Hey, I'll probably be starting a game soon and I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on the Flanking Optional Rules. How has your relationship with flanking been? Mostly positive? Mostly negative?

     Personally, from what I've been seeing in the current campaign I'm playing, flanking seems to compel players and DM alike to "line up". You know what I mean: Ally - Enemy - Ally - Enemy - Ally - Enemy, like a conga line.

     I've been thinking of homebrewing some nerfs to the bonus it gives (like +2 intead of Advantage), but I'm afraid ANY kind of bonus will be enough to promote the return of the damn lines. At the same time, however, the idea of flanking does make sense and it sounds like it should give you and upper hand in battle.

     So tell me, am I missing something here? Do you guys use it at your tables, or maybe some homebrewn version of it? Is there any way you can think of to promote tactical positioning that goes beyond lining up for Advantage?

 You might see the other thread. The basic problem is that it's really easy to move around in 5th edition, so you can't place too heavy a value on it.

I use it in my game. The players often forget about it.

I don't, but as a DM, I am often in control of (a) a single boss enemy, who by definition can't flank, or (b) creatures too dumb to flank.

When they are fighting something like Gith, though, when possible, I have them flank.

I used it for the first part of a campaign, then abandoned it.

The players didn't grumble too much.

I don't have it in my campaign. The Help action is in place for those that want to give/gain advantage on a target. 

Flanking is too easy to pull off and winds up giving PCs like Rogues too much of a power boost. I feel if you want to gain something, there should often be a price to pay.

It sounds like you don't enjoy flanking, which is perhaps the biggest reason not to do it.

Personally, I like flanking, I think it adds some fun tactics. If you are seeing a conga line, it sounds more like maybe the maps could use a few more terrain features. Instead of an open clearing in a forest, have a few trees that make it harder to line up like that. Rooms in dungeons could have tables in the middle of them, etc. It does take more work setting up the maps, but those details often make the combat arenas more fun anyway.

Also it sounds like the play styles of your group tend towards those lines. Groups I've been a part of tend to like to swarm the same monster/NPC. We end up in blobs rather than lines. And you can also avoid the lines as a DM by having your monsters/NPCs play defensively. Instead of spreading out, they can stick together in a formation so that it costs more movement for PCs to get behind them without triggering opportunity attacks. But then I guess that's why I enjoy it, because I get to be strategic both as DM and player. 

All that being said, I've considered going with the +2 to hit instead of advantage for the next game I run. I do feel like that makes the other melee advantage abilities feel better.

Groups I've been a part of tend to like to swarm the same monster/NPC. 

I'm a big fan of "focused fire" myself.... my players sometimes do it, and sometimes don't.

The one concession I have historically made going all the way back to our Champions days in high school as a GM is, I don't usually have the villains use focused fire, unless they are quite intelligent... The BBEG would have them do it if he's in the room, that kind of thing. Or my nastiest villain group, the Overlords, did it big time -- and were quite feared as a result. They would do things like, the martial arts guy would martial throw people into the hex directly in front of Ox, the physically strongest villain in our world (95 STR), and Ox would then pound whoever it was. Ox wasn't great at hitting things but if he hit, it was going to be a one-shot.

Most of my villains tend not to do that, and I usually won't have run-of-the-mill orcs or gobbos do it. But I will have the nastier bad guys do it.

I avoid FF with bad guys mostly to give the party that little bit of an edge -- it allows them to be more tactically savvy than the bad guys. But also, it makes the ones who do it seem all the more impressive and fearsome. (Which is why everyone feared the Overlords when they showed up, for years....)

Quote from BioWizard >>

Groups I've been a part of tend to like to swarm the same monster/NPC. 

I'm a big fan of "focused fire" myself.... my players sometimes do it, and sometimes don't.

You have to create somewhat specialized situations (extremely unbalanced defenses such as huge magic resistance and poor ac, or vice versa, a bunch of people using concentration spells that you want to interrupt, triggered defenses such as shield you want to get them to use up) for it not to be an optimal tactic.