I've noticed there seems to be a bit of a stigma against using the dodge action, especially on a burly front liner, and I think this is wrong. When a mage uses their action to cast a spell to debuff enemies, everybody appreciates it and sees the value. When the barb gets themselves surrounded then dodges, people usually think the value of their lost attack(s) outweighs any value gained from the the dodge. Here are a few reasons dodge is a great idea on your front liner when there are too many enemies to drop in 1 or 2 rounds:
1. At low levels your brawler probably only has one attack unless they're dual wielding. They can make this up with an opportunity attack if a monster runs.
2. Dodging is the fix for being swarmed with pack tactics.
3. A round where you kill 1 or 2 monsters then get dropped, vs a round spent dodging, followed by a round killing monsters and being dropped, are the same, EXCEPT you just bought your party a whole round of free attacks.
4. If you grapple an enemy then dodge next round you are now blocking two squares.
5. A raging dodging barb is a damage soaking machine. If they somehow take no damage the party can deliver a light smack or aoe to keep their rage going.
Dodge has it's place but I think it is better used by Moon druids, Fighters and Paladin than Barbs. A raging barb is resistent to BPS damage for for each hit they take they get less damage, but the damage they dish out is roughly on a par with other melee classes.
Having a party member give a barb a light smack to keep up rage depends on the initiative order. If the swarm of mooks go immediately before the Barb the party members are not aware if the barb will get hit I think it is also very rare for dodge to be worth the actions of two party members (the barb to dodge and the other party member to ttack them). This isn't a dealbreaker however as rage only ends at the end of the barbs turn, if a barb goes though a round without taking damage they just forego dodge fofr the next round and make an attack.
Barb can do more dmg than other melee builds by spamming reckless and never missing, but it's not unusual to run out of hps sooner than expected, which is where the dodge comes in... you make a very interesting observation about rage duration that is VERY nice! Those are all great dodge classes, I also like monk for patient defense.
Barb v other melee builds damage is more complex than that because all other classes have something extra they can do:
Barbs can reckless attack to increase an average hit rate from about 60% to 84% at the cost of making themselves more vulnerable (of course if they are very likely to hit anyway they can choose not to)
Fighters can Action surge to essentially double their damage as a limited resource
Rogues can increase their damage once per turn using sneak attack
Paladins can smite as a limited resource
Monks are more likely to be able to bonus action attack and can flurry of blows as a limited resource
Which of these does the most damage depends on things like the type of opponents and frequency of rests.
I've noticed there seems to be a bit of a stigma against using the dodge action, especially on a burly front liner, and I think this is wrong. When a mage uses their action to cast a spell to debuff enemies, everybody appreciates it and sees the value. When the barb gets themselves surrounded then dodges, people usually think the value of their lost attack(s) outweighs any value gained from the the dodge.
That's because when a caster debuffs an enemy's attacks with a spell, the whole party gets to enjoy the benefits of the debuffing. The dodge action only benefits the character who took it and they've got to keep burning their action to gain that benefit, whereas most spells only require concentration to maintain.
The other big weakness of Dodge (or anything that gives Disadvantage on attacks, really) is that it's most beneficial the closer then enemy needs to rolling a 10-11 to hit you, and loses value as the number needed to hit moves toward 1 or 20. If your enemy has a very high or very low chance of hitting you, then Dodge is not all that useful.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The core problem with dodge is that it's most useful if you're being attacked... but nothing about dodging itself incentivizes anyone to attack you, so you need to limit it to situations where the enemy will want to attack you for other reasons. This can happen -- for example, it can be a solid choice for a cleric using spirit guardians and spiritual weapon -- but there aren't a lot of situations like that (for martial characters, it can occur if they have sentinel mastery and are up against a single enemy).
It's true, it's much more useful if you have spirit guardians or something to hand out dmg while you dodge... but then there's perceived opportunity cost. If the monster has to dash to make it to the back ranks there's a good chance the dm will suffer from the same bias as the anti dodge crowd and just opt for the immediate nearest target, at least until they miss enough times to realize it's a bad idea, in which case job done. But I am beginning to perceive that the real role of dodge is to do all that stuff while serving its main function of keeping you alive when you messed up and are about to get dropped.
It's true, it's much more useful if you have spirit guardians or something to hand out dmg while you dodge... but then there's perceived opportunity cost. If the monster has to dash to make it to the back ranks there's a good chance the dm will suffer from the same bias as the anti dodge crowd and just opt for the immediate nearest target, at least until they miss enough times to realize it's a bad idea, in which case job done.
