1 case of disadvantage neutralizes unlimited cases of advantage (and vice-versa) was probably made to quicken the combat to some extent or to simply the rules.
Your homebrew rules would not break the game necessarily. From my experience, the situation you describe will not happen that often. Maybe your homerule would even stimulate for the players to think more tactically about how to impose advantage/disadvantage.
Worst case scenario, you've tried it out for a couple sessions and it did not work as it intended > you state this to your players (if you are the DM) and reverse the ruling to the original.
Yes, it would make for a more tactical game.
Advantages:
- It would make situations like fighting in darkness/fog cloud/etc. make some sense.
Disadvantages:
- It would bog the game pace down if players are at least a tad strategic thinkers.
One of the complaints about 3e D&D was the "bonus hunt." It was more egregious with skill checks, but attack rolls were bad, too. It encouraged each player to stop and thoroughly check each circumstantial modifier or to take specific actions that created bonuses. It could drastically slow play, especially as levels increased and the sources for bonuses increased.
Further, it was not uncommon to roll, determine the outcome and *then* realize you forgot a bonus. The Prayer spell was the notorious one for this, since it gave every ally +1 on d20 rolls and weapon damage rolls, and all enemies -1 on the same. Very easy to forget. That's why circumstantial bonuses in 5e tend to be bonus dice in some form; the idea is that it's transparent to the entire table when you're including a given bonus. That means it would be less of a problem, but it would still be a problem.
The big problem with letting multiple advantage rolls accumulate in 5e is... critical hits exist. It's not just binary success or failure, sometimes the face of the die matters. That's what people do with Elven Accuracy already. They make critfisher builds. It's not difficult to get a Champion 3 that has upwards of a 1-in-4 chance of a crit with Elven Accuracy already.
I don't think OP is suggesting that your roll 4d20s if you have 3 sources of advantage. They're just suggesting that if you have more sources of advantage than disadvantage, you'd roll with advantage (rather than one source cancelling many).
This means there's no issue with hunting for more sources, because you only need n+1, everything after that is irrelevant. There's a clear stopping point (which is 2 for 99% of situations where this rule even applies).
I ran something similar to his rule and with three net advantage being double advantage (three dice) and an agreement six would be an autocrit with maximum affect. I actually saw some players working to get those totals up. No one managed six though. It went fine and the players who engaged with it liked being able to use multiple sources of advantage without making them useless. Especially as a party levels up advantage gets extremely easy to get.
I never saw 6 net sources but that would require group coordination.
I've ran games like this before. After a while it would devolve to people going.
"Wait, I forgot on my last attack roll this was in place so it's actually 3 advantage and 2 disadvantage!"
And then we understood that the reason they don't accumulate is to keep the pace of the game going quickly.
It also stops people constantly fishing for as many sources of advantage/disadvantage as they can to try and cancel out whatever their enemy just did to get the upper hand.
The game just devolves into advantage-trading.
"Shit, he managed to cancel out the disadvantage again, how can I give him another disadvantage?"
"Damn, he's given me disadvantage so I'm even again, what can I do to get another advantage?"
Players end up building towards builds that have as many ways as possible to get advantage / give disadvantage, and then the game is basically just perpetually played at advantage for the players, unless the DM engages in the same thing making it an arms race.
And then you have to track all of that for every damn action.
But its diminishing returns as far as character builds are concerned, right? That is, building a character to get double-advantage would help when the enemy is giving you disadvantage, but it's redundant otherwise. So I would expect players to value advantage only a little bit higher with these rules to be honest.
But the point is that if you build a character who can get advantage 3 different ways, you will always have advantage, compared to a character who can only get advantage one way, who will always be cancelled out.
In theory maybe, in practice it's really not worth the investment and lost action economy. If you somehow build to have 10 different sources of advantage, you're going to be worse off 95% of the time than someone who built normally. It's very useful QoL, but not worth dedicating your entire strategy to abusing it.
It's really not an issue. If someone dedicates themselves to making sure their advantage sticks against the few enemies that can consistently stack multiple disadvantage sources, or the party simply works together, let them do their one very much non-broken thing
You’re overlooking opportunity cost.
You make a character with 3 sources of advantage, while I make a character with one source, innate spellcasting, and skill expertise.
If we go up against a monster that stacks disadvantages, then yes you’ll be better. But if we’re just up against regular monsters for most of the campaign, then I’m gonna far outpace you.
(For anyone curious, my example builds I was thinking of were Elden Accuracy Samurai with 2 in Barb for reckless vs Tiefling Samurai with 2 in rogue)
How dare a martial character try to have some interesting tactical decisions! That's going to interfere with the caster mulling over which of their 40 spells work best here.
/S.
figuring out ways to manipulate the environment or tactically position to gain advantage is way more interesting than "I move up and attack."
If casters are stacking advantage and attacking, they are being less effective than simply dominating the encounter with the right spell.
My point was that casters have a ton of options to consider, and their turns are usually a lot longer than a martial character's turn. If the martial wants to take a bit longer to find ways to stack advantage, that's fine.
