Why advantage/disadvantage mechanic?

[zoroaster100]

The one thing I find most puzzling an troublesome about the D&D Next rules so far is this reliance on the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. It seems like a very limiting mechanic. Why not just use bonuses and penalties as in every other edition of the game, which allows for smaller and larger penalties and bonuses, and stacking of same?

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I think it's supposed to be limiting. One of the most frequent complaints in any game is the necessity of tracking many numbers, some of which are quite minor. Further, allowing such minor numbers to consistently stack up can lead to extremes that make the game difficult to play. This mechanic takes the attitude that a given circumstance either has a significant effect, or none, and tries to do away with minor +1 bonuses and penalties. Depending on how you allow adv/disadv to stack it also limits how many circumstances can really affect the outcome of a given check.

I think it has been broadly accepted and liked, though there is a thread discussing minor penalties here. I'm in favour of removing any temporary numerical bonus - but that doesn't mean that effects lesser to adv/disadv can't exist, they just have to be thought about carefully.

 

[Nagol]

I can see certain advantages of the mechanic compared to bonus/penalty adjustments,

First, the range of outcomes isn't extended. The range remains 1-20. No need to consider what a 28 result looks like. This helps with bounded accuracy -- you know the maximum any attempt can achieve.

Secondly, advantage affects low initial rolls disproportionately. Under a bonus scheme, a +3 bonus offers the same change regardless of whether a 2 or a 19 were rolled. Imagine rolling the two dice sequentially. If you roll a 20 on the first die, you know there is no possible improvement from the second one. If you roll a 1 on the other hand, you know that 95% of the time your result will improve and your expected improvement is +9.5.

Thirdly, it affects how frequently a 1 or a 20 result appears. This can have cascade effets on any form of critical hit / critical failure results -- or even auto-hit/auto-fail that a bonus scheme doesn't duplicate.

 

[Mattachine]

I like the mechanic for the reasons that Nagol states.

*helps with flat math
*makes autofailures a bit rarer, and makes critical success a little more common

In my games, however, I will allow adv/dis to stack in a limited way: if an action has both advantage and disadvantage, the final result is determined by whether there is more sources of adv or dis. In other words, if an action has advantage from two sources, and disadvantage from one, the overall effect is advantage. There is never more than one extra d20 rolled; double advantage still simply grants advantage.

 

[slobo777]

From what I've read the mechanic is supposed to work well when forgotten and then remembered and applied afterwards.

Simply roll the D20 again, you don't have to reverse and add all the bits up again (which you may have to do if you forgot the old combat advantage or flanking bonus).

The odd +1/-1 or +2/-2 isn't hard maths, but I do know it annoys my group a lot due to slowness of checking for and adding a half-dozen or so situational alterations. This crops up in 3E and 4E a lot, as many class features, race features, feats and themes come with one or more situational changes to a roll or defence.

I'm behind any mechanic or design which culls the proliferation of check points and micro-changes in those two versions (edit: provided we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater and are left with no mechanics at all of course).

 

[Frostmarrow]

In Formula D, a racing boardgame, there is a d20 geared in such a way it's numbered 11-20 twice.
Wizards could sell that die and call it the advantage die (in a unique color scheme). So normally you would roll a d20 for any check but when you have advantage you would roll the advantage die. The average of the advantage is 15.5 compared to 10.5 for a regular d20.
If you don't have such a die simply roll 1d10+10.

 

[drothgery]

I'm still not a fan of re-roll mechanics because they do weird things to probability and I believe they slow the game down. And I believe WotC already came to this conclusion once; Star Wars Saga had somewhat extensive reroll mechanics, whereas in 4e they only show up for the Avenger and some oddball corner cases.

 

[Andor]

I love it. The Adv/Dis mechanic is simple, clean, evocative and powerful without blowing the bounded distribution curves.

And I'll note that while my players like advantage they don't go crazy trying to get it (except the rogue.) Otoh they'll fight much harder to avoid disadvantage than they would an equivalent -3 malus. A lot of dice distrust in my group.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Last night, we were continuing the Cave of Chaos with characters updated to 2nd level and from the most recent playtest. Since the characters were new to the group, they decide to go tangle the kobolds as an easy warm up (and because they hadn't hit that side of the caves yet).

At one point, the party got into a tangle with 45 kobolds. At a key moment, the cleric ran forward alone, using that area sun power through channel divinity (damage in a 20' radius plus lit up until the next round). This killed all but 15 of the remaining kobolds, but those fifteen threw daggers (after making a morale check). All fifteen missed. While improbable even with the disadvantage of kobolds throwing into bright light, with a simple modifier it would have never happened.

The players gasped when the daggers started flying, and then cheered when not a one hit. I described it as daggers flying all over the room in every direction, as the almost blinded but enraged kobolds ran around shouting.

We like wacky stuff such as that. The pursuit of advantage and avoidance of disadvantage generally encourages it.

 

[Mattachine]

I'm still not a fan of re-roll mechanics because they do weird things to probability and I believe they slow the game down. And I believe WotC already came to this conclusion once; Star Wars Saga had somewhat extensive reroll mechanics, whereas in 4e they only show up for the Avenger and some oddball corner cases.

By the way, it doesn't have to be reroll:
It can be roll two dice and take the appropriate result. Saves a bit of time.