That's an oddly specific scenario. Not one that I can say I've encountered regularly. I've been running a barbarian for almost a year now in a campaign, and ran a Paladin for over two in a previous campaign, and I can say that I can't think of a single time when I would have been better off using Dodge than hitting my opponent and contributing to them dropping faster.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I mean, Spirit Guardians doesn't really have to be the only time you have a better argument for dodging. Any time a front line caster is concentrating on a valuable spell, it raises the value for a dodge. A cleric surrounded by some dangerous melee combatants while concentrating on an area denial spell like Blade Barrier has a better use case. A Paladin/Fighter multiclass could Action Surge to dodge after their attacks if a combat is getting down to the wire but getting the clutch kill is unlikely, while potentially losing concentration and becoming lethargic would be disastrous. Is it usually going to better? No, but it'll have it's uses.
I don't think Dodge is amazing because realistically, if you're against intelligent enemies, they probably won't attack if they can tell that the character is preparing to dodge. But that could also be a good thing. If it means that them knowing you'll attempt the dodge just means you don't even need to make the attempt, maybe that's better sometimes.
Makes me think: I've seen some form of the dodge action in many games, and in almost all of them... it's never used. I've only run into two exceptions (Champions and Feng Shui), and both forms of dodge had a common feature: they were usable out of turn.
In Champions, dodging was an abortable action: in response to being attacked, you could sacrifice your next action (and it worked against all attacks until the start of the phase after the one you aborted). In Feng Shui, the initiative system was a bit more complicated but the effect was similar: you sacrificed about 1/3 of your next action (and it worked against one attack).
An equivalent to the Champions version for 5e would be something like
Abort to Dodge
You dodge as a reaction. On your next turn, you may not take any actions other than dodge.
Yeah, I'm definitely not saying Dodge is great. And I've never used it. I can just see some situations where, hey, maybe that's the play to consider.
Abort to Dodge does sound interesting. Forcing Dodge as the next action seems a little gnarly though. I'd be more inclined to run that if used a bonus action; that seems like a bit more of a trade off, but when some class don't or barely have bonus actions, then there's really no consequence.
The other, harder to quantify problem is that dodging isn't fun. People generally don't play RPGs to passively avoid damage, even if it might be the tactically optimal move.
Dodge is particularly bad on a Barbarian: If you spend your turn not attacking, but taking the Dodge action, and it works so that nobody is able to hit you, you lose your Rage (the only way this doesn't happen is if an enemy within melee range moves away from you without taking the Disengage option and you have your reaction available for an AoO).
And dropping an enemy means that there is 1-2 less attacks coming at your party that turn, while taking the Dodge action against smart enemies means that they will direct those attacks against somebody they are more likely to hit.
Dodge is great for a Barbarian if you are fighting enemies that are flying or using range, as those are where the Barbarian suffers.
Makes me think: I've seen some form of the dodge action in many games, and in almost all of them... it's never used. I've only run into two exceptions (Champions and Feng Shui), and both forms of dodge had a common feature: they were usable out of turn.
In Champions, dodging was an abortable action: in response to being attacked, you could sacrifice your next action (and it worked against all attacks until the start of the phase after the one you aborted). In Feng Shui, the initiative system was a bit more complicated but the effect was similar: you sacrificed about 1/3 of your next action (and it worked against one attack).
An equivalent to the Champions version for 5e would be something like
Abort to Dodge
You dodge as a reaction. On your next turn, you may not take any actions other than dodge.
I've seen dodging used in Shadowrun and L5R, as well; I think the main commonality there is that taking damage is much more serious in those games than it is in D&D. That's the core issue, I think: damage in D&D is trivial (until it suddenly isn't), whereas losing an Action is huge. I don't know if there's a way to fix that without totally restructuring damage or the action economy, and I'm not holding my breath for either of those.
So, the tanky characters should dodge? Seems like that would just encourage enemies to ignore them and target the non-dodging, squishy party members. Sure you can take an OA if they try to run past you, but you only get one of those, then everyone else just ignores you while you bob-and-weave. Doing damage is almost always a better choice. The condition you most want to impose upon an enemy is dead.
Certainly, there might be circumstances where dodging could really work. If you're holding a choke point, just didge and let the ranged allies behind you deal with the bad guys, for example. or if your weapon for whatever reason doesn't work very well against the target, you might dodge. But in general, you want to swing at the bad guy.
Beyond that, there's the more practical reason, it's a game, and attacking an enemy is fun. You roll some dice, get to see if you hit, maybe do some other tricks depending on your class. If you dodge, you just say, I dodge, then your turn is over -- boring.