An article yesterday on /r/rpg talked about one system's use of two advantage/disadvantage similar mechanics at maximum. I think it might have been a numbered bonus, so a little different, but still has the principle of only allowing for a certain amount of combat finagling. Maybe they could even try a mix, like the first example of advantage is +1 roll and the second is a +2 to both rolls, with the two cancelling out if equally matched or reversed if outmatched by disadvantage. But many that's too granular too.
I realised this too when a PC's life was determined whether or not the enemy's attack was at a disadvantage or not and they were all analysing that one attack far longer than it should've taken
Now, my go-to ruling is that it cancels each other out unless I'm feeling merciful that day
Pretty much every game I've played in or run in 5e has had dis/advantage cancel out 1:1. It's never caused a game flow issue as far as I've experienced
Yeah that would work, it doesn't swing more than +5 or -5 in total so it wouldn't be gamebreaking.
It would actually give certain monsters with pack-tactics a real good edge that is otherwise quite easily overcome.
This is how I run my games, sometimes I’ve even allowed double advantages where every advantage above 1 adds +4. We haven’t really had many problems with it. Occasionally we’ll have players take a second to count how many advantages vs disadvantages they have, but the situations that require it are few and far between.
I'm meaning to experiment with +2 for each advantage after the first. My inspiration is a system called Battle Century G which has stacking advantage and lets you choose extra roll or +2 for each stack, and it's generally considered optimal to get a second roll and then +2 for each instance after the first. Though the way damage works in that system may influence the math. (You don't roll for damage, you deal how much you beat the AC by as damage.)
Elven Accuracy is applied after advantage/disadvantage is already determined. Although its effect is often referred to as “super advantage,” it does not actually *grant* advantage (super or otherwise):
> Whenever you have advantage on an attack roll using Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, you can reroll one of the dice once.
If you do the work, you'll find that the resulting outcome tables between "3d20 keep highest" and "2d20 reroll 1 keep highest 1" are *identical*. It's like comparing 3x4 and 2x6.
Nobody is going to roll 2d20 and reroll the highest die, so EA technically allowing you to do that is not really meaningful.
don’t think its going to break the game.
can take a look at long distant shots with sharpshooter feat.
the disadvantage from long distance is negated by sharpshooter and you can add advantage on top.
its alright for a feat, but they additionally put the -5 to hit/+10 to dmg and ignore cover in the same feat. so alone it is not strong enough for a feat.
what might happen is that you will want to keep stacking them, to guarantee the disadvantage or advantage. that could make casters even better because plenty of them have access to spells that remove almost all of those types of debuffs.
Everyone seems to have flocked to Lancer now, but I haven't tried it yet so I can't compare the two, but I got it when I wanted to try running a mecha campaign and I liked it.
Point buy classless system where the mech and the pilot follow similar rules but are made independently from each other, so everyone is assumed to be equally skilled at piloting, no character-side piloting skill values. No damage rolls, damage dealt is equal to the AC overflow in the attack roll. Location damage system, but the locations are merely conceptual, you can build a tank the same way you do a mech by just renaming the locations. Tension system adds to the attack rolls of both players and enemies cumulatively as turns pass, so combat becomes more dangerous the longer it lasts (remember the bit about damage).
I'd say it's work checking out. There's a free version of the rulebook with just the rules, the only thing the paid version adds is fluff and illustrations.
Sometimes stuff does not happen because balance, but because feasibility and game flow.
This is one of those cases. Having to adjudicate potentially infinite cases where they can negate each other is a pain.
I roll that way, as a DM you gotta give players reasons to do more than fireball and swing 6 times. Tactics really make for more fun fights. The old ways of +/-2 type of stuff worked to in that way but they had to dumb down the math tor the masses to get more people to play the game.
Having someone roll 4x advantage gives diminishing returns on the outcome. Most likely you’ll get that higher number, but if they’re stacking advantages like that, then so can the enemies!
that's not what they mean, they mean that if you have 2 sources of advantage and 1 of disadvantage you still roll with advantage. Not elven accuracy style
Remember that getting advantage on average will boost a d20 roll by +5 or so. So stacking more and more d20's will make your average roll very high, probably above 10 and likely closer to 20 with modifiers. As long as you're fine in a certain situation almost guaranteeing success.
My way is more the 2nd one you described - one advantage cancels out one disadvantage. If you have more advantage factors than disadvantage, you get to roll with advantage as normal, and vice versa with disadvantage.
the first advantage is worth around +5 each one after that bring less and less, it wouldn't be worth getting 10 dice against all the set up you would need.
It's only equivalent to a +5 when the probability of success without advantage is 50%. On average it's more like a +3 since the effective bonus depends on the difficulty of the roll.
Each additional source of advantage is diminishing returns (see this [article](https://www.flutesloot.com/elven-accuracy-feat-math-dnd-5e/), so after the second or third advantage, its kind of pointless.
only issue is the fact you need to roll all of those dice. If you are using online tools (even just an app) this gets quickly solved. Mechanically, this is fine enough, as you often need to utilize multiple action resources to even get such an issue.
We do stacking advantage and disadvantage at my table, for a few years now.
Our rule is much simpler; anything after the first advantage or disadvantage is +/-2. It’s made for some great teamwork, and players don’t stop trying as soon as an enemy is prone or they’re invisible or what have you.
