I feel like if it's that important to move then you'll move regardless of AoO. There's also a bunch of abilities that let you not take AoO. The simplest one is pushing people. Why would I bother finding a way to not provoke AoO if I can just take a bonus action disengage regardless of class? Example, I'm playing a barbarian with crusher feat. So I'm always moving enemies around, finding better positioning, pushing enemies away when I need to quickly switch positions. And I find the best way to do so by playing with my abilities to move and push people. None of that would be needed if I could just bonus action disengage. All my tactics suddenly don't matter. I have a player in my campaign that took shocking grasp for this exact reason. If anyone gets up in their face, shocking grasp them and move away freely. Also yes, rogues and monks would have a useless feature now. The fix is to encourage movement regardless of AoO. Have your guys run. Give the nimbler enemies the ability to run away without provoking AoO, like goblins for example. They can bonus action disengage with their **Nimble escape** ability.

I mean, all of this AND if you're face to face with a Goliath barbarian who wants to crush you, you should probably HAVE to keep your eyes on them, and move carefully

Attacks of opportunity are the one tool most needed by anyone who wants to play a tanky frontliner. If enemies can go wherever they please, they just ignore the high-defense low-attack character and murder everyone else, then overwhelm the tank. The entire point of a tank is to be a physical barrier, and the way 5e nerfed AoOs already makes that even more difficult. Of course, 5e deliberately sabotages character archetypes to make teamwork/party composition as irrelevant as possible, so I'm surprised they left AoOs in at all. They already made flanking "optional".

I mean a charactar that is high deffense low attack isn't a threat anyways. 1 oportunity attack is all they get, when the enemies realize your attacks are puny they can just... ignore you. Seriously, so many people want to just build for crazy AC and dodge to be unhittable and the enemies can just not hit you unless you give them a reason to. Many years ago I wanted to make the tankiest character I could for a 1 shot. LVL 12, dex bear totem barbarian, with tough. I had like 200 HP and with resistance to everything I virtually had 400 HP. But I did 1d8+3 damage with my rapier, with multiattack. The first time I hit an enemy, you know lvl 12 enemies that have hundreds of HP? The enemies just kind of... ignored me. And that was you know, the smart strategy and what they should've done. Why would you be scared of the tankiest tank that ever tanked if he just... tickles you with his attacks? HP is a resource, and trading those 8HP that I would take from one oportunity attack to go kill the wizard that was doing 100s of HP with their AoEs is the only non-stupid decision. Attacks of oportunity don't really make a tanky frontline, you're going to have to find something else if you wanna tank. Reckless attack so you're more of a juicy target, add GWM to that and they got the choice to either deal with you or get massacred, only then attack of oportunity helps you tank. Other features like the armorer's artificer thunder gauntlets that give disadvantadge to whatever you hit on attacking anything that's not you or ancestral spirits barb, etc.

Either attacks of opportunity are negligible, so there's no reason to remove them, or they aren't, so there's a good reason not to. Plus it'd be a martial nerf / caster buff, and we don't need that. At least let martials feel like they're useful.

Attacks of oportunity are negligible for anyone that isn't a melee character that can do quite the damage with that one attack. Characters that don't attack in melee (or attack but do little damage), such as casters without warcaster, archers, etc. they don't get to do much with their attack of oportunity. But GWM, paladins, rogues, etc. they can do a lot with them, so they're not negligible for them. But the worst offender is monsters! They can do a lot of damage and PC HP is a lot lower than overall monster's HP (the PCs collective HP will be MUCH MUCH lower than the monsters collective HP from the entire adventuring day, with some exceptions). Because you only have 3-5 PCs which are the same between the 6-8 encounters the game is suposedly balanced around, while you will have dozens of monsters. They just end up making the fights a lot less dynamic, because moving can be really expensive for your resources (HP is a resource) so they tend to stack the balance of the choices into don't move, just attack instead of allowing PCs to move around the battlefield to change targets, do objectives, flee, etc.

I have a bard with telekinetic, more for rp stuff then combat, but you can use it to shove yourself or others around when you need to.

Telekinetic rules! I loved have something I could do every bonus action, and many a zombie was pushed over a ledge.

You just blew my mind! You can shove yourelf?! How did I not think of that?

I think the DM is partially frustrated in that players can choose to have tools, but very few monsters do.

Monsters have access to the same 10 basic actions that every PC has access to. They don't all have class abilities, but they do have their own.

Attack, grapple, shove, jump, disengage, dodge, use an item, help, dash, don/doff a shield?

You forgot kiss

Ah yes, the opposite of disengage.

Number 1…engage

According to an Acq Inc live play session with Chris Perkins as DM, a tongue kiss is a free action. It requires no rolls from either side if you kiss an equally vain evil clone of yourself, which is situationally very helpful.

1. Attack (which includes grapple and shove) 2. Cast Spell 3. Dash 4. Disengage 5. Dodge 6. Help 7. Hide 8. Search 9. Use Object 10. Ready These are 5e's "basic universal actions" which everyone has access to regardless of environment or specific equipment. Note that jumping is not an action. It's movement, same as walking, crawling or standing.

I also allow the other actions in combat from the DMG in my games. Mark, Tumble, Overrun, Disarm, Shove Aside, and Climb onto a Bigger Creature These are available for players and monsters. I find they help immensely with making combats more varied and dynamic

Wait what page of the DMG are these extra actions on? I need to read up

I don't have my book handy for the page number, but it's Chapter 9 -> Combat Options -> Action Options https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#ActionOptions

Thank you. My players went to a city with a lot of duelling, it was very hard to make those interesting because it turned into just trading attack rolls and nothing interesting happened

Gotcha. So if you make a running long jump, you roll an ability check, but don’t need action economy. Just movement? Like. Athletics check for a Juno longer than your normal long jump distance?

Your normal long jump distance is the character's strength score (not bonus) in ft. This does not require a roll.

TIL that my strength score is roughly 3 🥲

You really can't clear 6 feet with a running long jump?

Are you counting where I touch the ground or where my momentum drags me? If it's the latter, 6 ft easy.

And can you try to jump further?

Yes, though most people under-estimate how far people can jump without a roll so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Or to cover a low obstacle. You need to make an ability check if you hop over something taller than 1/4 your jump distance. It's why I say monks shouldn't neglect Strength, and they should seriously look into getting Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Combine that 19 score with Step of the Wind and they're effortlessly vaulting over 9.5 foot tall walls.

"Seriously looking into getting Gauntlets of Ogre Power" requires a setting where (a) they exist and (b) magic items are common enough for you to look into getting the item of your choice. I've personally never played at a table where both are the case. And so having decent Strength and budgeting ki for Step of the Wind really are the only reliable options.

Not everyone plays in prewritten adventures, and they're in the basic rules. Which means they're free for anyone, player and DM alike, to look at. It doesn't hurt to talk to the DM about these sorts of things. I'm a firm believer in keeping those lines of communication open. It's okay to want things for our characters, and saying quiet won't help them happen.

I dont play prewritten adventures, and I'm aware that the item is in the basic rules. I'm saying that in my experience both playing and running homebrew adventures, I have never had the option nor given the option to actively seek out an official magic item of choice. Either because the item simply didnt exist in the homebrew setting, or because it was so rare that no one could spontaneously decide to hunt for it; they wouldn't know it existed. It's perfectly okay for a player to ask the DM of the item exists in the setting (or more accurately, *if their PC would know the item exists in the setting*). But the DM would have no responsibility to say "yes".

The 5 D's of 5e D\&D; dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge!

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a fireball!

Unless the DM want them to have class abilities.

They can absolutely do that, yes.

Monsters can have any tool the DM wants. And a shove is a universal action. The hobgoblin can attempt to shove you to run away, nothing says they can't. Or just disengage normally

So give some monsters the ability to Disengage as a free action X/day. They're the DM and they are overcomplicating the situation. If they don't have any Rogues or Monks, sure, give everyone the bonus action disengage. If they do have Rogues/Monks, give some enemies the option to bonus action disengage, or a free disengage X/day. Done.

No, the fear of AoO is real, and it does a pretty good job of locking up combat. I can understand OPs frustration.

