Non Advantage/Disadvantage bonus and penalties

[Obryn]

I noticed this, too.

I had complained before that I thought limiting everything to advantage/disadvantage was too limiting. Having bonuses frees this up, but now I'm not sure I like it any better.

-O

 

[Li Shenron]

But since multiple sources don't stack, it stays balanced.

It's not a problem of balance. It's a problem of boredom, if it becomes a game of getting advantage to negate disadvantage (or viceversa) all the time.

Also, the additional problem of advantage (if bonuses weren't used) is that it doesn't raise the upper limit of what you can do. The DM can still fix this with some ad-hoc ruling, but another DM who gets used too much to using advantage for everything will be stuck with this.

 

[Prickly]

I think there should be a rule, or suggestion rather, that a DM can rule that a characters overwhelming advantage can ignore minor disadvantage.

I think this guideline should be encouraged to work in the players favour.

On topic, I think a +1 bonus here or there is fine, provided that it is quite rare.

 

[delericho]

Reading through the playtest documents, I'm finding little +/- 1s and 2s tucked here and there, like mob rule for Kobolds and Rats in the Bestiary, or -1 to attack when prone. It kind of defeats the purpose of advantage/disadvantage simplifying everything to mix the static modifiers back in, and static mods mixed with advantage/disadvantage I would even consider more complex than static modifiers alone.

It's a difficult one. Certainly, I agree that tracking lots of minor mods can be a pain, and that they can very quickly add up. (And I really don't want to see a rehash of the stacking rules, especially in their 3e form - nice idea in principle, but horrible in practice.)

Indeed, in general I would be inclined to drop the minor mods entirely, and only give out a modifier at all if it's significant enough to be worth the bother.

Additionally, applying both advantage/disadvantage and a +/- modifier to a single roll will make the probabilities much harder to design for, especially in a bounded accuracy system. While I believe that the designers of the core game will take the time to do it right, and catch the worst abuses in playtest, I have to doubt their ability to do the same in the supplements - where materials traditionally have had much less testing time available.

All that said:

The problem with using advantage and disadvantage exclusively is eventually there will be so many sources of both that someone will almost always have both advantage and disadvantage. That means any additional sources of advantage/disadvantage become useless.

This is also true. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic is best used sparingly. That way, when it applies it is both exciting and potent.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think advantage and disadvantage is a good idea, but should be pretty rare, and it looks like WOTC is dialing it back a bit to see how that works.

I have no problem with bonuses or penalties as long as they are pretty clear and consistent.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

There are some other options for bonuses/penalties smaller than advantage/disadvantage.

• If critical hits remain as they are, not being able to critical is a nice minor penalty (for prone perhaps) and perhaps we could offer criticals on 19 or 20 (for bless perhaps).
• Rather than apply disadvantage, you could not be able to benefit from advantage (and vice-versa - not being subject to disadvantage seems like a good benefit for a mob).
• For group effects, to saves perhaps, you could use the best or worst save bonus from the group rather than just a numerical effect.
• For the healer speciality, you could step up HD rather than maximise them.

Overall, I don't mind the odd bonus, but they should *never* stack - the highest magical bonus to any given dice roll or defence should apply. There are also more ways to improve your effectiveness than advantage.

 

[delericho]

If critical hits remain as they are, not being able to critical is a nice minor penalty (for prone perhaps)

I like this...

and perhaps we could offer criticals on 19 or 20 (for bless perhaps).

But not this.

Honestly, I feel that always critting on a 20 is probably a bit too frequent. In principle, I would prefer a confirmation roll be required. However, I'll gladly accept that I'm in the minority on that one. Besides, rolling a nat-20 is cool.

However, because this means that crits will actually be reasonably common, I'm inclined to think that they should only give a moderate bonus (4e's auto-max damage was good; the weapons that added extra dice on top of this were too much, IMO).

And I would certainly oppose any measure to have crits occur on anything other than a nat-20 - in retrospect, I think the expanded threat ranges in 3e were a mistake, even with the confirmation roll.

Rather than apply disadvantage, you could not be able to benefit from advantage (and vice-versa - not being subject to disadvantage seems like a good benefit for a mob).

Again, I think this is an area where WotC are making a mistake. IMO, advantage and disadvantage should simply cancel one another out, rather than the current situation where you only roll 1 die, but otherwise have both. (So, no Sneak Attack for the invisible, blind Rogue, please.)

For group effects, to saves perhaps, you could use the best or worst save bonus from the group rather than just a numerical effect.

I like it. I would be inclined to go with the best bonus, but apply a "drag factor" for the rest.

That way, the sneaky Rogue can guide the party stealthily through the enemy stronghold, rather than have his efforts outright destroyed by the noisy Fighter. Otherwise, if it goes by the worst (or everyone rolls), you quickly see stealth becoming a non-option due to the noisy Fighter, diplomacy being negated by the tactles Barbarian... and the party is left with only the common denominator of fighting their way through every adventure.

For the healer speciality, you could step up HD rather than maximise them.

I like this mechanic, and not just for healers - IIRC, the first playtest packet had some sort of implicit weapon specialisation mechanic that increased the damage die by a step. Also, bonuses to the damage die (or similar) are much easier to balance for than bonuses on the attack roll - the one is a point or two extra damage, while the latter is potentially tens of points from extra hits.

Overall, I don't mind the odd bonus, but they should *never* stack - the highest magical bonus to any given dice roll or defence should apply.

I'm broadly in agreement. I might be tempted to have both a semi-permanent 'condition' modifier and also an instantaneous 'power' modifier in play (where the former applies to all d20 rolls, while the latter only ever applies to one specific roll, taken immediately).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think, those minor bonuses are ok, but I liked the kobolds are fighting at disadvantage if they are in bright light and not outnumbering their enemies, and advantaged in darkness, while they are outnumbering you. But if you cast light, both advantages/disadvantages cancel out. That was kind of elegant.

 

[nightwalker450]

The problem with just having Advantage/Disadvantage is that there's no middle ground. And when you have class abilities that ride on those (Sneak Attack), making them too easy makes those abilities really powerful.

What they need is just a partial or lesser advangatage/disadvantage, which is likewise +/- 2, and unstackable. What this does is make 2 (or 3) tiers of advantage.

Lesser Advantage: +2
Advantage: Roll Twice
Greater Advantage (multiple advantages): Roll Twice with +2.

So yes, they should probably get rid of the +1/+2's and replace them with another well defined status that's less than advantage.

 

[VinylTap]

As elegant as advantage/disadvantage is, the math (from what I've seen), is somewhere around +4/-4, that's a huge bonus! +1 alone can be huge in some situations. People are right in thinking there needs to be a small bonus/negative option. Advantage should be for situations where success is almost guaranteed, and would inhibit the flow of the story, or things like prone, where a huge advantage makes sense.

Even used as a flanking mechanic its a bit much. It takes a lot of math out of the game, and that's a good thing, but modifiers probably shouldn't go away entirely, just easing off them a bit is a great thing for the game.