Kinematics
Hero
OK, this came out of brainstorming on @DEFCON 1's post about exhaustion, and the trouble with the impact of disadvantage on all ability checks at the first level of exhaustion. However I'm finding the idea more generally attractive, and would like comment on it.
The basic idea is to change the interpretation of how disadvantage affects a check. You still roll two dice, but instead of taking the lowest result and being done right there, you take both results, and apply them in order of lowest to highest.
If both results were failures, or both success, then nothing really changes. You still just fail or succeed as normal. However when one is a failure, and the other a success, then things get a bit interesting. Namely, you have to take the consequences of the failure before you can get the results of the success.
If the consequences of failure prevent the success from being possible at all (eg: attempting to jump over a pit trap; attempting to hit an enemy), then it's just a straight failure. But if the consequences of failure don't really prevent success from being possible (most mental skills), it either just adds time (eg: a history check), or you take the consequences before you get the success (eg: animal handling check).
You could apply a similar approach for advantage. With advantage, most cases would have a success prevent the failure condition from happening at all, and obviously wouldn't add extra time or anything. But I could see some cases where you might stumble a bit after a jump (did you make noise the guard would notice?), or stutter a bit in the attempt to seduce the barmaid, somewhat tainting the suave persona you were attempting to project. You still succeed, but the paired failure flavors the results in some way.
Summary: When rolling with advantage or disadvantage, this shifts how to interpret the results when one of the dice would fail while the other succeeds. It makes the results less binary, and allows for imperfect results, or success with consequences.
Thoughts?
The basic idea is to change the interpretation of how disadvantage affects a check. You still roll two dice, but instead of taking the lowest result and being done right there, you take both results, and apply them in order of lowest to highest.
If both results were failures, or both success, then nothing really changes. You still just fail or succeed as normal. However when one is a failure, and the other a success, then things get a bit interesting. Namely, you have to take the consequences of the failure before you can get the results of the success.
If the consequences of failure prevent the success from being possible at all (eg: attempting to jump over a pit trap; attempting to hit an enemy), then it's just a straight failure. But if the consequences of failure don't really prevent success from being possible (most mental skills), it either just adds time (eg: a history check), or you take the consequences before you get the success (eg: animal handling check).
You could apply a similar approach for advantage. With advantage, most cases would have a success prevent the failure condition from happening at all, and obviously wouldn't add extra time or anything. But I could see some cases where you might stumble a bit after a jump (did you make noise the guard would notice?), or stutter a bit in the attempt to seduce the barmaid, somewhat tainting the suave persona you were attempting to project. You still succeed, but the paired failure flavors the results in some way.
Summary: When rolling with advantage or disadvantage, this shifts how to interpret the results when one of the dice would fail while the other succeeds. It makes the results less binary, and allows for imperfect results, or success with consequences.
Thoughts?
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