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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jacob Lewis" data-source="post: 9828045" data-attributes="member: 6667921">I think what this discussion keeps circling is less about advantage/disadvantage and more about the limits of the d20 itself.There’s a constant push in the D&D space to make a single, flat, high-variance die express more nuance than it comfortably can. Most proposed “fixes” aren’t new axes of design so much as new ways of manipulating the same one—roll twice, reroll, push toward extremes, smooth the curve. The underlying constraint never really changes.Advantage/disadvantage works as well as it does because it leans into the nature of the d20 instead of trying to extract more from it. It caps optimization, reduces bookkeeping, and keeps the game moving, even if that means accepting some narratively odd edge cases.Ideas like emphasis are interesting, but they’re part of a broader pattern: trying to get more texture out of a resolution engine that’s already at its expressive ceiling, without moving away from the d20 because that die is part of the game’s identity.That doesn’t make the ideas bad—but it does explain why they often feel like fresh air while still running into the same limits.</blockquote>