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

[Yunru]

How's this - I'd expect to see advantage or disadvantage come up at least once in every 10 rolls. In a low level combat that might be every turn (5 PCs vs. 5 foes with 1 attack each) while many other activities are less roll-dense.

To me, every round in combat is "common". Others may say 10% of the time is "rare".

As a side note, the classes that can reliably generate advantage all pay a cost or have other limitation. Barbarian's "get advantage in your attacks, grant advantage in ALL ATTACKS AGAINST YOU" is an example. Or Assassins have a limited window that they may not take advantage of every combat. Casters have spells that grant it but those have saves and use up a limited resource. And take an action for no/little other effect. Having a PC who otherwise has no costs for advantage and being able to reliably grant them advantage on their multiple attacks with a d12 two handed weapon (not even including Great Weapon -5/+10 to keep it without optional rules besides a new class) is going to make a very effective killing machine.

You mean like an Archfey Warlock casting Greater Invisibility on them every encounter (doable from level 7)?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

The thing about "exceptional situations" is that in D&D, they are pretty common.

I think the main attraction of advantage/disadvantage is that it has made it so that I basically don't have to remember any situational modifiers other than that some cover gives +2, better cover gives +5 (and the best cover actually prevents being targeted).

So I don't at all mind seeing it all the time since it always comes with some kind of requirement (assassin rolls better initiative than target, specific sort of effect, etc.) or cost (action choice, spell slot, reckless attack giving your enemies advantage too, etc.) - and I count my blessing every time that I here a confident declaration of hit/miss where I used to hear "I think I got a 21... yeah... 13 roll, 5 normal modifier, +1 from his spell, +2 from flanking... that's everything I add right now, right?"

Even "Oh, you forgot the d4 from bless" or "you forgot to roll another d20" and the resolution following goes faster and smoother than how I remember things going when it was "Did you remember the +1 from bless?" yes, "...and the +2 from flanking?" yes, "oh, Aaron, you remember that his target doesn't get it's dex or shield bonuses to AC right now, right?" and so on, and so forth.

 

[Li Shenron]

But I've seen a significant amount of people express that it is intended for exceptional circumstances.

No, it's rather than a DM should never let the players "generate" advantage for themselves through roleplay or descriptions. This is how the spamming starts, and then the DM will have to stop them once it's clear that it happens too often, players will rehash the same descriptions and demand advantage "because you have given it before for the same reason". This is bad because the DM will have to break consistency, and the players will think they are now treated unfairly.

The players should be entitled to advantage only when a PC's ability specifically says so.

But the DM herself can (and probably should) use advantage and disadvantage freely to represent favorable and unfavorable situations.

 

[TwoSix]

Depends on how you define common. As stated above, I'd say it's probably between 10-15% of d20 rolls. I don't know if you would define that as common. (For purposes of the poll, I defined it as common).

 

[TheCosmicKid]

No, it's rather than a DM should never let the players "generate" advantage for themselves through roleplay or descriptions. This is how the spamming starts, and then the DM will have to stop them once it's clear that it happens too often, players will rehash the same descriptions and demand advantage "because you have given it before for the same reason". This is bad because the DM will have to break consistency, and the players will think they are now treated unfairly.

How often do the same roleplaying circumstance come up more than once? If you promise the location of the Staff of Zongar to the NPC wizard who is obsessed with the ancient sorcerer Zongar, you get advantage on a Persuasion check. But if you make exactly the same promise to him a second time, he's going to think you're jerking him around. You don't get to rehash roleplaying advantage, not just because of DM fiat, but because it very seldom makes any sense. Maybe if the wizard got amnesia or something...

 

[El Mahdi]

No, it's rather than a DM should never let the players "generate" advantage for themselves through roleplay or descriptions. This is how the spamming starts, and then the DM will have to stop them once it's clear that it happens too often, players will rehash the same descriptions and demand advantage "because you have given it before for the same reason". This is bad because the DM will have to break consistency, and the players will think they are now treated unfairly.

The players should be entitled to advantage only when a PC's ability specifically says so.

