Level Up (A5E) Changes to Advantage

[tetrasodium]

I don't play Fate so I don't actually know what that reference is.

I'm thinking of something pretty straightforward: for whatever reason, you know that you are probably going to succeed at something, given the DC and your bonus. So you go for a little more, get a little more ambitious. Because you're trying something harder, you roll with disadvantage. If you still succeed, the results are all that much more impressive.

I mean, really, it's quite similar to the -5/+10 of GWM and Sharpshooter, but using disadvantage.

There's a page on invoking aspects & compels in fate here. Without knowing what kind of "benefit" your suggesting I can really only say that it has the potential to be super abusable since you could just try again or let someone else do it.

 

[jmucchiello]

Instead of changing the mechanic, I’d like to see character abilities where you can choose to roll with disadvantage, and get a benefit if you succeed anyway. It’s a way of having a more interesting risk:reward option.

This sort of already exists in very limited form. A barbarian can make a wreckless attack gaining advantage and giving disadvantage to himself on defense.

Trip: If you do not already have disadvantage on your melee attack, you can impose disadvantage on yourself. If the attack succeeds, apply damage normally and your opponent is knocked prone.
All the old maneuvers could be similar: disarm, sunder, overrun, bull rush. Even charge could work like that.

Alternatively: If you have advantage on your next melee attack, you can forgo advantage....

 

[Horwath]

I don't have any d16s or d24s!

you could go with 2d8 and 2d12

 

[glass]

you could go with 2d8 and 2d12

Massively different distribution (and slightly different range).

_
glass.

 

[Phoebasss]

Massively different distribution (and slightly different range).

Also of note, I think 2d8 might actually be better than 1d20 at hitting the usual thresholds to score a hit on average.
EDIT: did the math. It is marginally worse, unless your goal number is 8+ on die. So against low AC enemies disadvantage becomes an... advantage.
And by low AC, I mean AC 13- at level one. 15- if you have archery.

 

[Giauz]

Massively different distribution (and slightly different range).

_
glass.

What if for a d24, you rolled a d20 and d4. Keep the d20 result and only re-roll the d4 for a result to add to that if it is even. Do something similar with the 2d8's.

 

[Phoebasss]

What if for a d24, you rolled a d20 and d4. Keep the d20 result and only re-roll the d4 for a result to add to that if it is even. Do something similar with the 2d8's.

This seems like a lot of work for what amounts to making a simple system complex in a way that doesn't give additional options. It also doesn't solve the problem of stacking advantage and disadvantage.

 

[DND_Reborn]

It also doesn't solve the problem of stacking advantage and disadvantage.

Sorry, I haven't had time to read through the whole thread again, but when was there a problem with stacking advantage and/or disadvantage? We've been doing since the beginning of playing 5E and no issues yet. shrug

 

[Phoebasss]

Sorry, I haven't had time to read through the whole thread again, but when was there a problem with stacking advantage and/or disadvantage? We've been doing since the beginning of playing 5E and no issues yet. shrug

Oh I just mean that by native 5e it doesn't stack and I think it should, and the 2d8 2d12 system makes stacking even more weird to figure out because I don't have d14s.

 

[tetrasodium]

Sorry, I haven't had time to read through the whole thread again, but when was there a problem with stacking advantage and/or disadvantage? We've been doing since the beginning of playing 5E and no issues yet. shrug

stock 5e advantage doesn't handle multiple advantage/disadvantage sources like you could with circumstance bonuses/penalties that leads to some absurd "nah lets do it the $ReallyReallyStupid way, we already have (dis)advantage because of $reasons, lets tell the smuggler we aren't interested in his stolen uniforms that would give us/cancel another (dis)advantage cause you can only have it once " or situations where something tiny cancels out a massive (dis)advantage that makes no sense. Morrus suggested an interesting method here that gives a nice middle ground between what was lost & what advantage does. In that example you have something like (dis)advantage 2/5/10/whatever & reroll the d20 if you get above/below that value but just add/subtract all the different sources to get the final above/below value. A lot of the suggestions since then are just different from 5e's advantage for the sake of being different & don't seem to actually bring anything new to the table beyond simply being different from 2d20[k/d]1