D&D 5E (2024) A fix for advantage/disadvantage stacking

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

It ends up that way, but you don’t have to count them. Advantage and disadvantage? Switch for emphasis. Emphasis and advantage? Drop emphasis. Etc.

Sorry, I liked this but then realised I'd read your reponse too quickly. What I was getting at was: how do you determine if you have emphasis and advantage, unless you count how many advantages/disadvantages you have?

 

[Charlaquin]

I suppose one could, but I was asking if it's intentional on your part since this is your proposal.

That’s how I intend to use it, yes.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sorry, I liked this but then realised I'd read your reponse too quickly. What I was getting at was: how do you determine if you have emphasis and advantage, unless you count how many advantages/disadvantages you have?

By… doing it? I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to answer. How do I know if I have both socks and shoes without counting the number of garments on my feet? They’re different things, so I don’t need to check the total number to know if I have both.

 

[Charlaquin]

It also immediately requires additional subrules such as how to handle results that are equally distant above and below the DC, and what do you do when someone rolls a nat 20 and a nat 1.

I assume that's the unmodified result furthest from 10? Even so, it favors success because there's a higher probability of getting a result higher than 10 than of getting a result lower. Is that intentional?

These two birds could be killed with one stone by ruling that, if the two numbers are equidistant from 10, take the higher result if the numbers are even (e.g. 2 and 18), or the lower result if they’re odd (e.g. 3 and 17). That makes 4 results where you take the higher and 5 where you take the lower, which could help compensate for there being more numbers above 10 on a d20
than there are below it.

 

[Horwath]

or you can just stack advantage/disadvantage to keep it simple.

now you just need to determine the cap, if it's needed at all, it's diminishing returns stacking advantage.

Elven accuracy adds +1 die if you have atleast 1 advantage die.

maybe limit to 4 dice rolled max(5 with elven accuracy).

 

[Charlaquin]

or you can just stack advantage/disadvantage to keep it simple.

I specifically don’t want to do that, because it isn’t simple enough for my tastes. Adding a third status that a roll gains if it would have both advantage and disadvantage is much simpler in my view. And it’s easy to follow the logic: one status is asking you to roll twice and take the higher, the other is asking you to roll twice and take the lower. By rolling twice and taking the furthest from 10, you’re kind of obeying both directions simultaneously instead of ignoring both.

It also fixes a problem I’ve run into a few times recently where a creature makes an attack with advantage, hits, and that hit triggers a reaction like Silvery Barbs or Protection style, and gains disadvantage, so it should have actually been rolled with only one die. With advantage and disadvantage together converting to emphasis instead of canceling out, you can keep the two numbers already rolled, and choose the one furthest from 10 instead of choosing the higher or the lower.

 

[Laurefindel]

While I don’t an issue with fighting in darkness being a straight roll, I like the emphasis idea. I’m just not sure how it plays out.

Advantage with emphasis: you roll 2d20 twice, keeping the best result out of each emphasis roll?

Or does emphasis only comes up in situations where advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out?

 

[Charlaquin]

While I don’t an issue with fighting in darkness being a straight roll, I like the emphasis idea. I’m just not sure how it plays out.

Advantage with emphasis: you roll 2d20 twice, keeping the best result out of each emphasis roll?

Or does emphasis only comes up in situations where advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out?

The idea is, Emphasis only comes up when Advantage and Disadvantage would cancel each other out. Any instances of Advantage or Disadvantage individually take priority over Emphasis.

So, for a practical example, let’s say your Drow character casts Darkness (and let’s say they do not have the Devil’s Sight invocation). As previously established, you would have both Advantage and Disadvantage on attacks against creatures within the darkness, which under RAW would cancel out to a single d20 roll, but under this house rule would convert to Emphasis. Now, let’s also say your drow character has the Lucky Feat. Under RAW, spending a luck point to gain Advantage would be pointless, since the Disadvantage from the darkness cancels out all instances of Advantage. Under this house rule, spending a Luck point while attacking in darkness would result in attacking with Advantage, because Advantage trumps Emphasis. So, say you attack and hit, but your target has a reaction that allows them to impose Disadvantage on your attack, so they use that. Now you’re back to Emphasis because the roll has Advantage from Lucky and Disadvantage from the reaction. And then let’s say your target has an ally who casts Silvery Barbs to give you Disadvantage. Disadvantage trumps Emphasis, so now you’re attacking with Disadvantage.

We are functionally counting instances of Advantage and Disadvantage and giving you Emphasis only if the number of each is equal. But, we don’t have to track any actual numbers, just the trinary logic of which of three states the attack is in. And, as an added bonus, there’s never a need to re-roll, because all three states involve rolling two dice. The statuses just tell us which of the two results to select, so even if these instances of Advantage and Disadvantage are all being applied after you’ve already rolled the dice, you don’t have to back up and roll again, you just choose either the higher, lower, or furthest from 10 depending on the final status you determine the roll has after everyone has used whatever reactions they want.

 

[Marc Radle]

We’ve never actually tried it at the table, but I’ve always liked the idea of Advantage and Disadvantage stacking. If you can get Advantage from two different sources, let them stack.

I may give it a try next time a GM …

 

[Xenolith234]

We’ve never actually tried it at the table, but I’ve always liked the idea of Advantage and Disadvantage stacking. If you can get Advantage from two different sources, let them stack.

I may give it a try next time a GM …

I saw recently a houserule that if you would have stacking advantage/disadvantage, you instead get a +/-1 for every additional source. So you’d get your normal reroll, then add or subtract the hard modifier for every additional source.