Just leaning in and saying something and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if you swap places with the echo for the effect of flanking ad you being the creature. Wouldn't that be a guaranteed advantage for you, the creature to hit with flanking applied?
Just leaning in and saying something and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if you swap places with the echo for the effect of flanking ad you being the creature. Wouldn't that be a guaranteed advantage for you, the creature to hit with flanking applied?
As long as there is another creature flanking with you and not just the echo.
RAW you do not get advantage since the Echo is no creature.
As a DM I would allow it, since the fluff of "advantage by flanking" is to me that the enemy has to worry about attacks from both sides, which holds true for the Echo.
But my players tend to be very tactical and if I allow Flanking they make every single attack roll with advantage anyways.
If your DM wants to be more restrictive, ask them if they'd allow a homebrew feat to use your Echo for flanking advantage. Given that Owl familiars with flyby can help you RAW to get advantage on melee attacks for 10 GP, a feat should be enough of an investment to gain the same effect. :-)
since the fluff of "advantage by flanking" is to me that the enemy has to worry about attacks from both sides
The problem with that is that you are overriding rules based on your interpretation of the fluff. There are plenty of things that can attack/be a threat that can't flank. Most of them are already in this thread but I'll throw one out here as an example - a Flaming Sphere.
If you actually think about the what the rules state, the fluff of flanking is more like being surrounded by two allies who are actively coordinating with each other. The echo can't do that. It's just a placeholder for the PC. And letting it flank isn't being a cool DM, it's completely unbalancing the subclass which is already very fun and a competitive choice without infinite free solo advantage.
Fluff is easily mutable, so you might as well change it to fit the actual mechanics it's supposed to represent.
since the fluff of "advantage by flanking" is to me that the enemy has to worry about attacks from both sides
The problem with that is that you are overriding rules based on your interpretation of the fluff. There are plenty of things that can attack/be a threat that can't flank. Most of them are already in this thread but I'll throw one out here as an example - a Flaming Sphere.
If you actually think about the what the rules state, the fluff of flanking is more like being surrounded by two allies who are actively coordinating with each other. The echo can't do that. It's just a placeholder for the PC. And letting it flank isn't being a cool DM, it's completely unbalancing the subclass which is already very fun and a competitive choice without infinite free solo advantage.
Fluff is easily mutable, so you might as well change it to fit the actual mechanics it's supposed to represent.
As I already pointed out: it's my personal take on the rule and I don't find it unbalancing my games at all since my players are flanking more often than not, even without having an Echo Knight. "Solo advantage" doesn't matter in a "team" game, where you have at least two players. Or a Battlesmith + Steel Defender. Or a Ranger and her Animal Companion. Or a Hexblade / Wizard and her familiar. All classes that can already do the very thing that'd apparently be broken if a fighter could do it.
Regarding "Fluff is easily mutable so you can change it to fit the mechanics": that sounds super-strange to me. Fluff as in "a consistent and believable world to play out a story in" is imo far more important than mechanics.
From an in world perspective you're standing in front of an enemy, begin swinging your sword and suddenly that sword strikes true from behind the enemy. Or not. The enemy doesn't know where the attack will come from, so this is basically the ultimate feint. Feint is btw a Battlemaster maneuver that grants advantage.
You could even teleport behind the enemy in a fracture of a second. There is just no way such an ability does not give a bonus on attack, and since D&D 5 does not know static boni anymore, this means advantage.
As I said, if you think that's broken don't do it. RAW is strict and clear on it.
It doesn't make sense to me mechanically or fluff wise so I overrule it as a house rule, but since I DM that's my decision and RAW may make more sense for other tables.
As I already pointed out: it's my personal take on the rule and I don't find it unbalancing my games at all since my players are flanking more often than not, even without having an Echo Knight. "Solo advantage" doesn't matter in a "team" game, where you have at least two players. Or a Battlesmith + Steel Defender. Or a Ranger and her Animal Companion. Or a Hexblade / Wizard and her familiar. All classes that can already do the very thing that'd apparently be broken if a fighter could do it.
It's not so much a comparison between the classes you mentioned - but a comparison with other Fighter subclasses - namely Samurai. They can only get solo advantage for all attacks for 3 individual rounds per long rest (and once per initiative after the first 3 after level 10).
Others have said the Samurai underperforms and that probably says more about Samurai than Echo Knight - but it's still worth noting that if you allow the Echo Knight to flank when the rules clearly say they can't - you're giving it a significant buff in situations where they find themselves one on one. Meanwhile the Samurai in the group will be pissed off they haven't been given anything that powerful to compensate.
