Flanking
Date Collected
Fall 11-18-2018
Informant
Steven Shumway
Point of Discovery/Informant Bio
My name is Steven Shumway I’m 21, a student at Utah State University and I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons for about 5 or 6 years. I think it is the most fun you can have with your brain. Because of this I have been immersed in the culture of the game both in game stores and online since I discovered it and fell in love with it.
Context
In previous editions of the game there was a rule for when your character was attacking an enemy and one of your friends was also behind the enemy, you gained a bonus to hit them as they were distracted by your ally. This usually meant that when you rolled the dice to see if you hit, you would add 2 to the result meaning you were always guaranteed a higher number. In the 5th edition of the game there was no built in rule for this. There was an optional rule, in a small textbox, however my group thought that the bonus was too large. Flanking let you roll the die twice and take the higher result, so we devised something that felt more natural and wrote it down in my houserule notebook
Text
Whenever you are and an ally are both adjacent to an enemy you may add 1d4 to your attack roll against that enemy.
Texture
This rule was created by my group in the name of balance and fairness. Some of the other characters had abilities that made them spend resources to gain the same bonus that flanking gave you. So why use those cool abilities when you could just stand somewhere? It made people feel like there was still a sense of tactics to your positioning while making others feel like their abilities were useful.
Course
ENGL 2210
Instructor
Dr. Lynne McNeill
Semester and year
Fall 2018
Theme
G6: Socializing Games
EAD Number
3.5.2.2
Recommended Citation
Shumway, Steven, "Flanking" (2018). USU Student Folklore Fieldwork. Paper 305.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/student_folklore_all/305