvantage all the time. My players do not mind being flanked since they like to flank, but make them roll with disadvantage and they feel like I am nerfing them.

 

[dave2008]

There is standing evidence if you make too long winded of arguments @tetrasodium people will not parse them.


It is a cost but bland and homogenous not nearly as descriptive as individuated abilities ie not really very interesting and tadah the point of this sub thread makes obtaining flanking pretty trivial.

Remind me, what was the flanking rule in 4e?

EDIT: Never mind, it gives combat advantage (+2) which is the 4e equivalent to advantage. So 5e and 4e are basically the same with flanking. So in reality, the issue is not the Flanking rule, but the rules around.

 

[Garthanos]

Remind me, what was the flanking rule in 4e?

The larger thing in consideration is the rules for evading taking opportunity attacks while obtaining that or the other benefits movement can grant which opportunity attacks balance like charging.

It is kind of insane charging is behind a feat pay wall.

 

[tetrasodium]

Well geee Karen, why do you keep saying nonsense like "there was no traffic today" or "I was the only car on the road" when we all know that not to be true because the rest of us along with everyone else on the road drove to work . Sure there was very light traffic that had almost no impact and definitely no meaningful impact on our commute but your statement about no traffic and you being the only car on the road are just false based on our presence....

I'll take your choice to make flippant criticism that avoids any of the very clear problems laid out in the comparisons rather than comment about any of those to assume you understand

Spoiler: this

is not a robust system that even pretend to meet the needs of a tactical combat system making use of a combat grid.. All that section you cite means is that the defensive line is not actively stepping aside & giving the other team a pat on the back as the quarterback is tackled by the offensive line in unison. Unless a battlefield is either very small or impossibly* crowded crowded like peak time time square & shinjuku station a few weeks ago.

* No Karen that does not mean it is "impossible" for a gm to fil enough squares, it does however make it implausible impractical & unrealistic to near if not for a human gm to convincingly have that many credible opponents not simply zergrush & initiate a tpk.

There is standing evidence if you make too long winded of arguments @tetrasodium people will not parse them.


It is a cost but bland and homogenous not nearly as descriptive as individuated abilities ie not really very interesting and tadah the point of this sub thread makes obtaining flanking pretty trivial.

@tetrasodium , I keep seeing you say this, but 5e does have opportunity attacks, which I assume you know, so what do you mean by this?

In case you don't know, it is page 195 of the PHB, under "Opportunity Attacks"

No it's not really an opportunity cost because with how 5e is structured it really only gets used to run away & as has been pointed out even time square/shinjuku station at peak deep in the zombie apocalypse is no hindrance there

 

[dave2008]

It is kind of insane charging is behind a feat pay wall.

Anyone can charge in 5e. Move + attack.

 

[dave2008]

No it's not really an opportunity cost because with how 5e is structured it really only gets used to run away & as has been pointed out even time square/shinjuku station at peak deep in the zombie apocalypse is no hindrance there

Not IME. I'm actually think about getting rid of OA completely because my players have become reluctant to run by or away from enemies because of OAs. Maybe I'm to punishing though. Now, I do get it in terms of Disegnage as @Garthanos pointed out. However, we house ruled disengage almost immediately and I had forgotten about that.

 

[Li Shenron]

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?

It's not bad.

Intuitively, I would think that the DMG optional rule is conceptually better: if you're flanked/surrounded, most of all you're going to have trouble defending.

Maybe you can decide to focus more on defense and as a result you give up attacking at your normal best. There is no option like that in 5e, but there could have been a "fight defensively" such as "you can impose disadvantage on attacks against you if you accept disadvantage on your own attacks".

Anyway, while I think the DMG option is conceptually more sound than yours, I am not a fan of it as advantage enables many special abilities that are perhaps not supposed to be too easy to enable. Your version probably works better because of this.