As I already pointed out: it's my personal take on the rule and I don't find it unbalancing my games at all since my players are flanking more often than not, even without having an Echo Knight. "Solo advantage" doesn't matter in a "team" game, where you have at least two players. Or a Battlesmith + Steel Defender. Or a Ranger and her Animal Companion. Or a Hexblade / Wizard and her familiar. All classes that can already do the very thing that'd apparently be broken if a fighter could do it.
It's not so much a comparison between the classes you mentioned - but a comparison with other Fighter subclasses - namely Samurai. They can only get solo advantage for all attacks for 3 individual rounds per long rest (and once per initiative after the first 3 after level 10).
Others have said the Samurai underperforms and that probably says more about Samurai than Echo Knight - but it's still worth noting that if you allow the Echo Knight to flank when the rules clearly say they can't - you're giving it a significant buff in situations where they find themselves one on one. Meanwhile the Samurai in the group will be pissed off they haven't been given anything that powerful to compensate.
I think that's more an issue of the Samurai being a bit lackluster as a subclass than Echo Flanking being unbalanced.
If one of my players wanted to play a Samurai I'd probably show them the "Heroes of the Orient" pdf from dmsguild, that has several classes that sound far more thematic than the D&D Fighter subclass.
If they absolutely have to play the fighter subclass for some reason, I'd allow it and tell them that Fighting Spirit is quite weak when flanking rules are allowed, so if they feel unhappy about it they should talk to me so we can figure out a solution. That solution might well be to remove the optional flanking rules from that campaign so the Samurai has something going for him that can't be achieved by correct positioning. Or granting the Samurai an extra feat of their choice or something like that.
Fortunately so far none of my players have shown even remote interest in the Samurai subclass, so I don't have to worry about it at the moment. :D
Yeah, echo knight was really designed oddly. I think it would have benefited from a UA pre-release. A house rule that may provide a solution is to allow the echo to grant a flanking bonus, but to reduce the power of flanking. My house rule is that flanking doesn't grant advantage, but it allows the flankers to use the help as a bonus action to help another flanker. This ensures that in the best case scenario, a pair of flankers can only get advantage on one attack each at the cost of a bonus action.
From an in world perspective you're standing in front of an enemy, begin swinging your sword and suddenly that sword strikes true from behind the enemy. Or not. The enemy doesn't know where the attack will come from, so this is basically the ultimate feint. Feint is btw a Battlemaster maneuver that grants advantage.
The whole point of what I was saying was it's not the ultimate feint - that's fluff you are imposing on the ability. You are taking how you view the power in your mind and deriving mechanical benefits from it. If the attack was the ultimate feint then it would have the mechanical benefits of a feint, but it doesn't so it's not.
For some reason, the attack is obvious and figuring out that reason is where fluff comes in. Maybe there's a sound, maybe there's a gesture, I don't know - be creative. For those who wish to follow the rules and keep a semblance of balance between subclasses, it can be useful to incorporate that into their mental picture of the ability to better match the mechanics.
As for "familiars and animal companions can do it," I'm not going to reiterate what's been said so many times before - in this thread among others - but it's not remotely the same in terms of repeatability and resource expenditure.
As a player, I would certainly love it if an Echo could be used for flanking, and I can totally visualize who one could be use as such. As a DM, I’d be concerned about balance. But balance is really entirely game dependent and there are many other factors such as number of players, other player power levels, difficulty, etc. And everyone things differently about it. That often why as a DM I fallback to the RAW. But it is interesting how much of a debate this has all caused given that every game and DM is different. Balance seems like a very subjective thing to me.
This whole subject makes me feel (again) like 5e has just reverted to board game rules, where the rules themselves are considered more important than the rules making sense. To me, and I freely acknowledge that this goes against the official rulings and seemingly the majority player opinion (at least among players in this thread), if an object is behaving like a creature, it is effectively a creature for purposes of things like flanking.
The echo behaves like a creature. If you are being attacked from different angles more than 90 degrees apart, you are flanked. Technically even 90 degrees should be enough if you are too stupid to turn 45° to compensate for the second opponent. However you are being attacked by opponents separated by too wide an angle to properly compensate for. It should not matter if the second opponent is a person, creature, force creation, trap, conceptional idea of damage, or whatever.
And static terrain (including walls) is a red herring and a bit of a straw man since it does not attack. It is a hazard, not a flanker.
The echo doesn't attack either, and you clearly don't know what a strawman is. Both a wall and an echo are objects that take no actions, and don't move or harm others without outside help.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Honestly, if you're going to give a player easily gained advantage on every roll, it's probably broken. That's roughly a +5 on all their attacks that can be set up and taken advantage of on their turn through a level 3 class feature with no limit. That leaves it incredibly hard to counter outside of backing against a wall, some antimagic zone, or just surrounding yourself with AoE. Additionally, Mercer's RAI wasn't to allow you to flank with your echo. Even if you are in the RAF side of DM'ing, you have to see this as pretty broken if interpreted that way.