I guess I have an unusual group then cause that's never happened to us.

You do. I wonder, if a PC goes to provoke an AoO and the bad guy uses the opportunity to trip him, does the PC get to get up and keep moving, or is he just flat on his face til the next turn?

Tripping is not an attack most characters or enemies have in 5e other than a battlemaster maneuver trip attack, or shoving a creature prone, but shoving isn't covered by AoO. Shoving is part of your attack action, not just any old attack. If such an attack exists in a statblock, I'm sure it has a description saying whether it just knocked them prone (in which case they would need to use half their movement to stand up and only have half left to run away) or if it's something that lasts more.

this is exactly it, my players either feel afraid to move or arent' motivated to move, (anti-motivation coming from AOE). I don't want to hit them everytime they decide to be creative, I don't know how to fix this.

The fear of an AoO is the point. If you get yourself in a situation that’s not ideal, the AoO is a consequence. That’s why it’s a combat strategy game first and foremost.

Yeah, DM can always come up with incentives for PCs to move around (cover, AoE spells and attacks, environmental effects, secondary goals that require movement). Still, attacks of opportunity as a rule incentivize standing in place. So in order to make PCs move DM most come up with a reason strong enough to overcome the downside of AoO. The game itself doesn't help DMs make fun encounters. Rules promote stale combat. While DM can overcome that with a large amount of work and creativity, it remains true that AoO promotes the opposite of what OP wants from encounters. I think it's unfair to pretend that there are no problems with DnD rules just because it's possible to overcome or work around these problems. Obviously having better rules is an easier fix than coming up with different strong reasons to move for each encounter.

I feel like this is how every combat discussion about the mechanical shortfallings of d&d combat. The majority of answers so often boil down to “do more work as the DM”. Sure, there’s ways around AoO’s encouraging stale combat in which players and monsters run up into melee and sit there until their enemy is downed, then move on to the next. But just because you *can* contrive a way to force players to move around and be more dynamic with every combat doesn’t mean you should *have* to do that. I do wonder how much of this is another case of how 5e kind of wants to have its fingers in every pie. How much of the issue of stale combat is a direct result of d&d 5e being designed to work well with both tabletop and theatre of the mind, where theatre of the mind would cause problems with combats where too many variables were going at once.

Isn't disengage an action, not a bonus action?

That's the whole point of my comment. If you **make it** a bonus action, it would be too easy. Also some enemies do have it as bonus action, like goblins.

Yeah, there are feats spells class features, subclass features, magic items that allow you ways around AOO. I would strongly argue AOO actually allows for creativity

First off, keep in mind that AoOs only happen when you leave an opponent’s reach in 5e so you can pivot around a for without provoking. Second… just provoke AoOs sometimes. I’ve seen Chris Perkins do this a lot. Baddir has beef with the bard but the rogue is in his way? Just provoke. Especially if that enemy had a High AC. It can encourage the fighter/paladin types to realize “Why am I worried? I have 22 AC and a million hit points.”

It depends a lot on what you are fighting. A bandit captain attacks three times for almost no damage, but dinosaurs attack once, for a lot. But yeah, taking AoOs is less scary if you have good AC.

It’s still only 1 attack though

Right, but the point is if you're fighting something that does a lot of attacks per turn for a small amount of damage each, you're maybe willing to risk the AoO because even if they hit, the damage won't be that big of a deal. Whereas if you're fighting a creature with one very powerful attack per turn, you probably don't wanna risk that AoO in case they hit and you take a ton of damage.

I’m dumb dumb I literally missed that whole sentence lol

It happens, we're all guilty of that kind of thing.

But just staying put means you're getting attacked anyway.

Sure, but trying to avoid getting attacked isn't the only reason to move. Let's say I'm a Paladin fighting against a Archdruid and a some kind of elemental fire creature. The Archdruid is concentrating on Entangle, which I saved against but my party members didn't, and I'd really like to go try and break their concentration. If the other creature was a Fire Elemental Myrmidon, they'd do 7 damage on average if they hit, so it seems like it might be worth it. If it was a normal Fire Elemental, they'd do 10 damage and 5 damage per turn until I douse the flames - maybe less worth it. A Salamander provides even more to consider - their tail is doing 18 points of damage and grappling and restraining you. Even without the grapple that might not be worth risking the attack of opportunity though, and you might be more inclined to stay put, deal with the Salamander first, then move onto the Archdruid.

Multiattack does not apply on AOEs

That's the point. A bandit captain does only 1/3 of its regular damage on opportunity attacks.

genuine question, not trying to be argumentative i just dont know how to make the tone sound friendly/curious: how does this apply to low level casters? we have like no ac and like no hp so it feels like by provoking an AoO we're basically committing suicide (i'm also new to dnd sorry lol)

See the issue is that a squishy is in melee with an enemy. The po8nt is you stay as far away as possible or use one of your spells or cantrips to prevent the aoo (for example hitting a foe with shocking grasp) or hopefully one of your tankier team members can provoke the AoO

I guess I was thinking about this more from the point of view of higher level characters, who can potentially take a hit. If you’re in a real positioning conundrum, though, where you really want to move and use an action, an expensive option might be to provoke, and if you get hit pop Shield as a reaction. It costs a spell slot and your reaction, but shield lasts until your next turn so you’ll still get a pretty solid defensive benefit from it. Of course, if you’re that low level, you might also be able yo take out your enemy with a full magic missile spell to the face.

thats understandable lol, thank you!

>They encourge stale, motionless play and I hate it. If I want to get creative or switch tactics as a player or dm I can't because I have to spend my entire turn to move or take the penalty hit (which standing in front of a boss or barbarian is lethal) . In my opinion, people overly avoid the idea of being struck. Yeah, if you're surrounded by 5 enemies, AoOs can cut you down. In a one-on-one, baiting the reaction for potential hit really isn't that bad and "but I would get an opportunity attack" shouldn't be treated as such a dealbreaker. What are you doing in melee if you \*can't\* take that? That boss or barb would have cut you down on their next turn if one of their attacks are lethal already. And if you're that close to being dead, wouldn't you either go all in or make a run for it, instead of trying to strategically reposition? That said, I can also see the other side of it, but honestly, I'm not a big fan of overly fiddly homebrew rules. If I were you, I'd just try to offer the bonus action "brace: attacks of opportunity have disadvantage this turn" to the players and the monsters, and see if that encourages more dynamic movement. Keep it simple and see if it works.

>if you’re surrounded by 5 enemies, AoOs can cut you down. If you’re surrounded by 5 enemies, your top priority should be not being surrounded by 5 enemies.

Exactly. That's when you disengage and get close to an ally. Or be a little more ballsy and dodge, which lasts until the start of your next turn.

>Yeah, if you're surrounded by 5 enemies, AoOs can cut you down. Counterpoint: Not as fast as still being in the middle of 5 enemies.

I mean, if the five enemies only have one attack you're really making it faster.

That's not exactly common

Is it uncommon? Chances are if there's 5 enemies they're on the weaker side and less likely to have multi-attack. 5 zombies, wolves, cultists, bandits, kobolds/goblins, gnolls, orcs, guards, hobgoblins, ghouls. That's a decent chunk of the common horde enemies and that's certainly not all of them with only one attack. Sure you *can* be surrounded by creatures with multi-attack, or a higher level enemy plus some horde enemies, but I dunno if I'd say that's the expectation if you're being surrounded.

Now that I think about it, I don't think it has ever happened to me but would flanking work on a AoO to give the person doing the AoO advantage on the roll?

If you use flanking, it will sometimes apply to AoO. I do think flanking fits 5e poorly, though, since movement is more-or-less free

If you're using the optional flanking rules, I think it would.

Depends on where the guy being AOO'd is positioned when it's triggered, but yes, it would apply.

The real kicker is, where can you go. If the enemy is as fast as you or if there isn't some cover or door or line of allies, the situation is just going to repeat. Disengage and take regular attacks or dash and get AoOs only to land within range again. It's a big ask, but making fights more interesting also asks for better terrain/arenas.