I've seen dodging used in Shadowrun and L5R, as well; I think the main commonality there is that taking damage is much more serious in those games than it is in D&D. That's the core issue, I think: damage in D&D is trivial (until it suddenly isn't), whereas losing an Action is huge. I don't know if there's a way to fix that without totally restructuring damage or the action economy, and I'm not holding my breath for either of those.
From what I remember about Shadowrun, the big difference is actually that the action economy is different -- a character with multiple actions could dodge once and cover the entire turn. Also, I don't think movement cost actions, so if you were dashing from one point to another while being shot at, might as well dodge (this doesn't work in 5e because both dash and dodge are actions). I don't remember enough about how L5R combat worked (I recall it being 'he who wins initiative wins', but not much else) to say.
The core problem with dodging really is action economy: you're sacrificing your entire action, so unless the fact that you're dodging costs the enemy more than your action is worth, you're better off doing something else. In D&D, the enemy can usually just target someone other than the dodging character so the cost (potentially suboptimal damage allocation) isn't very high. There are exceptions (for example, if you're fighting in a choke and your side has ranged attacks and the enemy doesn't, having the person who is blocking the choke dodge may well be a good decision) but they're quite situational and IME pretty rare.
I've seen dodging used in Shadowrun and L5R, as well; I think the main commonality there is that taking damage is much more serious in those games than it is in D&D. That's the core issue, I think: damage in D&D is trivial (until it suddenly isn't), whereas losing an Action is huge. I don't know if there's a way to fix that without totally restructuring damage or the action economy, and I'm not holding my breath for either of those.
From what I remember about Shadowrun, the big difference is actually that the action economy is different -- a character with multiple actions could dodge once and cover the entire turn. Also, I don't think movement cost actions, so if you were dashing from one point to another while being shot at, might as well dodge (this doesn't work in 5e because both dash and dodge are actions).
The action economy is different, but the bigger difference is damage. Shadowrun is the game that gave us the name for the chunky salsa rule. You want to avoid damage as much as possible- even taking a small wound causes debuffs to your character and getting seriously wounded means you're taking a long time to recover and may be left with permanent injuries.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
In our group, we had a Barbarian, Fighter, Monk and Cleric. As expected, Fighter and Barb grabbed a nasty to hold it's attention and Monk ran around helping chip away at them as needed. Barb switched characters, to a Pal-Lock, who, as it turns out, is pretty squishy. Now, Fighter engages and Monk joins him, dealing damage as an Action, then, instead of adding damage (early fight) if the enemies are dealing decent damage, or seem capable, I take the Dodge as my Step of the Wind. UD and some homebrewed items give me a great AC and Dodge is usually enough for me to weather a few attacks, with low risk of being smooshed, as I, a Monk, don't have an abundance of HP to spare. Our DM plays most battles fairly, and enemies will try to swipe at me at least once, when I am a viable target, and more so if someone does land a blow. At level 13 now, and I am finding it effective enough in mitigating incoming damage to the party by spreading at between me and the Fighter, so everyone stays up and we can finish the fight as a fully upright party.
As someone else pointed out, though, even for a Monk, when you're down to likely eliminating an enemy or lowering your chances of being hit, eliminating them is a better use of resource. I'd FoB for sure if I thought I had a chance of finishing one of the enemies, rather than Dodge.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The action economy is different, but the bigger difference is damage.
No, it really isn't. Dodge would still be unused in D&D if every attack was an instant kill, because dodging is less effective at preventing incoming damage than killing the source of the damage. I realize Shadowrun did have a second feature that encouraged dodge: it was a lot easier to build a PC who was completely useless in a fight, at which point you might as well dodge while the more effective PCs obliterated everything.
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I've noticed there seems to be a bit of a stigma against using the dodge action, especially on a burly front liner, and I think this is wrong. When a mage uses their action to cast a spell to debuff enemies, everybody appreciates it and sees the value. When the barb gets themselves surrounded then dodges, people usually think the value of their lost attack(s) outweighs any value gained from the the dodge. Here are a few reasons dodge is a great idea on your front liner when there are too many enemies to drop in 1 or 2 rounds:
1. At low levels your brawler probably only has one attack unless they're dual wielding. They can make this up with an opportunity attack if a monster runs.
2. Dodging is the fix for being swarmed with pack tactics.
3. A round where you kill 1 or 2 monsters then get dropped, vs a round spent dodging, followed by a round killing monsters and being dropped, are the same, EXCEPT you just bought your party a whole round of free attacks.
4. If you grapple an enemy then dodge next round you are now blocking two squares.
5. A raging dodging barb is a damage soaking machine. If they somehow take no damage the party can deliver a light smack or aoe to keep their rage going.
