D&D 5E Tactics for dealing with Polearm Masters

[Horwath]

Yeah, that's some good DM'ing right there. Arbitrary punishment with no warning! Make them pay for trying to be creative!

Crawling in front of 7-10ft long melee weapon is not creative. It is exploiting a rule in most non realistic and dumb way.

 

[Caliban]

Crawling in front of 7-10ft long melee weapon is not creative. It is exploiting a rule in most non realistic and dumb way.

Absolutely! And you have to make sure the players know their place. Doesn't matter if what they did was perfectly legal when you sat down to play. Show the courage of your convictions and you change that rule. You change it, and you retroactively punish them for breaking a rule that didn't exist 30 seconds ago!

It's the only way to maintain dominance over those dirty power gamers. *fist bump*

 

[Tony Vargas]

I stand corrected.

I was using logic. Every melee attack has advantage against a prone target.

Houseruled by default.

You can certainly do that. 5e isn't written in legalese, so sometimes it's trying to say something fairly straightforward (dropping prone to avoid arrows, good, dropping prone to avoid an axe, bad) and it gets hung up in the gap between natural language and rules jargon. Obviously it makes no sense that a character 10' away from a 20' tall giant with 15' reach should drop prone to avoid being pounded into the ground, while dropping prone should be an obvious thing to do when a unit of crossbowmen are shooting at you.

However cogently you stated such a rule, though, there'd always be some corner case that messed it up. Like elevation, if someone's making a ranged attack against you from the top of a wall you're standing at the foot of, dropping prone would give him a /better/ target.

5e's solution is to dash off rules without worrying too much about it and empower the DM to iron out any issues. Which is exactly what you'd be doing with that ruling.

...by the same token, you could rule that way in some instances, but not all...

Crawling in front of 7-10ft long melee weapon is not creative. It is exploiting a rule in most non realistic and dumb way.

So if a player - maybe one accustomed to 3.x where you could make a 'Tumble' check to avoid AoOs - declared an action like "I run up to the pikeman, tuck and roll under his guard and stand up right in front of him to stab him with my dagger," rather than declaring blah-technicality-actions like 'dropping prone' and 'crawling?'

Personally, I didn't much care for the 3.x tumble check, because AoOs added something to the game and tumble checks and concentration checks and the like to negate them just took that something right back out again.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Absolutely! And you have to make sure the players know their place. Doesn't matter if what they did was perfectly legal when you sat down to play.

Not as crazy as it sounds. In 5e, the order of play really is for the player to describe what his character does, and the DM to decide how it works out for him, that includes calling for checks, if any. The rules are the DM's domain, the player shouldn't just throw rules snippets at the DM and expect to dictate outcomes thereby. The results of an action always rest to some degree on DM judgement. You may interpret the rules one way, and the DM might even agree with that interpretation in some situations, but, in another, he'll rule differently. That's his prerogative.

 

[Caliban]

Not as crazy as it sounds. In 5e, the order of play really is for the player to describe what his character does, and the DM to decide how it works out for him, that includes calling for checks, if any. The rules are the DM's domain, the player shouldn't just throw rules snippets at the DM and expect to dictate outcomes thereby. The results of an action always rest to some degree on DM judgement. You may interpret the rules one way, and the DM might even agree with that interpretation in some situations, but, in another, he'll rule differently. That's his prerogative.

Exactly. And sometimes, changing how a clearly written rule works and then dealing an auto-crit to the player's character immediately afterward is just what you have to do. If the players aren't paranoid and twitchy from fear of arbitrary punishments for trying to use rules they failed to predict were going to change mid-game, then you are doing it wrong.

It's your game, treat it like the unlicensed social engineering experiment it is!

 

[hejtmane]

So if a player - maybe one accustomed to 3.x where you could make a 'Tumble' check to avoid AoOs - declared an action like "I run up to the pikeman, tuck and roll under his guard and stand up right in front of him to stab him with my dagger," rather than declaring blah-technicality-actions like 'dropping prone' and 'crawling?'

Personally, I didn't much care for the 3.x tumble check, because AoOs added something to the game and tumble checks and concentration checks and the like to negate them just took that something right back out again.

The first time I remember that type cocnept in rpg was Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangness first edition (not the revised one) was like 1985 they had roll with punch fall good old Palladium

Note I never played D&D 3+ or 4e

 

[Tony Vargas]

If the players aren't paranoid and twitchy ...

Hey, 5e was going for "classic feel," I'd say it succeeded. ;P

Note I never played D&D 3+ or 4e

4e didn't have the AoO-negation checks like 3e, but it had plenty of things that let you shift, and thus avoid movement-based OAs, you probably couldn't /always/ use one of them, though, so it didn't erase the tactical aspect. Essentials introduced some feats that just flatly negated swaths of 'em, like just go ahead and make ranged attacks in melee, all the time, which was kinda lame. But, when they weren't being blanket-negated by optimized checks or ill-conceived feats or items, AoOs/OAs added to the tactical depth of those editions.

5e barely has OAs, and when it comes up, it's limited by the need for a Reaction, add in that they don't scale with Extra Attack, and they can be all but ignored. I'm not sure PM makes such a huge difference, that way. You trick out a character with weapon & style choice and a pair of feats, and the most he can do is still just stop one guy from running past him.

:shrug:

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

So if a player … declared an action like "I run up to the pikeman, tuck and roll under his guard and stand up right in front of him to stab him with my dagger,"

In 5E, I'd say that's a use of the Dodge action. You only get one Action per round (without special abilities), so the polearm fighter would attack you at disadvantage on their reaction, then you'd be ready to attack on your next turn.

 

[bedir than]

In 5E, I'd say that's a use of the Dodge action. You only get one Action per round (without special abilities), so the polearm fighter would attack you at disadvantage on their reaction, then you'd be ready to attack on your next turn.

Would be a good case for a bonus action attack - two-weapon fighting comes to mind, there may be others

Sent from my Pixel using EN World mobile app