Level Up (A5E) minor advantage/disadvantage

[Faolyn]

Just to be clear: I didn't reduce advantage/disadvantage to a step on this ladder, I just suggested that in addition to its normal effects, it should change the boundaries of the ladder.

But yes, this is probably overcomplicated.

On the other hand, the "guidance should be an actual bonus, not just a potential one" is exactly my argument for this kind of system. That is, I think the ideal situation is the opposite of what you say. The problem to be avoided is if stacking a bunch of bonuses gives you a guaranteed outcome; that ends up pitting your rules-crafting fun (look at all these bonuses!) against your fun at the table (You succeed. Again. Yawn.). This is exactly the kind of situation that comes up in Pathfinder more than it should, and occasionally in 5e (with belts of giant strength, or the new "bonus to spell DC" magic items). So I think 1d8 is far better than 2d4 from that perspective.

While I agree that always succeeding isn't always fun, I don't think that increasing the die size because of a magical effect is the ideal. It is a magical effect and shouldn't be treated as a mundane one.

Since you say you're a statistician, I needn't go over the averages of 2d4 versus 1d8. I think, though, that rolling two additional dice, even if they're both d4s, is a bit more fun than rolling a single d8.

At the moment, we've only seen a couple of things in both o5e and in LU that cause people to roll a die and subtract it from their roll. Bane will do that, and there's a bardic Battle Hymn that will do it. There might have been others from other playtests that I just can't remember. So I don't know if there's going to be a regular "anti-expertise die" in the game. Expertise is supposed to represent know-how, not luck, favorable conditions, or magical ability, so an anti-expertise die would probably at most represent unfamiliarity with something--yes, you're good at locks, but this is a weird gnomish Twisting Lock that you have heard of but never dealt with before, so take a d4 off your roll.

 

[AllOlive]

Having thought about it more, I think that if you have multiple modifier dice (expertise, bardic inspiration, guidance/resistance, bless, etc.), the simplest thing to do that doesn't over-reward stacking them up is to take the largest roll. So if you had 1d4 guidance, 1d6 super-expertise, and 1d8 bardic inspiration, you'd roll four dice (d20, d4, d6, d8), then add the d20 with the highest number showing on the other three. If you rolled 19, 4, 1, 3, you'd take the 4 from the d4 for a total of 23 (before flat modifiers).

Since that "raw roll" is 21 or higher, you'd have a chance of critical success. Say your modifier was +5, and the DC was 20. You'd roll a d10 (half of the DC rounded up), and if it was below your modifier plus the raw roll minus 20 (+5 +23 -20 = 8; so, 70% chance), you'd get a critical success.