Facing Rules in 4e

[Actana]

Does anyone know if there are any sort of facing rules written for 4e anywhere? As far as I know there are no official rules, but how about house rule writeups? I don't know how much use they'd be, likely adding in a useless layer of complexity and possibly nerfing a lot of characters, but I'd like to give facing rules a thought anyway as I enjoy the concept and how it could give a bit more depth to strategy.

[Sol]

I don't really see a point. The only non-contrived consequence of facing when you're dealing with 6-second turns is that you can only properly defend yourself against one side at a time, which is adequately covered by existing flanking rules.

[Mando Knight]

How many extra useless layers of complexity do you want to add? That would be the first step towards determining how crazy you'd be for adding facing.

Personally, I'd switch to a hex map (or no map) and use more realistic burst/blast shapes first...

[Akodo Makama]

In combat it's covered by the flanking rules. Out of combat it's covered by the stealth-trained thief saying "I wait till their backs are turned".

[georgie_leech]

It might help if you explained why you want facing rules, because they can be done in a number of different ways. Facing rules that are designed with Gaze attacks in mind will look different than those where shields provide extra defence primarily on one side, which will be different from those designed for Stealth and detection.

[Actana]

A big part of it is honestly just a theoretical approach to the rules. I doubt I'd ever use them in practice, but I would like to see how people have conceptualized them and worked around issues such as multi-target melee/ranged attacks, not gimping OAs too much and what kind of actions it'd take to change facing and how CA would work with it.

So yeah, mostly just theoretical and seeing if and how someone has already done it, instead of actually finding a use for the rules.

[Rakaydos]

"A character can choose to ignore a flank. if he does, select one character flanking him. The character is considered blind to that opponent, giving them a +5 to hit him, but that opponent no longer counts for flanking, denying CA to the enemy opposite."

[Athistaurr]

I like the idea from Rakaydos,
But I would suggest to declare the ignored opponent as hidden and drop the explicit +5 and blinded effect.

[Mando Knight]

I like the idea from Rakaydos,
But I would suggest to declare the ignored opponent as hidden and drop the explicit +5 and blinded effect.

It's not hidden. Blinded is a better effect, since you're only unable to detect them visually. It would give them the total concealment needed to become/stay hidden, though.

[Laserlight]

If you've got helm and shield, it takes some effort to keep track of anything not right in front of you. In fact, even if you don't have helm and shield, combat tends to induce tunnel vision--someone can be in plain sight, off to one side, and you simply don't see them.

If you're on a hex map and facing 12 o clock, I could see saying that anything at hex direction 10 or 2 would get +2, anything at 8 or 4 would get +4, and someone on your 6 would get +6. Not counting "multiple attacker" bonuses.