D&D Next's Advantage/Disadvantage

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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

OgreBattle wrote:What if Advantage/Disadvantage was +/- 1d6 to your d20 roll.

Is that better in any way to the rerolls that it currently is?
Changes the variance and the expected value. Which is not a good thing for otherwise linear RNGs because that makes it really hard to calculate probabilities. Unless you're running dicepools (where doing this is mathematically tractable by eyeballing it) you generally only want to change the EV or rarely the variance.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

So I've been thinking about an advantage/disadvantage system with 2d10 instead of a d20. If you have advantage, you can re-roll one of your dice (if you like). If you have disadvantage, your opponent can make you re-roll one of your dice). You'd have to take the re-roll, even if it is lower (or higher).

So if you roll a 10 and a 10 (20), you'd not bother re-rolling ever - you could only do worse. But if you roll a 10 and 1 (11), you could re-roll the 1 for a higher total.

I know the bell-curve breakdown of the results of 2d10 versus a d20. What would the option of rerolling one die do?
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Post by TiaC »

How about you start with 3d6 and advantage changes it to 2d6+6?
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Post by Seerow »

Personally I like 3d20 take middle, with advantage shifting that to take best and disadvantage shifting to take worst.
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Post by JonSetanta »

I'll stick with a d20 or two kthx.
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Post by FaerieGodfather »

I like the Advantage system, but it works better with smaller bonuses, and like Frank says... can't replace all of the niggling little bonuses D&D tends to throw out.

It's a good step toward making D&D mathematically simpler, though.
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Post by OgreBattle »

So for advantage/disadvatage to work properly, what kind restraint needs to be taken?
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Post by FaerieGodfather »

OgreBattle wrote:So for advantage/disadvatage to work properly, what kind restraint needs to be taken?
At its most basic, you need to have fewer numerical bonuses/penalties with smaller total values.
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Post by Username17 »

OgreBattle wrote:So for advantage/disadvatage to work properly, what kind restraint needs to be taken?
You need to put restraint on how often you give out advantage/disadvantage. It's just a named bonus that doesn't stack. If people routinely get it 3 or 4 times, it'll get frustrating and stupid.

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Post by OgreBattle »

FrankTrollman wrote: You need to put restraint on how often you give out advantage/disadvantage. It's just a named bonus that doesn't stack. If people routinely get it 3 or 4 times, it'll get frustrating and stupid.
-Username17
So what would a good list of Adv/Dis look like? Here's my shot:


Advantage
-You're berserk and smashing shit willy nilly
-Your target is flat footed/prone/stunned/paralyzed
-Your weapon was made to kill your target
-You are a fish in water and your target is a ground/rock type also in water


Disadvantage
-You're berserk and totally exposed
-You're prone/stunned/dazed
-You are a drow in sunlight without your hoodie
-You're undead and the cleric of pelor is staring at you
-A magic circle is repelling you
-You are a fish on dry land


I figure A/D shouldn't be given for 'at-will' actions like flanking or covering an ally with your shield.
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Post by Zaranthan »

OgreBattle wrote:Advantage
-You're berserk and smashing shit willy nilly
Disadvantage
-You're berserk and totally exposed
I like this. I get advantage against everyone in exchange for gaining disadvantage when it's not my turn. That's about the level of strategy the barbarian players seem to want.
Advantage
-Your target is flat footed/prone/stunned/paralyzed
Disadvantage
-You're prone/stunned/dazed\
This, OTOH, is too far the other way unless these status conditions are either rare to encounter or easy to resist. Doubling-down is a good way to demonstrate the power of your Ad/Disad system, but if it can be somebody's at-will schtick (like tripping somebody in 3.5 so they're prone), it can make the cool interactive system seem monotonous. "Oh gee, it's my turn, I give all my teammates advantage and all the enemies disadvantage. Again. Your turn."
Advantage:
-Your weapon was made to kill your target
-You are a fish in water and your target is a ground/rock type also in water
Disadvantage:
-You are a drow in sunlight without your hoodie
-You're undead and the cleric of pelor is staring at you
-A magic circle is repelling you
-You are a fish on dry land
I like these, because they imply either planning ahead (werewolves in the ruined castle? Better stock up on silver daggers) or directly-noticeable teamwork (I stare down the vampires, go get 'em, boys).
I figure A/D shouldn't be given for 'at-will' actions like flanking or covering an ally with your shield.
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Post by ishy »

