Howdy folks. My group is currently enjoying a mixed campaign of Eberron (homebrewed by the DM to 5e.) and Curse of Strahd. When combat started we discussed that using the optional rule for Flanking wouldn't be an issue, until it became one. I'll explain:
Our initial group setup was composed by a Paladin (me), Sorcerer, Ranger and Druid. Having only one melee combatant, with the occasional inclusion of our druid in animal shape, flanking didn't have an actual impact in combat. But by reaching level 4, my paladin acquired the "Great Weapon Master" feat, which allows me to take a -5 penalty on attacks to add +10 to damage. Oh, I use a Greataxe, by the way, with the Great Weapon Fighting paladin build. When our group received another player, a barbarian, things started to look weird.
Almost every single combat I would manage to flank enemies and roll with advantage, which would in turn allow me to take the Great Weapon Master penalty to deal extra damage. Add to that the paladin's Divine Smite ability, which you may choose to use after checking if your attack successfully hit. Rolling 1d12+15, +2d8 every single turn... That was completely ridiculous. After reaching level 9, our group decided to consult the DM to stop using the Flanking optional rule, as he started having trouble calculating the encounters' CRs. Since then I feel combat has been leveled and balanced.
Has anyone else experienced issues with the Flanking rules? Please share your thoughts. :)
Gotta agree with the groups decision there, the optional flanking rules allow combatants to have advantage on attack rolls way too easily which undermines Barbarians and Samurai who have chunks of their abilities made invalid by positioning alone.
At least from the book Advantage seemed like it was supposed to be hard to get.
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Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. I will protect those who cannot protect themselves, I will protect even those I hate so long as it is right.
The optional flanking rule would be fine - if not for all the features built into the game that it steps all over the toes of because they exist only to provide Advantage, and "Stand over there" is a lower cost to pay to gain Advantage.
No barbarian is going to choose to use their Reckless Attack feature unless they are fighting alone (and then they still might not because of its downside).
No one is going to spend an action on the Help action when they can spend a few feet of movement to gain the same effect.
And so on, with numerous other bits of the standard game.
I think that the real issue in scenarios like this is that cr is difficult if this really outpaces the the rest of the group. I've been in similar situations where it has always been the goal to simply set up our one trick pony.
There are other ways around it.
The Dm uses mobs that cannot be flanked or fight in such a way that flanking becomes difficult or punishing such as in a phalanx. It is possible to still do it,just less accessible or frequent.
You alter the rules slightly so that flanking either requires the use of a help action from the barbarian to feint your access to it or it is not a guaranteed flank, base it off of a %. The mob in question gets a chance to ignore flanking/be more focused on you instead of the barbarian etc. Arguably in a situation where fighting two at once you would still have a priority after all and a skilled combatant may be able to make that choice.. Who to give up advantage to?
Alternatively you look at the rewards for flanking. Ultimately its a good rule to have and as someone else pointed out, the enemies can use it too. Perhaps you lower the damage bonus or simply refund the ability in place of another combat trick.
Just a few ideas. Personally I prefer the DM finding creative ways of using tactics/enemy abilities to minimise the impact of the party tricks. It makes it more challenging, forces alternative strategies and makes it more rewarding when it pays off. It just requires a DM that can think through all of the tools available. Not easy and time consuming!
Dipping from 3e and 4e is a great way to implement things that aren't otherwise standardized in the game. For example, use the previous editions flanking method and give a +2 to the attack roll. It's still strong enough to improve your chance to hit (by ~10%), but not as strong as doubling your chance to hit (and has the added bonus of not causing any increase to critical chance, unlike advantage), and doesn't cause the cancellation of disadvantage.
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
I just thought about changing a bit the rule. I still did not have problems with flanking on my table, but this would be something I'd do to try to fix things. It could undermine the help action, but there's the conditional of being in the right position.
When you attack a flanked creature, you can use help as a bonus action, giving advantage to one ally, that is also flanking that creature, on their first attack against it.
