This is a slightly related thread to the one about fighters earlier, but since I'm applying it to all classes, I thought it was better separated.

Like many people, I've always found it frustrating how melee combat in D&D (and many RPGs) tends to degenerate into standing in one place and pressing the "attack" button every turn. There's been a lot of talk about combat maneuvers like disarm, trip, sunder armor, etc., but instead of addressing that problem by the "pressing attack" part, I'd prefer to try and address the "standing still" part. Anyone who's ever watched a fight or been involved in one knows that if they go on for more than a few seconds, they usually will involve a great deal of moving around and changing positions. It takes a good amount of training to get a group of men to hold formation in battle, and a lot of ancient and medieval tactics were about trying to break those formations. I've been brainstorming some ideas to try and bring this kind of dynamism into the game, and have come up with a couple of prototype rules. I'll keep them system neutral for the purpose of this thread.

Combat actions:
--Drive back: A staple of any narrated swordfight in probably any book you've ever read about it. As part of an attack action, you may choose to try and drive your opponent backwards. If successful, both you and the opponent move 5 feet in the desired direction. Provides a means of disrupting enemy formations or forcing an opponent against a wall/hazard, and adds some extra danger to trying to hold a doorway or bottleneck.

--Line-Breaker: As a movement action, you can attempt to charge through a space occupied by an enemy. The roll and effect of this would be based on the relative size of the combatants. So an orc berserker might attempt a suicidal charge through your lines, but would be likely to die in the attempt. A mountain giant might get hit on the way, but is likely to break through, and might even knock down the PCs in the way. A dragon can plow through your space without effort, trampling anyone who fails to get out of the way.

--Engage: A furious attack which demands your opponent's attention. If successful, that opponent's next action must be a melee attack made against you. I see this as largely a tool to be used to prevent PCs from always being able to concentrate all their damage on a single target, but they can easily use it against NPCs for the same purpose.

--Circle: While attacking an enemy, you may move up to two unoccupied spaces around them while remaining within melee range, but the target may make a saving throw to attempt to cut you off.

I think the key with all of these is that they not be alternatives to a move or attack action (which will inevitably be ignored, because doing damage is a more efficient return on your action economy), but instead be additional checks which can be added onto that action. So using the Line-Breaker example, if the mountain giant succeeds at charging through the party's fighters, he still has an attack action left to smash the wizard with his club. 

Combat Statuses
--On the Back Foot If a combatant has been driven back two or more rounds in a row, they are on the back foot, and take a minus to attacks and AC until they stop being driven backward.

--Cornered: If a combatant is surrounded on all sides by any combination of walls, enemies, and impenetrable hazards they take a minus to attacks and AC, due to not having room to fight effectively.

--Hard-Pressed: If a combatant is hit by melee attacks from three or more enemies in a single round, they are forced to fight defensively, and must take the defend/parry action on their next round.

These I'm a bit iffier on, due to the potential snowballing effect, but I think they might be necessary to make the optional actions worthwhile.

I'm putting this out to see if others have tried this kind of thing, or if anyone has other rules that achieve the goal better, or ideas to add to the list.

Give them a roll bonus to hit from the back and also allow flat footed to take out shields.  Change opportunity attacks to give a front arch and if they go behind that arch you get an attack of opportunity.  For certain types of NPC's like humanoids and undead, they drag out the npc as soon as they are downed, hell toss in a fog cloud to make the character not targetable as well.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 23, 2023, 10:15:04 PM
Give them a roll bonus to hit from the back and also allow flat footed to take out shields.

I prefer to give the attack bonus based on outnumbering the foe. Never liked the "attack from behind" rule, as it implies that people stand still facing one direction when it's not their turn.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 23, 2023, 10:15:04 PM
Change opportunity attacks to give a front arch and if they go behind that arch you get an attack of opportunity.

Agreed. That's how I play it now. No AofO if you retreat directly away from an enemy.

It's something TFT and GURPS do quite well.  Really it's a theatre of the mind verses map based play issue.  A battle line is much easier to track with theater of the mind and dynamic tactics are quite difficult and usually work with some kind of boost or dice pool based on tactical skill rating rather than actually rewarding tactics.  It's a bit like my Star Trek technology rule: if the player makes the roll whatever technobabble they spouted works.

Fourth edition D&D did a lot with pushing, pulling, and shifting opponents which is another way to go about it.

