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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8321943" data-attributes="member: 2629">Reread the article: This is the first in a weekly series of articles by a team of designers answering D&D questions for beginners. Feel free to discuss the article and add your insights or comments!It is aimed at new players.  There will always be elements of D&D that we can break down further for new players.  Other elements of OAs worth mentioning:* If an enemy has reach and you are going to provoke an OA from them, you can drop to your knees, crawl out of their reach, and then stand up in order to give them disadvantage on their attack roll.  Attacks against prone (including crawling) creatures is at advantage within 5', and at disadvantage at greater than 5' (regardless of whether melee or missile).* If you can 'eat' (cause them to use) your opponent's reaction, you can prevent them from performing an OA on you.  Strategically, fighting foes that go right after you in combat tends to provide you more options in this area, as other allies are likely to cause them to react before it is your turn, and you're likely to have your reaction on their turn.  There certain spells and abilities that will either use a reaction, or deny an opponent their reaction.  One tricky spell in this regard is Wall of Stone.  If you encircle a foe with it, they can make a save.  If they succeed, they can use their reaction to move out of the wall area.  That means they will either be captured in a wall and unable to attack, or will have used their reaction.  Either way - no OA.  Other spells, such as Wall of Force, can be used to entirely block OAs with no save to avoid the blockage, but there are sneaky ways to use Wall of Stone to trick opponents into position.   * Enemies Abound is worth mentioning as it can be used to force enemies to attack their allies with OAs, which eacts their reactions and deals damage to enemies.  * Zephyr strike allows you to not provoke OAs.  For certain PCs in certain games, this is a much more useful spell than people realize.  Due to bounded accuracy, a high speed PC that wants to get into position, or flee from danger, can really get a lot of benefit out of this spell.  I've seen it be a life saver.  As a ranger, you're often casting a few spells with most of your slots.  Although you do not get a lot of spells, you spend most of them on one or two spells in my experience.  As such, the best use of the other known spells is on conditional spells - and this is a decent one to have.  * Certain familiars (owls) do not provoke OAs when flying into and out of reach.  This makes them good options to deliver touch spells.  You use your reaction to prepare to cast the spell when your familiar is adjacent to the enemy, your familiar then moves adjacent, triggering your spell, uses its reaction to deliver the spell, and then flys off with no OA.  Shocking grasp is a primary option for low level PCs, but there are a few others (Bestow Curse, Plane Shift) that can be methods of delivering spells in a sneaky fashion.  Owls are the favored familiars of a particular group in my campaign world (long before this 5E nuance), so it has been something I've used a lot. * Finally - diagonal placement around a foe locks them down into a single location if they do not want to provoke an OA.  If your foes are up to the right and down to the left, there is no place you can go (other than up or down) where you will not provoke at least one OA.  If someone is to your right and left, you can move 1 square forward or backward without provoking an OA.</blockquote>

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