I just thought about changing a bit the rule. I still did not have problems with flanking on my table, but this would be something I'd do to try to fix things. It could undermine the help action, but there's the conditional of being in the right position.
When you attack a flanked creature, you can use help as a bonus action, giving advantage to one ally, that is also flanking that creature, on their first attack against it.
I like this method as well. It makes a lot of sense RP-wise as well. After stabbing your foe that you are flanking you taunt the enemy forcing it to focus on you rather than your helped target (plus it will get PCs to start using the damn Help action, which would be nice if they remembered about it).
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
None of my players think about giving away their action to use help. It is like trading two regular attacks for one single, a bit better, attack. I can't say if they are being selfish, or optimizing actions, since everyone wants the final blow.
The reason why I have chosen not to use the optional Flanking rule is because moving within an enemy's threatened area no longer provokes attacks of opportunity. This allows players to effortlessly get flanking. In 3.5 it was a trade off sometimes if the player was willing to take the attack of opportunity to get into the flanking position. Giving advantage so easily was something I did not want to grant.
The reason why I have chosen not to use the optional Flanking rule is because moving within an enemy's threatened area no longer provokes attacks of opportunity. This allows players to effortlessly get flanking. In 3.5 it was a trade off sometimes if the player was willing to take the attack of opportunity to get into the flanking position. Giving advantage so easily was something I did not want to grant.
Yeah, I just house ruled that to be like other editions where if they leave a space you threaten. It made literally no sense to be able to just run around an enemy without causing an attack. I mean, they already took out spell casting as a cause for opportunity attacks. It seems silly to remove ANOTHER cause of it.
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
The reason why I have chosen not to use the optional Flanking rule is because moving within an enemy's threatened area no longer provokes attacks of opportunity. This allows players to effortlessly get flanking. In 3.5 it was a trade off sometimes if the player was willing to take the attack of opportunity to get into the flanking position. Giving advantage so easily was something I did not want to grant.
Yeah, I just house ruled that to be like other editions where if they leave a space you threaten. It made literally no sense to be able to just run around an enemy without causing an attack. I mean, they already took out spell casting as a cause for opportunity attacks. It seems silly to remove ANOTHER cause of it.
With the removal of the ability to Tumble to avoid the attack of opportunity I chose to just not use the optional flanking rule. I wanted my group to experience 5e for the first time for exactly what it is. In the future we may decide to use the flanking optional rule but we are trying it out as is.
My first 5e campaign used the optional Flanking rule because I really liked what it did in combat for prior editions.
After playing through that I stopped using it in the future campaigns. I found that the end result of having Flanking as an optional rule was that it stepped on the abilities of specific classes AND created a tactical imperative for almost everyone on the battlefield to rush into a flank position. It wasn't the sort of game I wanted to run. I wanted other combat options to be as viable.
That said, it's really a matter of game style. It can work really well for groups that want to embrace it, and the DM can easily adapt (monsters flank too, etc.).
The one key thing for me, proven over the course of four games, is that Flanking isn't 'missing' in the core rules of 5e. Playing without it does not diminish melee combat at all. That makes it nice as an option vs. a 'fix' to an oversight.
Thanks for the feedback guys, it's been really great reading valuable comments here. And also noticing that other people felt the same way as we did.
I have spent most of my time playing D&D over the last 25 years as a DM, so I felt really bad for our DM in the current campaign. He went to great extents to balance combat and added some really creative and challenging options to gameplay, but when all players started feeling comfortable in their own roles, things got overpowered quickly.
Also, I think it is important to reinforce that flanking in 5e is an optional rule. We tried it with the current group, it just didn't work fine. But I have DM'ed 5e games for unexperienced players, including people with absolutely zero experience in RPG at all, and with those cases, it did work. In the end yes, it is up to the DM to choose how to keep the game flowing well and picking optional rules and even house rules as he or she sees fit.
