DM: As you’re crossing the completely empty, 20’ x 20’ room, your foot hits a pressure plate. A huge fireball engulfs the room! Give me a Dexterity saving throw!
Player: 18! And I have evasion!
DM: Somehow, while standing upright in the middle of the featureless room and taking no defensive action whatsoever, you’ve managed to completely avoid the raging inferno!
That’s weird, right?
But we’ve all come to just kind of accept it as a weird trope of D&D. It’s not even an intentional trope. It’s just a weird artifact of turn-based actions, locking our characters onto a grid, and requiring specific abilities or effects to declare any sort of positional change.
Partly we can address this by just loosening up a bit and giving ourselves a bit more creative leeway when narrating outcomes in a scene like this. (There’s nothing inherently wrong with describing a PC diving out of the room in the nick of time.) Even if we want to remain more firmly locked to the grid, the reality is that the 5’ x 5’ square is an abstraction that can cover a multitude of sins, particularly in a typical room.
(Seriously: Tape out a typical room of your house in 5’ x 5’ squares. You’ll discover that pretty much any square has some bit of furniture or a door or some other form of cover that you could imagine an evasive monk finding cover behind in the event of an unexpected explosion your living room. This is a useful lesson in general: Even if your dungeon map or battlemap may make most squares look wide open for the sake of legibility, that doesn’t mean you can’t weave unillustrated details into your descriptions of the action.)
Of course, many of our fantastical adventures will take us into quite atypical rooms — barren rooms, vast vaults, and so forth.
Regardless, we might find a slightly more formal system useful in any case. For better or worse, I’ve frequently had players object to bits of flavor text woven into action descriptions (e.g., “you stagger back a step” or “you leap out of the way”), and you may find a little formality can help grease those wheels.
DYNAMIC RESPONSES
When a character has to make a Dexterity saving throw in order to avoid an area effect (or any other effect where the DM deems it appropriate), they can describe a dynamic response that explains why/how the saving throw is being made.
Examples include:
- falling prone
- ducking behind a large shield
- getting behind cover
- moving out of the area of effect
Other options are certainly possible, particularly in specific environments (e.g., diving into a lake). Players are encouraged to be creative in the dynamic responses that they create.
Guidelines for resolving dynamic responses:
Not a Reaction: A dynamic response is not a reaction. If a character cannot take a reaction, however, they also cannot make a dynamic response.
No Response: If no appropriate dynamic response is attempted (or can be attempted), the character makes their Dexterity saving throw with disadvantage.
Movement: Characters can move up to 5 ft. as part of a dynamic response. Alternatively, they can move up to 10 ft., but they must fall prone at the end of the movement. (In other words, they’re diving for cover.) This movement provokes attacks of opportunity normally.
Duck and Cover: Simply falling prone and covering up can be a sufficient dynamic response, but this renders the character prone.
Design Note: Dynamic responses essentially create a wider spectrum of mechanical response to area effects. You can have no adequate response (disadvantage), actively seek to avoid the effect (resolve normally), or be well-prepared and take the Dodge action (advantage).
ABUSING THE SYSTEM
“Hey! What if my players start dropping area effects on each other just so they can ‘dive out of the way’ and get ‘free’ movement across the battlefield?”
You have a few options:
- Simply disallow it.
- Limit dynamic response movement to once per round.
- Allow it, with the rationale that the area effects are creating enough chaos and confusion that people are able to move around a little more freely than they usually could. (Or whatever other rationale makes you happy.)
- Only require/allow dynamic responses to trap effects.
- Sigh… fine, dynamic responses now require you to use your reaction. If you don’t have a reaction left this round, then you’re stuck making your Dexterity saving throws at disadvantage.
Curiously enough, this doesn’t actually solve the problem presented in the very first example. Sure, that Rogue has a Disadvantage now… but they can just roll high enough anyway, leading to the exact same weird situation.
DM: Thorag and Nyra, give me Dexterity saves.
Thorag: 6?
Nyra: 24!
DM: Nyra, you see the fireball coming and, unable to find cover, you hide behind Thorag.
Thorag: I hate you.
Personally, I’d suggest the best solution is to go after the real problem: “players object[ing] to bits of flavor text woven into action descriptions”. I mean, okay, there’s different ways to play D&D, and if your version is Tactical Squad Combat with occasional-talky-bits, then fine, you have to write a rule. [I don’t actually think “you” is Justin here, but gamers like that exist, sure.] But otherwise, just getting your players to loosen up a bit would solve this problem and many others.
Even in the Tactical Squad Combat case, I’d really question how often an extra 5′ of movement would make *enough* difference that it would be worth an ally spending an action casting *at* their teammate. It doesn’t even escape attacks of opportunity! If players are sharp enough to catch those rare cases, I say good on them.
