D&D 5E Advantage/Disadvantage - Common or Special?

[Mercule]

Advantage/Disadvantage is the "go to" modifier when we're in flight and don't immediate know what the actual modifier would be. It has a simple elegance and was one of the things that sold my group on 5E.

The effective bonus ends up being something of a bell curve, based on DC. So, someone who was likely to succeed is marginally more likely to succeed (effective +1 bonus when a 3+ is needed on the die). Someone who was unlikely to succeed is marginally more likely to succeed (effective +1 bonus when a 20 is needed). But, someone for whom success was a coin-flip is substantively more likely to succeed (effective +5 bonus when a 10 is needed). That fits nicely with what I want for any creative idea that would take very much time to ponder balance. I can look up (or create) the actual rule after the game.

The main time that I think harder about whether to grant advantage is if the Rogue is attacking.

 

[Coredump]

3 levels of Ranger and being a Halfling. Bam, scaling AC mount.

The more restrictions you need to put... the obvious it becomes that is it not 'common'.

1) Be a ranger
2) Be a Beastmaster Ranger
3) Be a halfing
4) Pick your campanion to be a 'mount'
5) Spend one of your feats to get mounted combat

and then BAM... you get advantage on *small* creatures only.

That is a lot of requirements to get a advantage on a small subset of adversaries.

 

[Coredump]

I think part of the problem is how each person is defining 'common' 'easy' 'exceptional' etc.

For some folks, running 3 times a week is 'easy', or others its 'exceptional'.

A is for Assassinatr
C is for Concealment
F is for Faerie Fire
H is for Help, Hold spells, Hiding
I is for Inspiration
L is for Lucky (kinda)
M is for Mounted Combat
P is for Prone
R is for Reckless, Restrained
S is for Surprise, Stunned
T is for True Strike
U is for Unconscious
W is for Wolf Totem
Everyone join in!

A is for a single subclass that only gets it for one round and only *if* it wins initiative.
C is for no rules give advantage for concealment (Hiding yes, unseen yes.... )
F is for a spell that affects foes *and* friends, requires concentration, and allows for a saving throw
H is for giving up an entire action, using a sell that allows for (multiple) saves, good for one attack, and for many gets much more difficult to do more than once.
I is for Inspiring roleplaying, which is usually not very common
L is for spending a feat to 'kinda' get it only 3 times a day
M is for spending a feat, spending money on a mount that tends to die and is hard to bring around town and into buildings or dungeons.
P is for someone using a Feature that only helps those adjacent to the target
R is for allowing everyone to hit you more easily, or failing a saving throw
S if for NO rules for advantage on surprise, Stunned is a pretty exceptional occurence.
T is for sacrificing your action, and it can't be used on anyone else. (Most with TS don't have very useful attacks.)
U is for.... who cares once you are unconscious?
W is for a specific sub feature of a specific subclass of a specific class.

 

[MostlyDm]

Of course your players don't "metagame," there is no such thing as metagaming - it's an illusion designed to keep players asking their DM for permission to be in control of their character, including their thoughts and lucky guesses.

Uh... What? That's a very strong assertion, that goes way beyond the context here. Do you really believe that?

Care to elaborate? For example: As far as you're concerned, player knowledge and character knowledge are the same thing?

 

[Uchawi]

An example of Advantage being special would be the Avenger class in 4E. It was very specific to a single class to highlight its ability in comparison to others. Take that analogy with 5E in mind, and Advantage becomes common place because it is available to more than just a single class. If it comes up once every combat, I would state it is common.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Uh... What? That's a very strong assertion, that goes way beyond the context here. Do you really believe that?

Care to elaborate? For example: As far as you're concerned, player knowledge and character knowledge are the same thing?

Elaboration in full is too much of a derail for the thread, but yes, I really do believe that what most people refer to when they use the term "metagaming" doesn't actually exist (at least, it doesn't exist until you invent it so that you can do it in order to avoid it).

