Level Up (A5E) Bonus/expertise dice: max, not sum

[AllOlive]

One problem with complex rulesets that offer various ways to get bonuses is that there's often a strong incentive to stack multiple bonuses up to potentially gamebreaking levels. Then, in order to keep things challenging, a Narrator would have to stack penalties to match — an arms race that could easily remove all sense of balance from the party.

With the addition of Expertise Dice, 5e's various kinds of bonus dice could easily fall into this pattern. Guidance, bless, bardic inspiration, expertise dice, etc. — they're each fine in isolation, but if added up, they could turn into boring guaranteed success (or so close as to make no difference).

There are various ways to solve this. One would be to unify all these disparate mechanics into one, so that instead of adding various dice, you're increasing the size of a single die. But even simpler is just to use the maximum of various rolls, instead of the sum. So if you had, say, Bless and Resistance and Bardic Inspiration, you'd roll 3 dice to add to the saving throw, but you'd only use the highest one. And any expendable resources — like Bardic Inspiration — wouldn't be used up unless that was the roll you ended up using.

This would be a simple change to explain, and it would open up space in game design for LU, because you could be less stingy with bonus-die-type effects without breaking the game.

 

[Faolyn]

One would be to unify all these disparate mechanics into one, so that instead of adding various dice, you're increasing the size of a single die.

This is what LU is doing. d4 --> d6 --> d8, which is the maximum you can get. You can't stack more than three expertise dice.

 

[AllOlive]

This is what LU is doing. d4 --> d6 --> d8, which is the maximum you can get. You can't stack more than three expertise dice.

So Bless, Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, and the like are all rolled into this same expertise dice system?

 

[Faolyn]

So Bless, Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, and the like are all rolled into this same expertise dice system?

As of the playtest, the BI die is separate from regular expertise die. Guidance appears to grant an expertise die, according to the spell document (as do several other spells). Don't know about bless yet.

I would say that bless and bardic inspiration, and things along those lines, are "special" enough to allow for an additional die.

 

[Steampunkette]

Faolyn is correct.

From what we have seen so far, some things just grant or increase your expertise dice. Which is a nifty little way to allow multiple sources of improvement to affect a given check without "Stacking Advantage" or something similar.

If you've got a Bard in the party inspiring the rogue to defuse the bomb, the cleric calling on their deity for guidance, and a fighter with bomb-defusal training all helping the rogue with bomb defusal expertise... They get an Expertise die that grows 2 sizes and a bardic inspiration dice, to boot.

Rather than the Bard offering a dice and one character "Helping" for advantage.

 

[AllOlive]

In Steampunkette's scenario, LU would give up to +1d8+1d12, for an average bonus (after proficiency and ability) of 11. That's as much again as the bonus of a maxed-out level-20 character versus an unproficient character with a 10 in the ability. It's not as much as advantage+2d4+1d12, so that's good, but it seems like an awful lot to me — you could have an average bonus of +22, where anything over +20 is danger zone)

I'm suggesting it should be +max(1d8, 1d12), which averages out to +7.4 — an appropriately heroic amount, but not so off-the-scale. On a maxed-out character, that'd still be +18.4 — almost, but not quite, +20, just as it should be. And frankly, it requires less math, not more — choosing the bigger of two numbers is easier than adding them.

(Here's code to check my "7.4" in R:
> N = 1000000

mean(pmax(sample(1:8,N, replace=TRUE),sample(1:12,N,replace=TRUE)))

[1] 7.378091
)

 

[Steampunkette]

That's also 6 people working on one problem with their actions while a seventh person provides bardic inspiration.
(Or 6 total if the bard is also spending their help action)

Modified downward by other sources of Expertise (Like a Rogue's Exploration Knacks)

I don't really see that big a deal, here, because it's not going to be often that you get 6 people working together on the exact same task unless holy crap that singular task is incredibly story-important. In which case it makes sense for all six to pitch in and essentially force a success (Assuming it's something that can even be accomplished with a +22 or higher. Doesn't matter how strong those 6 are, they're still not punting a goblin to the moon)

 

[Faolyn]

You can't stack help actions. Even if six people help, you only get the bonus once. Unless LU has changed that.

But it's pretty darn rare that you're going to have someone with three levels of expertise dice, plus bardic inspiration plus bless. Yes, there's the potential for a very high number, but it's under such extraordinary circumstances that it's OK once in a while. it's not like in 3x where you could expect +20s higher on every roll due to stacking bonuses.

 

[Steampunkette]

You can't stack help actions. Even if six people help, you only get the bonus once. Unless LU has changed that.