OgreBattle wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: You need to put restraint on how often you give out advantage/disadvantage. It's just a named bonus that doesn't stack. If people routinely get it 3 or 4 times, it'll get frustrating and stupid.
-Username17
So what would a good list of Adv/Dis look like? Here's my shot:


Advantage
-You're berserk and smashing shit willy nilly
-Your weapon was made to kill your target
So a weapon that was created to kill a target is always useless for a berserker?
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Post by OgreBattle »

ishy wrote:
OgreBattle wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: You need to put restraint on how often you give out advantage/disadvantage. It's just a named bonus that doesn't stack. If people routinely get it 3 or 4 times, it'll get frustrating and stupid.
-Username17
So what would a good list of Adv/Dis look like? Here's my shot:


Advantage
-You're berserk and smashing shit willy nilly
-Your weapon was made to kill your target
So a weapon that was created to kill a target is always useless for a berserker?
Berserkers were made to kill every target.


There'll probably be things like damage bonuses or DR and whatnot in a completely well thought out and tested system tho'. How do you think A/D should look?
Last edited by OgreBattle on Mon Dec 09, 2013 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Bottom line is that if you're going to give advantage for stunts and shit, you absolutely can't give advantage for anything that is on all the time or even lasts an entire combat. D&DNext's Shield of Faith is simply something that cannot happen. Magic forcefields can jolly well give you a +2 to AC or something, because if they give advantage they won't stack with anything that gives advantage.

Giving advantage because you just zapped someone with a color spray is fine, but giving advantage because you cast recitation at the beginning of the battle is right fucking out. Any time you grant advantage, you discourage the other players (and yourself) from using stunts or special abilities until it is over. If it doesn't end before the combat does, no one will ever move into an advantageous position or throw sand into someone's eyes or do anything else interesting until the battle is over.

Flanking is a good example of something that you could get advantage from, because it's fluid and will probably end pretty soon. Turning on Berserking or a magic circle are very bad examples.

-Username17
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Post by ishy »

OgreBattle wrote:There'll probably be things like damage bonuses or DR and whatnot in a completely well thought out and tested system tho'. How do you think A/D should look?
Something like:
Advantage:
Flanking
Melee attack from high ground
Enemy who is prone

Disadvantage:
Attacking someone while it is dark
Attacking while balancing on a slippery surface

Basically things that you have to seek out or that can change from fight to fight and round to round, that you don't necessarily need stacking for.

Though I might play around with things like, disadvantage:
Attacking someone with a higher BAB
Attacking someone who wears a shield (unless the shield was used for a bashing manoeuvre)

So people who wear a shield will always shield bash lower BAB enemies. Just don't like handing out disadvantage that is always active.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

So you can get +9 on a d20 before more bonuses break the RNG. How can stacking static modifiers be kept under control?

The D&D SRD lists these as all the bonuses/modifiers:
Property
*Alchemical
*Enhancement
*Size
*Inherent (ability scores)
*Resistance

Armor related
*Natural AC
*Armor
*Shield
*Deflection

Training/Mood related
*Racial
*Ability
*Morale
*Competence
*Insight
*Epic
*Dodge

Other Stuff
*Luck
*Divine
*Circumstance
*Profane
*Sacred
Though there's also things like range increments and flanking that aren't mentioned. How should this list look in a better D&D though? Here's my shot at it:

Fiddly modifiers
Training/Mood related
*attributes
*Level
*Proficiency/Skill/Feat
*Morale (Encouragement/Fear, going berserk?)