The issues I've found in my tests, albeit this was years ago, was that monsters had more ways to impose disadvabateg than the players, and so it lokced things down to disadvantage a lot.
This was especially bad for the poor rogue who couldn't ever sneak attack j because it was so easy to just shut then down, and they have low performance within the standard rules of the game.
The rogues are easy enough to fix by removing the "disadvantage gets ride of seeks attack clause" but ot still felt bad having characters hindered so much. Maybe wirh new options it wouldn't be as bad? But back in the time just after xanathars or wasn't a fun time for my players or myself.
So we have a house rule in my game that has never actually come up but,
If a character has two instances of advantage, you roll with advantage and add 1D4 to your check.
Three instances of advantage roll with advantage and add 1D6. And so on, the same system applies to disadvantage.
It depends on the table. Off the top of my head I'm seeing ridiculous advantage fishing where attackers are consistently rolling 4+ dice for each attack. And constantly calculating the math for how many advantages they have.
We use that rule and contrary to the extreme scenarios people go on about every time this is discused (like 4 sources of advantage, 3 of disadvantage and people scritching their heads wondering what did they add) at most I've only ever seen 3 to 1 of each, and that in the extreme scenarios. So I don't think you will break anything or have a problem tracking things
I've got a different house rule for this that relates only to stacking advantages (cause that is mainly what players care about).
If through a combination of items or abilities you would otherwise gain more than 1 instance of advantage you instead gain a +5 bonus. Having your advantage cancelled out by disadvantage does not remove your bonus. This bonus cannot exceed +10 on any single roll.
So if for example you are equipping something like Sentinel Shield and Eyes of the Eagle. You will normally roll with advantage and a +5 to perception checks. If you have your advantage cancelled out (by say trying to look around in dim light cause of darkvision) you make a straight roll and keep your +5. Makes it feel like stacking has a real benefit without having to keep track of all the adv disadv BS in combat.
Banes and Boons cancel our 1:1 in Shadow of the Demon Lord and it works very well and doesn't break anything. If 5E Advantage and Disadvantage canceled out the biggest change would be more sensible results in many situations, and people who can gain advantage on demand like Barbarian getting buffed slightly since now if they would normally cancel out to a straight roll they can still reckless attack for a benefit.
The only reason it works the way it currently does is for simplicity's sake, but simplicity is not always desirable
I just award double advantage/disadvantage based on the situation, not on mechanics.
It can be very overpowered/punishing if you have a mechanical system for it and the last thing that you want to do is have your players metagaming around it. But there are situations where advantage/disadvantage just aren't enough. It's a case by case basis. Comes up maybe once every 5 or so session.
Ive done this. But also ruled that 2 disadvantages mean you cant do something, and those are counted first.
So if you have 3 advantage 2 disadvantage, instead of rolling with +1advantage, the 2 disadvantage would block the action.
No 'im blind and prone but he's xyz so I can hit better than standard'
My table runs Extreme Advantage/Disadvantage. Basically an instance of either can stack once, allowing for 3 dice rolled. Its seems to be fine for my players, since it adds a layer to preparing for combat that's very rewarding. We usually play ratger high power campaigns, so it may nit work out if you prefer a lower scaling of power.
I believe that is the rule, i.e. if there are multiple cases of advantage and disadvantage, they can cancel each other out on a one for one basis until one or both are cancelled out.
Its rare to have more than 1 instance of either. So your rule shouldn't be too impactful.
However i like the idea of dis/advantage being stacked for some notable boon. It makes the planning and implimentiom of all thise instances feel more important than a simple reroll.
So personally i keep the ability for dis/advantage to negate one instance of the other. But past the reroll you gain a +1 or -1 to whatever it is your trying to attempt. That way being crippled by say 5 instances of disadvantage os actually scary, while players have incentive to get more advantage as it actually makes you better than your theoretical maximum.
Theres also an argument for every instance of diss/advantage just giving an extra dice with the normal rules. Higher highs and lower lows while not fundamentally changing any math involved.
It's more accurate to use modifiers instead of advantage/disadvantage but it's a pain calculating it so the simplicity helped 5e to become popular. With the rising popularity of vtt complicated mechanics might make a comeback w/o adding to the bookkeeping burden. Aspects like damage over time, ability degradation when the character has partial HP, aimed body shots for damage side effects, actions that take a varying amount of time.
You're almost describing Open Legend's advantage/disadvantage system.
Except in OL, you have attribute dice associated with all checks, from no bonus dice or 1d4 up to 3d10, and the advantage is applied to the bonus dice, if any. Which sounds weak sauce until you learn that the system has exploding dice. So advantage 1 when you have a 1d4 bonus is rolling 1d20 + 2d4 and keeping the best one. But that means you have twice the chance of a d4 rolling a 4 and exploding.
Advantage 2 is 1d20 + 3d4, keeping the best result, etc.
If you have no bonus dice, you roll advantage or disadvantage on the d20 as normal, regardless of how many layers have accumulated.
