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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 6339033" data-attributes="member: 54710">The thing with advantage/disadvantage is that it's either on or its off.  There aren't gradations of advantage and if you have advantage (or disadvantage) from two different sources, the second source doesn't affect the combat.  The benefits of having advantage of a mechanic are simplicity and impact: if most modifiers are just "advantage", it's easier to remember and the modifiers matter since rolling that second die has a big impact on the outcome.  The tradeoff is the difficulty in expressing small modifiers and the risk that important things stop mattering because advantage / disadvantage already applied.My suspicion is that most tables break down into (a) tables that play tactically, likely with maps, and use cover a lot and (b) tables that don't play tactically, sometimes using TotM, and don't use cover that much.  If you don't use cover that much, then these modifiers are a little fiddly to remember, but you probably ignore them anyway.  But if you do use cover, then gradations of cover is probably important to your game.  If I'm spending time thinking about exactly which square my character is located in and how he's using terrain and screening allies, then (a) I probably already remember the modifiers from the past couple editions and (b) I don't want to lose that gradation or have disadvantage suddenly stop mattering because the enemy is already behind cover (or visa versa).  I imagine a lot of tactical D&D players thinking that at least one character or monster is behind cover 90% of the time in combat and that many tactically interesting decisions about positioning would go away if cover lost the levels of granularity in the last two editions.I don't see this as a theorycraft issue.  The theory is not that complicated.  It's just a practical question of whether cover is a mechanic that is important enough to deserve its own subsystem.  I think they tried D&DN with cover rolled into advantage / disadvantage and enough designers / playtesters liked it better the old way.-KS</blockquote>

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