Is knocking someone prone worth it?

Question

In 4e, proning was a Defender's best friend. Easy to get with Flail Expertise or Polearm Momentum, and it provided a great reward: no shift+charge for the enemy. It improved your stickiness greatly.

In 5e proning only halves the target's speed, and in combat you usually hardly move once you engaged the enemy. So most of the time you care only about the Advantage/Disadvantage it provides.

So if you have an archer or warlock in your group you are actually better off without proning. You can not benefit from it yourself, as the target stands up before your next turn.

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

Prone isn't as strong as it was in 4e, but it can still be a solid tactical choice. You just have to weigh if it's something your party can take advantage of.

The biggest and best advantages of proning are as follows:

• reduction in movement speed (halved)
• Advantage on close (5' range) attacks (includes ranged, so it negates the disadv imposed there)
• Impose disadvantage on the target's attacks

Is prone worth burning your whole action on? Probably not. Is prone worth it if you can add it onto an attack you're already making? Possibly.

This is really a question of party composition. If your party favors ranged attackers (as yours seems to), prone is a bad play pretty consistently. You'll inflict disadvantage on your buddies and that means they'll miss, a lot. However, if you've got a melee rogue or other melee combatants in your party, they'll probably kiss you if you can prone someone consistently. The rogue gets a huge damage bonus with advantage (like several DPR) even if they can already get their sneak attack off, and other melee combatants also get a big boost.

Advantage on their attack rolls plus disadvantage on attacks against them is great. Granted, it's easy to get out of this condition, but if you can do it right after your opponent's turn then you'll get a full round of benefits.

(I think it's worth mentioning here that Advantage/Disadvantage are much stronger benefits than CA was in 4e. Which means that the relatively limited movement restrictions don't matter quite as much)

Answer 2

Yes knocking an opponent Prone is a solid tactical choice if the attacker is part of a larger group attacking an opponent who is the focus of the group's attacks. Once an attacker has knocked the opponent prone, the remaining attackers will have advantage on their melee attacks.

However unless you have a bonus action or some way of generating additional attacks then it not as useful for one on one fight due to the fact that the prone opponent can get up as part of the movement portion of his turn.

Example

In the Phandelver module a horde of zombie attacked the party at Old Owl Well. The way the situation developed resulted in two of the party members surrounded by multiple zombies. The first zombie shoved a target PC. If he succeeded then that meant all the other zombie attacks were at an advantage. I did this until between a third and a half of the zombies (I randomly rolled) took their action and the rest attacked regardless whether there was successful shove or not.

It proved hugely effective and for this encounter highly evocative of the feel of a zombie attack.

I plan on using this tactic for organized military forces as well. As we now know that wrestling and body contact were part of historical sword fighting.

Answer 3

Whether it is worth it or not depends on what you must give up to accomplish knocking the target prone as well as how many others in your party will be able to take advantage of the prone target vs how many others will be at disadvantage.

No, not worth it: If you are playing a 4th level Barbarian or a Rogue or any other character with only one attack, it likely isn't worth losing an attack to knock an enemy prone. It also depends on how many melee characters are around to take advantage of the prone target vs how many ranged characters who will be at a disadvantage. And also how many targets there are giving the ranged characters other targets to choose from.

The initiative order also matters as the target can usually stand right back up on its turn.

Monsters that are bigger than large size will not be affected by this.

Yes, very much worth it: In some situations, it can be a fantastic option. This strategy is ideal for a character with multiple attacks who has the Shield Master feat. There aren't a lot of competing uses for a fighters bonus action (second wind once per rest). Every single turn the character takes the attack action he/she gets a "free" bonus action that allows a chance to knock the target prone with his/her shield. The beauty of this is the character, especially fighters who don't generally have a lot of use for their bonus actions, does not sacrifice a normal attack or spend superiority dice or burn up a spell slot or use any other limited resource. The character has the option of doing this every single turn! If you use your bonus action first and succeed in knocking the target prone, you can use all your remaining attacks to hit the prone target with advantage. And once the target is prone, all your melee buddies can beat on the target with advantage with all their attacks until it stands up again. The target burns half its maximum movement to stand up so its options to run away are limited. If other characters can reduce the target's movement further, to below half its movement, it won't be able to stand up.

Answer 4

At higher levels barbarians can have the option to use a bonus action to knock an enemy they hit prone. With two attacks that means if they hit with the first they can knock 'em down and then wail on them a second time with advantage. So even if the monster goes next they still would get at least one good blow and then would have to try and creep away before they get the smack down on the next.

I would look at prone as something you can capitalize on as the opportunity presents itself.

Answer 5

It is, especially in combinations with grapples

Knocking somebody prone already makes it a lot less likely that they will be able to bother your squishy friends, as they'll need to use half their movement speed to stand back up, and if they don't stand back up they'll have disadvantage on their attacks, and allies in melee combat will have advantage.

That in itself is pretty darn good, but there are ways to shut down enemies even further. If you also grapple them while they are on the ground, their movement speed will become 0. This means they don't even get the -chance- to stand back up, they will need to either attack with disadvantage or try to break the grapple somehow, they don't even have the option anymore of using half their speed to get up.

How good this is depends a lot on what you're fighting. If you're fighting a group of 20 goblins, doing this to one of them is really not that big a deal, you'd be better off just hitting one and most likely instakilling it with your attacks. But if you're fighting a big boss monster, it suddenly becomes extremely debilitating for the monster.

I've personally done it with a Young Green Dragon, which is a lot less scary when it can't fly, can't reposition itself for its breath attack, and either has to use an action to escape that grapple, or resign itself to having disadvantage on all of its attacks.

Answer 6

There are ways to turn that lost movement into a lost turn with the right combination. Standing up doesn't cost half your current movement, it costs half your MAXIMUM movement. In other words, if you can reduce a target's movement low enough, they won't be able to stand up at all.

For example, say an enemy has 30' of movement, and is knocked prone. Now in the next turn, two casters attack that enemy with Ray of Frost. The enemy now only has 10' of movement left, but needs 15' to stand up. They've fallen, and they can't get up! Unless they have ranged attacks, they're now a much less significant threat. Even if one of the rays misses, they'll still only have 5' of movement left, so any threatened characters can probably just move out of the way.

Against melee-only enemies, Eldritch Blast + Repelling Blast can also work, by pushing an enemy so far back that they can't reach any party members on their next turn. The Monk's Open-Hand style works as well.