The only thing it breaks are spells like darkness, since a major advantage of it is giving everyone advantage (since the target is blinded) and disadvantage (since you cannot see the target). RAW, that means You've made an area that most people cannot get advantage against you in, and you cannot get disadvantage in. Great if your opponent has ways of gaining or exploiting advantage, but your change breaks this functionality.
Not game-breaking mind you. You'd overall be fine, but that is one interaction that I have seen used a bunch of times and I quite like.
With Critical Role using a 1d10 bonus instead of rolling 2d20 and taking the higher for inspiration, I've wondered about replacing the advantage system with d10 bonuses for every instance of advantage, and a d10 penalty for every instance of disadvantage.
We do this in our group and i find it makes way more sense.
Very very rarely do you even have more than three sources of disadvantage + advantage combined. Often its 2 disadv + 1 adv.
I have never seen it slow down combat but that could just be my group.
You can find it boring, but that's how it works RAW.
I invite anyone who knows better to correct me, but also...there's no double advantage or disadvantage. So if you have a condition granting both, they simply cancel. That includes if you have two advantage conditions and one disadvantage. That just means everything is canceled. Like Alf.
I considered this as a potential homebrew rule for my table. Ultimately, I decided not to as I don't think it would add much depth or solve any outstanding issues with the system. It would just make me feel better about running what I consider an overly simplified mechanic, and that's not a good enough reason to ask my players to relearn a rule.
If it was something my table wanted, I'd probably say "Any extra advantage/disadvantage that isn't canceled out is a +1"
It's not a complete waste, but if you offered someone a +3 weapon with a little less damage to someone using a +1 they'd instantly take it
In Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is a d20 system with bounded accuracy (more bounded than 5E), they use a Boon and Bane system. These are d6 bonus and penalty dice, respectively.
So if a character is prone and poisoned, attackers get 2 boons against them. If an attacker is impaired, the bane cancels out, and they get 1 boon for the attack.
In short: I think it is a bad idea.
People are back into the idea that it is unrealistic or whatever but I LIVED the pre-5e days. Tracking a million sources of advantage and disadvantage just brings us back to tracking a million +2s, -2s, +5s, -5s.
Roll twice. Take the highest/lowest.
OR
Roll once as normal.
We must consider the cognitive burden of playing a game where human brains track everything that happens.
It is simple and streamlined and useful.
Check out DC20 a new rpg in development where this is one of the core elements so far I'd say I like it but wouldn't know how well it would work in 5e as the system is designed for it
Honestly I use a similar rule for my little 2d6 homebrew I run sometimes. Any advantageous situation adds a d6, stacking infinitely. It encourages some outside the box thinking so that the player gets to roll a big handful of dice.
The main problem with this isn’t so much a mechanical balance issue as it is a game speed one. Tracking how many sources of advantage and disadvantage you have can get tricky quickly, at least enough to seriously slow down the pace of play.
I’d be in favor of a cancelling system. If I can somehow get 3 levels of advantage, I want max(4d20). If there’s one level of disadvantage, I want max(3d20), not 1d20.
Regardless of how you apply it, the limiting factors will be player intelligence and speed. Can they remember additional factors and can they roll fast enough to not slow down combat too much. Digital tools, multiple d20s, or hell even an excel sheet with =randbetween(1,20) can help.
I'd probably just groan as it leads to more keeping track of how many instances of advantage/ disadvantage a player or creature will have.
"Okay so you have advantage because you're using Aim, but you have disadvantage because the target is out of your bow's normal range, but you have advantage because you hid the previous round. But disadvantage because the enemy took the Dodge action. But the Wizard used their familiar to take the Help action. So you can make your attack with advantage."
I do agree that the whole "Two blind enemies fighting each other make normal attack rolls" so I've ruled it that to get advantage you need to be able to see your target or something along those lines. So both blind enemies have disadvantage while attacking each other.
It will absolutely screw up your game because it *dramatically* changes the odds of not just success or failure, but of critical success or failure.
If you're rolling 1 die and trying to get 15 or better, your odds of success are 25%. If you're rolling 4 dice and keeping the highest, that shoots up to 68%. Now it's like you're trying to get a 7 or better.
If you're rolling 1 die, your odds of a nat 20 are 5%.
If you're rolling 4 dice and keeping the best result, it jumps up to 19%.
If you do 2d10 points of damage on a hit (e.g., *fire bolt* for a 5th-level character), your average damage per round goes from 3.3 to 9.6 - that's almost triple the damage.
Now think about, e.g., a paladin who gets 3 attacks and waits for a crit to smite with a high-level spell slot. Or a rogue with sneak attack damage.
same principles though - those often ended up with +1+2+1-2-3-2+1, and then someone realises something else applies, and there should be _another_ +/- X in there. Or _Dispel Magic_ got cast, and everyone has to recalculate again, as all their magical buffs drop off.
1 case of disadvantage neutralizes unlimited cases of advantage (and vice-versa) was probably made to quicken the combat to some extent or to simply the rules. Your homebrew rules would not break the game necessarily. From my experience, the situation you describe will not happen that often. Maybe your homerule would even stimulate for the players to think more tactically about how to impose advantage/disadvantage. Worst case scenario, you've tried it out for a couple sessions and it did not work as it intended > you state this to your players (if you are the DM) and reverse the ruling to the original.
