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

[Umbran]

Oh, that’s cool! I assume custom dice with more faces numbered with higher and lower values instead of a straight 1-20? Could be fun.

Wyrmwood made a version numbered thus: 1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,5,6,15,16,17,18,18,19,19,20,20,20.

Another pattern I have seen has 1,1,1,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,20,20,20.

One can imagine others. A bit of a web search can probably find you makers.

 

[Scott Christian]

Case in point!

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

As I mentioned a few times, I think I poisoned my own well by framing this conversation around fixing a “problem” with advantage and disadvantage. What I should have said was, “I’ve recently discovered this ‘emphasis’ thing and I think it sounds cool, but I don’t just want to use it arbitrarily. I thought in place of a flat roll when you have both advantage and disadvantage would be a good place for it, what do y’all think?”

In my line of work (software design/architecture), there are a lot of 'white room' or 'theory crafting' discussions, so to speak. I imagine that @bedir than (from what I gather he does for a living according to this thread) has the same types of conversations in his line of work.

In my industry, we don't use that terminology, but that's effectively what we are doing. Except we don't eyeroll at these conversations as sometimes happens on these boards; these talks follow the wisdom of 'measure twice, cut once'. Think out the scenarios on paper, ahead of time, so you don't have to deal with an unintended consequence when you're in the middle of a real-world/live/in real time situation.

At least in my business, these conversations can and do go down rabbit holes. Par for the course. That's all that's happened here to your question. A gentle nudge, and the focus gets pointed back to where it belongs. Which is what you subtly did with your post

But my main point is that it's okay to have a sidebar about the execution of advantage/disadvantage. Sometimes great ideas come from these diversions. If it's going nowhere though, get that train back on the tracks.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Thank you for the clarification.

I wasn't trying to give you a hard time! Your post was immediately after @Charlaquin's post. It was like you floated that one right over the plate... couldn't resist putting it into the bleachers

Thanks for being a good sport about it...

 

[Scott Christian]

I wasn't trying to give you a hard time! Your post was immediately after @Charlaquin's post. It was like you floated that one right over the plate... couldn't resist putting it into the bleachers

Thanks for being a good sport about it...

No problem. And your comment above, about these conversations being "theory crafting" is a great way to look at it. We do the same when we lesson plan as a group. The stuff put out there is always prefaced by phrases such as: "I haven't thought this all the way through," or "Has anyone ever tried _____, I wonder how it would work."

It is unfortunate forums don't always work the same way, but then again, neither do all of our lesson plan meetings.

 

[Moving Pictures]

Diving in with a few thoughts.

As usual, I tagged this for 2024, but it applies equally to 2014 and presumably to your 5e-alike of choice, as long as it has advantage and disadvantage.

Much digital ink (should that be many pixels…?) has been spilled on the problems with advantage/disadvantage stacking. While advantage and disadvantage is in many ways an elegant fix to the endless parade of + or - 1 or 2 modifiers of 3e and 4e, but to many, it felt like a slight overcorrection.
[....]

Well, I think I’ve come up with a solution, and credit where credit is due: I’m stealing the idea almost directly from Brennan Lee Mulligan (so Dimension 20 fans, apologies in advance if this idea is old news to you). Brennan has used this mechanic on only a few occasions so far in Critical Role and hasn’t called it by a specific name there, but I’m given to understand that in some of his other campaigns, he has used this mechanic and called it “rolling with emphasis.” The idea is, similar to how a d20 test can have advantage or disadvantage, it can also have emphasis; when you make a d20 test with emphasis, you roll twice and instead of taking the higher or lower result, you take the result that is farthest from 10.

In another post, I kinda trashed 5e, but said it had some good ideas. Advantage/disadvantage was one of them. I think I can grasp the idea. In the old school rules, a party of six could have spent hours setting up an ambush in advance of the ... I dunno .... Hobgoblin war band or whatever. The concealment is perfect. The cross-angles are perfect. The party successfully gains surprise..... +4 to all rolls. Woo!
And...
The ranger rolls a 4+4=8, and their longbow arrow misses.
The fighter rolls a 6+4=10, and their crossbow misses
The rogue rolls a 15+4, and their shortbow arrow hits for .... oh, two point of damage...
The cleric lobs a slingstone ... 8+4, but you've got a range modifier of -2 so sorry, no, 10 doesn't hit.
You get the idea.

The idea of rolling twice in such situations and taking the best certainly helps drive home the reality of a surprise ambush.

I think my core concern with this idea is that the d20 is already a very swingy die and priviliging the bigger diversion from the median makes the game even more unpredictible. If you're okay with that, then by all means give it a try.

This is/was the other issue. In my game, we've solved that by using 2 d10, which helps bell-curve the rolls.

Some folks make "high variance" d20s. The average roll is still a 10.5, but the numbers on the die are skewed to give high and low results. They might serve your idea here.

See above.

The major issue I see is that there's now too much use of advantage/disadvantage.

My approach is to use advantage in situations where it is clearly warranted, but offer bonuses to the skill checks/saves/rolls to hit as the case may be.