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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7442275" data-attributes="member: 996">Yeah, RL is what we play D&amp;D to escape from, so that's fine, really.&nbsp; ;P&nbsp;Yeah, it's a fairly rational 'gamist' decision.&nbsp; The player declaring the help action is using up his action, prettymuch sitting out his turn, and in return the character he's helping 'automatically' gets Advantage.&nbsp; That is a very steep price to pay, so if you want players to pay it, making it work 'automatically' (and Advantage is 'clever,' in a way, in that it seems to help more often than it actually does - unless you choose to differentiate 'your die' from the 'advantage die' by color or order rolled or something) is a pretty good idea.&nbsp; If there was a meaningful chance of blowing your action to 'help' and not being helpful or even screwing things up, it's that much less likely anyone would ever go for it.&nbsp;At least he'd be doing something.&nbsp; But it would eliminate that clever illusion (above) of Advantage being better than it actually is.&nbsp; Because the helpee would know that his helper was 'useless' any time his own roll succeeds (which is, in 5e, typically most of the time).Another trick I've started using is the group check.&nbsp; Sometimes a player will try something, get a check, obviously fail, and then everyone else will pile on and try to do the same thing with the same check - someone, almost inevitably, will succeed, and off they go, making the whole exercise pointless (just narrate success &amp; be done with it).&nbsp; So, instead, invoke 'Help' or 'Working Together.'&nbsp; Or, as I'd done in the past, if you're going to have everyone try to pile on with something, it turns into a group check, because you're looking for a consensus, and that consensus can be wrong, even if (only) one of you gets it right.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7442275, member: 996"] Yeah, RL is what we play D&D to escape from, so that's fine, really. ;P Yeah, it's a fairly rational 'gamist' decision. The player declaring the help action is using up his action, prettymuch sitting out his turn, and in return the character he's helping 'automatically' gets Advantage. That is a very steep price to pay, so if you want players to pay it, making it work 'automatically' (and Advantage is 'clever,' in a way, in that it seems to help more often than it actually does - unless you choose to differentiate 'your die' from the 'advantage die' by color or order rolled or something) is a pretty good idea. If there was a meaningful chance of blowing your action to 'help' and not being helpful or even screwing things up, it's that much less likely anyone would ever go for it. At least he'd be doing something. But it would eliminate that clever illusion (above) of Advantage being better than it actually is. Because the helpee would know that his helper was 'useless' any time his own roll succeeds (which is, in 5e, typically most of the time). Another trick I've started using is the group check. Sometimes a player will try something, get a check, obviously fail, and then everyone else will pile on and try to do the same thing with the same check - someone, almost inevitably, will succeed, and off they go, making the whole exercise pointless (just narrate success & be done with it). So, instead, invoke 'Help' or 'Working Together.' Or, as I'd done in the past, if you're going to have everyone try to pile on with something, it turns into a group check, because you're looking for a consensus, and that consensus can be wrong, even if (only) one of you gets it right. [/QUOTE]

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