The argument around this ability essentially boils down to RAW/RAI vs RAF, and I think that a lot of people would agree that you need a mix of all three in any game. That said, what separates D&D from just an RP session is that it has rules to bind the game. In this case, I would acknowledge that there is a potential for some sort of uber feint, but that the advantages of such a feature would be too great to allow in a game. You are, of course, allowed to rule how ever you want as a DM, or argue what ever you want to your DM if you're a player.
Well, another PC is still a second person who has to coordinate and a second turn that needs to be spent. That turn may not happen directly after the first flanker's turn which would mean there's a reasonable time to counter it, assuming it's even the best move for the second flanker in the first place.
Additionally, If you add a fame/notoriety mechanic (also assuming your party wants to be famous/notorious) how would you adjust tactics to avoid giving a player consistent advantage?
Well that's my point. Flanking comes at the cost of coordination. If not, there are checks involved for advantage like rogues having to make hiding checks before they can take advantage on attacks, melee PCs who need to knock targets prone or restrain them, or by expending spells slots (faerie fire, foresight, hold spells, invisibility, flesh to stone, etc) which also require saves in most cases. Echo flanking could be done quickly, with no check, minimal counter play, at the low cost of a bonus action. And all this immediately at level 3.
Also thank you for providing detail into your world building. I asked not to put you on the spot, but for clarification for my own understanding.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
That's just flavour for the ability. Mechanically it's not a creature, therefore can't be an ally, hence you can't flank with it
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Even Matt Mercer said that they're objects, so no, this doesn't work.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Just leaning in and saying something and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if you swap places with the echo for the effect of flanking ad you being the creature. Wouldn't that be a guaranteed advantage for you, the creature to hit with flanking applied?
As long as there is another creature flanking with you and not just the echo.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
RAW you do not get advantage since the Echo is no creature.
As a DM I would allow it, since the fluff of "advantage by flanking" is to me that the enemy has to worry about attacks from both sides, which holds true for the Echo.
But my players tend to be very tactical and if I allow Flanking they make every single attack roll with advantage anyways.
If your DM wants to be more restrictive, ask them if they'd allow a homebrew feat to use your Echo for flanking advantage. Given that Owl familiars with flyby can help you RAW to get advantage on melee attacks for 10 GP, a feat should be enough of an investment to gain the same effect. :-)
The problem with that is that you are overriding rules based on your interpretation of the fluff. There are plenty of things that can attack/be a threat that can't flank. Most of them are already in this thread but I'll throw one out here as an example - a Flaming Sphere.
If you actually think about the what the rules state, the fluff of flanking is more like being surrounded by two allies who are actively coordinating with each other. The echo can't do that. It's just a placeholder for the PC. And letting it flank isn't being a cool DM, it's completely unbalancing the subclass which is already very fun and a competitive choice without infinite free solo advantage.
Fluff is easily mutable, so you might as well change it to fit the actual mechanics it's supposed to represent.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
As I already pointed out: it's my personal take on the rule and I don't find it unbalancing my games at all since my players are flanking more often than not, even without having an Echo Knight. "Solo advantage" doesn't matter in a "team" game, where you have at least two players. Or a Battlesmith + Steel Defender. Or a Ranger and her Animal Companion. Or a Hexblade / Wizard and her familiar. All classes that can already do the very thing that'd apparently be broken if a fighter could do it.
Regarding "Fluff is easily mutable so you can change it to fit the mechanics": that sounds super-strange to me. Fluff as in "a consistent and believable world to play out a story in" is imo far more important than mechanics.
From an in world perspective you're standing in front of an enemy, begin swinging your sword and suddenly that sword strikes true from behind the enemy. Or not. The enemy doesn't know where the attack will come from, so this is basically the ultimate feint. Feint is btw a Battlemaster maneuver that grants advantage.
You could even teleport behind the enemy in a fracture of a second. There is just no way such an ability does not give a bonus on attack, and since D&D 5 does not know static boni anymore, this means advantage.
As I said, if you think that's broken don't do it. RAW is strict and clear on it.
It doesn't make sense to me mechanically or fluff wise so I overrule it as a house rule, but since I DM that's my decision and RAW may make more sense for other tables.
It's not so much a comparison between the classes you mentioned - but a comparison with other Fighter subclasses - namely Samurai. They can only get solo advantage for all attacks for 3 individual rounds per long rest (and once per initiative after the first 3 after level 10).
Others have said the Samurai underperforms and that probably says more about Samurai than Echo Knight - but it's still worth noting that if you allow the Echo Knight to flank when the rules clearly say they can't - you're giving it a significant buff in situations where they find themselves one on one. Meanwhile the Samurai in the group will be pissed off they haven't been given anything that powerful to compensate.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
I think that's more an issue of the Samurai being a bit lackluster as a subclass than Echo Flanking being unbalanced.