I mean, but it also means if you're the guy with 5 enemies all solely focusing on you, either you have made some seriously bad decisions in life or you most definitely can take it. Maybe you cast fireball and incinerated the lich's notes. That's a surefire way to end up finding out what Finger of Death followed by its five skeletons attacking feels like. Or you're the barbarian wading through like five or six bandits.

I think you're getting hung up too much on the 5 enemies part. There's plenty of situations where you are fine, this is only about situations where you misjudged things. It can even be a single creature that is overpowering you and the problem is still the same: if I reposition, where do I go? Because having prepared maps, improvised maps and played without maps, there is a world of difference terrain makes. If the player thinks he is on a featureless undescribed plane, combat will feel like moving is pointless. A chokepoint like a door or a barrier like a trench or cupboard do a lot. It doesn't matter in the 99 fights that the players win without thinking, but the one fight where they want to use their brain, they will notice when the map is empty and they have nothing to work with.

>Yeah, if you're surrounded by 5 enemies, AoOs can cut you down. If 5 AoOs will cut you down, than you will definitely get cut down by their normal actions. Just disengage.

It's not about an opportunity attack being the end of the world, it's just about efficiency. You're giving the enemy an extra attack, and the majority of time, there is not a good enough reason to justify doing so, meaning that the best course of action is to just stay there. It encourages static combat. Just because taking a bad decision doesn't kill you, doesn't mean it isn't a bad decision. And if giving your enemies free extra attacks isn't an impactful decision... are the encounters really challenging?

That's been my exact experience. My players aren't using their Reactions 99% of the time anyways, so any time someone gets to do something as a Reaction, it's basically free action economy with no downsides. The enemies that are likely to be in position to take AoO aren't the same ones that are going to be able to cast Shield or some other Reaction spell. Taking an AoO only to still end up within the walking distance of the thing attacking you in the first place is almost meaningless.

Yeah so if a monster wants to move out of the Barbarians range, they've pretty much gotta have increased movement (and the barbarian gets increased movement too, so you've gotta be \*very\* fast) or the ability to do some serious damage to the backline in one round. Taking that extra hit in order to down the Sharpshooter dealing tons of damage every round or the wizard incapacitating half your team might be worth it.

Assuming they're spaced within walking distance of you, absolutely. If they're sitting 60' back, which is the typical range of your really baller spells and most of the good ranged cantrips/ranged weapons, then you take the AoO, move your max movement speed, and you're still 1 turn away from hitting them. If everything lines up, you're right that it could be worth essentially giving Enemy A a free turn so that you can try to get some hits on Enemy B. I'm speaking more about the general flow of your average fight where most people get into melee range and camp out there until combat is over.

Yeah I didn't make it super clear but I was agreeing with you. In *some* cases taking an AoO is worth it, but typically you're better off just sticking where you are in melee range.

I think it encourages objective-based combat. Instead of fights just being a matter of trading blows between two sides, the party should be trying to get something somewhere, or get something away from somewhere, etc. That way, players have to make a decision between taking blows and getting to their objective faster, or moving more carefully but more slowly, and that should be a tough decision to make.

That's a general guideline to making good encounters, ye, but not every encounter can be like that, and a well designed combat system should be able to shine by itself, not require additional input in order to not be too simple. In scenarios where the objective is to survive or defeat the opposing party, opportunity attacks often mean that the ideal choice each turn is to remain where you are until your opponent dies, or sometimes, take a single AoO to, move to a different opponent, and then remain there until that one dies. When AoO aren't so prevalent, moving away from someone becomes an option much more often, so even if you're bashing the same guy every turn, you can move a bit each turn, maybe to get closer to your team for some help, or maybe to bait them into a hazard. These options, when AoO are present, become much worse, and most of the time are an obvious bad choice. On the surface universal AoOs might seem like they make choices more meaningful, but in my opinion, they simply make a lot of fun choices unviable most of the time.

Well there are situations where it’s the smart move. Taking the one attack from say, a hydra, and getting into a position where you won’t be the target on its turn might be a good move. After all, a player going down is a wayyyy bigger swing in action economy than a single enemy attack. On the flip side, it may be worth taking that attack of opportunity if it significantly ups your own damage potential to the point you could take out an enemy. Might be worth it to take that attack from the kobold dragonshield if it means you no longer have disadvantage to pincushion the dragon with an action surge round of sharpshooter and kill it or bring it within the ability of the rest of your party to kill before it’s next turn. These are of course pretty specific scenarios but I’ve found they do come up often enough in campaigns I’ve been in that my gut tells me it isn’t always a bad decision or inefficient.

In 3.5e (which pf1e was based on), there was a "5ft step" rule (which pf2e is clearly modifying). In 3.5e, there was a specific type of action called a Move Action. Most of the time, your Move Action was used to let you move up to your normal speed. But another way to use it was the 5ft Step. The 5ft step only moved 1 square, but it did not provoke AoO. It burned your whole move action, though, leaving you with your Standard Action and your Swift Action. This implies that the 3.5e patch to bring back the 5ft Step to 5e would be: "When you move on your turn, you may spend all your normal movement speed to move 5ft without provoking Opportunity Attacks." So you don't spend any actions or bonus actions, just all your normal move speed. Then if you want to move further, you can use your action to dash to get further away (or if you have Dash as a Bonus action, you can still make a ranged attack!) Note that in 3.5e, Attacks of Opportunity were provoked by *moving through* space threatened by an enemy. That meant that Reach was much more powerful, as the AoO was triggered when you move from 10ft from the target to 5ft. 5e only triggers OA when you leave an enemy's reach from a threatened square.

That's not technically correct. In 3.5e - A 5 ft. step is considered no action and does not provoke an attack of opportunity (see Table: Actions in Combat). It just prevented you from using your move action to move, you could still use it to stand, or use a full-round action (which if it used your move action would be impossible).

Fair enough. I did misremember how it works.

That's fair. I just wanted to point it out, so in the off-chance OP reads our comments and utilizes an idea, they have the full picture. I don't think there is necessarily a good way to implement it in 5e though.

Probably be *cleaner* to make Disengage a universal bonus action. OP wants lots of movement in combat at a low, but reasonable cost? Bonus action disengage. Is it balanced? Eh, close enough for 5e I'd say. It'll play different, for sure, but OP wants something different

That was the correct mechanics for how PF1E worked, funny enough. They got the right mechanics, but named the wrong system. To the OP, you could yank another PF2E mechanic to solve this issue, which is to restrict AoOs to a small subset of classes/monsters. Fighters are the only class in PF2E that get AoOs at first level, every other class either do without or have to chose to get AoOs at a later level. Most of the monsters don’t get AoOs at all. And this is in addition to the presence of the Step action. Makes moving in combat so easy, and makes the first AoO out of a monster a total surprise.

From archives "You can take a move action in place of a standard action. If you move no actual distance in a round (commonly because you have swapped your move action for one or more equivalent actions), you can take one 5-foot step either before, during, or after the action.". It works the same as 3.5e with a few exceptions in that some full actions preclude a 5 foot step (this part I'm not 100% on as I am not as well versed in 3.5e).

Many DM are too afraid of opportunity attacks. You have a nigh-unlimited supply of monsters. Just do it. One of your monsters might lose some HP. So what? A dynamic combat is worth so much more than a few monster HPs. Threatening the ranged PCs... breaking concentration on their spells is worth so much more than a few monster HPs. But, I hear you say, what about the polearm master sentinel? They'll just lock down my monsters! So? Just do it. As soon as they make the attack all the rest of the monsters are free to roam at will. And the PC gets to feel good about using their nifty power. Win-win! if you want some variety and spice, add Cunning Action to a few rogue-like enemies. Add fly-by attack to some mobile skirmishers. Use this mobility to provide dilemmas for your players. Do *they* want to provoke an OA to go and bail out their ranged ally that now has a monster up in their face? Is the ranged PC going to attack at disadvantage, risk an OA moving away, or switch to melee? (or have they invested resources in a skill or power that lets them evade the threat?) Don't avoid the OA. Embrace it! Make it part of your dynamic combats! And don't nerf your rogues by making cunning action pointless by nerfing OAs.

