D&D 5E Flanking House Rule

[BookTenTiger]

Advantage bloat?

What's this about Advantage bloat, though? You either have advantage or you don't, right?

Sorry, that was my quippy shorthand for it sometimes being too easy to get advantage in combat.

In my own campaign, I was noticing that when characters were flanking, they often also had advantage from other sources (usually from the powers of other characters). Flanking made those other sources less special. So changing Flanking to an increase in critical hit chance helped preserve the specialness of character-born advantage.

 

[NotAYakk]

You threaten a flank by surrounding a creature.

A creature becomes flanked if they end their turn surrounded.

Attacks have advantage on flanked creatures.

So threats of flanking encourages mobility, instead of bogging down the battlefield.

 

[TwoSix]

My house rule:

Flanking adds a +1d4 to the attack roll. If the attack hits and a 4 is rolled on the 1d4, the attack is a critical hit.