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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8147731" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I told people during the Next playtest that Advantage was going to be a problem. But it runs deeper than what Ancalagon said. The "get X, you're done, stop engaging" problem is a problem, but there's a second, more insidious problem.Advantage is everywhere, and once you hit Advantage, designers are encouraged to think "you're done, stop engaging," too.Ad/Dis works mechanically like a weapon of last resort: it's big, it doesn't stack (except where Ad negates Dis), it's simple to implement, it has a feeling of power, doing more of it wouldn't make nearly as much impact (e.g. you only get more than 1% probability increase in the 16-20 range, and low values are only very minimally depressed compared to normal), etc. It's the kind of big-ticket item that, logically, should show up and MATTER when it does, especially because of D&D's crit rules.But it is used, in design terms, as a weapon of first resort. The game hands out Advantage like candy, not least through players earning Inspiration, and it has implicitly replaced the "DM's little helper" plus-or-minus-2 as the go-to benefit for when you have....well, being blunt, any meaningful advantage or disadvantage. Features that grant blanket advantage on various things are ERRYWHERE, and pretty much the only other tool in the DM's toolbox now is Expertise, which becomes a (comparatively) enormous bonus at high level (+6). Designers seem to have gotten it into their heads that as soon as they give one or both of these two mechanics, they no longer need to engage with further design either.I get why people like the fundamental mechanic: it's easy, straightforward, strong-yet-constrained, the whole nine yards. But both how it's used by players and how it's used by designers has gotten lost in the enthusiastic embrace of it, and it really does create problems on both ends.And yes, there are (relatively) simple ways to address this. One example is to have a "minor" and/or "major" equivalent of it, so there's slightly more gradations, or to allow stacking (e.g. you might roll up to 4d20 if you have enough sources). Another is to have a parallel but separate track for a consistent static bonus (e.g. you could be "Helped" for +2 vs "Hindered" for -2, non-stacking just like Ad/Dis but concurrent with it). Yes, none of these methods will ever keep the pristine simplicity of the mechanic as it exists now--but I honestly don't think there's any way to keep that while addressing both Ancalagon's problem and mine. Streamlining has become dead-ending in multiple ways, sometimes to the game's detriment.</blockquote>

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