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How useful is the Dodge action?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dessert Nomad" data-source="post: 7522392" data-attributes="member: 6976536"><p>There's a ton of middle ground between 'treat a free action speech like an AOE taunt in an MMO' and 'completely ignore the guy in front of you'. Players should be doing more than just hoping monsters are really sensitive about insults to channel enemy attacks - using choke points, distance, and positioning makes it harder for the enemy to walk over and attack the rear guys. Add in the use of abilities like Sentinel for the tank to hinder movement, and blocking spells like Wall of X or Web, cantrips like Campfire or Minor Illusion, and mundane items like caltrops or ball bearings, and suddenly there's more than 'do I let free action speech control their decisions' to make hitting the rear line a questionable decisions. And note that these are all things in the PHB that can be used from level one, they're not eostric rules from some random third party supplement or 'my level 20 build solves that problem'.</p><p></p><p>On the flip side, monsters have options other than 'attack with disadvantage' 'hit the rear line' or 'leave'. An often overlooked option is using shove attacks to knock the dancing opponent prone, which both removes disadvantage on their attacks and gives him disadvantage on AOOs. It's also realistic and not just a weird gamey option; having your trained dogs pull the tough guy or prey to the ground is something that police and aristocratic hunters do IRL, and watching a fighter get overwhelmed, knocked to the ground, and swarmed by a horde of weaker enemies is a pretty cinematic event. And while it does make the 'charge up and dodge' option less effective, it also makes the whole combat more engaging. Again, these are all easily used parts of the basic game, they're not from oddball supplements and aren't obscenely complicated rules no one wants to touch like 3e grappling.</p><p></p><p>These sorts of tactical options are the reason I like playing with map and miniatures, and one of the big draws away from computer RPGs to pen and paper RPGs for me. I feel like a lot of discussions about this kind of situation overlook that we're playing a tabletop RPG and not an MMO, and end up with the false choice of 'well either I duplicate an MMO taunt ability or we just trade attack rolls'. Going back to the main topic, I think that generally if players are engaging with the whole environment and using a variety of options, use of specific abilities like dodge become much more common.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dessert Nomad, post: 7522392, member: 6976536"] There's a ton of middle ground between 'treat a free action speech like an AOE taunt in an MMO' and 'completely ignore the guy in front of you'. Players should be doing more than just hoping monsters are really sensitive about insults to channel enemy attacks - using choke points, distance, and positioning makes it harder for the enemy to walk over and attack the rear guys. Add in the use of abilities like Sentinel for the tank to hinder movement, and blocking spells like Wall of X or Web, cantrips like Campfire or Minor Illusion, and mundane items like caltrops or ball bearings, and suddenly there's more than 'do I let free action speech control their decisions' to make hitting the rear line a questionable decisions. And note that these are all things in the PHB that can be used from level one, they're not eostric rules from some random third party supplement or 'my level 20 build solves that problem'. On the flip side, monsters have options other than 'attack with disadvantage' 'hit the rear line' or 'leave'. An often overlooked option is using shove attacks to knock the dancing opponent prone, which both removes disadvantage on their attacks and gives him disadvantage on AOOs. It's also realistic and not just a weird gamey option; having your trained dogs pull the tough guy or prey to the ground is something that police and aristocratic hunters do IRL, and watching a fighter get overwhelmed, knocked to the ground, and swarmed by a horde of weaker enemies is a pretty cinematic event. And while it does make the 'charge up and dodge' option less effective, it also makes the whole combat more engaging. Again, these are all easily used parts of the basic game, they're not from oddball supplements and aren't obscenely complicated rules no one wants to touch like 3e grappling. These sorts of tactical options are the reason I like playing with map and miniatures, and one of the big draws away from computer RPGs to pen and paper RPGs for me. I feel like a lot of discussions about this kind of situation overlook that we're playing a tabletop RPG and not an MMO, and end up with the false choice of 'well either I duplicate an MMO taunt ability or we just trade attack rolls'. Going back to the main topic, I think that generally if players are engaging with the whole environment and using a variety of options, use of specific abilities like dodge become much more common. [/QUOTE]
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How useful is the Dodge action?
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