As for player knowledge and character knowledge... I'll say that I believe any knowledge the character could possibly have learned in the "back story" portion of their life is up to the player to decide if the character learned it or not, that any knowledge the character couldn't possibly have learned or guessed at being used is playing in bad faith (cheating, in a fashion), and that people often get far too concerned with trying to claim that something which could fall in the first category should fall into the second category instead, and create situations in which metagaming becomes mandatory in order to avoid metagaming.

As an example, because I'm sure this is confusing: Say there is a character, and that character is at camp near a campfire. A monster attacks the camp, and this character responds by shoving the monster into the fire.

I say that is perfectly fine no matter what kind of character that is, how often they have used similar tactics before, or how much knowledge about what that monster is the character has - it is simply an idea that could be arrived upon in the circumstances at hand.
Others would start to question things, is that monster vulnerable to fire? If so, does the player know that? Does it matter if the player knows or not? Does it matter if the character knows?

I've had people tell me that because I am a long-time DM and would definitely recognize that this creature is a troll, because of course it is a troll to make the example relevant, I can't try to shove it in the fire without first jumping through some hoop (sometimes it is actually making up the back-story detail as to why the character knows, other times it is passing a check at some arbitrary DC the DM set), because if I do that then it is "metagaming" because I have acted in a way that my player knowledge knows is good but maybe my character doesn't know that it would be good.

I've had the same people tell me that if a brand new player that didn't know anything about the game reacting to the same monster with the same action of shoving it into the fire would be perfectly acceptable.

You catch that? How my player knowledge, which it is "metagaming" to use as a basis for determining my character's thoughts actions, determines that my character can't think and act in the same way an unknowledgeable player could, thus forcing "metagaming" into existence, and doing it, in order to "avoid it."

 

[Yunru]

I think part of the problem is how each person is defining 'common' 'easy' 'exceptional' etc.

For some folks, running 3 times a week is 'easy', or others its 'exceptional'.





A is for a single subclass that only gets it for one round and only *if* it wins initiative.
C is for no rules give advantage for concealment (Hiding yes, unseen yes.... )
F is for a spell that affects foes *and* friends, requires concentration, and allows for a saving throw
H is for giving up an entire action, using a sell that allows for (multiple) saves, good for one attack, and for many gets much more difficult to do more than once.
I is for Inspiring roleplaying, which is usually not very common
L is for spending a feat to 'kinda' get it only 3 times a day
M is for spending a feat, spending money on a mount that tends to die and is hard to bring around town and into buildings or dungeons.
P is for someone using a Feature that only helps those adjacent to the target
R is for allowing everyone to hit you more easily, or failing a saving throw
S if for NO rules for advantage on surprise, Stunned is a pretty exceptional occurence.
T is for sacrificing your action, and it can't be used on anyone else. (Most with TS don't have very useful attacks.)
U is for.... who cares once you are unconscious?
W is for a specific sub feature of a specific subclass of a specific class.

A is for multiclassing three levels and having a high Init - nothing uncommon there.
C is actually Unseen, since if you're fully concealed you are unseen.
F is for a spell that's very easy to place to hit only enemies.
H is for is for anyone with a familiar/per, a spell that has advantages beyond advantage, and a condition that is trivially easy to get.
I is you I don't envy your table then.
L is spending a feat for the mother of all advantage that can say "No!" and scold disadvantage like a bad puppy.
M is for spending a feat, and money on a mount, which can go anywhere but Small places because squeezing.
P is a condition that helps everyonr adjacent. Saying it only helps everyone adjacent is a false arguement.
R is for Advantage on all attacks, enough said.
S is for a condition that anyone with a level 5 (or higher) Monk in there party can get, so no not pretty exceptional.
W is for any party that has and/or dips 3 levels or Barbarian.

So no, they'vre trivially easy to acquire. Some moreso than others, but they all are.

True Strike still sucks though.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

[MENTION=6780961]Yunru[/MENTION], your definition of "trivially easy" greatly differs from the common definition in the context of D&D (which, to be completely objective, isn't actually anywhere near hard to play no matter whether you feel multiclassing 3 levels is the huge and impactful cost that it is, or you feel that it is "triviallly easy").