As the DM in the group in question I faced a bit of a pickle trying to figure out combat situations with the flanking rule:
1st scenario: I calculated encounters for the characters with a large number of enemies with low CR to get better tactical positioning, the sorcerer answered it with fireball, low CR, low HP.
2nd scenario: I calculated encounter for the characters with fewer enemies with higher CR to survive the crowd control, the Barbarian, Paladin and Druid of the Moon flanked the enemies and destroyed them, not to mention the damned Ranger of the Hunter Conclave with favorite enemy humanoid and the giant slayer trait that would make short work of pretty much everything that still breathed, and to be sure he used Mark and transferred it to a surviving enemy.
3rd scenario: using the flank rule I used the Hitting Cover rule, so the sorcerer and the ranger got spell sniper and sharpshooter feats.
We decided to not use the flanking rule any more and it has worked.
As an added comment, since we play in Eberron, the world of Artificers and House Cannith I am a lot liberal with magic items, that has contributed to my CR calculating problems.
Great discussion here. My party that I DM for loves flanking, but I agree that there's basically no risk for great reward. In 3.5 and 4, the A-Op mechanics made it a risk to get flanking, or at least time-consuming if you were going to 5-foot-step your way there. In 5e there is no reason not to get flanking every combat. My current campaign has a monk and a barb, and all they do is flank, every combat.
I've been swayed by this discussion, but now how to implement a change without seeming like I'm just randomly deciding to swing the nerf bat...
I've been swayed by this discussion, but now how to implement a change without seeming like I'm just randomly deciding to swing the nerf bat...
Perhaps show them this discussion and the information that's lead you to this conclusion.
While it allows the monk and barbarian to shine even brighter than those classes already do, it's actually diminishing the other characters. That realization is really what took me over the hump. "They do it every combat!" gets a No-big-deal response from me. "The Rogue can't keep up even with Sneak Attack" does get a response. It's a neat and clear change in the mechanics of the game to use flanking in 5e.
If your players are open to discussion and understanding how it does change the game it could be a healthy and simple conversation!
I've been swayed by this discussion, but now how to implement a change without seeming like I'm just randomly deciding to swing the nerf bat...
Perhaps show them this discussion and the information that's lead you to this conclusion.
While it allows the monk and barbarian to shine even brighter than those classes already do, it's actually diminishing the other characters. That realization is really what took me over the hump. "They do it every combat!" gets a No-big-deal response from me. "The Rogue can't keep up even with Sneak Attack" does get a response. It's a neat and clear change in the mechanics of the game to use flanking in 5e.
If your players are open to discussion and understanding how it does change the game it could be a healthy and simple conversation!
What kinds of monster players do you have that they aren't flanking with the rogue literally every time?
Using the flanking rules, that gives a 200% increase on crit chance for a sneak attack which means MOAR D6S!
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
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Howdy folks. My group is currently enjoying a mixed campaign of Eberron (homebrewed by the DM to 5e.) and Curse of Strahd. When combat started we discussed that using the optional rule for Flanking wouldn't be an issue, until it became one. I'll explain:
Our initial group setup was composed by a Paladin (me), Sorcerer, Ranger and Druid. Having only one melee combatant, with the occasional inclusion of our druid in animal shape, flanking didn't have an actual impact in combat. But by reaching level 4, my paladin acquired the "Great Weapon Master" feat, which allows me to take a -5 penalty on attacks to add +10 to damage. Oh, I use a Greataxe, by the way, with the Great Weapon Fighting paladin build. When our group received another player, a barbarian, things started to look weird.
Almost every single combat I would manage to flank enemies and roll with advantage, which would in turn allow me to take the Great Weapon Master penalty to deal extra damage. Add to that the paladin's Divine Smite ability, which you may choose to use after checking if your attack successfully hit. Rolling 1d12+15, +2d8 every single turn... That was completely ridiculous. After reaching level 9, our group decided to consult the DM to stop using the Flanking optional rule, as he started having trouble calculating the encounters' CRs. Since then I feel combat has been leveled and balanced.