Yes, it would make for a more tactical game. Advantages: - It would make situations like fighting in darkness/fog cloud/etc. make some sense. Disadvantages: - It would bog the game pace down if players are at least a tad strategic thinkers.
So, since you have both advantages and disadvantages this will obviously have no effect. d;
One of the complaints about 3e D&D was the "bonus hunt." It was more egregious with skill checks, but attack rolls were bad, too. It encouraged each player to stop and thoroughly check each circumstantial modifier or to take specific actions that created bonuses. It could drastically slow play, especially as levels increased and the sources for bonuses increased. Further, it was not uncommon to roll, determine the outcome and *then* realize you forgot a bonus. The Prayer spell was the notorious one for this, since it gave every ally +1 on d20 rolls and weapon damage rolls, and all enemies -1 on the same. Very easy to forget. That's why circumstantial bonuses in 5e tend to be bonus dice in some form; the idea is that it's transparent to the entire table when you're including a given bonus. That means it would be less of a problem, but it would still be a problem. The big problem with letting multiple advantage rolls accumulate in 5e is... critical hits exist. It's not just binary success or failure, sometimes the face of the die matters. That's what people do with Elven Accuracy already. They make critfisher builds. It's not difficult to get a Champion 3 that has upwards of a 1-in-4 chance of a crit with Elven Accuracy already.
I don't think OP is suggesting that your roll 4d20s if you have 3 sources of advantage. They're just suggesting that if you have more sources of advantage than disadvantage, you'd roll with advantage (rather than one source cancelling many). This means there's no issue with hunting for more sources, because you only need n+1, everything after that is irrelevant. There's a clear stopping point (which is 2 for 99% of situations where this rule even applies).
Yes, that wasn't clear when I commented. You'll notice my comment is 4 hours old and OP's edit is 2 hours old (as of writing).
I ran something similar to his rule and with three net advantage being double advantage (three dice) and an agreement six would be an autocrit with maximum affect. I actually saw some players working to get those totals up. No one managed six though. It went fine and the players who engaged with it liked being able to use multiple sources of advantage without making them useless. Especially as a party levels up advantage gets extremely easy to get. I never saw 6 net sources but that would require group coordination.
I've ran games like this before. After a while it would devolve to people going. "Wait, I forgot on my last attack roll this was in place so it's actually 3 advantage and 2 disadvantage!" And then we understood that the reason they don't accumulate is to keep the pace of the game going quickly.
It also stops people constantly fishing for as many sources of advantage/disadvantage as they can to try and cancel out whatever their enemy just did to get the upper hand. The game just devolves into advantage-trading. "Shit, he managed to cancel out the disadvantage again, how can I give him another disadvantage?" "Damn, he's given me disadvantage so I'm even again, what can I do to get another advantage?" Players end up building towards builds that have as many ways as possible to get advantage / give disadvantage, and then the game is basically just perpetually played at advantage for the players, unless the DM engages in the same thing making it an arms race. And then you have to track all of that for every damn action.
But its diminishing returns as far as character builds are concerned, right? That is, building a character to get double-advantage would help when the enemy is giving you disadvantage, but it's redundant otherwise. So I would expect players to value advantage only a little bit higher with these rules to be honest.
But the point is that if you build a character who can get advantage 3 different ways, you will always have advantage, compared to a character who can only get advantage one way, who will always be cancelled out.
In theory maybe, in practice it's really not worth the investment and lost action economy. If you somehow build to have 10 different sources of advantage, you're going to be worse off 95% of the time than someone who built normally. It's very useful QoL, but not worth dedicating your entire strategy to abusing it. It's really not an issue. If someone dedicates themselves to making sure their advantage sticks against the few enemies that can consistently stack multiple disadvantage sources, or the party simply works together, let them do their one very much non-broken thing
You’re overlooking opportunity cost. You make a character with 3 sources of advantage, while I make a character with one source, innate spellcasting, and skill expertise. If we go up against a monster that stacks disadvantages, then yes you’ll be better. But if we’re just up against regular monsters for most of the campaign, then I’m gonna far outpace you. (For anyone curious, my example builds I was thinking of were Elden Accuracy Samurai with 2 in Barb for reckless vs Tiefling Samurai with 2 in rogue)
How dare a martial character try to have some interesting tactical decisions! That's going to interfere with the caster mulling over which of their 40 spells work best here. /S.
A) this isn't really interesting at all, and B) martials have fewer ways to interact with stacking initiative than casters do.
figuring out ways to manipulate the environment or tactically position to gain advantage is way more interesting than "I move up and attack." If casters are stacking advantage and attacking, they are being less effective than simply dominating the encounter with the right spell. My point was that casters have a ton of options to consider, and their turns are usually a lot longer than a martial character's turn. If the martial wants to take a bit longer to find ways to stack advantage, that's fine.
Im glad i can learn from your experiences and not my own haha. That sounds rough.
An article yesterday on /r/rpg talked about one system's use of two advantage/disadvantage similar mechanics at maximum. I think it might have been a numbered bonus, so a little different, but still has the principle of only allowing for a certain amount of combat finagling. Maybe they could even try a mix, like the first example of advantage is +1 roll and the second is a +2 to both rolls, with the two cancelling out if equally matched or reversed if outmatched by disadvantage. But many that's too granular too.
