Advantage or disadvantage?

RogerBacon

First Post
Would you consider it an advantage or a disadvantage to have a class that was functionally identical to a wizard except that they received silent spell, still spell, and eschew materials at first level AND they HAD to cast all of their spells using these feats. i.e. all of their spells ended up being two levels higher than usual.

Roger Bacon
 

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RogerBacon

First Post
OK. Disadvantage. Got it.

What if I generalize it (and change it) a little.

Would it be an advantage or a disadvantage if you could choose X number of meta-magic feats at first level that were ALWAYS-ON (i.e. you had to use them) but they only added ½ the normal amount to the level of the spell?

Roger Bacon
 


Mort

Legend
Supporter
RogerBacon said:
OK. Disadvantage. Got it.

What if I generalize it (and change it) a little.

Would it be an advantage or a disadvantage if you could choose X number of meta-magic feats at first level that were ALWAYS-ON (i.e. you had to use them) but they only added ½ the normal amount to the level of the spell?

Roger Bacon

Doesn’t seem very workable.

Many of the metamagic feats only have a +1 level modifier. Since you can’t have a 1.5 level spell you either round up or down. Rounding down makes this way too powerful as you can get 2 metamagic feats for free on every spell.
Rounding up leaves you at the same modifier (+1 but you add it twice) and that means your mage can’t even cast cantrips until 4th level and no 1st level spells until 5th– not too appealing.
 

RogerBacon

First Post
Mort said:


Doesn’t seem very workable.

Many of the metamagic feats only have a +1 level modifier. Since you can’t have a 1.5 level spell you either round up or down. Rounding down makes this way too powerful as you can get 2 metamagic feats for free on every spell.
Rounding up leaves you at the same modifier (+1 but you add it twice) and that means your mage can’t even cast cantrips until 4th level and no 1st level spells until 5th– not too appealing.

Sum the modifies and divide by two and then round up. The example of still, silent, and eschew materials would be (1+1+0)/2 = 1. Thus the class in question would have all spells one level higher. If there are other +0 level meta-magics I would probably say that only one could be chosen for each two other meta-magics.

For me the final test if anything is balanced is if the players shun it, choose it all the time, or choose it occasionally. I will let the players decide. I just posted here to get an idea of a starting place before fine tuneing.

Roger Bacon
 

CapnZapp

Legend
Reposting my general math-less explanation of advantage:
There is, I think, an easier way to explain advantage.

In the middle, when you need to roll 11 or more to succeed, that's 50% chance.

Since advantage gives you two shots of making the roll, and you only need to roll 11+ once, the total probability is 75%. In layman's terms, the second roll is only relevant if the first one fails, so the second roll's success rate (50%) is halved by the fact that the first roll is only a failure half the time, and 50% + 25% = 75%.

An increase by 25% is what we gamers would express as a +5 bonus on a d20.

Mathematically, of course, you take the probability of each roll failing, multiply them together (since they are independent) to get the chance of not succeeding; to find out the chance of actually succeeding you subtract that number from 1 (100%). In our example this becomes 1-(0,5x0,5)=0,75.

Now let's investigate the extremes. When you need only to roll a 2, that's 95% chance. This time advantage gives you much less of a benefit, because if you roll 2 or better, you've succeeded already, and you gain nothing from advantage. This is the reason advantage can't be pinned down to a single number, and this is the insight you need - no actual math needed.

But let's investigate anyway: while the success rate supplied by advantage is 95%, it only applies 5% of the time (the first roll's failure rate). So we reduce the first number by the second (i.e. we multiply them) to get 0,95x0,05. Before we even whip out our calculators, you should see this will be a number close to 0,05, since we are close to calculating 1x0,05. 0,05 is 5% which is equivalent to a +1 bonus. (The real result is 4,75%)

Mathematically, advantage increases our success rate from 0,95 to 1-(0,05x0,05)=0,9975. The increase is 0,0475 which is the 4,75% number above which we'll round up to 5% because that's +1 on a d20

So already we've concluded that advantage can both mean a +5 bonus and a +1 bonus, depending on whether we're right in the middle of the probability curve, or at either end of it.

If you have a +5 attack bonus, and the monster has AC 16, advantage means a whopping +5.

But if the monster has AC 7 (or indeed AC 25), advantage means only +1.

---

Now, while you're "only" getting a +1 on your AC 7 attack, don't forget that you almost don't need it, since after all, you will succeed 19 times out of 20 anyway, even without advantage.

Saying this because it's not just so simple as "advantage is sometimes close to worthless". After all, it's only "worthless" when you either don't need it, or when you're hopelessly behind.

Instead I'd say advantage helps those exposed to pure luck and chance the most. It is when your d20 roll could be reduced to a coin toss advantage carries the most impact.

Advantage is truly a wonderful mechanism :)

It is far better than statical bonuses, because it levels out the playing field.

Yes, it also leaves the have-nots in the dust, but when has a hero ever had that problem?

The much more common scenario in previous editions was when your hero had a very high chance, and a static +5 would only obliterate any remaining chance at drama or tension, since it would turn a highly likely roll into a statistical certainty.

With a static +5 bonus you can no longer fail at hitting AC 7 (in the example above).

With advantage, you can still roll two ones in a row and thus you can still fail.
Not coincidentally, the chance of that happening is 1 out of 400. Which is, you guessed it, exactly the "missing" 0,25%. The success rate only went up to 0,9975, remember.

This means that advantage is an important part of the entire bounded accuracy concept of 5E.
 

Celebrim

Legend
Your asking the wrong questions.

For your currently proposed rules, the real question is, "What sort of wizard would profit by increasing the level of his spells by 1 in return for having no components?"

More than 90% of the time, the components of a spell don't matter. So losing all component requirements is only an advantage in a small number of situations. For a typical blaster wizard or battlefield control wizard, fighting behind the front line, turning your slow spell or your fireball spell in to a 4th level spell in exchange for no spell components is an almost pure disadvantage. 90% of the time, you are just getting fewer, weaker spells with no tangible benefit.

But for an intrigue wizard, who wants to subtly manipulate situations without being caught, having no visible components to your spellcasting is a massive advantage. After all, you don't want anyone to know you are doing anything. No one can now notice you are casting poison, bestow curse, charm person, suggestion, hold person, major illusion and so forth. Since your whole shtick is based on being unobserved and having plausible deniability, getting a discount on meta-magic you'd have to otherwise pay for both in terms of spending build points and reducing your caster effectiveness by applying meta-magic is a really good deal. That you can get out of grapples more easily and are more difficult to disarm is just bonus.
 

MarkB

Legend
Depending upon the specific metamagics chosen, this will clearly be a specialist class - for instance, as Celebrim points out, a class that takes your default still/silent/no-materials combo is ideally specialised towards intrigue.

So, why make the class otherwise identical to a standard wizard? Why not build it to synergise around its speciality?
 

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