But the DM herself can (and probably should) use advantage and disadvantage freely to represent favorable and unfavorable situations.

I understand limiting it based on roleplaying and descriptions - for the most part. It's seriously ripe for abuse based simply on "but I said I was doing X...". It can turn into a game of Calvin-ball real quick.

But I'm getting the impression that you don't want players "seeking" advantage at all; only allowing it as you said, for very specific, preset conditions (features, abilities...)

Why? Isn't seeking advantage even how real world conflict works?

In sports one tries to generate and exploit mismatches.

In business that's the very name of the game - at least for the successful ones.

In War one seeks advantage at every turn; whether through intelligence, environment, "choosing the battlefield," etc. In fact, most conflicts post-Vietnam have only been fought that way. Only engaged in if superiority is achieved before the shooting even starts.

Why should it be anathema for players?

 

[Psikerlord#]

I would say Adv/Disad is common out of combat, and rare in combat (because otherwise combat would be even easier than it already is - yes, barbarians, but that is a special class ability and has a cost, and no, we dont allow hiding mid combat most of the time).

Even that out to uncommon? So I choose "other" in the poll.

We also use +1 to +3 modifiers however, so we have more to choose from. The devs should have at least keep the smaller modifiers in the DMG rules options. It is very handy to have options beyond adv/disad which is about a +/- 4/5. It's not like those bonuses are not already in the game - half cover, for example.

I suspect the idea was to have the standard game operate on easy mode with full healing and simplified modifiers to attract brand new players more easily.

 

[Blue]

You mean like an Archfey Warlock casting Greater Invisibility on them every encounter (doable from level 7)?

The way you post that is coming across as if you mean that as a counter-example. If that's not the case I misunderstood your point.

A 7th level Warlock has 2 spell slots per short rest. Assuming the DMG average of 8 encounters per day (DMG pg 84) and 2 short rests per day (also DMG pg 84) gives about 2-3 encounters per short rest. So, at the cost of their ENTIRE complement of spells for the entire day they can cast Great Invisibility for 3/4's of the combats. It'll last for 1 minute, or until concentration is broken, and will be quite good against foes without other senses because it'll grant both advantage with attacks and disadvantage against. (Greater Invisibility, unlike Invisibility has a much shorted duration and you can't up-cast for more targets.)

At 11th you get a 3rd slot and can do it for every one as long as you the short rests stay regular. Again, at the cost of all/most of your spell slots and even then if you aren't SURE you are going to get a short rest you may not chose to use that last slot in case you need another Greater Invisibility.

That's a fairly large cost to be able to do that consistently, in line with what I was saying. It's a good tactic, but far from free. Now, if your DM lets you have frequent short rests, say guaranteed after every combat, then it's only taking half your spell slots which is a better deal.

So here we have an example that wasn't cherry-picked to show the cost, rather the opposite, but I think it fairly telling.

 

[Yunru]

A 7th level Warlock has 2 spell slots per short rest. Assuming the DMG average of 8 encounters per day (DMG pg 84)

6 to 8 actually. So 0.75-1 casting per encounter. And that's not accounting for encounters within a minute of each other.
And it only consumes your spell slots, so you can still blast away with Eldritch Blast for baseline damage.

 

[discosoc]

I make them fairly common rewards for things like fun or cinematic descriptions, to encourage more interesting actions. For example, saying "I run up to the orc and attack" really isn't interesting, but if you say something like "I leap onto the table and leap at the orc with my axe ready to strike as I land" I very well might reward that with an advantage to hit.

I don't do it every time but, generally speaking, if such a description would call for an ability check, I'll probably award it. So in the previous example, I'd have the player make an athletics or maybe acrobatics check to leap onto the table and launch himself at the orc -- probably something basic like DC 10. If he succeeds, he gets advantage on the attack; if he fails, it's just a normal attack described as more of a crash through the table as he stumbles onto it. Stuff like that.

Sometimes having advantage isn't useful, typically because he already has it. In those cases, I just think of another way to reward him, such as give the opponent disadvantage to the next attack or something, or I'll give him his inspiration back if he's out.