# Stand-up from prone is a joke



## Li Shenron (Jun 30, 2012)

Does anybody else think that the 5e playtest rule for standing up is outrageously forgiving?

IIRC (please correct me if wrong) standing up from prone is:

in 3.0 a move-equivalent action that doesn't provoke AoO
in 3.5 a move-equivalent action that provokes AoO
in 4e a move action that doesn't provoke AoO
in 5e it costs 5ft of your movement action

As [MENTION=12306]Kraydak[/MENTION] pointed out in another thread, tripping someone prone has been at best a 1-round effect, although how good actually depends on the penalties than the prone character gets. Lots of penalties make being prone bad enough so that you might want to grant the prone character the option to stand up easily in the next round, and IMHO the 3.5 version with its AoO has always been too harsh and allowed for tripping monkeys.

OTOH the 5e version is really minimally costly... you still have pretty much all your round's worth of actions after standing up.

What would be the pitfalls, if instead of having lots of penalties with easiness of standing up, the rules went a bit easy on the penalties but instead required you e.g. to use your main action to stand up? IOW, shifting part of the overall penalties from the condition itself to the cost of getting out of it.

At least, that 5ft cost seems really small to me... it's practically free.


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## Stormonu (Jun 30, 2012)

It's like 5E gave everyone the ability to do a kip-up, just like they gave everyone spring attack.

I like neither and I think it takes away from the game in both cases.

I'm thinking perhaps 1/2 your movement rate to get up, but the opponent gets a free swing.  An attempt to quickly get back on your feet, but risking the opponent hitting you as you get back up.

Or you could give up you action (or just all movement?) for the round and safely stand up - basically waiting until your opponent(s) take a swing at you and either parrying, dodging or rolling away and getting back up while your opponent is momentarily out of position.


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## Grydan (Jun 30, 2012)

In every 4E campaign I've ever participated in, melee-based characters have sought out Acrobat Boots (stand from prone as a minor).

The gain in action economy is significant enough that nobody even looks at other foot slot items, unless they have some particular synergy with some other aspect of their build.

It's essentially a feet tax.


(sorry)


Switching (in 5th) from having it be -5 ft. of movement to having it use your action would likely lead to combat being fought between people crawling around on their bellies.

Particularly if at the same time you are doing so, you are reducing the penalties for actually being prone in the first place. If something doesn't inconvenience you all that much, and negating it means giving up your attack for a round, then (usually) you're better off just attacking. 

I'm rather fond of 5th's rather elegant system of sacrificing movement. I could see increasing the penalty to 10 ft for standing up, though. Maybe even 15 ft, but that might be pushing things. 

1/2 movement is a bit less elegant, and leads to nonsensical results: faster people spend more effort getting up than slower people. 

As a 4E player, I tend to prefer that system's far less trigger-happy OA system to 3E's AoO system, so free attacks against people standing up don't... sit well with me. The poor sucker's already being penalized for being on the floor, and has to pay to get up, and you want to kick him while he does it as well?


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## Steely_Dan (Jun 30, 2012)

Stormonu said:


> just like they gave everyone spring attack.
> 
> I like neither and I think it takes away from the game in both cases.




That's one of our favourite aspects, and the lack of clunky OAs (in our experience/play-tests so far).


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## GX.Sigma (Jun 30, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> IIRC (please correct me if wrong) standing up from prone is:
> 
> in 3.0 a move-equivalent action that doesn't provoke AoO
> in 3.5 a move-equivalent action that provokes AoO
> ...



Anybody know what it is in AD&D? Just curious.


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## Nagol (Jun 30, 2012)

GX.Sigma said:


> Anybody know what it is in AD&D? Just curious.




The penalties for being prone are stated (opponents get +4 to hit and ignore shield, DMG p.70) and there are ways to knock opponents prone (overbear and grappling, DMG p.72-73).

Getting up from the prone position is not codified so it varies from table to table.  I can't remember a table I've been at where the penalty was greater than your movement for the round and typically it was a fraction of that.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 30, 2012)

With the simple action economy put in place, I think it's reasonable. Maybe it could be something like "halves your movement" or cost a few feet more.