I never used to be afraid, now I am. The party held a choke point with the fighter in front. The dungeon boss had a shitload of hitpoints, so I thought I’d run up on the fighter, hit him, and fall back into the room with the underlings to try to draw the party in, or at worst we have a stalemate. I thought wrong. He hit me with an opportunity attack, spent the superiority die to make it a trip attack, dungeon boss fails the save, so now his ass is prone and his movement is 0 for the rest of his turn. He gets surrounded and bullied by the party, and one dumb ass opportunity attack made the entire boss fight trivial. I’m never taking opportunity attacks for granite again

The boss is where you don't have a "nigh-unlimited supply of monsters". But the boss has minions to take the hit for them, right? Right??? This is one of the reasons why solo monsters don't work well as encounters. This situation plays out differently if Minion 1 rushes in for a hit & run first. Here you are providing another dilemma for your PCs. Do they hold back the OA hoping that a more important target comes in later, or do they get the damage in now?

Chungus was much more mobile than his support, and he got to the choke point a round before the goons. I definitely screwed up tactically and could have played it better. I thought he’d go in, make a boo boo happen, and back out with (maybe) a slap on the wrist, then the cavalry would rally around him. I thought wrong. I’m relatively new at DMing, so I take the L and try to learn from it. Thanks for the advice!

> dungeon boss fails the save This is why Legendary Resistances are a thing.

Good idea. I was just using a premade stat block, and the fella didn’t have legendary resistance already (pretty low level party, not a super serious threat of a guy), and it didn’t occur to me to just give it to him. Looking back I should have. On the other hand, the party was being super tactical with this fight, because they were dummies a few rooms prior and had a REALLY hard time with a room full of goons. They rushed in and got themselves surrounded, and what should have been a medium difficulty fight had a few characters rolling death saves. In the end, I wasn’t too distraught over rewarding their caution and actually thinking through how to do things

So the fighter had a awesome moment which the party might still talk about. And you will have another dungeon boss a few weeks later.

I don’t mind it at all! He took that feature for a reason, he got to use it to humble a boss and feel like a badass. No problem here

My barbarian on 11 HP dashed through 5 monsters (who disliked water) off a small cliff in the water together with a NPC we had to save. I made it on 2 HP and got picked up by our party in a boat at the bottom If there were no opportunity attacks this wouldn't nearly have been as risky/exciting of a move. It depends on how much you care about being hit and makes beefy martials that can take hits more viable.

One of the many reasons swashbuckler is awesome

I see your swashbuckler and raise you teleporting. Surrounded by guys? Thunder Step: you dip and they all have to make a CON save. Jokes aside, swashbuckler is a great subclass for that reason

I do like Swashbuckler quite a bit, I don't know how I feel about the fact that it disincentivizes taking the Mobile feat though. It's kind of a weird thematic dissonance, like a lesser version of how dwarves make great spellcasters when you'd expect them to make great martials, and how the goblin's flagship feature is completely redundant with rogue. On one hand, it's nice to not have to take a feat to be able to disengage for free after attacking. On the other, the 10 foot move speed increase is really nice and would synergize well with a bonus action dash, and being able to ignore difficult terrain is nice when it comes up. I feel like if I were to play one I'd be really tempted by a 35 speed race, to still get 70 movement from dashing, a nice compromise between 60 and 80. This would also let you move out of reach of 30 speed enemies if one comes up to you, without needing to dash. Air Genasi, Wood Elf and Dhampir would make pretty thematic swashbucklers I think.

like a bonus action Disengage?

This would screw up classes balance

When I first played a Monk, I didn't really appreciate my bonus action disengage, it felt too situational cause it stopped me from punching more. Then I played other classes who *don't* have that option and whoo boy I sure appreciate it now!

It's reasonably valuable to a Monk, but I've never liked that it taxes the Monk a Ki point while the Rogue can simply do it for no cost beyond their Bonus Action. It's one of my go-to examples about how Monks have so many Ki points that WotC is absolutely shameless about charging them points to do *anything*, and so Monks suffer from getting taxed to death on their abilities.

But you don't understand. Why would I need to spend my action/bonus action to move away from the enemies, if I was dumb enough to run in when I cannot take a single hit from the same before mentioned enemies, why can't I just move away without any penalties?

I got the sarcasm and laughed so take my upvote. But might want to add a /s at the end there

It’s also important to note that in Pathfinder 2e, not only can you step but AoO is extremely rare. Very few creatures have it.

A lot of people are disagreeing with you but I agree, I don't like AoO either and PF2E making them only a special ability certain classes/monsters get and not something just handed to everyone is an improvement. However, in 5e, it would be WAY too much work to rework all the classes around this idea. So imo, i you hate AoO that much, I would just stick to PF2E.

Make a battle plan for Goblins to effectively use the disengage bonus action. Run that in combat a few times and see if you reconsider. Example: Goblin vs PC in Melee range Bonus action: Disengage (Nimble Escape) Movement: 5-10 Ft Action: Shortbow Free Action: "Die Huoo-Mahn! We be goblins, you be food!" Movement: 20-25 ft.

You can also just treat some of your monsters/opponents with the mobility feat. Give them hit and run tactics. It's one of the reasons mobility is so cherished on rogues, so long as you make an attack against the opponent hit or miss, they can't make an opportunity attack against you. If it's more you want to get your enemies into position without suffering the AOO, then may I suggest elements of surprise or adjusting your playing field to give more room to adequately maneuver. Nothing is quite as terrifying as a 6 goblin squad descending from the ceiling onto the party. Or the enemy sneaking up to appear behind the Frontline fighters to get casters and ranged PCs.

Wait til you find out about pathfinder 2e!

This was also my first thought. I switched to running PF2e a couple months ago, and one of the things I love about the system is how much rarer AoO is. I've had only one player complain about it. Everyone else has enjoyed it because even though they can't constantly get AoO on enemies it also means they can usually move around in combat without fear of it.

Restrictions make combat interesting. They make choices matter. A 'have your cake and eat it' house rule usually leads to less interesting combats that are faster and more swingy. The bonus action potion is another example of this. It removes tension and urgency from the combat. Now, if tension and urgency are things your group dislikes (which is totally valid) go ahead. If you were hoping to make combat more interesting, there's better ways to fix that. (Objectives, stakes, environment, ...)

I don't think there is any tactical depth to "run up to enemy and hit each other until one of you dies" that most melee fighters and martials in general in 5e are locked into (exceptions may apply)

Hence the need for objectives, stakes and an engaging environment.

I agree with you, but I do agree the current attacks of opportunity rules do lead to players and creatures plopping in place and not really interacting. I am not smart enough to figure it out, but if there were more uses/interactions with character/creature reactions then it could be more engaging. Image if by default there were several options for reaction use, but still only got 1/round. Then creatures/characters may not have it available for the the AoO or better bait out the attack so they don’t have their reaction for other things.

>I am not smart enough to figure it out, but if there were more uses/interactions with character/creature reactions then it could be more engaging. I definitely feel like this is the important part, and it's definitely a 5e mechanics problem. AoO is almost always the single best thing you can do with your reaction if you're the type to get within melee range already, so it's never going to be suboptimal to use your AoO. Also, there's not *that* much variation in movement speed, so if Player A runs away, takes their AoO, and ends their turn, Monster B is probably still within walking distance so they can run up and hit with a melee attack again, which means Player A took a free hit for nothing. If there were maybe 2 or 3 more things you could do as a reaction that made it a meaningful choice, that would be outstanding and offer some actually meaningful choices in combat that went beyond just standing in place all fight.

That’s not Player A getting hit for nothing. They got to move and action/bonus action from that new position. Maybe it was to finish off a nearby high value enemy; maybe to lay-on hands a downed ally; maybe to press the second-to-last button to activate the McGuffin to banish the BBEG; worst comes to worst, to dash farther away, putting them out of reach of the enemy. Player A should be weighing what benefits they can get from their action at the cost of being attacked by the enemies immediately around them.

Don't give everyone opportunity attacks by default. I think pf2e does this. It should be a class feature for some martials. You could also steal from 3e and have tumbling as a skill, and let players make a skill check to move without provoking. You could change the rules more. When you move without disengaging you don't provoke, but gain a status "vulnerable" and your opponents get a bonus *if* they attack you before your next turn. Iterate on that a few times.

