Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9680207" data-attributes="member: 6790260">No. What I mean is, Advantage and Disadvantage was used as the weapon of first resort. As in, it was THE go-to thing for functionally EVERY possible &quot;here's a benefit&quot; mechanic they gave to players.But it was also supposed to be the new GM's Best Friend, AND the new &quot;this situation is helpful&quot; modifier, AND the new &quot;well of course you should be good at this for narrative reasons&quot; modifier, AND the weapon of last resort, meaning, where the buck stops, no further benefits. Oh, AND a single instance of the opposite thing instantly cancels out an infinite supply of the other.That's what I mean by &quot;rampantly overused.&quot; GMs no longer have a codified useful tool for tweaking a character's results because of circumstance, specifically because it doesn't stack, any time you have any instances of both they completely cancel out, AND there's neither a smaller benefit to hand out if Advantage seems like too much, nor a bigger benefit to jump to that isn't leaping all the way to automatic success.So, no, a high degree of use is in fact bad. It means that any hard-written mechanic which grants Advantage both neuters the GM's ability to reward clever thinking or beneficial circumstances (since they literally don't have any other option, and going back to the old GM's Best Friend would break the design principles of 5e!), and means that now the GM can't inflict any meaningful penalties the moment the player gets a single source of advantage.I get why folks felt that there were too many modifiers in 3e. (Despite what some claim, 4e actually wasn't as bad as 3e, but I admit it was still overboard, even as a 4e fan I recognize that.) But WotC absolutely threw the baby out with the bathwater. SOME other options should have been present. SOME different design should have applied, so that GMs weren't saddled with such a high frequency of situations where they have so few tools to help them do their job, especially in an edition that is so eager to push everything onto the GM's shoulders.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9680207, member: 6790260"] No. What I mean is, Advantage and Disadvantage was used as [I]the weapon of first resort[/I]. As in, it was THE go-to thing for functionally EVERY possible "here's a benefit" mechanic they gave to players. But it was also [I]supposed[/I] to be the new GM's Best Friend, AND the new "this situation is helpful" modifier, [I]AND[/I] the new "well of course you should be good at this for narrative reasons" modifier, [B][I]AND[/I][/B] the weapon of last resort, meaning, where the buck stops, no further benefits. Oh, AND a single instance of the opposite thing instantly cancels out an infinite supply of the other. [I]That's[/I] what I mean by "rampantly overused." GMs no longer have a codified useful tool for tweaking a character's results because of circumstance, specifically [I]because[/I] it doesn't stack, any time you have any instances of both they completely cancel out, AND there's neither a smaller benefit to hand out if Advantage seems like too much, nor a bigger benefit to jump to that isn't leaping all the way to automatic success. So, no, a high degree of use is in fact bad. It means that any hard-written mechanic which grants Advantage both neuters the GM's ability to reward clever thinking or beneficial circumstances (since they [I]literally don't have any other option[/I], and going back to the old GM's Best Friend would [I]break[/I] the design principles of 5e!), [I]and[/I] means that now the GM can't inflict any meaningful penalties the moment the player gets a single source of advantage. I get why folks felt that there were too many modifiers in 3e. (Despite what some claim, 4e actually wasn't as bad as 3e, but I admit it was still overboard, even as a 4e fan I recognize that.) But WotC absolutely threw the baby out with the bathwater. SOME other options should have been present. SOME different design should have applied, so that GMs weren't saddled with such a high frequency of situations where they have so few tools to help them do their job, [I]especially[/I] in an edition that is so eager to push everything onto the GM's shoulders. [/QUOTE]

Verification