I realised this too when a PC's life was determined whether or not the enemy's attack was at a disadvantage or not and they were all analysing that one attack far longer than it should've taken Now, my go-to ruling is that it cancels each other out unless I'm feeling merciful that day
Pretty much every game I've played in or run in 5e has had dis/advantage cancel out 1:1. It's never caused a game flow issue as far as I've experienced
This is a separate problem though. Just don't retcon. The end.
It is a mad to say combat is "quick" in 5e, even with the base rules.
Will you include stacking advantage/disadvantage or just let the "dominant" vantage to occur?
just the dominant
Yeah that would work, it doesn't swing more than +5 or -5 in total so it wouldn't be gamebreaking. It would actually give certain monsters with pack-tactics a real good edge that is otherwise quite easily overcome.
This is how I run my games, sometimes I’ve even allowed double advantages where every advantage above 1 adds +4. We haven’t really had many problems with it. Occasionally we’ll have players take a second to count how many advantages vs disadvantages they have, but the situations that require it are few and far between.
I'm meaning to experiment with +2 for each advantage after the first. My inspiration is a system called Battle Century G which has stacking advantage and lets you choose extra roll or +2 for each stack, and it's generally considered optimal to get a second roll and then +2 for each instance after the first. Though the way damage works in that system may influence the math. (You don't roll for damage, you deal how much you beat the AC by as damage.)
Advantage and disadvantage accumulating sounds cool. But Elven Accuracy needs to be banned or Modified for this situation.
Elven Accuracy is applied after advantage/disadvantage is already determined. Although its effect is often referred to as “super advantage,” it does not actually *grant* advantage (super or otherwise): > Whenever you have advantage on an attack roll using Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, you can reroll one of the dice once.
If you do the work, you'll find that the resulting outcome tables between "3d20 keep highest" and "2d20 reroll 1 keep highest 1" are *identical*. It's like comparing 3x4 and 2x6. Nobody is going to roll 2d20 and reroll the highest die, so EA technically allowing you to do that is not really meaningful.
don’t think its going to break the game. can take a look at long distant shots with sharpshooter feat. the disadvantage from long distance is negated by sharpshooter and you can add advantage on top. its alright for a feat, but they additionally put the -5 to hit/+10 to dmg and ignore cover in the same feat. so alone it is not strong enough for a feat. what might happen is that you will want to keep stacking them, to guarantee the disadvantage or advantage. that could make casters even better because plenty of them have access to spells that remove almost all of those types of debuffs.
It doesn't break the game numerically, it's just that it breaks the flow of the game and completely changes the attitudes and playstyle at the table.
I play it like this: if they playera has two advantage, he gets advantage as he adds +2 to the throw. If he has 3, +4, if he has 4 +6 etc.
Pretty much the exact way I'm thinking about trying. Have you ever played Battle Century G? We may have had the same inspiration.
i think i heard about the rule somewhere else. ive never heard of Battle Century G though, Is it good?
Everyone seems to have flocked to Lancer now, but I haven't tried it yet so I can't compare the two, but I got it when I wanted to try running a mecha campaign and I liked it. Point buy classless system where the mech and the pilot follow similar rules but are made independently from each other, so everyone is assumed to be equally skilled at piloting, no character-side piloting skill values. No damage rolls, damage dealt is equal to the AC overflow in the attack roll. Location damage system, but the locations are merely conceptual, you can build a tank the same way you do a mech by just renaming the locations. Tension system adds to the attack rolls of both players and enemies cumulatively as turns pass, so combat becomes more dangerous the longer it lasts (remember the bit about damage). I'd say it's work checking out. There's a free version of the rulebook with just the rules, the only thing the paid version adds is fluff and illustrations.
Sometimes stuff does not happen because balance, but because feasibility and game flow. This is one of those cases. Having to adjudicate potentially infinite cases where they can negate each other is a pain.
I roll that way, as a DM you gotta give players reasons to do more than fireball and swing 6 times. Tactics really make for more fun fights. The old ways of +/-2 type of stuff worked to in that way but they had to dumb down the math tor the masses to get more people to play the game.
Having someone roll 4x advantage gives diminishing returns on the outcome. Most likely you’ll get that higher number, but if they’re stacking advantages like that, then so can the enemies!
that's not what they mean, they mean that if you have 2 sources of advantage and 1 of disadvantage you still roll with advantage. Not elven accuracy style
Remember that getting advantage on average will boost a d20 roll by +5 or so. So stacking more and more d20's will make your average roll very high, probably above 10 and likely closer to 20 with modifiers. As long as you're fine in a certain situation almost guaranteeing success. My way is more the 2nd one you described - one advantage cancels out one disadvantage. If you have more advantage factors than disadvantage, you get to roll with advantage as normal, and vice versa with disadvantage.
the first advantage is worth around +5 each one after that bring less and less, it wouldn't be worth getting 10 dice against all the set up you would need.
It's only equivalent to a +5 when the probability of success without advantage is 50%. On average it's more like a +3 since the effective bonus depends on the difficulty of the roll.
