D&D 5E "The problem with 5e" is the best feature - advantage

[tetrasodium]

Fair enough. I felt the only fixing it really needed is to allow it to stack. My argument about changing it so it offers a bump in terms of some die roll or another added to the d20 is it messes with bounded accuracy. If that isn't an issue for the person seeking a "fix", than have at it.


Other mechanics still exist, they just accomplish different things IMO. Spells such as Bless and features such as Bardic Inspiration grant bonuses which are random, others such as the Archery Fighting Style grant a flat +2 bonus. But, your point is taken in the loss of granularity. For example: the difference in a flanking or side attack versus a rear attack where you are unseen by your target. Would attacking from behind offer a great benefit than attacking from the side? IIRC in prior editions it was a +1 bonus (side) and +2 (rear) or maybe +2 and +4, respectively. With advantage they are basically equal. Of course, I think the greater issue is the loss of the Rear AC calculation (no Dex, no Shield) which would make the difference--but that is a different issue.

No not really....

Spoiler: Things that give advantage in the dmg

This is absurd & the point is made so I'll end with this before continuing with the many more items that grant advantage

Spoiler: Things in the dmg that grant flat +N other than weapons & armor

Nothing... and just to be certain no GM takes it upon themselves to introduce badwrongfun magic items with static bonuses to their game they removed bonus types. They topped that by removing the idea that you can't get multiple bonuses to one thing by allowing a +n shield +n armor & even +n bracers/cloak/ring of protection to stack. Just to be safe in case a GM truly wanted to do those kind of things they left out anything about body slots that once were used to help prevent silliness by limiting your ability to wear more than one item boosting something or boosting related things.

So no.... advantage is massively overused and they cleaned out the toolbox of competing mechanics along with the structural stuff that might be needed for them... but good news they wasted a page or so on flanking & facing rules that deliberately miss the mark to such an egregious degree that suggesting it was anything but deliberate is an insult to whomever could miss the need so bad as to do that "accidentally"... oh yea... there are like 4 half baked rules for changing how rests work that don't really do much of anything rather than one that does work & some other variant rules that might support things competing with advantage.

 

[Stormonu]

Its exactly how Shadow of the Demon Lord's Boon vs Bane works.

They cancel each other one for one, and you roll them all but keep the highest.

I've use it for 5e and it works great. You could also go with Advantage starting at 1d4 and then increasing or decreasing the die size for each beneficial or interfering effects

-1d12 > -1d10 > -1d8 > 1d6 > -1d6 > -1d4 > 0 > +1d4 > +1d6 > +1d8 > +1d10 > +1d12

Sounds to me like Alternity, though it went 1d20 > 2d20 on the far ends.

I'm pretty happy with the current method, and tweaking it to track multiple advantages/disadvantages just encourages fishing for those sort of things and taking up unnecessary time.

 

[TwoSix]

See Boons/Banes Shadow of a Demon Lord for an implementation that allow you to do a bit more.

Yea, one of the best features of SotDL is how many features allow you to spend boons for another benefit, so it’s almost always beneficial to seek out another boon.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Spoiler: Things in the dmg that grant flat +N other than weapons & armor Nothing... and just to be certain no GM takes it upon themselves to introduce badwrongfun magic items with static bonuses to their game they removed bonus types. They topped that by removing the idea that you can't get multiple bonuses to one thing by allowing a +n shield +n armor & even +n bracers/cloak/ring of protection to stack. Just to be safe in case a GM truly wanted to do those kind of things they left out anything about body slots that once were used to help prevent silliness by limiting your ability to wear more than one item boosting something or boosting related things.

Wrong.

Took me all of five seconds to find one... Oh, and right below it:

Note +5, not advantage.

And don't forget one of my favorites from AD&D:

Also, bracers of defense don't work with armor or shield (I think you know this, but your post implied otherwise so just clarifying). The limit is on ROPs and COPs si requiring attunement.

Oh, and I assume you decided the items that boost spell save DCs don't factor in and obviously you consider saving throws equal in your mind to +n weapons/armor? In that case you are pretty much solely focused on ability checks alone. As I mention, there are features (not magic items) that grant bonuses to ability checks, or give you a floor bump such as Reliable Talent, etc.

Anyway, the point of removing all the bonuses was to preserve bounded accuracy (not my favorite thing, but there you go) and stop the bonus escalation treadmill effect. To eliminate advantage "fishing" they made it so sources won't stack as well.

Obviously advantage is used a lot (I'm not arguing against that btw) but my point was other things are still in the game. I've offered you examples counter to your absolute impression there are none.

 

[tetrasodium]

Wrong.
View attachment 130060
Took me all of five seconds to find one... Oh, and right below it:
View attachment 130059
Note +5, not advantage.

And don't forget one of my favorites from AD&D:
View attachment 130062

Also, bracers of defense don't work with armor or shield (I think you know this, but your post implied otherwise so just clarifying). The limit is on ROPs and COPs si requiring attunement.

Oh, and I assume you decided the items that boost spell save DCs don't factor in and obviously you consider saving throws equal in your mind to +n weapons/armor? In that case you are pretty much solely focused on ability checks alone. As I mention, there are features (not magic items) that grant bonuses to ability checks, or give you a floor bump such as Reliable Talent, etc.

Anyway, the point of removing all the bonuses was to preserve bounded accuracy (not my favorite thing, but there you go) and stop the bonus escalation treadmill effect. To eliminate advantage "fishing" they made it so sources won't stack as well.

Obviously advantage is used a lot (I'm not arguing against that btw) but my point was other things are still in the game. I've offered you examples counter to your absolute impression there are none.