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## Zephrin the Lost (Jun 30, 2012)

It might be worth examining how hard it is to get an enemy prone and what it means to combatants to be prone or to be attacking a prone opponent. 

I don't have the play test booklet at hand, so what does prone mean in dndnext? granting advantage, I imagine? 

--Z


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## DogBackward (Jun 30, 2012)

My "fix" for standing from prone:



> If you are prone, you can use up 5ft of your movement in a round to stand up from prone. For each adjacent enemy that would be able to make attacks against you, it takes an additional 5ft of movement to stand up.



It's simple, easy to track, and it works well; the more bad-guys surrounding you, the easier it's going to be for them to keep pushing you down. And honestly, it's not that hard to stand up quickly if you're free and clear, away from the thick of battle. But if you have a 30ft speed and you're surrounded by 6 enemies, you're going to have to spend your action to stand up, in addition to your normal movement.


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## Iosue (Jun 30, 2012)

GX.Sigma said:


> Anybody know what it is in AD&D? Just curious.



With 1 minute rounds, combat in AD&D is highly abstract.  So there are no rules because it's assumed that within one minute you could get up and do a bunch of other actions.  At worst, the DM might impose a slight initiative penalty on you.


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## Agamon (Jun 30, 2012)

It might feel wrong tactically, but think about it a minute.  I can move 30 feet or I can stand up.  Zuh?  Is everyone wearing a big turtle shell on their back?

And, yes, there's no consequences.  But this is just the core game, tactical rules are coming for the tactically minded.  I should put that in my sig, I'd have to type it less often.


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## slobo777 (Jun 30, 2012)

"Prone" gets dished out a bit much in 4E, including an annoying tactical edge case of "prone + 2 squares away" which comes up a lot.

5E could easily have 4E or 3E-like conditions which combine its "prone" with another condition at the same time. These would obviously be rarer - only for specific spells or melee effects.

Having said that, I'm not too keen on "conditions" that are so trivial there's no point tracking them. Losing 5' of movement will make so little difference much of the time, it's not going to be worth the effort of pencilling a 'p' on the monster notes.


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## Remathilis (Jun 30, 2012)

I kinda like how prone is fairly easy to get up from. It feels cinematic, and it keeps trip-monkeys from being born. While I'd like a little more control of the battlefield, it doesn't bother me one bit to see trip-AoO monkeys go away.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 30, 2012)

Also keep in mind that just because the base prone condition is easy to recover from doesn't mean a feat or theme couldn't be developed for the "trip monkey" guys.

Hold Them Down (Feat)

Prone enemies adjacent to you must use all movement to stand up from prone.

Or something of that vein.


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## tomBitonti (Jun 30, 2012)

I'm thinking the cost of standing up needs to be considered together with:

1) How much effort would it normally take to stand up?  How much does that effort differ between, say, someone who is encumbered or clumsy or slow and someone unencumbered, agile, or quick?  How much should terrain matter?

2) What is the overall balance of costs?  For example, in 3.5E, the cost of tripping someone (a standard action; with iterative attacks, a fraction of an attack action) tends to be quite less than the cost of recovering from being tripped (a move action plus multiple attack actions, counting a +attack from an opponent the same as a -attack for yourself).

3) What is fun?  Tripping opponents and getting free attacks is fun, and adds a layer of tactical detail to fights.  Being tripped your self, in particular, being "trip locked" is terribly unfun.

4) Also, what is the appropriate state model for being tripped?  Would adding an "unbalanced" state help to even the action economy?  Or would it add complexity with too little benefit?

TomB


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## zlorf (Jul 1, 2012)

[


Hi,
Haven't tried Next yet, so I may be rehashing
staff already in the rules. 

I like the idea of using your movement
to do things other than move. 
Perhaps 10ft cost to stand up. 
Say you had 30ft of movement,
In play it would work something like this:
Move 10ft, get something from your pack (10ft cost), open a door (5ft)
,move 5ft and the attack. 