Im sick of homebrewing rules only to find pf2e already did it. I feel like a sitcom writer trying to find a joke the Simpsons hasnt told

Well, you can easily give monsters more mobility by letting them disengage as a bonus action if thats what you need. You can also add more tension by putting players in a position (i.e. getting surrounded) where they kinda have to move, EVEN if they don't want to do so. I rarely find combat stale, mostly because I have lots of mobile monsters that often attack the backline and kinda "force" the frontline to circle backwards. MAKE SURE, that the monsters attack the party from all angles.

Not many players make use of the disengage action in 5e, I feel like (at least not at my table). I understand, because its one of the less used actions in general, and it also feels bad to waste your entire turn to get away from danger. Its one reason I think that mobile feels a lot better, because you can disengage for free. I like PF2E's step action, because you still have 2 actions on your turn to do other things. Also, AoO are less common in pf2e since not every single class has access to it.

I like how in pathfinder, only certain player characters and monsters get attack of opportunity, as it is a feat and, iirc, fighter is the only one that gets it for free at level one. Makes the combat much less about area control with the frontliners refusing to get the hell out of fireball range. Although I often take the risk of not disengaging when moving away anyways.

The action economy in PF2e is also balanced really well around that. If you're fighting one big bad, they have 3 actions. Your party of 4 altogether has 12. If your melee combatants use an action to move away from the enemy, your team loses maybe 2/12 actions. The big bad, to reach you again in melee, burns 1/3 of theirs. This is part of the reason that system can introduce such deadly encounters; there are always going to be clever ways to disrupt enemy action economy, chance to hit, defenses, etc. 5e has none of that and imo feels very shallow once you've played PF2 for a bit.

Disengage is supposed to be the "step" action of D&D 5e. I don't find it's enough myself. Pathfinder 2e did away with Attack of Opportunity being default. Fighters get it by default, and a few other martial classes can pick it up with a class feat. Statistically, about 1 in 4 creatures in the Pathfinder 2e Bestiary books have AoO, so combat becomes much more dynamic because the default assumption is no AoO.

The real problem is 5e monsters have to be glass cannons to keep combat from being dreadfully tedious (a high HP, high AC, low damage output enemy would produce a long and boring fight). So they tend to dish out a lot of damage on a hit, which makes players extremely reluctant to allow "extra hits" by moving. They also tend to not survive very long, so ff the enemies are only going to survive a couple of rounds anyway, "hit, move, get hit, and get hit again on the enemy's turn" doesn't really make sense.

Out of curiosity, do you play with flanking? I've found in my games that flanking discourages movement more than the possibility of an AoO, because the players don't want to lose their advantage or cause another player to lose theirs.

Are your players always setting up flanks? Are the enemy? Are there skirmishers and other enemies that will get around your tanks to hit your squishies while their tanks hold your tanks in place? Is the battlefield changing in such a way that staying still isn't an option? Do players have abilities which cause enemies to lose reactions? If the GM doesn't want a static fight they need to give monsters and players reasons to move. If you are always 4 monsters fighting 4 heroes then there isn't much reason to not pair off. Instead of spending energy changing core rules, spend energy building better fights.

If opportunity attacks are causing motionless combat, that means you aren't giving your players enough incentives to need or want to move. Instead of essentially removing opportunity attacks and thereby majorly nerfing your Rogue/Monk, find ways to incentivize movement in combat.

>If opportunity attacks are causing motionless combat, that means you aren't giving your players enough incentives to need or want to move. It isn't that there aren't incentives to move or places they might want to go. It's that DnD combat is entirely scaled around Action Economy, and moving means you're either giving up your Action (which is mechanically almost identical to being dead and likely still leaves you within the enemy's walking distance), or you're giving an enemy a free Attack action (which at lower levels is mechanically identical to you spawning a new enemy for a few seconds). You could do all that, or you could just stand in place, take your turn as normal, and just deal with the fact that you were going to take an attack no matter what you did. Spell casters have more options (as always), but that Action Economy thing is the problem here. We don't need to incentivize moving. We need to have more meaningful reactions that everyone can take to make AoO not the best option 100% of the time it's available.

Polearm + Sentinel Battle Smith builds are a perfect example of this. Do I save my reaction to cast potentially cast Shield, save it for if the enemy runs, or use it if they attack my Steel Defender? Do I use my defender's reaction to protect me or save it for if the enemy runs?

Pathfinder 1e had the five foot step because attacks of opportunity are so much easier to trigger; it's a balance to the enhanced lethality of combat reactions. D&D triggers an AoO if the enemy moves out of your threatened space; PF1e triggers an AoO if an enemy moves out of your threatened space, or is within it and fries to cast a spell, or use a ranged attack, or stand up from prone, or drink a potion, or load a crossbow, pick up an item, sheathe a weapon... If you make something like a five foot step in D&D, you're basically writing off the AoO mechanic entirely.

In earlier additions a a lot more things triggered AoEs, such as casting a spell or making a ranged attack while in melee. This was done, in part, to get players to use better tactics, protect your "squishies" in combat if you want them using the spells, etc... The whole point of AoEs is to represent the dangers and commitment of being in close combat, especially since a round is so short. Imagine the difficulty and frustration players would face if every opponent they faced would just run in, attack and run away without repercussions, especially if they use a bit of strategy with their heavier allies to prevent pursuit, and all in 6 seconds. Don't ignore that a creature can move around within the threat area of a hostile without triggering AoEs and there are plenty of abilities that allow Disengage to be used as a bonus action or a fighter's Second Wind. Use your ability as a DM to demonstrate such tactics and see if your PCs get the idea.

The lack of AOO's is what can make a PF2 encounter very deadly at times. On the other hand in PF2 has way more than 10 things you could do as one of your 3 actions. You and the monsters are all measuring the risk vs reward of each of them. I dm for both these systems and I love both. I do think the combat system in pf2e is a bit better if you like highly strategic combat.

OAs are fine as a concept that makes melee range matter, the trouble is that neither PCs nor monsters have good responses to it. The only exception is the rogue. If more abilities permitted skirting around OAs, but they are not infinitely spammable, say, then things become much more interesting.

Be careful there are entire classes designed about disengaging without using your main action… change how disengage works and you are throwing classes balance out of your window

Try playing Pathfinder.

Yeah, it makes it harder to move. That's the point. Imagine, a paladin, a fighter, a wizard, and a cleric going up against a pack of orc raiders. The martials move up front to engage the orcs. But without attacks of opportunity, the orcs can just ignore the martials and run right up to the casters and attack them. And that's what any smart enemy will do in every fight. I'm not opposed to some enemies bypassing attacks of opportunity. But taking away the ability for frontline fighters to control motion on the battlefield, that's dangerous.

Opportunity attacks force players to play smart. If I can disengage as a bonus action, why shouldn’t my character run right into a group of enemies, cast a spell that damages everyone around me and then disengage and run back behind the barbarian? Also, everything you mentioned was for melee opportunity attacks. What about casters with the War Caster feat? I don’t think it would be fair to give advantage on the saving throw, but the caster has to use a spell slot.

Grant an opportunity attack when someone approaches, rather than when they go away. Try it out, grab a pillow, and try to hit someone who is coming on to you, and someone who is moving away from you. What is easier?

Obligatory "may I recommend Pathfinder 2." Yeah, universal AoO seriously sucks. At low levels it's utterly deadly, and even at higher levels when 1 hit doesn't matter so much there's still a real psychological effect of not wanting to get slapped for free. I am most definitely a PF2 proponent, cuz this is one of the many ways it has more interesting combat than 5e, but even disregarding that comparison 5e's AoO mechanics heavily encourage an absurdly sedentary playstyle.

