Alternate 5-foot Step Rules

Firebird

Explorer
Hello All,

I have been considering altering the 5-foot step rule to allow creatures to make a 5-foot adjustment per size category larger than Medium without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Large would be able to make a 10-ft step, Huge a 15-ft step, and so on.

Has anyone tried this in their games? What were the results?
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I've floated the idea around a few times on this board and a few others. There are always a few doomsayers that point out it will totally wreck melee combat, but I don't look at that as entirely a bad thing. It makes larger creatures much scarier, but that was 9/10's my reasoning behind adopting it. A housecat and a tarrasque shouldn't be making the same "minor adjustment" in movement.

The way I phrased it was creatures could take a "Single Step" equal to their Space, which you'll note is a lot like your method but it was easier for me to remember. I've only ran it in a couple of test combats, but I floated the idea past a couple of my regular players and they liked it so I might try it out in the next game I run.

Some notes. It does make larger combatants more deadly in melee combat, because they can move (slightly) farther and still full attack. You might want to bump the CR's a bit to reflect this. I was using +1 per Size Cat as a baseline, but you'll probably want to run that by someone who's better with CR's (I use it as a ballpark convenience). The spell Enlarge Person is more useful, so you might consider bumping it to 2nd level. Or, you can consider it a necessary tool in the Giant Killer's Bag o' Tricks, and leave it at level 1. (My inclination is to leave it at 1st level just so the extra move isn't a "monster only" advantage, but YMMV.)

I was looking at this as a way to make larger combatants scarier and more deadly, so I was planning on using less of them so that when they do show up, their presence is more dramatic. Kind of like the cave troll in LOTR. Its a way to make larger monsters scarier without necessaruly bumping their HD. Fighting a Large Ogre is different than fighting a 4HD orc. That was the effect I was going for.
 

Your reasons for trying it out exactly mirror my own. It made no sense to me that a gargantuan creature would make such a small adjustment given the reach of its weapons.

Anyone with knowledge of boxing or who's watched any movie involving a pike wall know just how important making the foe come to you can be.

Anyone else try it in their games?
 

When they have "reach" it will devastate medium sized creatures/PCs.

AoO to step away (more than a 5 ft step) or to move up (out of a threatened square) to attack.

"Reach" is the thing that covers this aspect for larger creatures, IMO.
 

The part that can be a real pain is the fighting retreat. An Ogre takes a 10' step backwards and Full Attacks whomever he was in melee with, then that character has to take a move action to get back into melee, can't full attack, and provokes and AoO. If you aren't built for fighting big guys, that can be a real pain in the butt to deal with. (This isn't that much different than fighting a big guy with Reach though, its nastier but its still the same getting hit all the time as you try to chase them down. Luckily, most giantish types lean towards the "Hulk Smash" school of warfare, but its the type of thing I'm surprised you don't see more of with the more intelligent big guys. That might be because by the time your fighting smart big guys, you're high enough level that you don't have to rely on melee and the big guys are better off in melee or they're just getting blown to pieces by the casters.)

But I don't think it's game breaking. I think it requires a different mindset and a different set of tactics, but that's not altogether a bad thing. If you want to make bigger creatures scarier, this is a way to do it. As long as you are rewarding the increased challenge, I think its fine.
 

I did this for a while imc. It proved disastrous when the pcs faced large or bigger creatures; no medium or smaller pc will ever get a full attack off against a clever large foe. I stopped doing it because it became all too clear that what I had thought was a little change was actually making a huge difference in how combats went.
 

I think, unless properly trained, it should be suicide to fight an enemy twice as large as you toe-to-toe. If you are also of this mindset, I think this rule fits that idea very nicely. Like another poster pointed out, I visualize it a la' the Cave Troll scene in LotR. Any of the heroes would have been dead if they simply stood and traded blows with that behemoth. If I had a PC truly concerned with it, I'd design a feat that would give a bonus to AC against AoO by large creatures (Or maybe just let them negate the AoO altogether).
 


Remove ads

Top