Is the 5e adv/disadvantage mechanic perfect?

cavetroll · Feb 3, 2022

Or has another game something as elegant to provide bonuses?

When I say perfect, I am only referring to the piece of the mechanic where you want to give a bonus, lets say +5 to hit and rather than using any math, you simply roll twice.

What makes it so perfect, is that a) it removes the math involved and b) its super simple to do the same with the disadvantage, just taking the lowest number.

Now the only downside I can think of, is if you lets say needed a 20 to hit, and so rolling twice doesn't confer as much advantage as a +5 for instance. Of course it all depends on what you are striving for.

Jd Smith1 · Feb 3, 2022

It's not bad. I house rule it that Ad and Dis cancel each other out on a 1:1 basis.

MGibster · Feb 3, 2022

It's a pretty good rule. It's so good that I sometimes wonder why it wasn't incorporated into the game decades ago.

TwoSix · Feb 3, 2022

I like boons and banes from Shadow of the Demon Lord. A boon gives you a +1d6 to your 1d20 roll, and a bane gives you a -1d6. Boons and banes cancel each other on a 1:1 basis, so if you have 2 boons and a bane from various effects, you roll 1 boon. If you have more than 1 boon/bane, you roll that many d6s and only keep the highest.

THEMNGMNT · Feb 3, 2022

On the DM side, it's a great mechanic. It makes adjudication so easy. Particularly for new DMs.

I'm 11 sessions into playing Shadow of the Demon Lord. Banes and boons are definitely an interesting take on advantage/disadvantage. Not sure if I like it more or less. When my group gets back to 5E I'll ask them if they want to adopt it or not.

Aldarc · Feb 3, 2022

I feel that there are a fair number of dice pool systems out there that are easier or at least the ones that involve simply needing a number or higher.

Deset Gled · Feb 3, 2022

Is any mechanic ever perfect? No. But it's pretty good. I generally like it.

But, IMNSHO, problems with dis/advantage can arrise with how it interacts with other mechanics. For example, we don't have a critical weapon system like we had in 3e (different ranges, different bonuses) partly because the math that balances that system start to break down when when the advantage mechanic is put in place. I happened to enjoy that system, so I consider losing it a sad thing. YMMV.

payn · Feb 3, 2022

Deset Gled said:
Is any mechanic ever perfect? No. But it's pretty good. I generally like it.

But, IMNSHO, problems with dis/advantage can arrise with how it interacts with other mechanics. For example, we don't have a critical weapon system like we had in 3e (different ranges, different bonuses) partly because the math that balances that system start to break down when when the advantage mechanic is put in place. I happened to enjoy that system, so I consider losing it a sad thing. YMMV.

This. Its too simple in the long run. Its better when its more rare IMO.

aramis erak · Feb 4, 2022

cavetroll said:
Or has another game something as elegant to provide bonuses?

When I say perfect, I am only referring to the piece of the mechanic where you want to give a bonus, lets say +5 to hit and rather than using any math, you simply roll twice.

What makes it so perfect, is that a) it removes the math involved and b) its super simple to do the same with the disadvantage, just taking the lowest number.

Now the only downside I can think of, is if you lets say needed a 20 to hit, and so rolling twice doesn't confer as much advantage as a +5 for instance. Of course it all depends on what you are striving for.

Its flaws...
lack of Granularity/Multiplicity of levels
No reliability of benefit: a +1 always increases the minimum and maximum, a -1 lowers them. Advantage, while roughly equivalent to adding 4, provides no benefit to the extrema of the roll.
Simplicity of execution: while it's easy to pick an advantage or disadvantage, the actual execution of rolling is more involved. See below.
Fails to account for preponderance. If a character has one advantage and 20 disadvantages, it's a "normal roll." Likewise, 20 advatanges and 1 disad? Still a normal roll.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it does have a number of flaws which make it not so good, IMO.

	Adv	Normal	Disad
Mean	13.825	10.5	7.175
Median	15	10.5	6
mode	20	NP	1

The steps for dice mods
Player makes declaration
Player often knows the dice to roll before difficulty, so has them in hand.
Player rolls. GM can have told them the modifier before, or may wait until after.
Player does one to 3 additions.

The steps for adv/disadv
Player makes declaration
GM announces advantage or disadvantage. May also state difficulty now, or later.
Player grabs correct number of dice
Player rolls
Player compares the two dice if either Advantage or Disadvantage
Player then adds 2 factors to the die, either as one or as two additions.

More steps, and some of them are more involved. The sequence also technically requires the player to be told advantage or disadvatage or not.