@Flyfly: An early version of this included “you can’t benefit from Evasion if you don’t take a response.”
I ditched it as potentially too disruptive to balance. Although the inclusion of duck-and-cover guidelines perhaps makes it viable again. (Although the monks and rogues will certainly howl.)
Short version: If what you actually want is an initiative check, why not make an initiative check?
And if you think that the ability to take action faster in response to unexpected stimuli (read: initiative check) should use the Dex-save rules for going up with class and level, why not…say that initiative checks should use the Dex-save rules for going up with class and level?
Long version:
D&D makes a distinction between reaction speed for micro-movements, lightning-reflex juking *within* a small area (a five-foot square), and reaction speed for macro-movements, defined as anything big enough that we need to impose turn-order on it to prevent simultaneous action resolution from overwhelming the DM.
The latter is called initiative; the former is called a Dexterity save (except when it is called Armor Class, and if you think I’m going to open THAT can of worms, you’re crazy). The point is that the system is already complete and unambiguous: if moving around within a single five-foot square is not sufficient to do X, then a Dexterity save is not appropriate; instead, an initiative check is appropriate.
Maybe, for whatever reason, you want to give more scope to the Dexterity save and less scope to the initiative check, without merging those two mechanics into one. You could do that! You could say that every character “occupies” a six-foot square instead of a five-foot square.
More seriously, if your underlying objection is the coupling of space-a-character-occupies-for-purpose-of-Dex-saves to space-a-character-occupies-that-their-allies-cannot-also-occupy, you can change THAT. You could say every character actually occupies a ten-foot square for the purpose of where they can choose to be, subdivided into five-foot squares of space-they-need-to-fight-effectively. In that case a character could bounce to any of those four squares to avoid an area effect, with success determined by a Dexterity save.
But that’s kind of wandering afield of the core problem here.
> DM: As you’re crossing the completely empty, 20’ x 20’ room, you foot hits a pressure plate. A huge fireball engulfs the room! Give me a Dexterity saving throw!
>
> Player: 18! And I have evasion!
>
> DM: Somehow, while standing upright in the middle of the featureless room and taking no defensive action whatsoever, you’ve managed to completely avoid the raging inferno!
The core problem is that you’ve chosen a mechanic and you’ve chosen a world-description, and the game’s description of what that mechanic represents in the world does not match what you want that mechanic to do here.
Your response is to say that the mechanic should represent something different…except, maybe not all the time, only when somebody triggers a trap. But, I mean. You could have chosen a different mechanic. Or, if your trap-design process started with you wanting to use that mechanic, you could have chosen a different description of the trap, one that matched the mechanic you wanted to use.
I seem to recall a wise bit of advice from the ancient past:
> When the entire dungeon wall moves to crush you, your quick reflexes won’t help, since the wall can’t possibly miss. A trap with this feature has neither an attack bonus nor a saving throw to avoid, but it does have an onset delay (see below). Most traps involving liquid or gas are of the never miss variety.
That says that if a solid wall moves through your space, then a Dexterity save can’t help you. But you can also turn it around: if a Dexterity save can help you, then clearly a solid wall didn’t move through your space.
There are many mechanics that explicitly specify a Dexterity save, such as the Fireball spell. The Fireball spell gives a brief description of what it looks like in the world: “an explosion of flame.” Many things are left unspecified there; notably, the COLOR of the flame.
Given that the Fireball spell says a Dexterity save can help, should we assume that an unbroken solid disc of blue burning hydrogen sweeps across the area from north to south (expanding and contracting such that it’s twenty feet in diameter when it’s midway across the area), such that your quick reflexes could not possibly help?
I mean. You could. Nobody can stop you. But it sort of seems to me that if you choose to do that, then 0% of your problems are coming from the original description of “an explosion of flame” and 100% of your problems are coming from the details that you chose to add on top of it.
> 1. Dupre has 100 hp.
>
> 2. A goblin with an axe has hit him 10 times and done 78 points of damage.
>
> 3. Clearly, the goblin has hit Dupre in the face 10 times and Dupre is still alive! That’s ridiculous!
>
> …imagine that you’re talking to someone in real life and they said, “Did you know that Bill was actually shot three times during a mugging a few years back?” Given that Bill is still alive, would you immediately assume that, during the mugging, Bill was dropped to his knees, a gun held to his head execution-style, and the trigger pulled three times?
Long comment. Kept waiting for you to explain why you thought combat initiative would solve this problem.
> DYNAMIC RESPONSES
Pretend that the rules already include the following.
Any character can interrupt anyone else’s turn to take a “otherkindofreaction”. The only thing you can do with a “otherkindofreaction” is move 5 feet.