That being said, shield walls and battle lines are very much what classic D&D is designed to represent and reward.  In first edtion a level 0 soldier can fight in two ranks effectively.  The free attack on fleeing foes also makes standing in ranks desirable as you can safely withdraw.  In D&D fifth edition you have to be fourth level before you get that feat.  The average soldier appears to be 2HD though there are many generic npcs that indicate that 4th level is about first level in first edition when it comes to fighting ability.  Magic is the other way with first level magic-users being at least as good as two or three third or fourth level magic-users.

Some of the fifth edition Rogue and Monk abilities do make for more dynamic movement in combat.  Being able to disengage and move is crucial since moving out of melee provokes a free attack.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 23, 2023, 10:30:58 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 23, 2023, 10:15:04 PM
Give them a roll bonus to hit from the back and also allow flat footed to take out shields.

I prefer to give the attack bonus based on outnumbering the foe. Never liked the "attack from behind" rule, as it implies that people stand still facing one direction when it's not their turn.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 23, 2023, 10:15:04 PM
Change opportunity attacks to give a front arch and if they go behind that arch you get an attack of opportunity.

In the real world if you are attacked from behind, you don't know the attack is coming.  Even in a fist fight, people put their backs to the wall or to the back of their friend to prevent people from making back attacks.  A round is considered 6 seconds of combat in 5E and everything is happening simultaneously, it means during the fight you were concentrating on defending from one direction and could put your full defense while one section of defense were left open.
Agreed. That's how I play it now. No AofO if you retreat directly away from an enemy.

This kind of thing is assumed in D&D (at least in the TSR editions), but is abstracted away (i.e., the PC is not really standing in one place and the "to hit" roll doesn't represent one swing -- moving, feinting, and so on are all assumed to be taking place over the course of the round). It's not the kind of detail that D&D does well (again, I'm mainly thinking of TSR D&D). If that kind of detail is desired I'd probably look to a different system that is designed for a more detailed and less abstract approach to combat: Runequest, GURPS, and so on. Can you hack D&D to do it? Yeah, sorta. But you're always going to be kind of swimming against the current; a high degree of abstraction is built into D&D's design assumptions. I'd try to start with a system that is closer to the level of abstraction that I want to end up with. Less work.

(With that said, I suppose some of the WotC D&D editions might qualify as being "a different system" with a different level of abstraction and a different set of design assumptions. Having a discussion about "D&D" without specifying exactly what edition is under discussion has become almost as nebulous as having a discussion about the "OSR".)

D&D doesn't do a good job making anybody care about positioning except circumstantially (like chokepoints). The only time you should approach a chokepoint or similar terrain held by the opposing force is when you don't have alternative options (which is a tactical blunder) or it has strategic significance which justifies forcing the encounter (unusual). So most melee combats may as well happen on open, flat ground. Once you're within reach and can deal damage, what reason is there to drive someone back, or retreat from that position? That's the question that needs to be answered.

Many D&D editions impose penalties on retreat options through AoOs, so that leaves just the options to drive back or bull rush an opponent. These are again pretty circumstantial - you usually already need to have granted the opponent the better position in order to justify trying to wrench it back from them. Other options like tripping or feinting are mostly about imposing status conditions. I think the options you've highlighted are interesting but mostly fall into the same assumptions D&D makes, which I think fundamentally cause the dynamic where it's viable to just walk up. stand still, and start trading blows.

Wargames are worth looking into for inspiration since they tend to care more about modeling terrain and positioning well since it's such a vital real-world factor in war. Many popular wargames like warhammer I think are bad examples, they're mostly list-building games (the equivalent of optimizing your character well in an RPG rather than playing well). The Middle Earth wargame in GW's product line however does make positioning central to the game because they needed to make the game fun to play with small number of heroes vs. many orcs and other asymmetric matchups that are commonplace in RPGs.