Cheers
Zlorf



QUOTE=Li Shenron;5958077]Does anybody else think that the 5e playtest rule for standing up is outrageously forgiving?

IIRC (please correct me if wrong) standing up from prone is:

in 3.0 a move-equivalent action that doesn't provoke AoO
in 3.5 a move-equivalent action that provokes AoO
in 4e a move action that doesn't provoke AoO
in 5e it costs 5ft of your movement action

As   [MENTION=12306]Kraydak[/MENTION] pointed out in another thread, tripping someone prone has been at best a 1-round effect, although how good actually depends on the penalties than the prone character gets. Lots of penalties make being prone bad enough so that you might want to grant the prone character the option to stand up easily in the next round, and IMHO the 3.5 version with its AoO has always been too harsh and allowed for tripping monkeys.

OTOH the 5e version is really minimally costly... you still have pretty much all your round's worth of actions after standing up.

What would be the pitfalls, if instead of having lots of penalties with easiness of standing up, the rules went a bit easy on the penalties but instead required you e.g. to use your main action to stand up? IOW, shifting part of the overall penalties from the condition itself to the cost of getting out of it.

At least, that 5ft cost seems really small to me... it's practically free.[/QUOTE]


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## PinkRose (Jul 1, 2012)

Remember, prone isn't just use 5' to stand up.
It also grants Advantage to those melee attacking it.
So don't discount it, slobo777.

But I agree, that 5' is too little.
I can't come up with what is just right.
Hlaf movement penalizes fast creatures. but might be the easiest.
10' or even 15' sounds about right, but then it penalizes slow characters.
5' +5' per monster in Zone of Control sounds about right.
Is your move action too much? You could still stand and attack.
Or stand and move (converting action to move).
How limiting is using all your move to stand? 
Does prone happen too often that it gets annoying?

I think 5'+5 per adj monster is my favorite. Quick if you aren't in combat, and cautious if you are in the middle of melee, where you want to be anyway so losing movement doesn't matter.


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## Vegepygmy (Jul 1, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> Does anybody else think that the 5e playtest rule for standing up is outrageously forgiving?



Yes.


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## Balesir (Jul 2, 2012)

I think 5' is far too little from two perspectives:

1) A turn is ~6 seconds. In a turn a typical character (move 30') could move 60' if they spent the whole turn moving. That suggests that they stand up from prone in around half a second; even with a "kip up" that sounds lightning fast.

2) Movement while prone is at half speed. A 5' of movement cost to stand up makes crawling while prone something you would basically never consider under any circumstances. Even if standing up cost half your move, that means you get the choice of (a) move half your move while prone and stay vulnerable/disadvantaged, or (b) stand up and still move half your move. Why would you ever choose (a)?


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## DogBackward (Jul 2, 2012)

Balesir said:


> 2) Movement while prone is at half speed. A 5' of movement cost to stand up makes crawling while prone something you would basically never consider under any circumstances.



Unless you're in a cramped cave with a 3ft high ceiling. Or there are laser-death-traps firing off at waist height. Or you need to wiggle under a tripwire to avoid squashy-wall-traps. Or you're sneaking behind cover. Or one of any number of other reasons to crawl.

Choosing to crawl or stand up... these aren't equal options because they're not supposed to be equal options; one is obviously better than the other, and for good reason. That's just common sense; standing up will _always_ be a better option than crawling, assuming there isn't something that makes you _want_ to crawl. If there _is_ some other reason you'd want to crawl, then you need to know how fast you can crawl, which is why they mention that it's at half speed.

But "Standing up is faster." isn't why you want to avoid crawling.
"Crawling when you don't have to is a really stupid idea." is why you want to avoid crawling.


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## Dragoslav (Jul 2, 2012)

The more I think about it, the more I like the "add 5' required to stand up for each adjacent enemy." Try lying prone right now -- not just lying down casually, but like you just got knocked flat on your face, which is how combatants typically end up prone in D&D. Now try getting up and running to the other side of the room. Imagine there are burly men with swords next to you while you do so. Do you feel how vulnerable you are while standing up? You couldn't just stand back up like nothing happened; you'd have to be really, really careful.

