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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Reflecting on advantage and disadvantage.
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6739724" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>I like advantage/disadvantage, but not for the reasons other people like it. I like it because it's the first time (A)D&D has had anything even vaguely approaching a bell curve on a single roll. It also gets you off that silly "even a blind peasant at extreme range hits a great wyrm red dragon at least 5% of the time" thing.</p><p></p><p>But I agree that it's too reductive when used blindly. I think the designers did the right thing by making partial cover an AC bonus instead disadvantage; and I think DMs are wise to consider using bonuses and penalties instead of disadvantage in other situations as well. In fact, a large part of the value of getting onto the bell curve is so that you can apply numerical bonuses and penalties and they'll have a consistent meaning no matter where on the curve you're located. When you're already at disadvantage, slipping from a target of 11+ on d20 to 13+ approximately halves your success rate. Likewise, slipping from 15+ to 17+ halves it again. That means that +/- 2 <em>matters</em>, it's not just noise.</p><p></p><p>So I very much recommend using bonuses and penalties in 5E in conjunction with binary advantage/disadvantage.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6739724, member: 6787650"] I like advantage/disadvantage, but not for the reasons other people like it. I like it because it's the first time (A)D&D has had anything even vaguely approaching a bell curve on a single roll. It also gets you off that silly "even a blind peasant at extreme range hits a great wyrm red dragon at least 5% of the time" thing. But I agree that it's too reductive when used blindly. I think the designers did the right thing by making partial cover an AC bonus instead disadvantage; and I think DMs are wise to consider using bonuses and penalties instead of disadvantage in other situations as well. In fact, a large part of the value of getting onto the bell curve is so that you can apply numerical bonuses and penalties and they'll have a consistent meaning no matter where on the curve you're located. When you're already at disadvantage, slipping from a target of 11+ on d20 to 13+ approximately halves your success rate. Likewise, slipping from 15+ to 17+ halves it again. That means that +/- 2 [I]matters[/I], it's not just noise. So I very much recommend using bonuses and penalties in 5E in conjunction with binary advantage/disadvantage. [/QUOTE]
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