Advantage/Disadvantage

[RobbyPants]

5E uses rules for advantage and disadvantage that you roll two dice and take the better or worse of the two rolls, and uses that in lieu of bonuses and penalties to the roll. This is praised for simplifying, removing bonus stacking, and helping keep the RNG sane, but it is criticize for certain shortfalls.

The biggest one I see is that once you already have disadvantage, there's nothing stopping you from willingly taking on others. So, if you're already in poor lighting, there's no reason for your wizard not to put away his staff and pull out his great sword.

Working in this simple paradigm, what can be done about that? The idea of "double advantage/disadvantage" (roll three dice, take the best/worst) seems like overkill to me.

Are there any other issues to consider for implementing a system like this?

[Schleiermacher]

It wouldn't be an issue if they'd applied advantage/disadvantage a little more intelligently in the rules. (I.e not used it as the default circumstance modifier.)

[angelfromanotherpin]

I don't see why stacking advantage/disadvantage is overkill. The first disadvantage die is like +/-3, but the second is like a +/-2. And the third one is like a +/-1. Can a d20 game handle that? Of course it can.

[Kaelik]

This is praised for simplifying, removing bonus stacking, and helping keep the RNG sane

...

The biggest one I see is that once you already have disadvantage, there's nothing stopping you from willingly taking on others. So, if you're already in poor lighting, there's no reason for your wizard not to put away his staff and pull out his great sword.

If one of your design goals that you consider a good thing is that bonuses and penalties don't stack, then you can't complain that you want the bonuses and penalties to stack.

[RobbyPants]

I don't see why stacking advantage/disadvantage is overkill. The first disadvantage die is like +/-3, but the second is like a +/-2. And the third one is like a +/-1. Can a d20 game handle that? Of course it can.

I guess it does make sense that each die added afterward would have less effect than the one before it.

This is praised for simplifying, removing bonus stacking, and helping keep the RNG sane

...

The biggest one I see is that once you already have disadvantage, there's nothing stopping you from willingly taking on others. So, if you're already in poor lighting, there's no reason for your wizard not to put away his staff and pull out his great sword.

If one of your design goals that you consider a good thing is that bonuses and penalties don't stack, then you can't complain that you want the bonuses and penalties to stack.

I didn't say it was one of my design goals. I said that it's one of the things people like about the system. Also: context. Bonus stacking is an issue in 3x in part because a proliferation of types as well as untyped bonuses.

Neither of those have anything to do with people disliking the fact that the system can't track more than one penalty.

[Kaelik]

I didn't say it was one of my design goals. I said that it's one of the things people like about the system. Also: context. Bonus stacking is an issue in 3x in part because a proliferation of types as well as untyped bonuses.

Neither of those have anything to do with people disliking the fact that the system can't track more than one penalty.

1) The point is that you are talking about a system who's entire meaningful difference from 3.5 is that bonuses and penalties don't stack, and you are trying to make them stack. That is really easy. Use 3e.

2) Yes, in 3e, bonuses stacked if they were different types. And the 5e system makes all bonuses and penalties the same type, so that none of them stack. That is literally the only selling point. Rolling 14 dice and taking the lowest is mathematically calculable to a specific +- bonus. The only meaningful difference between what you are proposing and 3e is that you roll more dice for the same effect. I'll pass.

[ishy]

I don't see why stacking advantage/disadvantage is overkill. The first disadvantage die is like +/-3, but the second is like a +/-2. And the third one is like a +/-1. Can a d20 game handle that? Of course it can.

If I have 1 regular + 3 advantage / disadvantage dice, die rolling feels really really pointless.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I can't argue with feels, man.

[OgreBattle]

The biggest one I see is that once you already have disadvantage, there's nothing stopping you from willingly taking on others. So, if you're already in poor lighting, there's no reason for your wizard not to put away his staff and pull out his great sword.
...
Are there any other issues to consider for implementing a system like this?

The solution is to not have "I don't know how to use a greatsword" grant disadvantage but just a regular -X. Adv/Disadvantage works best if it only applies to a short list of conditions that can come and go on a turn by turn basis and encourages the player to do something interesting to get advantage/avoid disadvantage. Here's a previous thread on this topic that explains it:

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54844& ... sc&start=0

Rolling two d20s and picking the better is worth, on average, about +3. However, you can normally only get three separate +3 bonuses added together before you're off the RNG altogether. The reroll doesn't break the RNG the way a fourth +3 bonus would.

If you insist on using a d20, and you insist on adding bonuses together, and you don't want to break the RNG, then adding a reroll in as one of your bonus types just makes good sense. But it's not a panacea. While you could add more rerolls, that gets really time consuming and annoying really fast and results start clustering pretty fast (lust look at what a clusterfuck Silhouette is when dicepools get moderately large). Practically speaking, one reroll is probably all you're going to want to allow, although it's not the end of the world if you allow 2.

Mike Mearls fapping to how it solves everything is just bananas. It doesn't solve everything. It solves the problem of adding a fourth +3 bonus without breaking the RNG. But it doesn't solve the problem of adding a fifth. Basically, it lets you go about one more standard deviation than a flat RNG is normally able to accommodate. And it does it by making your RNG no longer flat, so not much of a surprise there. Switching to a 3d6 system would do much the same to your ability to model probabilities.

-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

Here's my attempt at fleshing out what that "short list of conditions" could be:

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

Disadvantage
Penalties from temporary effects
-Cognitive: player is blinded, sensory overload (ex: color spray)
-Physical: player is entangled, imbalanced

[Ghremdal]

You can turn your proficiency bonus into dicepools, and ability modifiers into dicepools, and advantage and disadvantage are just added and removed from that pool.

But then its not d20 anymore.