Any character can interrupt anyone else’s turn to take a “yetanotherkindofreaction”. The only thing you can do with a “yetanotherkindofreaction” is drop prone and, optionally, move 5 feet at the same time.
For example, if someone makes a ranged attack against you on their turn, you can interrupt your turn with your “yetanotherkindofreaction” to give them disadvantage.
Are these two rules good? I dunno. The point of making combat turn-based is to make it easier to run. But if we’re too strict about turn order, we get results that feel surreal. That’s why we have things like opportunity attacks. But any out-of-turn actions that we add make combat more complicated to run.
Speaking of opportunity attacks, suppose that you’re in melee. Suppose that you have blindsight and your opponent doesn’t, and suppose that you’re immune to electricity and your opponent isn’t, and suppose that somebody casts a Lightning Bolt at the both of you. Should you get an opportunity attack?
I mean, I guess maybe? I certainly don’t think that would necessarily be a bad rule. Think about what opportunity attacks represent. Turn order isn’t “real”; when you’re in melee, you’re assumed to be harrying your opponent with your weapon throughout the round. The only question is whether you have no chance to succeed (even on a natural 20) or you have some chance to succeed (if only on a natural 20). If your opponent does something that gives you an opening, there’s some chance that you get them. If you put in some dedicated effort that round (meaning: take an action on your turn), there’s also some chance you get them.
I wouldn’t see any problem with giving you an opportunity attack in that case. Personally, I wouldn’t want to go through the bother of reverse-engineering this simple example into a general rule of area effects granting opportunity attacks. But if you did go through that trouble, the end result would be a perfectly fine rule. Whether anyone would want to use that rule would then depend on whether they thought the benefit was worth the overhead of remembering Yet Another Situation When Actions Can Be Taken Out Of Turn. That’s a judgment call that could easily go either way.
In fact, let’s pretend that this is in fact the default rule. I don’t want to go to the trouble of figuring out a good general rule for exactly when area effects should give opportunity attacks, but pretend we have one and it applies at least to the Lightning Bolt case.
And again, pretend that the standard rule is that any character can interrupt anyone else’s turn to take a “otherkindofreaction” to move 5 feet.
Then suppose that you’re not in melee, we’re not talking about opportunity attacks. Instead, you want to use that other rule: you want to use your “otherkindofreaction” to, I dunno, get through a doorway on Theoden’s turn when Theoden wants to drop the portcullis, so that Theoden doesn’t have to wait for you to move through on your turn before doing that.
That would be perfectly reasonable. That’s what the rule is for: taking some de minimis action outside of turn order.
It would also be perfectly reasonable to not have such a rule, to say that Theoden does in fact have to wait for you to move through on your turn. Being stricter about turn order naturally makes combat easier to run, and in this case the downside isn’t severe. A round is six seconds; Theoden taking a little longer to get the portcullis down isn’t surreal, it just gets lost in the general noise and confusion of combat.
What would not be reasonable would be to say “You can, but only if somebody casts a Lightning Bolt at you.”
Having specific triggering conditions for out-of-turn actions is great for reducing cognitive overhead. But that only works if there’s some kind of in-universe connection between the triggering condition and the action. For opportunity attacks, that falls out quite naturally: you have no chance to succeed on a melee attack roll against an opponent who stayed home. (If you want to “make an opportunity attack against the darkness”, going through the same motions without an opponent, then, sure I guess, we just don’t need to roll a die because you definitely aren’t going to hit anything.) “How far you can move per round depends on whether somebody casts a Lightning Bolt at you” is a bizarre result, and we graft out-of-turn actions onto our turn-based combat system to reduce the bizarre results of turn-based combat, not to increase them.
If you want to complicate the combat turn order, that’s not an inherently bad idea. If you want to make some interruptions have only a chance for success, that’s not a bad idea either. And you can have the chance for success either depend on class and level (as Dexterity saves do) or not depend on class and level (as start-of-combat initiative checks do not). But regardless of the specifics, if characters can take a couple of extra de minimis actions out-of-turn, then it shouldn’t matter whether anybody casts a Lightning Bolt at them.
(Or, if you really really don’t want it to count as an extra “action”, then overhaul the grid system to have every character dynamically occupy a ten-foot-square or what-have-you, though that would be a lot more work.)
@Justin Alexander
> Long comment. Kept waiting for you to explain why you thought combat initiative would solve this problem.
This is directed at me? I’m not sure I understand the question. Maybe I misunderstood the original problem you wanted to solve.
When you said “That’s weird, right?” I assumed that expanded to “The rules say that Dexterity saves only include movement within a 5-foot square. Escaping this effect would requiring moving outside a 5-foot square. But a Dexterity save allows a character to escape this effect! That’s a contradiction!”
