Looking at Prone

[Frogreaver]

A number of features allow you to knock an enemy prone. While melee attacks against the prone creature have advantage, and the prone creature can either move at half speed or use half of its speed to stand up, there's really not a huge benefit to knocking someone prone. Has anyone had any success homebrewing a way to increase its value?

Some thoughts:

• Being knocked prone invites an opportunity attack.
• Getting up from prone invites an opportunity attack ("stay down!").
• Getting up from prone while within the reach of a hostile creature requires a check of some kind (Athletics or Acrobatics).
• Being prone increases the chances of a critical hit (perhaps doubling the crit range of melee attacks?).

I get that being knocked prone shouldn't be as bad as, say, being stunned, but it feels like it should carry a heavier penalty than it does.

Prone is one of the most valuable conditions in the game. Advantage is that huge. That said, it's value is primarily for melee allies. If you don't have many melee allies it will not seem nearly as useful.

For example:
A single melee ally generating prone after he's attacked - not useful
2 melee allies with prone generated mid attack sequence of 1 of those PC's - starting to get much more useful.
3 melee allies with the wizard generating prone via grease - super useful!

It seems like the complaint may be more that using an attack to shove an enemy prone isn't very useful. That I agree with! But making prone stronger, while maybe fixing that, will break it in other instances.

Maybe the solution you are looking for is when you use an attack to shove an enemy prone you get to make a non-shove attack when successful.