To Face or not to Face, that is the question

[kayn99]

I am planning on starting up my game after a few years off. I have played in a few 3e and 3.5 games. Some use house rules of facing and some do not. I am on the fence about facing right now. I like the idea about facing. If a character in looking on one direction or you are able to get around a person, you deserve a back.

So here is my question to those who have a lot more experence about this. Does the no facing work really well and is it not worth writing all the house rules for facing?

Is it easy to introduce facing back into the game?

I am looking for problems that people have encountered, so I am not re-inventing the wheel.

 

[Gort]

I like not having facing in the game, and in the years of playing 3.x, I've never missed it not being in the game. Of course, we've had "so, which way is the guard looking" situations when our rogue goes sneaking, but it doesn't really need a rule mechanic.

In fact, the rare times that 3rd ed did use facing (3.0 shield spell, for instance) were annoying to me.

So, in my opinion, no facing works fine, and it's not necessary to house rule it. My advice would be to play the game a bit, see how you like it, then start house ruling.

 

[kenobi65]

Unearthed Arcana has a whole suite of optional rules on facing for 3.5. IMO, it's an awful lot of additional work for not a lot of return.

As a DM, I don't have any problem with the "no facing" rules. I do have a few players who just can't seem to get the concept into their heads, but these are folks who have problems with grasping the rules in general.

 

[Philip]

I am really, really glad that facing was discarded. It caused many disagreements. We used miniatures before, and you always had the (in)famous miniature at the end of the line of party members turned the other way.

To 'guard' against attacks from behind. :\

But was he really walking backwards? Probably not. This was used to indicate that he looked over his shoulder occasionally to prevent being surprised from the rear. But why can't other characters declare that they are looking over their shoulders? And why is the person in the back looking over his shoulder suddenly engaged from the rear when opponents come in from the other direction? To me it makes a lot of sense that adventurers are constantly looking around in dangerous areas, and not be hampered by the way the miniature is accidently facing on the battlemat. I think facing is a typical miniatures problem. And a problem I can do without.

Of course, when combat rounds lasted a whole minute back in the old days, it was especially weird that your character basically faced in a single direction for a whole minute, and could not turn around when he was otherwise unengaged and attacked by someone else.

 

[IronWolf]

I am completely fine with the "no facing" rules. It was an added complexity that we didn't really need. I assume a character in combat is quite aware of their surroundings, looking this way, looking that way, alert and ready. There are enough other things to keep track of in combat that I don't need to include facing. Just my opinion of course!

 

[dcollins]

In general, I'm happy with characters presumed to be constantly looking around in all directions. That's pretty convenient, and replacing "back" attacks with "flanking" works really well. I haven't had any complaints or difficulty with that.

However, what I'm unhappy about is not being able to simulate large or oddly-sized creatures with appropriate miniatures. 3.5 made this even worse by abstracting everything into a perfectly square facing area. I did previously like have a longer creature like a horse, dragon, or purple worm, being able to be rushed by several PCs along a side and pick a more- or less-dangerous segment to attack. I would prefer if larger creature did have rules for more slowly turning about (square by square), or direction, or general movement; I find myself ruling such things on the fly when dealing with giant monsters.

 

[Parlan]

I agree with everyone here that facing is an unnecessary complication.

In combat, presumably people are looking every direction. Really the only reason facing was put in was to provide some explanation for Backstabbing. The new rules for sneak-attacking and flanking provide a good balance between creating opportunities to use sneak attacking in combat, but making it sufficiently difficult to use that it cannot be used in every case.

 

[Gaiden]

I hate to be the naysayer, but I can't stand the current lack of facing rules. It is completely unrealistic. If you are completely surrounded, the people at your back should have a substantial benefit against you. Granted, the lack of facing rules is simpler - of that there is no question.

However, now using facing rules in all my games it is not really all that more difficult. You get a +2 to attack a flank and a +4 at the rear with no dependence on another attacker. This to me makes much more sense in terms of the mobile offensive, e.g. a rogue with great tumble.

A defendent gets a -5 to attack into his flank and a -10 to attack into his rear.

Spot checks are penalized similarly (another thing that makes a lot of sense).

And there are rules for how many directional changes you can make: I think it is a rotation of any degree with a 5' step and 1 rotation per move action or you can rotate as a move action (and not move).

The only thing then becomes keeping track of the directionality of all the miniatures (and you really do almost have to use miniatures in combat situations). I find that a simple dot or stripe at the face of the miniature that is considered front is sufficient if there would be any confusion.

I think there are also some feats that give some added benefits in terms of these rules, and there are the obvious changes that would need to be made: pincer attack, eyes in the back of your head, etc.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I'm glad facing is gone. I am a little annoyed by square monsters, but I really see no other way to do it fairly, if we want to keep facing out of the picture.

There's nothing you can't explain, really, if you try. The question above, for example, where a player is asking what way the guard is looking so they can sneak up on him. Well, your character's ability to judge which way the guard is looking, and predict which way he'll be looking a few seconds in the future, is included in your Hide skill ranks.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I am really really really glad that there is no facing in D&D for the following reason:
the granularity of turn-based combat.

If there is facing then, unless you allow people to move when it's not their turn, it's trivially easy to move around behind an enemy every round. It's a heck of a lot harder in an actual combat (judging from my pathetic experience fighting with wooden swords and my not-so-pathetic experience kickboxing).

There's also the issue of facing for unusual creatures. What, for instance, does it mean to be "behind" a coiled snake? How about a dragon--dragons having sinuous necks that can look "behind" them as easily as in front of them and tails that can easily strike behind them too. Facing makes sense for humanoid creatures but there's more than a few monsters for which the whole concept is questionable--or worse yet makes sense but would require radical reorientation of the mechanics.

Now there are some ways to mitigate this problem, some of which are made in UA, but they aren't entirely effective and add a LOT more complexity to the game for very very little return.

In some kind of a real-time simulation (or a game with extremely short combat rounds on the order of choose to step five feet or to do something else), I can see facing rules being useful. For D&D (or any RPG I've played for that matter), it just doesn't fit.