But it's pretty darn rare that you're going to have someone with three levels of expertise dice, plus bardic inspiration plus bless. Yes, there's the potential for a very high number, but it's under such extraordinary circumstances that it's OK once in a while. it's not like in 3x where you could expect +20s higher on every roll due to stacking bonuses.

I dunno if it's possible, either. But with help granting Expertise dice and those dice increasing in size rather than quantity, it may be possible for a whole mess of people to help.

And having a whole mess of people help won't actually be as big a thing as it would be if advantage stacked.

AllOlive showed a level 20 character with Proficiency and Maximum Stat in a given task having a +11 bonus. And then an average of +11 from the two sources (1d8/4.5 and 1d12/6.5)

But to compare it to a character with advantage we don't need to compare proficiency or stat mods, because it'll be the same in both cases. We also don't need to compare Bardic Inspiration or other external dice, because those things also exist in both cases.

With Advantage you have a 51% chance of getting a 15 or higher. Plus Bardic Inspiration Dice, Bless Dice, Etc.

With 1d12 of Expertise you have about a 50% chance of getting a 16 or higher. Plus Bardic Inspiration Dice, etc.

It breaks out to about even if you can get a whole lotta expertise compared to one thing granting you advantage.

But. They stack, right? Advantage plus Expertise work together which is just marvelous for allowing characters to do some ridiculously high end skill-use. 'Cause so far I've seen nothing that allows Expertise Dice on Attack Rolls or Saving Throws. Though perhaps I haven't paid enough attention?

 

[Faolyn]

I dunno if it's possible, either. But with help granting Expertise dice and those dice increasing in size rather than quantity, it may be possible for a whole mess of people to help.

Maybe? Personally--without seeing what LU is doing--I'd still limit it to one person using the Help action (dice-wise) unless there's a good reason that multiple people can Help. Picking a lock or attacking an enemy? No--there's not enough room for more than one person to Help. Building a pit trap or lifting a heavy gate? Sure, I could see several people Helping with that.

And, of course, there's an easy way to prevent the Help action from getting out of hand--only let people who have skill in what you're doing provide Help. If you're not trained in the skill at hand, you're not going to be of any use. I know that's not an official rule, but my table uses it and it works fine.

And having a whole mess of people help won't actually be as big a thing as it would be if advantage stacked.

AllOlive showed a level 20 character with Proficiency and Maximum Stat in a given task having a +11 bonus. And then an average of +11 from the two sources (1d8/4.5 and 1d12/6.5)

But to compare it to a character with advantage we don't need to compare proficiency or stat mods, because it'll be the same in both cases. We also don't need to compare Bardic Inspiration or other external dice, because those things also exist in both cases.

With Advantage you have a 51% chance of getting a 15 or higher. Plus Bardic Inspiration Dice, Bless Dice, Etc.

With 1d12 of Expertise you have about a 50% chance of getting a 16 or higher. Plus Bardic Inspiration Dice, etc.

Well, expertise only goes stacks three times, for a maximum of d8, so...

Which might not happen all that often. I made like 14, 16 sample characters of varying levels (I rolled a d8+2 to determine the level I'd build them at) and only one of them had two levels of expertise in a skill--and one of those levels was only useful under certain circumstances. Now, I wasn't trying for super-expertise characters, and of course I'm going with playtests and not the finished product, but it seems to me that it might be more difficult to gain multiple levels of expertise than we think.

Plus, at 20th level, of course you're going to be rolling amazingly high. You're practically godlike; you're supposed to roll well.

It'd be better to figure out what a more mid-level character would have. After all, most games don't go up to 20th level. So assume a 10th-level character. +5 stat, +4 prof bonus, +d8 expertise, +d10 Bardic Inspiration. So, a +19 to the roll on average, which is a lot, yes, especially when combined with advantage--but also very unlikely to happen very often.

And it's in a skill which, in itself, is only going to be useful in certain situations. In the double-expertise character I mentioned before, she got the d6 when using sleight of hand in combat situations. How often is that going to happen?

But. They stack, right? Advantage plus Expertise work together which is just marvelous for allowing characters to do some ridiculously high end skill-use. 'Cause so far I've seen nothing that allows Expertise Dice on Attack Rolls or Saving Throws. Though perhaps I haven't paid enough attention?

I found two, both in the Warlord document--but one of them was only available at 20th level. (And, of course, they weren't using expertise dice when they wrote the Fighter's playtest, so I haven't checked there). I wouldn't be surprised if it was changed in the finished product.