PS - Dodge is not the move for easy fights. It is the power move for hard fights. It also gives adv on dex saves.
Dodge has it's place but I think it is better used by Moon druids, Fighters and Paladin than Barbs. A raging barb is resistent to BPS damage for for each hit they take they get less damage, but the damage they dish out is roughly on a par with other melee classes.
Having a party member give a barb a light smack to keep up rage depends on the initiative order. If the swarm of mooks go immediately before the Barb the party members are not aware if the barb will get hit I think it is also very rare for dodge to be worth the actions of two party members (the barb to dodge and the other party member to ttack them). This isn't a dealbreaker however as rage only ends at the end of the barbs turn, if a barb goes though a round without taking damage they just forego dodge fofr the next round and make an attack.
Barb can do more dmg than other melee builds by spamming reckless and never missing, but it's not unusual to run out of hps sooner than expected, which is where the dodge comes in... you make a very interesting observation about rage duration that is VERY nice! Those are all great dodge classes, I also like monk for patient defense.
Barb v other melee builds damage is more complex than that because all other classes have something extra they can do:
Which of these does the most damage depends on things like the type of opponents and frequency of rests.
That's because when a caster debuffs an enemy's attacks with a spell, the whole party gets to enjoy the benefits of the debuffing. The dodge action only benefits the character who took it and they've got to keep burning their action to gain that benefit, whereas most spells only require concentration to maintain.
The other big weakness of Dodge (or anything that gives Disadvantage on attacks, really) is that it's most beneficial the closer then enemy needs to rolling a 10-11 to hit you, and loses value as the number needed to hit moves toward 1 or 20. If your enemy has a very high or very low chance of hitting you, then Dodge is not all that useful.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The core problem with dodge is that it's most useful if you're being attacked... but nothing about dodging itself incentivizes anyone to attack you, so you need to limit it to situations where the enemy will want to attack you for other reasons. This can happen -- for example, it can be a solid choice for a cleric using spirit guardians and spiritual weapon -- but there aren't a lot of situations like that (for martial characters, it can occur if they have sentinel mastery and are up against a single enemy).
It's true, it's much more useful if you have spirit guardians or something to hand out dmg while you dodge... but then there's perceived opportunity cost. If the monster has to dash to make it to the back ranks there's a good chance the dm will suffer from the same bias as the anti dodge crowd and just opt for the immediate nearest target, at least until they miss enough times to realize it's a bad idea, in which case job done. But I am beginning to perceive that the real role of dodge is to do all that stuff while serving its main function of keeping you alive when you messed up and are about to get dropped.
That's an oddly specific scenario. Not one that I can say I've encountered regularly. I've been running a barbarian for almost a year now in a campaign, and ran a Paladin for over two in a previous campaign, and I can say that I can't think of a single time when I would have been better off using Dodge than hitting my opponent and contributing to them dropping faster.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I mean, Spirit Guardians doesn't really have to be the only time you have a better argument for dodging. Any time a front line caster is concentrating on a valuable spell, it raises the value for a dodge. A cleric surrounded by some dangerous melee combatants while concentrating on an area denial spell like Blade Barrier has a better use case. A Paladin/Fighter multiclass could Action Surge to dodge after their attacks if a combat is getting down to the wire but getting the clutch kill is unlikely, while potentially losing concentration and becoming lethargic would be disastrous. Is it usually going to better? No, but it'll have it's uses.
I don't think Dodge is amazing because realistically, if you're against intelligent enemies, they probably won't attack if they can tell that the character is preparing to dodge. But that could also be a good thing. If it means that them knowing you'll attempt the dodge just means you don't even need to make the attempt, maybe that's better sometimes.
So anyway, I started (Eldritch) blasting
Makes me think: I've seen some form of the dodge action in many games, and in almost all of them... it's never used. I've only run into two exceptions (Champions and Feng Shui), and both forms of dodge had a common feature: they were usable out of turn.
In Champions, dodging was an abortable action: in response to being attacked, you could sacrifice your next action (and it worked against all attacks until the start of the phase after the one you aborted). In Feng Shui, the initiative system was a bit more complicated but the effect was similar: you sacrificed about 1/3 of your next action (and it worked against one attack).
An equivalent to the Champions version for 5e would be something like
Yeah, I'm definitely not saying Dodge is great. And I've never used it. I can just see some situations where, hey, maybe that's the play to consider.
Abort to Dodge does sound interesting. Forcing Dodge as the next action seems a little gnarly though. I'd be more inclined to run that if used a bonus action; that seems like a bit more of a trade off, but when some class don't or barely have bonus actions, then there's really no consequence.
