D&D 5E Advantage in 5e combet

[Umbran]

Players are bastards and don't deserve advantage. Unless they bring yummy snacks.

Gaining Inspiration
Your DM can choose to give you inspiration for a variety
of reasons. Typically, DMs award it when you play
out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks
presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your
character in a compelling way. Your DM will tell you
how you can earn inspiration in the game.

So, really, it should be, "DMs award it when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, otherwise portray your character in a compelling way, or you present a suitable bribe. We suggest yummy snacks."

 

[machineelf]

One of the rogue paths allow the "assassin rogue" to be able to use advantage against an NPC that hasn't taken a combat action, and when the rogue hits in that case it does crit damage (I believe that's how it works, anyway. It's something like that). So to allow all rogues (and all characters) to get advantage during surprise rounds sort of breaks the game in terms of the assassin rogue's unique ability.

Like others have said, surprise grants enough bonus on its own.

 

[damngravity]

​I decide to give advantage on surprise round based on the text of the suprise rule and the text from the Hiding sidebar. Players sneaking up on monster seems to guarantee them a surprise round on good rolls. And attacking unaware creatures suggests they should have advantage.



“The DM determines who might be surprised. If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the DM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side. Any character or monster that doesn’t notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter. If you’re surprised, you can’t move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren’t.”


“the Dungeon Master might allow you to stay hidden as you approach a creature that is distracted, allowing you to gain advantage on an attack before you are seen.”

Mike

 

[77IM]

I think it's great to reward advantage for circumstances that seem advantageous and aren't covered by existing rules.

In the case of surprise, there are already specific rules for that, so use them instead.

EDIT: damngravity, that sounds totally legit: you are granting advantage for stealth (as the sidebar specifically says to do), not for surprise (which is itself a consequence of stealth too in this case). This assumes the PCs stay hidden during the attack; any who charge forth should probably become unhidden and lose their advantage.

 

[bolo__]

This assumes the PCs stay hidden during the attack; any who charge forth should probably become unhidden and lose their advantage.

Attacking will give away your location the same way making noise or charging out of cover will.Hence the Goblins skill to be able to hide again as a bonus action.

Edit: my point being that if you do grant advantage for being hidden, it only lasts for a single attack as once they attack they are no longer hidden...

Excuse format failure... On phone.

 

[Jeph]

When you need to roll an 11+ to hit your opponent, advantage on all your attacks is equivalent to a 50% boost in damage per round.

In other words, advantage is about equivalent to half of an action. Which is big!

We can deduce some guidelines from this, and we see that these guidelines match up with what's already in the rules as written:

If a player uses an action to do something clever or exploit the situation or environment, consider either giving them advantage next round, or giving their opponents disadvantage. There are in fact two by-the-book actions that do this: Help (advantage to an ally) and Dodge (disadvantage to enemies). They're kind of the "well, I don't have anything better to do, sooo..." options.

If the player both uses their action and needs to pass a check in an attempt to gain a leg up against the competition, you should both give them advantage AND give their enemies disadvantage. This is analogous to the Hide action.

 

[beej]

I take my cues from the Help action. Mostly, I grant advantage outside of the normal rules if they spend a significant amount of effort (an action) to do so.

 

[Li Shenron]

Gaining Inspiration
Your DM can choose to give you inspiration for a variety
of reasons. Typically, DMs award it when you play
out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks
presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your
character in a compelling way. Your DM will tell you
how you can earn inspiration in the game.

So, really, it should be, "DMs award it when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, otherwise portray your character in a compelling way, or you present a suitable bribe. We suggest yummy snacks."

That's an optional rule, and actually I am even going to use it but only with regard to "giving in to the drawbacks".

This kind of rule IMHO can work wonder for some gaming groups and literally spoil the game in others. It's very subjective, so it's up to each DM to decide how "special" your RP or narrative decisions need to be in order to gain inspiration. One DM might make it very rare (e.g. once per character per whole campaign) while another might make it common (e.g. all the time) and this is still not enough to tell if it'll work well or not... it depends e.g. how comfortable are the players with getting advantage all the time to the point that not having advantage becomes a penalty, and also has some dependency with how many other sources of advantage the characters have (from spells, features, etc.).

Since generally I don't know what to expect about the latter in our gamers, I'll be very conservative and never grant advantage on free terms, at least until I might realize there is ample room for that.

 

[evilbob]

Don't forget that attacking when hidden reveals your location, so really only your first attack will have advantage (until you hide again). So even if you've surprised the enemies, you probably won't be able to attack from stealth twice in a row.

The halfling rogue in the Starter Set seems well-suited to attacking from stealth, re-hiding next round, and attacking from stealth again. Which seems fair, considering you're giving up an action to do that.

Generally I think others have summed it up well: when you use your action to help out in some way, that should probably grant advantage.

 

[77IM]

When you need to roll an 11+ to hit your opponent, advantage on all your attacks is equivalent to a 50% boost in damage per round.

In other words, advantage is about equivalent to half of an action. Which is big!

We can deduce some guidelines from this, and we see that these guidelines match up with what's already in the rules as written:

If a player uses an action to do something clever or exploit the situation or environment, consider either giving them advantage next round, or giving their opponents disadvantage. There are in fact two by-the-book actions that do this: Help (advantage to an ally) and Dodge (disadvantage to enemies). They're kind of the "well, I don't have anything better to do, sooo..." options.

If the player both uses their action and needs to pass a check in an attempt to gain a leg up against the competition, you should both give them advantage AND give their enemies disadvantage. This is analogous to the Hide action.

I love this analysis.