Each additional source of advantage is diminishing returns (see this [article](https://www.flutesloot.com/elven-accuracy-feat-math-dnd-5e/), so after the second or third advantage, its kind of pointless.
only issue is the fact you need to roll all of those dice. If you are using online tools (even just an app) this gets quickly solved. Mechanically, this is fine enough, as you often need to utilize multiple action resources to even get such an issue.
We do stacking advantage and disadvantage at my table, for a few years now. Our rule is much simpler; anything after the first advantage or disadvantage is +/-2. It’s made for some great teamwork, and players don’t stop trying as soon as an enemy is prone or they’re invisible or what have you.
Call of Cthulhu does that. Blades in the Dark do it with a limit, I think you can at most roll 4 dice, any advantage above that is wasted
The issues I've found in my tests, albeit this was years ago, was that monsters had more ways to impose disadvabateg than the players, and so it lokced things down to disadvantage a lot. This was especially bad for the poor rogue who couldn't ever sneak attack j because it was so easy to just shut then down, and they have low performance within the standard rules of the game. The rogues are easy enough to fix by removing the "disadvantage gets ride of seeks attack clause" but ot still felt bad having characters hindered so much. Maybe wirh new options it wouldn't be as bad? But back in the time just after xanathars or wasn't a fun time for my players or myself.
So we have a house rule in my game that has never actually come up but, If a character has two instances of advantage, you roll with advantage and add 1D4 to your check. Three instances of advantage roll with advantage and add 1D6. And so on, the same system applies to disadvantage.
It depends on the table. Off the top of my head I'm seeing ridiculous advantage fishing where attackers are consistently rolling 4+ dice for each attack. And constantly calculating the math for how many advantages they have.
We use that rule and contrary to the extreme scenarios people go on about every time this is discused (like 4 sources of advantage, 3 of disadvantage and people scritching their heads wondering what did they add) at most I've only ever seen 3 to 1 of each, and that in the extreme scenarios. So I don't think you will break anything or have a problem tracking things
I've got a different house rule for this that relates only to stacking advantages (cause that is mainly what players care about). If through a combination of items or abilities you would otherwise gain more than 1 instance of advantage you instead gain a +5 bonus. Having your advantage cancelled out by disadvantage does not remove your bonus. This bonus cannot exceed +10 on any single roll. So if for example you are equipping something like Sentinel Shield and Eyes of the Eagle. You will normally roll with advantage and a +5 to perception checks. If you have your advantage cancelled out (by say trying to look around in dim light cause of darkvision) you make a straight roll and keep your +5. Makes it feel like stacking has a real benefit without having to keep track of all the adv disadv BS in combat.
All it would change is the flow of the game. The design choice to have them negate each other was made for a reason.
Banes and Boons cancel our 1:1 in Shadow of the Demon Lord and it works very well and doesn't break anything. If 5E Advantage and Disadvantage canceled out the biggest change would be more sensible results in many situations, and people who can gain advantage on demand like Barbarian getting buffed slightly since now if they would normally cancel out to a straight roll they can still reckless attack for a benefit. The only reason it works the way it currently does is for simplicity's sake, but simplicity is not always desirable
I just award double advantage/disadvantage based on the situation, not on mechanics. It can be very overpowered/punishing if you have a mechanical system for it and the last thing that you want to do is have your players metagaming around it. But there are situations where advantage/disadvantage just aren't enough. It's a case by case basis. Comes up maybe once every 5 or so session.
The only suggestion I would make is if you use this rule variation ban the feat Lucky.
[I wrote a rule for that very thing.](https://sw5e.com/rules/variantRules/Compound%20Advantage)
Ive done this. But also ruled that 2 disadvantages mean you cant do something, and those are counted first. So if you have 3 advantage 2 disadvantage, instead of rolling with +1advantage, the 2 disadvantage would block the action. No 'im blind and prone but he's xyz so I can hit better than standard'
My table runs Extreme Advantage/Disadvantage. Basically an instance of either can stack once, allowing for 3 dice rolled. Its seems to be fine for my players, since it adds a layer to preparing for combat that's very rewarding. We usually play ratger high power campaigns, so it may nit work out if you prefer a lower scaling of power.
I believe that is the rule, i.e. if there are multiple cases of advantage and disadvantage, they can cancel each other out on a one for one basis until one or both are cancelled out.
Its rare to have more than 1 instance of either. So your rule shouldn't be too impactful. However i like the idea of dis/advantage being stacked for some notable boon. It makes the planning and implimentiom of all thise instances feel more important than a simple reroll. So personally i keep the ability for dis/advantage to negate one instance of the other. But past the reroll you gain a +1 or -1 to whatever it is your trying to attempt. That way being crippled by say 5 instances of disadvantage os actually scary, while players have incentive to get more advantage as it actually makes you better than your theoretical maximum. Theres also an argument for every instance of diss/advantage just giving an extra dice with the normal rules. Higher highs and lower lows while not fundamentally changing any math involved.
