Disadvantages of Advantage

[5ekyu]

Yeah, it's the same issue, but I always like to remind everyone that the World of Darkness rules were entirely copied from Shadowrun. (Nothing against World of Darkness, just giving credit where it's due.)

On the one hand, yes, it's important to not get too caught up on the specifics so that you lose track of how the rules work as a whole. On the other hand, this is still a game, and you can't meaningfully play a game if the players don't understand the rules. One issue with how 5E works, where the DM can either lower the DC or give Advantage to the check, is that the players don't necessarily know which way it's going to be - and that detail can be incredibly important when they want to decide which action they're going to take.

The other big issue where ambiguity hurts 5E is in the difference between Perception and Investigation, because the things that they govern can be so similar in terms of what they look like, but the mechanical difference for any given character can easily be a ten-point swing. I would have preferred if they'd spent more effort on distinguishing between them, and less effort on calculating specific numeric modifiers.

(To its credit, the system does try to establish some general guidelines for both of those issues, but it can still be hard to make sure that the DM and the players are all on the same page.)

Perception vs Investigation - i agree this is an area where there is a lot of "consult your gm" clarity needed. On this forum i have seen gms whose views are way off mine in this regard. Have sern it in streams as well. Have seen others more in line with mine.

As for DC vs advantage, i think the do in the rules a better job there. But to be sure how i choose DCs is a session zero campaign charter thing for me. I think itsvimportant to know that for players to have their characters make good informed choices.

As for WoD vs Shadowrun... I may have had it wrong then. I had thought SR 1 had variable dice in pool **and** variable successes required but thought (mistakenly) it had a set threshold for what a success was. Then again, now that you mention it, i think i recall armor ratings of like 2-6 or so... So likely my bad.

I knew VtM had all three in play and (while playing many many games and loads of fun) laughing at the math fails.

Then again, it was 2nd or 3rd i think, when they locked threshold at 7 (since they could sell special dice.)

 

[Jhaelen]

I come at it from a fairly non-analytical view: Rolling 2 dice is fun.

It's also a better system for the mathematically challenged. Although, a dice pool system would probably be best.

 

[5ekyu]

It's also a better system for the mathematically challenged. Although, a dice pool system would probably be best.

Diceless.

 

[Aldarc]

Advantage/Disadvantage is simple and elegant, but I find that its ubiquity in 5E becoming increasingly cumbersome and unimaginative.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I think it is best to treat adv/disad as rare, and still use mods like 1-3. The rest of game uses such modifiers after all (eg sliding DCs, cover, Stat bonuses/prof bonuses) - it doesnt take much to also offer such granularity in combat. Only adv/disad is too blunt a tool, imo, it goes too far, is too simplistic.

 

[Fauchard1520]

Advantage/Disadvantage is simple and elegant, but I find that its ubiquity in 5E becoming increasingly cumbersome and unimaginative.

That is exactly the tradeoff I'm worried about. You've got things like 5e's bless and bardic inspiration to provide different styles of bonus to a roll, but the system can feel a bit cramped at times. It begins to make me wonder whether that's part of the reason for its comparatively slow release schedule.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, it's the same issue, but I always like to remind everyone that the World of Darkness rules were entirely copied from Shadowrun. (Nothing against World of Darkness, just giving credit where it's due.)

Not quite true.

Shadowrun uses a priority system to pick how many points in the attribute, skill, and advantage pools, and magic and Species access. Shadowrun also is a 6 att, with the whole att pool being split amongst them. Skills similarly.
Vampire has attributes in three groups, and you prioritize 7/5/3 to each of the groups. Similar method for Abilities (Knowledges, Skills, and Talents). Similar for the traits. And then a pile of "spend anywhere." much more involved, quite different

VTM, while borrowing the basic dice idea, doesn't impliment it the same way. Initial Shadowrun was 6=6+1d6, recursively, and allowed TN's over the die's maximum. VTM was 10 always succeeds, and if within specialty, allows rolling an extra die separately against the TN. The two are similar, but not identical. Oh, and both can be implied to refer back to Space 1889, which uses the 1d6 per shot vs TN by weapon and range for small arms fire.

Further, cumulation of damage is VERY different between VTM and Shadowrun 1E. Similar concepts, but different in execution.

Inspired and/or adapted from? Quite possibly. Copied from? Absolute drekh.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Inspired and/or adapted from? Quite possibly. Copied from? Absolute drekh.

The basic mechanic of rolling a number of dice equal to attribute+skill, and checking each die individually against a variable target difficulty in order to get a number of successes, was what was copied. The only real innovation is that they switched from d6 to d10, so you could have more variance in the target numbers without having to explode the sixes.

No credit for innovation on stat generation methods; that's the first thing that anyone can house rule trivially. Minor credit is given for using different stats and skills, but some of that is just because the setting is different. Full credit for innovation on all of the different powers and clans and whatnot, but that's not really a "rule" thing. And the damage calculations were also different, as you say.

Over all, Vampire shows all of the signs of being a Shadowrun heartbreaker, except in that it actually managed to surpass its source material in terms of popularity for a while. You could make a strong comparison to Palladium Fantasy, which was a D&D heartbreaker, but was also more popular in the nineties. That doesn't make it any less derivative. Nor do I mean to cast aspersions on World of Darkness, by any means; being derivative is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that credit for the basic system mechanics - what people think of as "the White Wolf dice pool mechanic" - belongs solely to Shadowrun.

 

[Jhaelen]

Yeah, it's the same issue, but I always like to remind everyone that the World of Darkness rules were entirely copied from Shadowrun. (Nothing against World of Darkness, just giving credit where it's due.)

Even if true, WoD managed to eliminate all of the problems with Shadowrun's system. I'm not sure Shadowrun deserves any credit here.

 

[5ekyu]

"The basic mechanic of rolling a number of dice equal to attribute+skill, and checking each die individually against a variable target difficulty in order to get a number of successes, was what was copied. "

While afaik Shadowrun was the first rpg to involve pools of dice vs thresholds (comparative dice pool vs additive dice pool) i am pretty sure the dice based on traits vs threshold for damage has been used for tabletop for **i think** before shadowrun adopted it for rpg. Certainly, shadow rin did not invent the trait based number of dice pools (additive)

For me i can say from my pov both shadowrun and wod provided innovative and new approaches -***especially*** in the context of other games at their time.

It was a very different rpg era... VtM was really counter-marketting of a sort to the long period of games in a race it seemed to ramp crunch up more than their competition.