Material properties
*Item
*Force (force fields, magicked weapons)
*Weakness/Resistance (Silver vs werewolves, magic vs golems)

Positional
*Swarming (formation fighting, mob of zombies)
*Cover (light, medium, total)
*Distance (short, med, long, extreme)
*Footing (slippery, on horseback, on a storm wracked ship)
*Height/Size (giant vs dwarf, cavalry vs infantry without reach weapons, high/low ground)

-------

Advantage
Bonus earned through stunts or temporary effects.
+Positional advantage: Target is flanked/prone/restrained/flat footed
+Cognitive advantage: Target is unable to see you, target is surprised

Disadvantage
Penalties from temporary effects
-Cognitive: sensory overload, darkness, illusions, super distractions
-Physical: entangling vines, webs, getting grappled, beetles crawling all over you

Double Down
-Stunned/Nauseated (electrocuting a water elemental, getting clobbered hard on the head)
---------

A displacer beast and Mirror Image would inflict disadvantage on those targeting them (falls under "Cognitive Disadvantage)

How can my fiddly modifier list be improved? I'm not sure where 'haste' would fit, maybe 'Speed' deserves its own category (would include haste/slow/charging)
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Post by schpeelah »

Some of the bonus explosion can be attributed to bonuses serving multiple purposes. (Then much is due to the authors treating the bonus categories as flavor text, as is obvious from the fact that there's a sacred and a profane bonus, or an alchemical bonus). The stated goal is to keep them from stacking and for that you might want to go full meta with something like Primary, Secondary and Tertiary bonus categories.

However, types like "racial" and "ability" exist to make it easier to talk about those bonuses, and we'd call them that even if they weren't in the rules.

The third wrinkle is that some bonuses might have rules attached, and you'd want some kind of name to attach to that too. There are rules for when morale or dodge modifiers apply or not.

For advantage, you need to remember that the main advantage of using that is not doing any math on that, so you want it on things that come and go quickly. For anything longer, you'll want a regular bonus because you aren't getting the benefit of not recalculating bonuses every round anyway and are getting a drawback that all of those temporary stunts aren't stacking.
So yes on advantage from surprise or flanking, no on disadvantage from fighting a Displacer Beast or a beetle swarm.
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Post by Insomniac »

The Advantage seeking/Disadvantage Imposing thing is because of Bounded Accuracy. If they did something as crazy as Attribute bonuses to Ability Modifiers keyed to attack, +X attack and armor to items (you know, as crazy as that being the first stuff you ever buy for a 3.5/Pathfinder character EVER) then you may not be off the RNB but you're definitely off the Bounded Accuracy train tracks.

Getting a +2 weapon is supposed to be this OMG moment in the game.

So since the item stuff is so stingy, people are going for Advantages. People aren't dumb. They're gonna find what works in a system and go for it. Most of the Advantage/Disadvantage proliferation and seeking would go away with proper gear that has been standard in these style games for about 15 years.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Thread bump for related questions.


1. Now that 5e has been around for a while, is the general consensus still the same that A/D is a good thing, or did Wizards implement it badly?

2. If one were to declare both "Reroll a success" and "Reroll a failure" instead of "Roll twice and take the higher/lower", is that the same, better, or worse?
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Post by Grek »

Reroll a Success/Reroll a Failure is better iif you have a limited resource which causes it to occur, due to the fact that you definitionally can only use the ability after you know whether the original roll would have been a success or failure respectively. If you have "Reroll a Failure 1/day" as a power, you obviously won't use it if you were already going to succeed. An "Advantage On Next Roll 1/day" power lacks that benefit.

General Den consensus is that 5e is a steaming pile of shit and also unplayable and that Advantage/Disadvantage is just one more turd on the pile. My personal opinion is that 5e is playable in the same sense that kitty liter is acceptable sandcastle building materials: technically true, but by no means an endorsement. Continuing the metaphor, Advantage/Disadvantage is one of the bits without cat turds all over it but which is still ultimately unsatisfactory due to a lack of granularity.
Last edited by Grek on Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

sigma999 wrote:1. Now that 5e has been around for a while, is the general consensus still the same that A/D is a good thing, or did Wizards implement it badly?
Wait What?