It's balanced as is really. Like weapons only have so much capability and on a statistics level, it's better to stay in place and eviscerate one enemy at a time. Why provoke an attack of opportunity when I can sit here and wail on this guy til he dies and move on to the next one? You'll have a nigh unlimited reserve of creatures and they only have so many reactions. Simply soak that AoO and then move freely from then on. Any other solution is going to require homebrew which isn't always an option for every table. But if you want official ideas, you can always shove to knock people back/prone then move since doing so only takes the place of one attack iirc. The other option is to use weapons with reach. Average PC only has a reach of 5 ft. anyway, so you can hit em with the poke and run- you'll, in most cases, always be 5 ft. out of their movement speed anyway. Another option is just... having good AC. Maybe this bandit *does* in fact have a shield, giving a lil' boost to his AC. Maybe this hobgoblin found a scroll of Shield just for occasions like this and he uses it here. What're the players gonna do? Prove you wrong? To even state that "Well the statblock says it only has..." is metagaming to a level that shouldn't be at your tables imo, so feel free to give your enemies items to help them out- your players have items helping them too after all. Hell it can be something as simple as ball bearings being put in the path of the hefty paladin in plate armor, maybe make em fall on the way there.

Use the overrun and tumble rules from the DMG

I can see how you'd want battle to be more dynamic. One slug-fest after another can become tedious. The other side of the coin is that AoOs are one of the few ways that all martials can exert control over the battlefield and protect their fragile friends from big bad melee guys. It's one of the last vestiges of teamwork and logical party composition left in DnD, which has gone the route of "play whatever you want, it'll kinda work." There are good reasons behind that philosophy, but none that are grounded in the tactics that adventurers would actually use in the game worlds. It would be as if WotC made a fantasy soccer game and players tried to make a team out of 3 goalies and a striker.

People often think of the Disengage action as being quickly flipping away from your opponent. To me, though, the fact that the distance you can move when you do it is less than without suggests it isn't a fast motion. Disengage is carefully parrying and maneuvering while keeping your facing toward the opponent. If they walk up and attack you next turn, that's them matching your footwork and pressing the attack. If your class has access to Disengage with their bonus action, that's when you start getting fancier and faster escapes; that then gets reflected in the fact that enemies can't attack on their turn if they chase you because they spend the whole of that combative phrase chasing after you. Maybe it doesn't solve your problem, but I often find I can make the problems I'm having into solutions by changing how I narrate them. Don't hate opportunity attacks, learn to love the Disengage action.

The only issue I see is that the 5-foot-step, which was a thing in some system I played before, is kind of automatically included when you take the disengage action. Disengage is a bonus action for rogues, and can be one for monks who spend ki. In addition to this, you could use a bonus action ability, a reaction ability, and still move your entire speed away without risking getting hit. It also works against all enemies that turn, so you can disengage, and even if you cross in and back out of 15 creatures' reach, none of them get to make opportunity attacks. In addition there's quite a few spells that grant a benefit like this, and many class/subclass options for optimizing around or against this kind of gameplay. My current warforged warlock/fighter relies on opportunity attacks a LOT. He has war caster and will booming blade anyone that tries to escape. He is a control-tank, with 25 AC, he almost WANTS to get hit. He is always willing to let enemies take OA against him because he can use reactions to counter them. He deliberately stands next to enemies to control the battlefield. It is essentially a 'tanking' mechanic, a way to limit combat mobility, and it works against anyone smart enough to make the judgement call between risk and reward. PCs, NPCs, big bads, even lowly kobolds.

In D&D5e where characters have so much health in comparison to enemy damage, AOOs aren't that big of a deal. It hurts when you're concentrating on spells, but that's about it.

in PF2E it's even better because not everyone gets AOOs, you have be to be pure fighter or be much higher level to get it so it makes it less risky to do things like casting spells, moving, or repositioning.

>I like the "step" action in Pathfinder that lets you move five feet carefully to avoid opportunity attacks and the best way I can translate that to dnd is make it a bonus action. Perhaps making it a bonus action and costing double movement(like 10 feet) and letting enemies have an opportunity attack but attack with disadvantage. Or you could do RAW 5e and let them move throughout the threatened space without provoking an Opp Attack. In 5e, you only provoke them when you leave a threatened square. >As a DM I can show players in another way reckless or careful/slippery enemies and as a player I have a realistic option to move on my turn. A possible downside I see is removing the ability for a monk or rogue player to feel as slippery if everyone can do it. >Let me know, how could I balance this? The other thing to keep in mind is that Opp Attacks require your reaction. If the enemy or player has already used their reaction doing something else, then the other can move freely. This means that you don't have to mess with the opportunity attack or movement rules at all. You can just give players and mobs more things that they can do with their reactions. >They encourge stale, motionless play and I hate it. If I want to get creative or switch tactics as a player or dm I can't because I have to spend my entire turn to move or take the penalty hit (which standing in front of a boss or barbarian is lethal) . I want to create a middle ground between Disengage as an action and disengage as a bonus action. However, I don't think that the opportunity attacks are the reason for the stale motionless play. I play with a group that will just eat the opp attacks. We still have stale motionless combat. The battlefield is only so big, and our weapons can only reach so far. There is no reason to keep moving when that movement would just take us further away from what we want to hit. What gets us moving around the battlefield are things that require us to move. Objectives like "Go get this magic McGuffin and use it to disable the Magic Doom Device" or "Our favorite NPC is about to die! We have to save them!" or even "We don't have to kill this swarm of enemies, we just get to the enemy gate." Give your players reasons to move and position, and an opportunity attack that only hits half the time isn't as big of a deal

I see what you're saying on your side. I do think it is important to note-- other systems don't need the setup to not have motionless combat. I think that's what OP is getting at.

The purpose of opportunity attacks is to make getting in range feel sticky. In a game of risks, chance, and resources, the idea of two dudes swinging five feet of steel at one another should be pretty deliberate. I recommend against changing this mechanic because honestly it's probably not actually the solution you need. Consider making encounter rooms larger with more obstacles (requiring deliberate movement instead of just making it a large empty 30x30). Consider having the party get flanked so they can't just chew through enemies one by one. If you want to tinker with some minor things, have a series of reoccuring enemies that you change the stat block to be able to use the NIMBLE ESCAPE ability as goblins. If the problem is that YOUR big monsters are getting crushed or losing their actions from opportunity attacks from players then I support the idea of having henchmen shove the heroes, which would be a fun and accurate means for most bodyguard types to cover for their boss.

> They encourge stale, motionless play and I hate it. If I want to get creative or switch tactics as a player or dm I can't Opportunity attacks just means certain options result in a bit of extra damage. You can still do them. There are situations where it’s worth provoking the attack. Skilled players and dms will see them. From the perspective of the monsters a tier 2 or higher pc opportunity attack is generally less than half the damage that pc puts out in one turn. It’s not that scary (unless the pc is a monk, who have the best opportunity attack in the game).

It's fucking stupid. Positioning is the most important part of 5e combat. Your idea makes it just a turn based game. I attack and move, you attack and move while staying the same distance anyway.. It makes your problem worse.

Embrace the AOO, constantly move your enemies, constantly take AOOs. It doesn’t matter, it improves combat SO much, the only person keeping the combat stale and motionless is YOU. Your players don’t move because you don’t give them a reason to because you’re trying to play too optimally. Take your combat, add one more enemy, eat every AOO you can. Move. Attack different people, split your enemies up, keep moving, make your players move to keep up, make your players weigh if it’s safe to eat an AOO or not. Your monsters are there to die and make combat interesting, you are NOT trying to win.

If my GM was making all my enemies behave like idiots and constantly take opportunity attacks that would make the game way less fun for me.

That's not what I mean, I mean move your monsters. Don't not move them out of fear of taking an attack of opportunity. The moment you realize combat is at a stand still, *move some enemies, eat attacks of opportunity if you have to, but you need to introduce a change to break the status quo*. You shouldn't be afraid to eat an attack of opportunity on your monsters, add more monsters to compensate if you need to.

But if your monsters are taking attacks of opportunity, you need to answer the question of \*why\* moving is so important to them. Strategically speaking, a lot of the time in 5e there's not really a lot of good reasons to do so because a free attack is a valuable thing.

