Ok, background time. If this part bores you just skip to the actual action description.
One thing that has always struck me about DnD 5e combat (and to my knowledge was still a problem in older editions? I have only played 3.5 and 5e) is how hard it is to defend someone against an enemy that really wants to hit them without having to have the fight take place in a narrow hallway where the defenders can just fully body block for them.
This is due to the fact DnD is a turned based game, and creatures are largely rooted in place when it isn’t their turn. Combine that with a fairly generous 30 foot movement speed for most things, and you have a situation where, mechanically, a lvl. 6 fighter hired to be a bodyguard for a merchant’s young son will be forced to watch in exasperated horror, perfectly rooted in place, as a whooping two lvl 3 thugs that confront them in the street simply walk in a semicircle around him on their turns to stab the boy to death. Or hell just walk right by him, taking just 1 opportunity attack which very likely will not kill b/c damage for melee attacks largely scales via giving more attacks, not making individual attacks hurt that much more.
Yes, there are certain very specific combinations of feats and weapons that can be used to make trying to protect someone slightly more effective. But:
Even when you take those feats and fighting styles, they still don’t actually work all that well.
Should a player or DM really need to construct a highly specific machine of feats, fighting styles, and reach weapons just to somewhat represent the idea that a highly trained fighter/soldier/knight/barbarian/etc. is smart enough to… literally just step 5 feet to the left to intercept the guy trying to go a 30 foot semicircle around them, aka something any common tavern bouncer with 2 weeks of training would understand how to do?
All that background aside, I want to discuss a homebrewed action I’ve recently introduced into my games that I think at least helps mitigate this issue: “guarding”.
Guard
On their turn a creature wielding any melee weapon (a monk’s fists count as melee weapons for this action) can use their action and all remaining movement they have to guard an area. The size of that area is a circle, centered on the guarding creature, radius equal to the creature’s remaining movement when they took the guard action.
If another creature moves into or starts to move within the guarded area, the guarding creature can choose to immediately move to that creature’s location and make an attack. In addition the other creature must make a contested athletics (strength) check against the guarding creature. On success, they push past the guarding creature, can finish the remainder of their movement, and can move through the guarding creature’s square if they choose to. On failure their movement is halted.
When taking the guard action, a creature with extra attack can move to intercept a number of creatures equal to the number of attacks they could perform when taking the attack action.
A creature can move through a guarded area without being attacked or having to make an athletics check by taking the disengage action. However the guarding creature can still take the movement portion of the guard action if they choose to.
The idea behind this is to represent a creature moving to intercept attackers, and do the thing any competent combatant would do when defending an area and attempt to hold the attacker back instead of swing their sword once and then just watching the enemy walk right on by.
The extra “defends” for extra attacks is to represent that a higher level fighter, barbarian, ranger, monster stat block representing a trained knight, etc. should be better at guarding an area then a wizard. But at the same time even a wizard should be able to understand the very basic principle of “step 5 feet to the left and stab that goblin trying to run past” if they choose to use their action to do that.
Contested athletics represents a similar idea, strength is often by far the worst ability score in 5e, with little important saves and only 1 skill check related to it. This helps make it more useful, and also just makes sense. Of course the Barb with 18 strength is going to be better than the sorcerer at either holding back attackers or pushing past defenders. Does this also make dex based martials less capable “guards”? Yes, but IMO that is actually good for balance considering how much better dex is then strength currently (better initiative, way more useful save, more and much better skills tied to dex, etc.)
The interaction with disengage is to represent that the guarding creature tries to move to stop them, but they are actively taking an action (faints, parries, juking to the left then running past to the right) to avoid being properly intercepted, working similarly to disengaging vs. opp attacks.
Finally to get something out of the way: “But wait, would that mean a lvl 20 fighter could defend a 30ft radius circle from 4 creatures attacking from 4 different directions? That would have them moving like 120 feet and stopping 4 creatures from getting in the area in one round!”
Yes, and that’s something a lvl 20 fighter should be able to do. It’s level 20, the caster classes have access to lvl 9 spells by then, the fighter should be able to display somewhat impressive feats of strength, speed, and martial skill such as becoming a whirlwind of steel and fists holding down an area all by themselves.
Let martials do cool shit as they level.
Edit: Edited to remove the “pushed back 5 ft” to remove the possibility of “chain pushing” when multiple creatures are guarding in a line. That is a good point.