So anyway, I started (Eldritch) blasting
The other, harder to quantify problem is that dodging isn't fun. People generally don't play RPGs to passively avoid damage, even if it might be the tactically optimal move.
Dodge is particularly bad on a Barbarian: If you spend your turn not attacking, but taking the Dodge action, and it works so that nobody is able to hit you, you lose your Rage (the only way this doesn't happen is if an enemy within melee range moves away from you without taking the Disengage option and you have your reaction available for an AoO).
And dropping an enemy means that there is 1-2 less attacks coming at your party that turn, while taking the Dodge action against smart enemies means that they will direct those attacks against somebody they are more likely to hit.
Dodge is great for a Barbarian if you are fighting enemies that are flying or using range, as those are where the Barbarian suffers.
I've seen dodging used in Shadowrun and L5R, as well; I think the main commonality there is that taking damage is much more serious in those games than it is in D&D. That's the core issue, I think: damage in D&D is trivial (until it suddenly isn't), whereas losing an Action is huge. I don't know if there's a way to fix that without totally restructuring damage or the action economy, and I'm not holding my breath for either of those.
So, the tanky characters should dodge? Seems like that would just encourage enemies to ignore them and target the non-dodging, squishy party members. Sure you can take an OA if they try to run past you, but you only get one of those, then everyone else just ignores you while you bob-and-weave. Doing damage is almost always a better choice. The condition you most want to impose upon an enemy is dead.
Certainly, there might be circumstances where dodging could really work. If you're holding a choke point, just didge and let the ranged allies behind you deal with the bad guys, for example. or if your weapon for whatever reason doesn't work very well against the target, you might dodge. But in general, you want to swing at the bad guy.
Beyond that, there's the more practical reason, it's a game, and attacking an enemy is fun. You roll some dice, get to see if you hit, maybe do some other tricks depending on your class. If you dodge, you just say, I dodge, then your turn is over -- boring.
From what I remember about Shadowrun, the big difference is actually that the action economy is different -- a character with multiple actions could dodge once and cover the entire turn. Also, I don't think movement cost actions, so if you were dashing from one point to another while being shot at, might as well dodge (this doesn't work in 5e because both dash and dodge are actions). I don't remember enough about how L5R combat worked (I recall it being 'he who wins initiative wins', but not much else) to say.
The core problem with dodging really is action economy: you're sacrificing your entire action, so unless the fact that you're dodging costs the enemy more than your action is worth, you're better off doing something else. In D&D, the enemy can usually just target someone other than the dodging character so the cost (potentially suboptimal damage allocation) isn't very high. There are exceptions (for example, if you're fighting in a choke and your side has ranged attacks and the enemy doesn't, having the person who is blocking the choke dodge may well be a good decision) but they're quite situational and IME pretty rare.
The action economy is different, but the bigger difference is damage. Shadowrun is the game that gave us the name for the chunky salsa rule. You want to avoid damage as much as possible- even taking a small wound causes debuffs to your character and getting seriously wounded means you're taking a long time to recover and may be left with permanent injuries.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
In our group, we had a Barbarian, Fighter, Monk and Cleric. As expected, Fighter and Barb grabbed a nasty to hold it's attention and Monk ran around helping chip away at them as needed. Barb switched characters, to a Pal-Lock, who, as it turns out, is pretty squishy. Now, Fighter engages and Monk joins him, dealing damage as an Action, then, instead of adding damage (early fight) if the enemies are dealing decent damage, or seem capable, I take the Dodge as my Step of the Wind. UD and some homebrewed items give me a great AC and Dodge is usually enough for me to weather a few attacks, with low risk of being smooshed, as I, a Monk, don't have an abundance of HP to spare. Our DM plays most battles fairly, and enemies will try to swipe at me at least once, when I am a viable target, and more so if someone does land a blow. At level 13 now, and I am finding it effective enough in mitigating incoming damage to the party by spreading at between me and the Fighter, so everyone stays up and we can finish the fight as a fully upright party.
As someone else pointed out, though, even for a Monk, when you're down to likely eliminating an enemy or lowering your chances of being hit, eliminating them is a better use of resource. I'd FoB for sure if I thought I had a chance of finishing one of the enemies, rather than Dodge.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
No, it really isn't. Dodge would still be unused in D&D if every attack was an instant kill, because dodging is less effective at preventing incoming damage than killing the source of the damage. I realize Shadowrun did have a second feature that encouraged dodge: it was a lot easier to build a PC who was completely useless in a fight, at which point you might as well dodge while the more effective PCs obliterated everything.