Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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The prone condition needs a rework -- the current implementation is incredibly poorly thought out. For example:
Lance (topple) - has reach. Spot the problem?
Right now, every backline caster worth their salt drops prone at the start of every fight. It's free, it doesn't affect spell casting, and it gives disadvantage against all attacks that aren't directly on top of you.
Prone should be:
Just my $0.02
This really seems like a solution looking for a problem. It complicates things excessively without providing any real benefit.
pronouns: he/she/they
The benefits are that prone right now is poorly conceived and frequently more helpful to the person being knocked over than to the person knocking them over.
Seriously, if someone with a lance uses the topple feature of the lance from a reach position, they now have disadvantage on attacks against their target? And prone is stronger than most cover, defensively, because not even sharpshooter can overcome it? A free action to grant all ranged and reach attacks disadvantage vs the prone character? Does your table just not have prone characters or something?
I don’t know what tables you’ve been at, but for mine going prone is a good way to get dog-piled by all the melee attackers in the area. And speaking from experience, even trash mobs attacking high AC targets can chew through a target pretty fast with advantage. Not sure why you think squishy caster types would find it particularly desirable most of the time.
So don't do that if it will disadvantage you and your friends. (Situations where it will significantly disadvantage your side aren't all that common, really.)
Most people don't automatically drop prone in fights. Disadvantage on your attack rolls is a big deal. Also, it significantly restricts your mobility. If you drop prone, you're just asking to get an area-control effect dropped on your head. Or have a mobile character move up and ruin your day.
Self-proning is a tactical move with relatively limited utility. Basically, you need the enemies to be primarily ranged attackers, and you need to be running saving-throw-based attacks. (Dropping prone, standing up to attack, and then dropping again ought to work exactly once in any fight. After that, you're going to get some of the enemies holding attacks.)
I have literally never seen anyone intentionally drop Prone as a defensive measure. As The_Ace_of_Rogues said, it's a great way to get quickly killed by a series of advantaged melee attacks.
pronouns: he/she/they
I'm guessing combats aren't very dynamic at their table. I know my monk would immediately stroll up and tap-dance on the face of any caster who tried it.
Can't the PC that used lance to topple the enemy just walk 5ft and stab the prone enemy again with Advantage?
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I just had a player do that last week. Then he got, predictably, swarmed by nearby enemies and said, “Awww. I played myself.” I don’t think he’ll do it again.
I’d also add, as far as the lance thing in the OP’s earlier comment. Usually, you’re using one while mounted. So even if your mount is out of movement and can’t move the last square closer to be adjacent, the character can just dismount, and step forward themselves to get advantage on the prone target with their next attack.
Having people drop prone in ranged battles is realistic (setting aside whether realism is appropriate), particularly when using a weapon that can be used effectively while prone (historically speaking, it doesn't become common before guns are available). If you wanted a bit more realism:
If there's any significant melee component to a battle prone is mostly a self-correcting problem due to being dogpiled.
Every table is indeed different. And just because dropping prone is a tactical local maximum for yours, doesn't mean that's true for all, or even the majority of tables.
You're asking for a mechanical fix for a problem that can be just as easily solved with greater variety in tactics, presumably on the part of your GM. There's any number of things they could add to their encounter mix that would push the players to vary their tactics, making things more interesting for everybody.
This post ignores that 90% of enemies use melee attacks and those that don’t may also just saving throws. You need to be more than 60 feet away from someone to ensure they have disadvantage and don’t dash to your space, you need to loose half your movement whenever you want to go unprone and it can only work in the beginning of combat since the enemy will more than likely be the same speed as you while you kneecap your own speed.
No actually, we don't. Our combat tends to be more dynamic with quite a bit of movement so giving up half your movement to stand up from prone or crawl is a pretty big downside for us. We also use differing elevations and incorporate line-of-sight when possible so a prone character may not be able to see their target and may not have the movement to address that deficiency. Situationally nice though.
I know that at all of your tables, your characters can magically make it across difficult terrain, through sentinels, past whatever other obstacles that pose a problem of getting to a prone character. I also know that for you all, a Lance toppling someone is actually helpful for the Lance wielder on their follow-up attack. After all, they want to get right next to someone so that if they keep moving they provoke an attack of opportunity. I realize that at your tables, you have things set up to block line of sight for anyone that lies down on the ground.
