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Sage Advice (18 May 2015)
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<blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 7671352" data-attributes="member: 2525"><p>I've seen several people say you'd choose to take disadvantage with Lucky to gain some advantage from it. That's not correct. You'd use it if you naturally find yourself at disadvantage, but you wouldn't voluntarily take disadvantage for no other gain as it doesn't help you on average if you do that. Here's why:</p><p></p><p>You only use the feat once you see what the dice rolled come up with (otherwise you may be wasting it). And only then are you seeing the lowest roll is a failure, and choosing to throw another die and choose between the other two dice. </p><p></p><p>Let's say you choose to do something with disadvantage when you didn't need to. Your target is a 10. You throw two dice, the first comes up 13, and the second comes up 7.</p><p> </p><p>If you had not chosen to do it with disadvantage, you would have succeeded with the 13. Instead, you put yourself in a position where you needed to essentially declare your use BEFORE the dice are rolled, by deciding to do it at disadvantage when you didn't need to do it that way. Now, you've forced yourself to use Lucky just to get the same result you would have had without the voluntary disadvantage (success with the 13). It was a waste of the feat. So now, you needlessly throw a third die, and it doesn't matter what comes up because your first throw was a success which you could have used to begin with had you not been at disadvantage.</p><p> </p><p>And that situation happens 50% of the time (the other half the 7 would have come up first and you'd have used Lucky like normal to get the 13). You gained no benefit overall from the feat by forcing disadvantage in advance when you didn't need to, on-balance. The only way such a tactic would have increased your odds is if you could decide to do something at disadvantage only after you throw the first die and see the result. But, that's not how the disadvantage rule works - it's declared before dice are rolled.</p><p> </p><p>So no, mechanically, people are not going to choose disadvantage when they don't need to do so. They will still use it when they naturally find themselves with disadvantage of course, or if there is some other benefit to be gained from disadvantage, but they won't be choosing voluntarily to have disadvantage just for this feat as you're not really gaining the best of three dice that way, because you may be wasting the feat.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mistwell, post: 7671352, member: 2525"] I've seen several people say you'd choose to take disadvantage with Lucky to gain some advantage from it. That's not correct. You'd use it if you naturally find yourself at disadvantage, but you wouldn't voluntarily take disadvantage for no other gain as it doesn't help you on average if you do that. Here's why: You only use the feat once you see what the dice rolled come up with (otherwise you may be wasting it). And only then are you seeing the lowest roll is a failure, and choosing to throw another die and choose between the other two dice. Let's say you choose to do something with disadvantage when you didn't need to. Your target is a 10. You throw two dice, the first comes up 13, and the second comes up 7. If you had not chosen to do it with disadvantage, you would have succeeded with the 13. Instead, you put yourself in a position where you needed to essentially declare your use BEFORE the dice are rolled, by deciding to do it at disadvantage when you didn't need to do it that way. Now, you've forced yourself to use Lucky just to get the same result you would have had without the voluntary disadvantage (success with the 13). It was a waste of the feat. So now, you needlessly throw a third die, and it doesn't matter what comes up because your first throw was a success which you could have used to begin with had you not been at disadvantage. And that situation happens 50% of the time (the other half the 7 would have come up first and you'd have used Lucky like normal to get the 13). You gained no benefit overall from the feat by forcing disadvantage in advance when you didn't need to, on-balance. The only way such a tactic would have increased your odds is if you could decide to do something at disadvantage only after you throw the first die and see the result. But, that's not how the disadvantage rule works - it's declared before dice are rolled. So no, mechanically, people are not going to choose disadvantage when they don't need to do so. They will still use it when they naturally find themselves with disadvantage of course, or if there is some other benefit to be gained from disadvantage, but they won't be choosing voluntarily to have disadvantage just for this feat as you're not really gaining the best of three dice that way, because you may be wasting the feat. [/QUOTE]
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Sage Advice (18 May 2015)
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