D&D General Reworking movement and positioning

[Brotton Goodfellow]

I’m tinkering around with positioning and movement rules in combat encounters and am wondering if anyone else has experience with doing so as well.

My main design goal was to make being close to an opponent or multiple opponents stickier and dangerous without bogging down play or being too brutal.

I’ve come up with two ideas that might serve my purpose but am curious to know if anyone has tried doing something similar.

1. If you are adjacent to an opponent, you cannot move out of their reach unless you take the disengage action.
2. If two or more enemies are adjacent to you they are Outmaneuvering you. For each adjacent enemy, a +1 is added to all damage rolls against you.

• To negate the outmaneuvered condition, one or more of your allies has to be adjacent to both you and an enemy that is adjacent to you
• Taking the Dodge action also negates the Outmaneuvered condition

I think this achieves a few things. It makes scrums a little more tactical without slowing the pace of each round down with multiple attack rolls, and it makes being surrounded/outnumbered worse without being cheesy. I also now see shoving and grappling being more useful, as they both could be used to free up space or get a better position.

I’d loved to hear anyone’s thoughts on this. Haven’t tested it out yet, but I feel like it could work for my table.

 

[aco175]

I'm always a fan of making rules that are easy and as simple as they need to be.

I'm not sure why you cannot move out of an opponents reach unless you take the disengage action? This takes your action and limits you doing anything like attacking. The current way of allowing this gives the bad guy a attack of opportunity at the cost of you keeping your action. Maybe you want to run past a bad guy to attack the caster in the back or to position yourself near the big bad. Simply not allowing the PC to move unless they wish to disengage seems off and takes away player choice. There should be choice but at cost which seems to be what we have now. I would not change it.

I do not have problems with granting bad guy that gang up on a PC additional damage. The +1 per monster is ok but does not seem like it scales at higher levels. 4 goblins on the fighter at level 1 granting +4 damage for each hit is a big deal compared to 4 ogres attacking a 10th level fighter and only getting +4 damage to all hits. Not sure on the fix to this. Maybe a +1 to-hit for each monster instead of damage? Maybe this gets closer to the flanking rules than many like though.

 

[Tigris]

This sounds like it makes combat even more stale / less movement than 5E already has. I agree that having attacks of opportunity causing attack and damage rolls is slowing things down, but you can just use automatic average damage or something (like paladin in D&D 4E).


Also outmaneuvering brings the action economy problem (which in 5.5 is not as bad as 5e but still there) again stronger to the table because the more characters there are the easier to outmaneuver the enemies.


I think just using D&D 4E rules with automatic average damage might be easier. Flanking gives (4E) combat advantage (+2 to attacks), someone who is flanked cant flank, and moving out of reach causes automatic opportunity average damage.

 

[GMMichael]

I’ve come up with two ideas that might serve my purpose but am curious to know if anyone has tried doing something similar.

1. If you are adjacent to an opponent, you cannot move out of their reach unless you take the disengage action.
2. If two or more enemies are adjacent to you they are Outmaneuvering you. For each adjacent enemy, a +1 is added to all damage rolls against you.

• To negate the outmaneuvered condition, one or more of your allies has to be adjacent to both you and an enemy that is adjacent to you
• Taking the Dodge action also negates the Outmaneuvered condition

I'd go with Advantage instead of bonus damage for (2). Ultimately, this looks like it incentivizes a lot of running around instead of actual fighting.

I do not have problems with granting bad guy that gang up on a PC additional damage. The +1 per monster is ok but does not seem like it scales at higher levels. 4 goblins on the fighter at level 1 granting +4 damage for each hit is a big deal compared to 4 ogres attacking a 10th level fighter and only getting +4 damage to all hits. Not sure on the fix to this.

Two words: damage advantage.

 

[aco175]

Two words: damage advantage.

Having advantage to damage rolls would up the threat of monsters at level. Is it better than advantage to hit rolls with something like flanking? Likely I think. Does add more dice to roll, but not more than just rolling with advantage to hit.

Does it step on the PC creation feat where they have advantage to damage? I do not see it as a big deal breaker to anything. I wonder if my players would like this.

 

[Li Shenron]

1. If you are adjacent to an opponent, you cannot move out of their reach unless you take the disengage action.
2. If two or more enemies are adjacent to you they are Outmaneuvering you. For each adjacent enemy, a +1 is added to all damage rolls against you.

• To negate the outmaneuvered condition, one or more of your allies has to be adjacent to both you and an enemy that is adjacent to you
• Taking the Dodge action also negates the Outmaneuvered condition

IMXP combat is "sticky" enough due to OA, and house rule 1. would have minimal effect in my games because everyone already takes Disengage to move away without provoking OA.

House rule 2 makes being in melee even worse, it might encourage more allies to join melee to negate the condition but it might also instead encourage even more disengaging. Also, it is already giving me headaches trying to think how 2 enemies maybe be both adjacent to you but at 180 degrees, which on a square grid means an ally cannot place themself as adjacent to both you and one enemy at the same time...

If you really want to make melee "sticky", do not allow the Disengage action. Even more sticky? Make it so that a successful OA also stops movement.

 

[Piperken]

I’m tinkering around with positioning and movement rules in combat encounters and am wondering if anyone else has experience with doing so as well.

My main design goal was to make being close to an opponent or multiple opponents stickier and dangerous without bogging down play or being too brutal.

I’ve come up with two ideas that might serve my purpose but am curious to know if anyone has tried doing something similar.

1. If you are adjacent to an opponent, you cannot move out of their reach unless you take the disengage action.
2. If two or more enemies are adjacent to you they are Outmaneuvering you. For each adjacent enemy, a +1 is added to all damage rolls against you.

• To negate the outmaneuvered condition, one or more of your allies has to be adjacent to both you and an enemy that is adjacent to you
• Taking the Dodge action also negates the Outmaneuvered condition

I think this achieves a few things. It makes scrums a little more tactical without slowing the pace of each round down with multiple attack rolls, and it makes being surrounded/outnumbered worse without being cheesy. I also now see shoving and grappling being more useful, as they both could be used to free up space or get a better position.

I’d loved to hear anyone’s thoughts on this. Haven’t tested it out yet, but I feel like it could work for my table.

Initial thoughts. I don't know if these changes play well with your intention (being in close against multiple opponents = more dangerous, avoiding bogging down in play).

There's ofc the fictional position that everyone in the scrum is focused on someone or something different, happens often. It's also true that well organized, ordered groups do exist and capably work well together. These two ideas assume that mass groups have the same behavior.

Concerning PCs, both decisions above I feel impede player agency. In this arrangement, I can't step in now to take the blow in place of my friend, if it looks like they'll go down with another blow. The second rule also could be cheesed in combination with particular abilities or feats (if you happen to play with those).