If one of my players wanted to play a Samurai I'd probably show them the "Heroes of the Orient" pdf from dmsguild, that has several classes that sound far more thematic than the D&D Fighter subclass.
If they absolutely have to play the fighter subclass for some reason, I'd allow it and tell them that Fighting Spirit is quite weak when flanking rules are allowed, so if they feel unhappy about it they should talk to me so we can figure out a solution. That solution might well be to remove the optional flanking rules from that campaign so the Samurai has something going for him that can't be achieved by correct positioning. Or granting the Samurai an extra feat of their choice or something like that.
Fortunately so far none of my players have shown even remote interest in the Samurai subclass, so I don't have to worry about it at the moment. :D
No pure NO, it isn't a creature.
only ally creature will give you flanking.
*Edited
Yeah, echo knight was really designed oddly. I think it would have benefited from a UA pre-release. A house rule that may provide a solution is to allow the echo to grant a flanking bonus, but to reduce the power of flanking. My house rule is that flanking doesn't grant advantage, but it allows the flankers to use the help as a bonus action to help another flanker. This ensures that in the best case scenario, a pair of flankers can only get advantage on one attack each at the cost of a bonus action.
The whole point of what I was saying was it's not the ultimate feint - that's fluff you are imposing on the ability. You are taking how you view the power in your mind and deriving mechanical benefits from it. If the attack was the ultimate feint then it would have the mechanical benefits of a feint, but it doesn't so it's not.
For some reason, the attack is obvious and figuring out that reason is where fluff comes in. Maybe there's a sound, maybe there's a gesture, I don't know - be creative. For those who wish to follow the rules and keep a semblance of balance between subclasses, it can be useful to incorporate that into their mental picture of the ability to better match the mechanics.
As for "familiars and animal companions can do it," I'm not going to reiterate what's been said so many times before - in this thread among others - but it's not remotely the same in terms of repeatability and resource expenditure.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
As a player, I would certainly love it if an Echo could be used for flanking, and I can totally visualize who one could be use as such. As a DM, I’d be concerned about balance. But balance is really entirely game dependent and there are many other factors such as number of players, other player power levels, difficulty, etc. And everyone things differently about it. That often why as a DM I fallback to the RAW. But it is interesting how much of a debate this has all caused given that every game and DM is different. Balance seems like a very subjective thing to me.
Yea! take that undead and constructs! no flanking for you!
But I have awarded echo knights flanking advantage, but only when the attacks come from the echo, since you ARE living.
As for balance, I have seen people abuse samurai against my critters, and fighters can't cast meteor swarm, so I roll with it.
Thanks for highlight that, I made a mistake on that statement.
Scratch that back. I edit my previous comment.
But both have to be creatures. The echo isn't a creature, it doesn't matter if the other thing is.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
The echo doesn't attack either, and you clearly don't know what a strawman is. Both a wall and an echo are objects that take no actions, and don't move or harm others without outside help.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Honestly, if you're going to give a player easily gained advantage on every roll, it's probably broken. That's roughly a +5 on all their attacks that can be set up and taken advantage of on their turn through a level 3 class feature with no limit. That leaves it incredibly hard to counter outside of backing against a wall, some antimagic zone, or just surrounding yourself with AoE. Additionally, Mercer's RAI wasn't to allow you to flank with your echo. Even if you are in the RAF side of DM'ing, you have to see this as pretty broken if interpreted that way.
The argument around this ability essentially boils down to RAW/RAI vs RAF, and I think that a lot of people would agree that you need a mix of all three in any game. That said, what separates D&D from just an RP session is that it has rules to bind the game. In this case, I would acknowledge that there is a potential for some sort of uber feint, but that the advantages of such a feature would be too great to allow in a game. You are, of course, allowed to rule how ever you want as a DM, or argue what ever you want to your DM if you're a player.
Well, another PC is still a second person who has to coordinate and a second turn that needs to be spent. That turn may not happen directly after the first flanker's turn which would mean there's a reasonable time to counter it, assuming it's even the best move for the second flanker in the first place.
Additionally, If you add a fame/notoriety mechanic (also assuming your party wants to be famous/notorious) how would you adjust tactics to avoid giving a player consistent advantage?
Well that's my point. Flanking comes at the cost of coordination. If not, there are checks involved for advantage like rogues having to make hiding checks before they can take advantage on attacks, melee PCs who need to knock targets prone or restrain them, or by expending spells slots (faerie fire, foresight, hold spells, invisibility, flesh to stone, etc) which also require saves in most cases. Echo flanking could be done quickly, with no check, minimal counter play, at the low cost of a bonus action. And all this immediately at level 3.
Also thank you for providing detail into your world building. I asked not to put you on the spot, but for clarification for my own understanding.