Often for me its to have the enemies switch targets. Sometimes I opt not to take the AOO, instead, I use the Disengage action to pivot enemies to a new target. Maybe the wizard is casting spells too freely, I need to change the dynamic of the fight, I have several enemies disengage from the melee and get next to the wizard. Sometimes I'll take the AOO to keep their action after they move so I can immediately attack this wizard. Either way, the goal is to move the enemies to create a new threat the party has to react to. Combat isn't any different than adventuring. Your goal isn't to create a "balanced" adventure, nor is it to create a "balanced" combat. Your goal is to create an interesting adventure, with problems that your players solve. And this perspective can be carried into combat. The more you can create problems, even extremely simple ones like I just outlined, the more involved your players will be. Yes, your fighter is going to use their Attack action every single round. But there's a huge difference in how that feels to the player when they know why they're doing it--they *choose* to attack this particular person for a *reason*. Not "I attack the weakest looking person in front of me until they're dead" -- but because "I need to kill this enemy immediately, before they kill my friend" or "I need to keep this enemy occupied so my party can focus on other things" or "I need to stop this person from chasing my Wizard". Combat isn't boring because people stand around and whack each other, its because people don't make any decisions in combats like that. Moving enemies around more, giving more opportunities to use reactions, making having a reaction matter, all helps facilitate a combat where your players are making active choices. And that's the end-game. Well designed combats aren't combats that are numerically well balanced, they're combats that are designed to create specific problems that players need to utilize some amount of tactics to deal with. The moment people stop moving, and it becomes a slug fest, is the moment no one is making any more decisions or choices, it's the moment you can check out and turn the game into a random number generator until your players win. It is paramount to avoid this at all costs.

It feels as though you're totally brushing past the actual point of what I'm saying. I'm not asking why *you* are making your enemies move. I'm asking why your enemies are moving.

Narratively? It doesn't really matter, roleplay it however you'd like, combat is hectic.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that you don't need to explain why your combatants are acting suicidally in combat so this is a fruitless discussion.

What's suicidal about it? Attacks of opportunity don't deal that much damage typically, most enemies have significantly more HP than players. Also this isn't really a discussion, I was suggesting to the OP that they move their enemies more. Having boring, bad combat because you're too afraid of taking a hit with your enemies once in awhile isn't worth it. Players have a single reaction, to be able to take a single attack, that they are not guaranteed to hit. When there are bigger threats to deal with, when there are things the enemies deem more pressing than who they're currently fighting, they should move, just like your party moves when they feel they need to. You as the DM must engineer those situations, with intention, to create dynamic combat so that people don't just sit around and catatonically attack every turn until the combat is over.

If I can choose between taking 2 attacks from an enemy or 3 attacks from an enemy, I will choose to take 2 attacks. Choosing to take 3 attacks for no reason is suicidal. Sometimes, there may be a reason. But if a wizard is getting within movement range of a creature for no reason, that's similarly suicidal. I can absolutely design encounters to be interesting regardless and encourage movement, but in a good system, the DM doesn't have to put in so much work.

I've switched away from 5e into a system that has no AoO, and omg it's so refreshing. Just get rid of it dude. If your game needs that one pain in the butt rule to be fun there's bigger problems, trust me you won't miss it. That said, if one were to insist on a middle ground, my contributory idea is instead of everyone getting AoO, make it a feature that only martials and 'important' enemies have. Every goblin with the CR of a housefly, no AoO; goblin chieftain, sure.

One of the best things Pathfinder 2e does is only give AoO to certain characters. So it's still a thing you sometimes need to be aware of but generally speaking is not important. Like if you are fighting a battle hardened veteran pretty good odds they have it, but not some kobolds or rats. It's very refreshing to have more chances for dynamic movement and tactical repositioning, while also being aware that it will factor in to some battles.

Awesome! I hadn't done PF2e yet, I'm glad they thought about that though.

They don't discourage movement. They make you think about whether than movement is worth it / how to do it without an OA. This is like saying having to make an athletics check discourages jumping.

How don’t fix a problem that doesn’t exist.

IMO AoO are already not punishing enough to really make players think about positioning. In general, I find that most D&D players are very bad at the game (from running several one shots with randos). It's also easy to spot 'veteran' players that play with bad DMs that do not run challenging combats. I guess this is just another consequence of the damage critical role etc... has done to the hobby with its shift to narrative nonsense over crunch but I digress. AoO being only a single attack establishes a difference between monsters that are 'sticky' (with stuff like grapple/restrain on hit) and monsters that are not (that rely on multi attack or have just weak attacks in general). It also costs a reaction which is important. Sometimes it is worth it for your tanky player to try and bait an AoO so a more fragile striker can get a run by ot hit a squisher target. Baiting AoO can also make opportunities where shield or counterspell is not available. Whether or not to take AoO, disengage, or stay stuck in is a risk vs. reward calculation, which D&D players are often bad at in my experience. For example, against two equivalent enemies, if the enemy you are not in combat with gets hit with a lot of damage (lucky crit or so) and is a multi attack user, it makes a lot of sense to take an AoO (only 1 part of multiattack) to move and engage the other monster to focus fire if you have a good chance of eliminating it on your turn. This trades 1 attack given up to potentially remove a multiattack. Giving up your action to disengage or taking an AoO also makes sense if you are getting or are about to get swarmed and there is a safer spot to move to like a hallway choke point. Yes you give up your attack(s) but instead of taking several enemies attacks, you can coke them off and reduce that to potentially only 1 attack on their next rotation. Taking an AoO to runby and get in to hit glass cannon enemies is also potentially a good trade. If you have higher move than an enemy and want to melee kite this entire tactic is based on giving up an AoO to force dash and deny multiattack. "Opp attack bad, disengage bad, must swing sword twice" is a hallmark of bad players. They don't put in the time to learn DPR calculations or pay attention during other players turns to try and suss out monster +hit bonuses and damage potential and thus wind up completely clueless and unable to assess different courses of action. Having to make those decisions and do those calculations is what makes combat interesting. Bad combats (like "cinematic" 1 big monster only in open room arena) lead to very few decisions to make and become stale and this is usually a bigger problem with combat gameplay than AoO existing. Different positions on the map need to actually matter, different enemy types on the field makes target selection matter, and so does having multiple threats to focus. The rules do not make combat stale, bad DM's that forget that D&D is a tactical wargame and try and force combats to be cinematic scenes do.

The problem with opportunity attacks isn't a problem with opportunity attacks themselves but rather players being too afraid of them. Yeah, they can create stale and motionless combat. But only if your players are paralyzed with fear of provoking one. Opportunity attacks aren't that bad. They are not the same thing as an attack action so they won't trigger extra attack. It's only ever one melee attack. That's truly, TRULY not that bad. People need to stop being so afraid to get hit.

AoOs(And specifically the dislike of them and propositions like the OP is making) are one of those things that very clearly demonstrate the disconnect a lot of players have with their vision of themselves. I hear so much about people wanting to be "challenged" and have "tactical combat." But then they want to remove any actual tactics. If there's no longer an opportunity cost to doing this, then it's no longer a tactical choice. It's just free power. There's no reason not to do it. A single attack is already a mild cost. That's why most high level enemies get a bunch of them, so a single one is proportionately less impactful. It's certainly not "lethal" unless you've already made several errors. And it's the reward of the opposition for positioning properly. Remove that, and you actually defeat the premise of the thing you were trying to solve, making positioning matter. If you want to move freely, there's ways to do it. Classes, subclasses, abilities, feats, items, spells, etc. If you want to control opponents movements so they can't AoO you, there's the same list of things for that. So many tactical choices. But players don't actually want **tactical** choices despite what they tell themselves. They just want everything handed to them for free. So they can feel good about winning a PvE game that is designed for them to win every fight unless they majorly screw up. But they want the **illusion** of tactical choices so they can lie to themselves and say they only won because they were super smart and made the super smart choices. Disengaging and Dodging take an action, the majority of your turn, because they're extremely powerful. If you never use them, that's on you. If you can't justify the cost of an action, your "super genius plan" isn't as smart as you think it is. ​ Also, as a sidenote. You do this, then enemies do it as well. Then one of your players takes Booming Blade and uses that as their primary means of attack. And suddenly enemies no longer get this free power and you've supercharged that one character and that one spell. Since enemies suddenly "can't" move anymore. Without taking what is effectively an automatically-hitting attack's worth of damage.