In that game, combat is resolved as an opposed check and the winner drives back their opponent by default. This matters because once you are engaged in combat, you can't just walk away. This combines with the initiative system so that winning initiative means you get to choose which combats are going to pair off, so you can pick advantageous pairings,  potentially push models in your desired direction, and tie up the enemy's best resources with insignificant fights. The combat always always driving back the losers means that even big clashes between battle lines have an ebb and flow over the course of several rounds. Models can get trapped by terrain or other models which doubles the number of strikes they receive when the lose a combat (so guarding flanks is important). If an opponent holds a chokepoint, your goal of killing the opponent and taking the desired position coincide and it's actually tactically viable if you have spear support or good archery fire. Trying to force the enemy to leave the chokepoint and come to you just means you get the worst possible melee matchups which is lose/lose and fighting is probably actually your best option. So while list-building is an important part of the game (like all GW wargames), it makes positioning matter more than most GW games I've played and games are often decided by decisions about movement. This is probably more useful as a starting point for innovation than a complete idea.

At my table I have melee engagements lock all combatants in unless they try a full retreat or make a successful roll to escape. I allow a push/bull rush option, but being pushed into enemy reach or into terrain results in AoOs (which I buff since they now no longer serve the purpose of discouraging movement). I roll side-based initiative each round so I'm considering letting the winning side push their melee combatants around at half speed to simulate the push/pull dynamic of combat.

I'm not a fan of "attack from behind" rules.  They introduce the need for facing mechanics that inevitably balloon in complexity.  Which way is this character facing right now?  How about now?  How well can they keep track of things moving behind them?  Does this introduce uncertainty about where things are? If it does, how do you model that when some PCs can see the monsters moving around while others can't?  It's just a headache for not much real gain that I can see.

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 24, 2023, 10:48:28 PM
I'm not a fan of "attack from behind" rules.

Backstabbing is a feature of the Rogue/Thief class since AD&D. How do you deal with it?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 24, 2023, 11:22:27 PM

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 24, 2023, 10:48:28 PM
I'm not a fan of "attack from behind" rules.

Backstabbing is a feature of the Rogue/Thief class since AD&D. How do you deal with it?

I don't run AD&D and haven't for decades.  I have no need to deal with it.  Later editions don't use facing to determine of a rogue/thief gets the extra damage.

Here is a set of optional rules for D6 Star Wars called, "dueling blades."   

http://griffonpubstudio.blogspot.com/p/schweigs-d6-resources.html?m=1

The basic premise is that a "Hit" can actually have four outcomes, not one.  It depends on how much the dice roll beats the target number.  If you just barely beat the roll by 1 or 2, it's just a "push," and the fight moves towards a direction chosen by the winner, but nobody gets hurt.  Exceed the roll a little more, then it's a "stun," which means instead of moving the loser is given a penalty to their next dice roll, but only for one round.  After that is a normal injuring hit.  Lastly, a huge margin means a critical hit, the exact nature of which is chosen by the GM.   

I would steal ideas from this and adapt it.

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 24, 2023, 11:29:09 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 24, 2023, 11:22:27 PM

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 24, 2023, 10:48:28 PM
I'm not a fan of "attack from behind" rules.

Backstabbing is a feature of the Rogue/Thief class since AD&D. How do you deal with it?

I don't run AD&D and haven't for decades.  I have no need to deal with it.

So do you have backstab at all?

QuoteLater editions don't use facing to determine of a rogue/thief gets the extra damage.

3rd+ use flanking as one way to get the backstab damage. Doesn't require facing but does require a tactical grid or imagining the tactical grid in theater of the mind.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 25, 2023, 01:03:04 AM
So do you have backstab at all?

It hasn't been called backstab for for three editions.

Fun thread.  I like where this is going.

Mobile combat is a fun idea.  What about being able to move the target as well?  In essence this makes the combat mobile no?

Like Inigo fighting Wesley in The Princess Bride.  Highly mobile combat no?

The Withdrawal (around 1/4 Mv IIRC) along with 3 front engagement per PC allows tactical retreat to take advamtage of terrain. That way I had parties who could not push a mob back -- due to greater strength or greater rank numbers in a choke point -- back up to a large object and wheel-turn. Trees, wagons, boulders, all useful to scrape off some frontline fighters and let PCs readjust and ad hoc new frontlines.

My biggest recommendation is not so much to expect Players to take the initiative like this anymore, but to have monsters (or NPC trainers) teach the PCs thisby doing it to them. So have your NPCs withdraw (1/4Mv) to a better tactical position, ask players do you follow up, and then teach them why paying attention to your surroundings is strong. The assumption is 'the melee must continue!' but in reality a fighting withdrawal can be as much of a lure as an escape, and thus any movement like that is a choice for the opponent to accept continuance.