Has anyone else experienced issues with the Flanking rules? Please share your thoughts. :)
Gotta agree with the groups decision there, the optional flanking rules allow combatants to have advantage on attack rolls way too easily which undermines Barbarians and Samurai who have chunks of their abilities made invalid by positioning alone.
Keep in mind that if you play with flanking rules, the NPCs can flank too.
At least from the book Advantage seemed like it was supposed to be hard to get.
Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. I will protect those who cannot protect themselves, I will protect even those I hate so long as it is right.
The optional flanking rule would be fine - if not for all the features built into the game that it steps all over the toes of because they exist only to provide Advantage, and "Stand over there" is a lower cost to pay to gain Advantage.
No barbarian is going to choose to use their Reckless Attack feature unless they are fighting alone (and then they still might not because of its downside).
No one is going to spend an action on the Help action when they can spend a few feet of movement to gain the same effect.
And so on, with numerous other bits of the standard game.
I think that the real issue in scenarios like this is that cr is difficult if this really outpaces the the rest of the group. I've been in similar situations where it has always been the goal to simply set up our one trick pony.
There are other ways around it.
The Dm uses mobs that cannot be flanked or fight in such a way that flanking becomes difficult or punishing such as in a phalanx. It is possible to still do it,just less accessible or frequent.
You alter the rules slightly so that flanking either requires the use of a help action from the barbarian to feint your access to it or it is not a guaranteed flank, base it off of a %. The mob in question gets a chance to ignore flanking/be more focused on you instead of the barbarian etc. Arguably in a situation where fighting two at once you would still have a priority after all and a skilled combatant may be able to make that choice.. Who to give up advantage to?
Alternatively you look at the rewards for flanking. Ultimately its a good rule to have and as someone else pointed out, the enemies can use it too. Perhaps you lower the damage bonus or simply refund the ability in place of another combat trick.
Just a few ideas. Personally I prefer the DM finding creative ways of using tactics/enemy abilities to minimise the impact of the party tricks. It makes it more challenging, forces alternative strategies and makes it more rewarding when it pays off. It just requires a DM that can think through all of the tools available. Not easy and time consuming!
Dipping from 3e and 4e is a great way to implement things that aren't otherwise standardized in the game. For example, use the previous editions flanking method and give a +2 to the attack roll. It's still strong enough to improve your chance to hit (by ~10%), but not as strong as doubling your chance to hit (and has the added bonus of not causing any increase to critical chance, unlike advantage), and doesn't cause the cancellation of disadvantage.
Click Here to Download my Lancer Class w/ Dragoon and Legionnaire Archetypes via DM's Guild - Pay What You Want
Click Here to Download the Mind Flayer: Thoon Hulk converted from 4e via DM's Guild
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
I just thought about changing a bit the rule. I still did not have problems with flanking on my table, but this would be something I'd do to try to fix things. It could undermine the help action, but there's the conditional of being in the right position.
When you attack a flanked creature, you can use help as a bonus action, giving advantage to one ally, that is also flanking that creature, on their first attack against it.
Click Here to Download my Lancer Class w/ Dragoon and Legionnaire Archetypes via DM's Guild - Pay What You Want
Click Here to Download the Mind Flayer: Thoon Hulk converted from 4e via DM's Guild
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
None of my players think about giving away their action to use help. It is like trading two regular attacks for one single, a bit better, attack. I can't say if they are being selfish, or optimizing actions, since everyone wants the final blow.
The help action can be useful not only for attack rolls but also for check rolls. Also, allied NPCs or summoned creatures can use help action.
The reason why I have chosen not to use the optional Flanking rule is because moving within an enemy's threatened area no longer provokes attacks of opportunity. This allows players to effortlessly get flanking. In 3.5 it was a trade off sometimes if the player was willing to take the attack of opportunity to get into the flanking position. Giving advantage so easily was something I did not want to grant.