But in reality, prone is poorly designed. The fact of the matter remains that being prone is very heavily skewed towards being a defensive boon instead of being a penalty. Yes, obviously, it grants advantage to the frontliner who knocks someone prone with a non-reach weapon. And obviously, if someone lies down on the ground without putting difficult terrain, thorns, defenders with sentinel, walls, burning oil, whatever between attackers and themselves, they're going to get dog piled. But in reality, the caster will have ways of getting around the 50% movement penalty for crawling. They give up half their movement for basically the entire enemy team to have disadvantage on every attack. It is an unreal advantage. And it's so poorly thought out that it actually penalizes people for using the mastery on a Lance.
It doesn't need much to fix it. Making all melee attacks have advantage on prone characters would be a big step. Then large and huge creatures would not get disadvantaged just for knocking someone over. It should also have penalties for dexterity saving throws, and it should probably prevent people from making attacks of opportunity. It should also be defeatable by sharpshooter or other things that defeat cover because ultimately prone is an alternate take on cover where you're reducing the amount of Target visible.
I have good news for all of you and though -- there's no way Hasbro is going to change it until they can sell d&d 5.75 or 6.0 books, so this deeply flawed implementation is here to stay. Even if it shouldn't be.
The vast majority of ways of applying prone come from attacks and creatures that can benefit from the target being prone. Yes, it's a suboptimal status effect, because of how it interferes with attacks from ranged allies, but all the better status effects are also far more difficult to apply.
You know what, let’s try to prove the OP's point just to see what he’s on about.
Wolves cannot get disadvantage from someone else being Prone due to their attack being 5 feet. Elephants get an extra saving throw the Prone target must make, all attacks are within 5 feet. So he can’t be complaining about them.
Hill Giant's melee attack has a range of 10 feet, so it must be overpowered against giants, right? The Hill Giant needs to spend all 40 of their movement and have a player be within EXACTLY 10 feet for them to hit, which means they get disadvantage for 1 attack. If the player unprones and moves away, Attack of Opportunity (2 attacks with disadvantage instead of 1 normal attack is not what I would call a defensive boon).
If the player disengages, they move 15 feet for a total distance of 25 feet, where the giant can move 15 feet more. This of course ignores Difficult terrain which would affect both parties instead of just one, more enemies instead of a singular giant and that the giant's Poison attack wouldn’t give the player disadvantage (the thing he’s been complaining about all this time) for all attacks.
Has it occurred to you that most Reach attacks have no penalties for attacking a creature within 5 feet of you? The large monsters can literally just move one square towards the Prone creature and get Advantage.
I don't understand the problem you are trying to convey with this example. A weapon mastery is optional. If having a Prone opponent is somehow detrimental to yourself or your party then don't Topple them.
For the rest your comments you're just adding complexity. The one thing this game doesn't need is more complexity. I was in a game last weekend where ONE round of combat took 45 minutes to work through. Why would I want more complexity?
I do know that optimizers will sometimes talk about exploiting Prone. And the silly Prone Fighting style feat that's in drops just compounds that. But I have been in exactly one game where my party exploited that mechanic. We were surrounded by a dozen mobs. Our ranger cast spike growth centered on our party, the cleric had spirit guardians active, and we all went Prone at the end of our turn because ALL the mobs had bows. One combat encounter exploiting the Prone condition in a few thousand hours of play time just doesn't seem worth adding all that complexity to me.
But... you know... to each their own. If you think it's a problem for your table then homebrew it.
The Prone condition is essentially the same since the begining of 5E and is fine to me.
These are all reasonable ideas imo. Disadvantage on Dex checks and Dex Saving Throws would make some sense.
Nah. Such attacks already have disadvantage which seems about right.
This also seems reasonable. Maybe even a penalty for all spellcasting (not just spells with an S component) since casting spells with equal effectiveness while laying on your belly just seems weird. Perhaps a -5 penalty to the Spell Save DC formula would be the way to do it. This would be sort of in line with how Passive Perception can be given disadvantage based on the physical interaction with the environment (such as how sight is affected by low light or some other physical obscurement) even though that formula is based on a mental stat.