Since when the fuck was it ever the consensus that Advantage/Disadvantage was a good thing? Are we in opposite world now?
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Post by Rawbeard »

in my experience players and GMs don't do anything to gain advantage, just walk up to target, smack it, rince, repeat. Inspiration seems to be something even more obscure.
I still haven't bothered to actually read the rules, so when I tried to use positioning in one game to get advantage and the game came to a screeching halt because no one knew if that is supposed to work. GM started giving out advantage more often after that, even giving out inspiration like candy.
One year later, at least, new group, I have still not read the rules, got into a group that played for longer than the previous one, and literally no one is doing anything that even looks like advantage/disadvantage outside of explicitly pointed out stuff in the module.
such a failure, it's not because it's bad design, people just don't seem to realize it exists. they play 3e lite without loot, basically.

I really like the bard, though.
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Post by Aharon »

Rawbeard wrote:in my experience players and GMs don't do anything to gain advantage, just walk up to target, smack it, rince, repeat. Inspiration seems to be something even more obscure.
I still haven't bothered to actually read the rules, so when I tried to use positioning in one game to get advantage and the game came to a screeching halt because no one knew if that is supposed to work. GM started giving out advantage more often after that, even giving out inspiration like candy.
One year later, at least, new group, I have still not read the rules, got into a group that played for longer than the previous one, and literally no one is doing anything that even looks like advantage/disadvantage outside of explicitly pointed out stuff in the module.
such a failure, it's not because it's bad design, people just don't seem to realize it exists. they play 3e lite without loot, basically.

I really like the bard, though.
At low levels, it's not really distinguishable from 3e (currently playing a lvl 2 cleric). I know that there are big differences in design, but especially bounded accuracy doesn't kick in until later.
I did notice that my DM seems to use the DC10=easy metric, which leads to unintentionally funny moments (like falling to the ground and hitting ones' nose when trying to grapple somebody), but the DM acknowledged that I don't find this particularly funny and tries to limit instances of this happening.

Concerning Advantage: We use it, and it's nice to have, since there are so few other bonuses. Basically, I spam guidance a lot for +1d4, and that's it (other characters halfing druid, half-elf rogue, tiefling wizard).
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Post by Hiram McDaniels »

nockermensch wrote:Since they hand out A/D like candy and since further books down the line must introduce power-creep or they won't sell, we can surely expect some kind of DOUBLE or TRIPLE ADVANTAGE in a couple of years.

And since they'll need to build boss monsters that can somehow survive for 3 or 4 rounds against the onslaught of a party rolling several d20 for each hit or save or lose spell, they'll introduce a number of successes mechanic for hitting the toughest monsters. So once we get to killing Lolth or Asmodeus, their AC will be listed like 15 (2). They'll just assume you'll be using several kinds of advantage, but will require you to confirm the hit.

Advantage will lead to dicepools in D&D. Remember, you read this here first!
As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, the rule is that you either have advantage, or you don't. There is no rolling 4d20 and picking the best. Of course, this does get jammed-up because disadvantage cancels out advantage, so if you have ADV from multiple sources and D/ADV from multiple sources it basically means playing a short game of War before you can resolve a roll, which is bad.

I think it's more likely that we will see the return of 3E's niggling little +'s and -'s before 5E turns into a dicepool game, but if you end up being right I'll owe you a coke.

Generally, I keep A/D cordoned off within spells/mechanics that grant it and for player stunts I just adjust the target numbers down in my head before they roll, but I digress. The den doesn't give a shit what I do at my table, only what's in the books.
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Post by mlangsdorf »

My understanding is that any advantage cancels all disadvantage and vice versa. So if you're in the dark, grappled, and firing your bow at a monster at long range, the three instances of disadvantage are canceled out by your buddy using a spell that gives you advantage against the target and you only roll a single d20 for the attack.

D&D 5e is mildly horrible, but it's playable at a decent table and most combats resolve quickly.
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