Click Here to Download my Lancer Class w/ Dragoon and Legionnaire Archetypes via DM's Guild - Pay What You Want
Click Here to Download the Mind Flayer: Thoon Hulk converted from 4e via DM's Guild
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
My first 5e campaign used the optional Flanking rule because I really liked what it did in combat for prior editions.
After playing through that I stopped using it in the future campaigns. I found that the end result of having Flanking as an optional rule was that it stepped on the abilities of specific classes AND created a tactical imperative for almost everyone on the battlefield to rush into a flank position. It wasn't the sort of game I wanted to run. I wanted other combat options to be as viable.
That said, it's really a matter of game style. It can work really well for groups that want to embrace it, and the DM can easily adapt (monsters flank too, etc.).
The one key thing for me, proven over the course of four games, is that Flanking isn't 'missing' in the core rules of 5e. Playing without it does not diminish melee combat at all. That makes it nice as an option vs. a 'fix' to an oversight.
View my StartPlaying.Games profile to see my games!
Thanks for the feedback guys, it's been really great reading valuable comments here. And also noticing that other people felt the same way as we did.
I have spent most of my time playing D&D over the last 25 years as a DM, so I felt really bad for our DM in the current campaign. He went to great extents to balance combat and added some really creative and challenging options to gameplay, but when all players started feeling comfortable in their own roles, things got overpowered quickly.
Also, I think it is important to reinforce that flanking in 5e is an optional rule. We tried it with the current group, it just didn't work fine. But I have DM'ed 5e games for unexperienced players, including people with absolutely zero experience in RPG at all, and with those cases, it did work. In the end yes, it is up to the DM to choose how to keep the game flowing well and picking optional rules and even house rules as he or she sees fit.
As the DM in the group in question I faced a bit of a pickle trying to figure out combat situations with the flanking rule:
1st scenario: I calculated encounters for the characters with a large number of enemies with low CR to get better tactical positioning, the sorcerer answered it with fireball, low CR, low HP.
2nd scenario: I calculated encounter for the characters with fewer enemies with higher CR to survive the crowd control, the Barbarian, Paladin and Druid of the Moon flanked the enemies and destroyed them, not to mention the damned Ranger of the Hunter Conclave with favorite enemy humanoid and the giant slayer trait that would make short work of pretty much everything that still breathed, and to be sure he used Mark and transferred it to a surviving enemy.
3rd scenario: using the flank rule I used the Hitting Cover rule, so the sorcerer and the ranger got spell sniper and sharpshooter feats.
We decided to not use the flanking rule any more and it has worked.
As an added comment, since we play in Eberron, the world of Artificers and House Cannith I am a lot liberal with magic items, that has contributed to my CR calculating problems.
Check out the many mes here!
Great discussion here. My party that I DM for loves flanking, but I agree that there's basically no risk for great reward. In 3.5 and 4, the A-Op mechanics made it a risk to get flanking, or at least time-consuming if you were going to 5-foot-step your way there. In 5e there is no reason not to get flanking every combat. My current campaign has a monk and a barb, and all they do is flank, every combat.
I've been swayed by this discussion, but now how to implement a change without seeming like I'm just randomly deciding to swing the nerf bat...
While it allows the monk and barbarian to shine even brighter than those classes already do, it's actually diminishing the other characters. That realization is really what took me over the hump. "They do it every combat!" gets a No-big-deal response from me. "The Rogue can't keep up even with Sneak Attack" does get a response. It's a neat and clear change in the mechanics of the game to use flanking in 5e.
View my StartPlaying.Games profile to see my games!
Using the flanking rules, that gives a 200% increase on crit chance for a sneak attack which means MOAR D6S!
Click Here to Download my Lancer Class w/ Dragoon and Legionnaire Archetypes via DM's Guild - Pay What You Want
Click Here to Download the Mind Flayer: Thoon Hulk converted from 4e via DM's Guild
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.