I still think it should be possible to at least stand up regardless of how many enemies are adjacent to you, though.


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## DogBackward (Jul 2, 2012)

Dragoslav said:


> I still think it should be possible to at least stand up regardless of how many enemies are adjacent to you, though.



Well, for the average combatant, only 8 enemies can fit around them while prone. That's a 45' movement cost, which means that they'd use their entire movement and then have to use their Action to hustle in order to stand.

But I can easily see just adding a clause like: If the additional movement cost to stand up (that added by adjacent enemies) is higher than your speed, you can still stand up, but it takes up all of your movement.

And with that clause, you can decide whether it applies to just movement, or if you'd still have to use your Action to stand in addition.


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## tomBitonti (Jul 2, 2012)

To continue my prior point, there seems to be a big difference in regards to the degree to which one is prone.  Not to say that the detail is worth preserving in the game, but I can see at least four gradations:

1) Knocked prone, but retaining movement.  That is to say, being knocked down but recovering quickly by rolling with the fall and using it to spring back up.

2) Knocked prone, and losing momentum, but keeping ones hands and legs basically where they can be used to get back up.

3) Knocked prone, and being splayed, such that effort is required to obtain a purchase before standing.

4) Knocked prone, and being splayed, and perhaps in a disadvantageous orientation.  Say, on ones back and perhaps winded.

One would need to spend only a little effort to regain their feet in the first case.  I can see that requiring a balance or acrobatics check, and costing 5' or 10' of movement.  The fourth case seems like it might take a full move action (3 seconds) to recover from.  The first case might not draw an AOO, but the fourth certainly should.

The question is, when we say "prone", which case do we mean?  Down on ones rear and slightly stunned, or twisting to match the motion of the fall with a quick roll and spring back?

TomB


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## Stormonu (Jul 2, 2012)

DogBackward said:


> Well, for the average combatant, only 8 enemies can fit around them while prone. That's a 45' movement cost, which means that they'd use their entire movement and then have to use their Action to hustle in order to stand.




If there's eight folks surrounding you trying to wail on you, that's pretty much a dogpile anyway and I have no problem with it taking a double-move to get back up.  There's a very good chance in that case you're gonna get dragged back down anyways.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 2, 2012)

PinkRose said:


> 10' or even 15' sounds about right, but then it penalizes slow characters.




Never feel bad about a penalty....being a penalty!


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## Balesir (Jul 2, 2012)

DogBackward said:


> But "Standing up is faster." isn't why you want to avoid crawling.
> "Crawling when you don't have to is a really stupid idea." is why you want to avoid crawling.



Yes, of course, but sometimes you have to because you need to move *now*, not because you are somehow held down. If you can get up _and_ move simultaneously, this dilemma will never arise, removing much of the point of imposing a "prone" condiditon.

Oh, and in 3' high IRL I would likely get up (unless immediately threatened) and crouch. Is a crouch "prone" or "standing", since we don't have an intermediate stance, it seems?


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## tomBitonti (Jul 2, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Yes, of course, but sometimes you have to because you need to move *now*, not because you are somehow held down. If you can get up _and_ move simultaneously, this dilemma will never arise, removing much of the point of imposing a "prone" condiditon.
> 
> Oh, and in 3' high IRL I would likely get up (unless immediately threatened) and crouch. Is a crouch "prone" or "standing", since we don't have an intermediate stance, it seems?




In 3.5E, wouldn't a crouch be considered squeezing?

TomB


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## Dordledum (Jul 4, 2012)

Isn't it a fullround action which provokes AoO in 3.5? Or has that been errata'ed?

Otherwise we have been playing it wrong for the last 10 years or so.

I always thought a fullround action was harsh but only 5 foot of movement as in the playtest is quite ridiculous in comparison.


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## Hypersmurf (Jul 6, 2012)

Dordledum said:


> Isn't it a fullround action which provokes AoO in 3.5?




No.

-Hyp.


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