I considered wands that boost spell attack & spell save in with weapons yes. plus five and a +1 to everything are hardly values that allow character growth. You can't simultaneously hold up bounded accuracy as some sort of gold standard good thing when expretise destroys it & advantage makes it irrelevant. especially when you have nonsense wasting page space in place of a useful addition that doesn't break it like

Spoiler: this

at no opportunity cost to get it mind you, just take it free because adding one more way to get advantage is more important than a flanking rule meeting the needs of tables who want things like flanking... obviously a meaningless checkbox for a free gigantic bonus is the most important part of flanking

edit: They needed to have a gigantic +5 rather than versions that could allow progression because they removed everything needed to support that in favor of one crude mechanic known as attunement slots to rule them all.

 

[Don Durito]

Spells generally don't provide advantage - they provide additional dice.

This really shows the limitations of Advantage/Disadvantage. It's not as universal as it first appears. Things like Guidance, Bless or Bardic Inspiration add dice, because it would be too easy for them to become redundant if they granted Advantage.

 

[DND_Reborn]

hardly values that allow character growth

Advantage and the lack of other mechanics don't "grow" a character, either.

I agree Expertise blows out BA somewhat and so we house-ruled it to half (round up) proficiency modifier. This impact things slightly, but not as badly as you cap out at +14 instead of +17 if you actually reach tier 4. FWIW, for a while we had expertise grant advantage ( ), instead. Finally, even at +17, DC 30 still has just a 40% chance of success. shrug With our house-rule, it is just a 25% chance.

Granted, with that huge +5 bonus, those items, with Expertise (RAW) and tier 4 you could have a rogue (due to reliable talent) who always gets a 32 or better--but that requires a lot of planets to align and is a outlying case.

Advantage doesn't make Expertise irrelevant, it helps it since the two can be used in conjunction.

Finally, notice the very first part of your spoiler:

It is entirely optional, like most of 5E.

 

[tetrasodium]

Advantage and the lack of other mechanics don't "grow" a character, either.

I agree Expertise blows out BA somewhat and so we house-ruled it to half (round up) proficiency modifier. This impact things slightly, but not as badly as you cap out at +14 instead of +17 if you actually reach tier 4. FWIW, for a while we had expertise grant advantage ( ), instead. Finally, even at +17, DC 30 still has just a 40% chance of success. shrug With our house-rule, it is just a 25% chance.

Granted, with that huge +5 bonus, those items, with Expertise (RAW) and tier 4 you could have a rogue (due to reliable talent) who always gets a 32 or better--but that requires a lot of planets to align and is a outlying case.

Advantage doesn't make Expertise irrelevant, it helps it since the two can be used in conjunction.

Finally, notice the very first part of your spoiler:
View attachment 130064

It is entirely optional, like most of 5E.

saying a rule that misses the mark so badly that it's almost an insult to suggest the author's failure is anything but deliberate is ok because the rule is optional doesn't fix the problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I told people during the Next playtest that Advantage was going to be a problem. But it runs deeper than what Ancalagon said. The "get X, you're done, stop engaging" problem is a problem, but there's a second, more insidious problem.

Advantage is everywhere, and once you hit Advantage, designers are encouraged to think "you're done, stop engaging," too.

Ad/Dis works mechanically like a weapon of last resort: it's big, it doesn't stack (except where Ad negates Dis), it's simple to implement, it has a feeling of power, doing more of it wouldn't make nearly as much impact (e.g. you only get more than 1% probability increase in the 16-20 range, and low values are only very minimally depressed compared to normal), etc. It's the kind of big-ticket item that, logically, should show up and MATTER when it does, especially because of D&D's crit rules.

But it is used, in design terms, as a weapon of first resort. The game hands out Advantage like candy, not least through players earning Inspiration, and it has implicitly replaced the "DM's little helper" plus-or-minus-2 as the go-to benefit for when you have....well, being blunt, any meaningful advantage or disadvantage. Features that grant blanket advantage on various things are ERRYWHERE, and pretty much the only other tool in the DM's toolbox now is Expertise, which becomes a (comparatively) enormous bonus at high level (+6). Designers seem to have gotten it into their heads that as soon as they give one or both of these two mechanics, they no longer need to engage with further design either.

I get why people like the fundamental mechanic: it's easy, straightforward, strong-yet-constrained, the whole nine yards. But both how it's used by players and how it's used by designers has gotten lost in the enthusiastic embrace of it, and it really does create problems on both ends.

And yes, there are (relatively) simple ways to address this. One example is to have a "minor" and/or "major" equivalent of it, so there's slightly more gradations, or to allow stacking (e.g. you might roll up to 4d20 if you have enough sources). Another is to have a parallel but separate track for a consistent static bonus (e.g. you could be "Helped" for +2 vs "Hindered" for -2, non-stacking just like Ad/Dis but concurrent with it). Yes, none of these methods will ever keep the pristine simplicity of the mechanic as it exists now--but I honestly don't think there's any way to keep that while addressing both Ancalagon's problem and mine. Streamlining has become dead-ending in multiple ways, sometimes to the game's detriment.

 

[DND_Reborn]

saying a rule that misses the mark so badly that it's almost an insult to suggest the author's failure is anything but deliberate is ok because the rule is optional doesn't fix the problem.

FWIW, we use flanking rules and have no issues with them. I'm just pointing out that if you have issues with it, don't use it. shrug

Anyway, I love how you focused on that after my recent posts. I'll let others continue any discussion with you on this topic. Have a nice day.