…which you then proceeded to solve by changing Dexterity saves to allow movement outside a 5-foot square, something which is normally the domain of initiative checks.
But you could also have left the mechanics exactly the same, and invoked the mechanic that normally allows movement outside a 5-foot square (the initiative check) instead of the mechanic that normally doesn’t (the Dexterity save).
I mean…here, lemme rewrite the example each way.
DM: You see a completely empty, 20′ x 20′ room with a door on the far side.
Player: I walk to the door.
DM: In the center of the room, your foot hits a pressure plate. Give me a Dexterity saving throw against DC 18.
Player: I succeed, and I have evasion.
DM: A solid wall of flame sweeps across the room, so your quick reflexes won’t help, since the wall can’t possibly miss. Nevertheless you are unharmed.
At which point you object “That’s weird, right?”
What if it’s initiative instead?
DM: You see a completely empty, 20′ x 20′ room with a door on the far side.
Player: I walk to the door.
DM: In the center of the room, your foot hits a pressure plate. Give me an initiative check against DC 14.
Player: I succeed.
DM: A solid wall of flame is sweeping across the room. The wall can’t possibly miss, but fortunately, you dive back out of the room in the nick of time, and the wall of flame vanishes at the doorway.
But players can be touchy about narrating their actions, even when those actions seem obvious, so really we’d probably ask the player for confirmation of what they’re going to do, just as we would against a living opponent.
DM: You see a completely empty, 20′ x 20′ room with a door on the far side.
Player: I walk to the door.
DM: In the center of the room, your foot hits a pressure plate. Give me an initiative check against DC 14.
Player: I succeed.
DM: A solid wall of flame is sweeping across the room. The wall can’t possibly miss. What do you do?
Player: I dive back out of the room!
DM: The roar of the flames fills your ears as you dive back out of the room, but you feel no heat. The magical flames vanish at the border of the room. You are unharmed.
Or, the other way this could end:
DM: You see a completely empty, 20′ x 20′ room with a door on the far side.
Player: I walk to the door.
DM: In the center of the room, your foot hits a pressure plate. Give me an initiative check against DC 14.
Player: I fail.
DM: A solid wall of flame is sweeping across the room. The wall can’t possibly miss, and you don’t react in time to get out of the room. (roll damage…)
Maybe you think the problem isn’t solved. Maybe you’d still say “That’s weird, right?”. But if so then I really don’t know what exactly you mean by “That’s weird, right?”.
To my way of thinking, the problem isn’t “solved” so much as the problem never occurs in the first place because rolling high on initiative allowing you to move before something else happens is exactly what the initiative mechanic is normally used for.
DM: In the center of the room, your foot hits a pressure plate. Roll a Dexterity save.
Player: I succeed.
DM: A solid wall of flame swept across the room, but your quick reactions and dexterity saved you. (What did you do?)
Player: I ducked behind my shield / I fell prone hugged mother earth / I confused the fire by dancing a dainty jig / I saw a small patch of the wall of flaming death that wasn’t all flamey-like and tumbled thru that.
DM: (I don’t actually care. You saved. That’s enough. But thanks for the amusing narration, I needed that.)
I reckon this system works but it feels too granular to me. I suppose if someone has a group that feels really strongly about the tactical nature of the game then it’s pretty good but surely taking a more abstract approach wouldn’t harm the game?
I typically do: “As you’re crossing the completely empty, 20’ x 20’ room, you foot hits a pressure plate. You hear a click. What do you do?”
The answer to that question triggers the request “Give me a Dexterity saving throw!” After the roll I describe the fireball engulfing the room. This way the saving throw is perceived as a reaction to something in game – the click – and the dice roll represents their attempt to escape the horrible fate. I need to add some dud pressure plates on my next dungeon…
But I like the idea of a dynamic response… I will think how to incorporate that
I think the best reaction to system abuse is simple, “If there are enemies in the area they also are able to move.” Smart players will note that give enemies more actions is probably not worth it.
There was a thing in Champions RPG called Dive For Cover. It was a reaction (and within the Champions system, you could ‘abort an action’ – to sacrifice a future action to do this) where you could roll a Dex (Acrobatics) vs a target# based on how far your were moving to escape an area of effect (AE’s were pretty darn common in the system). You could also abort / use your action to dodge and gain a bonus to not being hit (Defensive Value, akin to an armor class).
I could easily see something like this being incorporated into D&D, with the caveat of such a reaction movement (even if it was a free action of a saving through) would either cost your next Turn action (with action economy I can see this being the less desirable option) or count against your movement on your next turn.
One problem it would introduce would be some AE’s wouldn’t leave space to try to escape that effect.
Also, shout out to those DMs that remember to add the Cover bonus to appropriate saving throughs against AE attacks!