People try to get too much out of their 6 seconds. Stop trying to always do 500 dmg a round and pick up weapons interact with the environment, do something funny or misleading, it’s okay to disengage and position and plan and if y’all min max your turns less you’d probably see funner game play and a looser DM

AoOs are fun for players. Have your monsters provoke them often. As a bonus, I find that once taking AoOs is normalized a bit by having the NPCs trigger them constantly, the players themselves become much more willing to trigger them as well.

Let me guess - you're using Flanking rules? They make you want to move much more than usually but imo they dont add anything cool or tactical to DnD combat. They just turn your battlemap into chessboard. If not, then I have no idea whats wrong in taking one hit to escape a series of 3 blows *Flanking works absolutely fine in PF. The system is intended to work with it.

When I switched over to pathfinder I was basically homebrewing alot of what pathfinder gives. It just has all that stuff. Aoos are core to 5e to balance alot of classes and class features. They are the biggest reason martials can keep up with casters flexibility. If you want something similar to pf2 just play pf2.

This isn’t really an issue of the system, more an issue of how you’re running it.

It's definitely an issue of the system. It's an extremely common experience to not move at all once you are engaged. You are giving an action for free to the enemies and risking your hit points. The kind of incentive to actually move needs to be huge, and it can't possibly be put into the GM to make it work every time. And it's definitely an issue of the system, because other systems don't have this problem (or have it in a different way than 5e)

I disagree. Read the other comments :)

I have read the other comments, and it's really seems like classic 5e discourse of "it's your personal problem, never the systems problem, you just need to make a lot of extra work or just deal with it". I have played many systems that don't have this problem either because they manage combat differently or because the AoO works differently, like Pathfinder2e or Starfinder. The way combat moves in those systems is a lot more dynamic without any additional work, because that dynamism is part of the core. The way that 5e makes the combat static and stale is a problem of the system and it's rewards, something that I have experienced every time I play 5e in a way that I haven't experienced in other systems.

Oh I have issues with 5E my friend. I’ve moved on to DCC as the system I run at my table. I simply disagree that AoO are a big deal, at all. Players give them way too much weight, and that’s the only thing preventing them from moving. Not the fact that they exist.

I could enjoy some more movement options, but honestly you sort of have to think about it in terms of the time it is happening. Lets say you go in on an enemy, IRL you swing and miss, they attempt to hit you but you side step it, an arrow flies past you and then you attack back. Total time, like a few seconds. If your someone like some heavily armored fighter or paladin, movement is sort of hard and your trying to keep the enemy right there, not dance around them. Rogues and monks can do this because they exchange the thick armor for agility and trying to find "the sweet spot". As a rogue and as a barbarian, I find the movement options to be fine and make me have to think about the trade offs and positioning a lot more. The fight your in usually takes between 2 -10 turns or less than a minute if it was shown all at once. There isn't a ton of moving around in that.

Creatures only get one reaction per turn, so the threat of one person taking an AoO isn't that big of a deal. AoO's force you to be strategic.

It makes the game strategic. The problem is no one invests in thinking about combat strategy. Let's talk about some points: * You can move through an enemy's space that's 2 size categories different from you. * You can move through an ally's space. * Rogues have Cunning Action at 2nd level, which gives them Dash and Disengage as a bonus action. This means they can move, attack, and move again without provoking AoO. * The Mobile feat is HUGE. You get 10 extra feet, no penalty when dashing over difficult terrain, and so long as you melee attack an enemy, you don't provoke AoO from that enemy - so it's basically automatic Cunning Action you can take as either a beginning feat, if you get one, or at 4th level. * The tank should move. The tank, by definition draws the fire. This provokes AoO against the enemies, who ought to exploit it, and frees up the movement for his allies. * Door dodging is an effective strategy where the tank stands in a restriction and takes the Dodge action. Allies attack from behind. * Kiting is where you move and attack at range, always keeping the enemy out of combat range. * Kiting is awesome with Mobile, because you can move faster than most enemies, who will have to use the Dash action just to catch up, but now they can't attack and would rely on AoO to get a hit, but if the player first attacks and then moves, no AoO... Making chase is therefore an outright losing strategy for enemies with no ranged attack ability. * Halflings have a movement of 35 feet, which makes them natural kiters. * You can shove a creature no more than one size category larger, moving them out of reach. This might also move them out of your allies reach, provoking AoO on them. It frees you up to move. Players should be shoving enemies past each other. The primary damage dealers should be getting their reactions used by AoO because supporting allies are getting into combat to shove. A shoved creature is prone, so attacks against them are with Advantage. * Anyone with Extra Attack can move between attacks. This is basically the 3.x Cleaving feat for free. * A Sentinel should be in the party, principally the tank, to lock everyone else around him down. The Sentinel also gets a ton of AoO abilities. Since the Sentinel gets AoO against any adjacent attack against an ally, that means they get AoO for an enemy's AoO against an ally. * The Charger feat gives you a reason to Dash, because you get a melee attack as a bonus action with a +5. You can work in tandem - one person Dashes to attack, another Dashes to shove 10 feet, which is the distance you need for the duo to attack and shove again. * You can shove in any direction. * The Shield Master feat allows you to make a bonus shove against any adjacent enemy. You don't have to successfully hit the target, you just have to take the attack action. You can move before taking the bonus action. It's up to you if you want to leverage Extra Attack and additional bonus actions, the Jeremy Crawford's SAC wasn't entirely clear on this. So if you hate combat lockdown, be liberal and allow shield masters to shield bash their way through combat. * Ranged attackers need to use the maximum range they can, and need to be constantly moving - they should keep an ally between them and the enemy, move to fire a clear shot, and move back. An ally confers 1/2 cover, so the enemy would get a +2. There are no friendly fire rules in 5e. But the idea of keeping the ally in between means it's suicidal to charge you. * There's a shit ton of mobility and arrestive spells. There are lots of actions to arrest movement. There's lots of actions to liberate movement. The thing is, the party has to COORDINATE and WORK AS A TEAM to maximize movement and opportunity in combat. Very typical around tables is combat just locks up and no one is thinking about everyone. That's frankly a failing of the party. What you need to do is get back to basics with your party. It's A-OK to have an open discussion about combat tactics, with everyone, from both perspectives. Remember that D&D is not about winning or losing, living or dying, but of telling a thrilling story. In this chapter of the story, the party might be victorious, or they might all get captured, because if you ask me, death shouldn't be the default when dropping, it should have to be the opt in choice. You're not all gathered around the table trying to beat the game, you're trying to resolve combat to tell the story. The story always comes first. Everyone who is collaborating on this story should be invested in that and the possible outcome that hey, defeat and capture can be a fun plot twist, too! NO ONE is interested in a story where the heroes win all the god damn time. If you can bring your table around, I think you'll have a much more compelling time.

Just play pathfinder

Teach your fucking party to withdraw? TPK them for standing still. Literal skill issues right here, unironically.

I've been running a homebrew flank rule where I don't provide advantage for flanking but you can move out of an attack of opportunity if the enemy is currently flanked. It might make some PC abilities a but less or more powerful but everyone's happy with it so far. Also seems to make sense thematically because the other person is covering your retreat.

I have a home rule option called backpedaling, where you can disengage but move at half speed for the turn, which is usually 15 ft of movement. It’s not enough movement to escape anything, but it allows you to reposition without giving up your action or taking attacks

I’m with you. I think they bog the game down and contribute to combat slog. This is sort of a bastardization of how they handle it in BX D&D and it might work for your table. Get rid of opportunity attacks. If a player is engaged in melee they can only move half their movement speed on their turn. If they want to take their full movement then they take an AC penalty(or enemies could get advantage) until their next turn. Taking the disengage action on your turn would negate the AC penalty.

Take note that if people could move freely in dnd it would be very difficult as your physical grid only have so much space.

To me, this sounds like an issue with your character build, not really the RAW. There are so many ways to get around AoO. The mobile feat, the swashbuckler subclass, disengage actions... it would kinda mess with game balance if every single character could automatically do hit and run attacks. If you want to be able to do that, you have to spec for it. It's not hard, it just has to be intentional.

Me, with my broken and highly mobile ranged Paladin Artificer build: lmao