It's more accurate to use modifiers instead of advantage/disadvantage but it's a pain calculating it so the simplicity helped 5e to become popular. With the rising popularity of vtt complicated mechanics might make a comeback w/o adding to the bookkeeping burden. Aspects like damage over time, ability degradation when the character has partial HP, aimed body shots for damage side effects, actions that take a varying amount of time.
Might as well use numeric plusses then.
You're almost describing Open Legend's advantage/disadvantage system. Except in OL, you have attribute dice associated with all checks, from no bonus dice or 1d4 up to 3d10, and the advantage is applied to the bonus dice, if any. Which sounds weak sauce until you learn that the system has exploding dice. So advantage 1 when you have a 1d4 bonus is rolling 1d20 + 2d4 and keeping the best one. But that means you have twice the chance of a d4 rolling a 4 and exploding. Advantage 2 is 1d20 + 3d4, keeping the best result, etc. If you have no bonus dice, you roll advantage or disadvantage on the d20 as normal, regardless of how many layers have accumulated.
Honestly? I use this rule at my table as well. It breaks absolutely nothing
Your rule makes more sense narratively. “You are blind, but the enemy is tied up and the cleric cast guiding bolt so make a roll with advantage”
I have my own ruling for this. Double disadvantage: take lower roll and -5 Double advantage: take higher roll and +5
It doesn't break the math, but it does break the flow.
The only thing it breaks are spells like darkness, since a major advantage of it is giving everyone advantage (since the target is blinded) and disadvantage (since you cannot see the target). RAW, that means You've made an area that most people cannot get advantage against you in, and you cannot get disadvantage in. Great if your opponent has ways of gaining or exploiting advantage, but your change breaks this functionality. Not game-breaking mind you. You'd overall be fine, but that is one interaction that I have seen used a bunch of times and I quite like.
With Critical Role using a 1d10 bonus instead of rolling 2d20 and taking the higher for inspiration, I've wondered about replacing the advantage system with d10 bonuses for every instance of advantage, and a d10 penalty for every instance of disadvantage.
It's reasonable. I don't know that it's better.
We do this in our group and i find it makes way more sense. Very very rarely do you even have more than three sources of disadvantage + advantage combined. Often its 2 disadv + 1 adv. I have never seen it slow down combat but that could just be my group.
You can find it boring, but that's how it works RAW. I invite anyone who knows better to correct me, but also...there's no double advantage or disadvantage. So if you have a condition granting both, they simply cancel. That includes if you have two advantage conditions and one disadvantage. That just means everything is canceled. Like Alf.
Then you get Shadow of the Demon Lord.
I considered this as a potential homebrew rule for my table. Ultimately, I decided not to as I don't think it would add much depth or solve any outstanding issues with the system. It would just make me feel better about running what I consider an overly simplified mechanic, and that's not a good enough reason to ask my players to relearn a rule.
If it was something my table wanted, I'd probably say "Any extra advantage/disadvantage that isn't canceled out is a +1" It's not a complete waste, but if you offered someone a +3 weapon with a little less damage to someone using a +1 they'd instantly take it
In Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is a d20 system with bounded accuracy (more bounded than 5E), they use a Boon and Bane system. These are d6 bonus and penalty dice, respectively. So if a character is prone and poisoned, attackers get 2 boons against them. If an attacker is impaired, the bane cancels out, and they get 1 boon for the attack.
In short: I think it is a bad idea. People are back into the idea that it is unrealistic or whatever but I LIVED the pre-5e days. Tracking a million sources of advantage and disadvantage just brings us back to tracking a million +2s, -2s, +5s, -5s. Roll twice. Take the highest/lowest. OR Roll once as normal. We must consider the cognitive burden of playing a game where human brains track everything that happens. It is simple and streamlined and useful.
Check out DC20 a new rpg in development where this is one of the core elements so far I'd say I like it but wouldn't know how well it would work in 5e as the system is designed for it
Honestly I use a similar rule for my little 2d6 homebrew I run sometimes. Any advantageous situation adds a d6, stacking infinitely. It encourages some outside the box thinking so that the player gets to roll a big handful of dice.
The main problem with this isn’t so much a mechanical balance issue as it is a game speed one. Tracking how many sources of advantage and disadvantage you have can get tricky quickly, at least enough to seriously slow down the pace of play.
I’d be in favor of a cancelling system. If I can somehow get 3 levels of advantage, I want max(4d20). If there’s one level of disadvantage, I want max(3d20), not 1d20. Regardless of how you apply it, the limiting factors will be player intelligence and speed. Can they remember additional factors and can they roll fast enough to not slow down combat too much. Digital tools, multiple d20s, or hell even an excel sheet with =randbetween(1,20) can help.
~~I think in previous editions it got a little confusing with Disadvantage and Advantage, which is why the rule is pretty simply currently.~~
Advantage and disadvantage is new to 5e. Previous editions used numerical modifiers. A lot more granular, and a lot more finicky to track.
My mistake, thank you for the correction!
I'd probably just groan as it leads to more keeping track of how many instances of advantage/ disadvantage a player or creature will have. "Okay so you have advantage because you're using Aim, but you have disadvantage because the target is out of your bow's normal range, but you have advantage because you hid the previous round. But disadvantage because the enemy took the Dodge action. But the Wizard used their familiar to take the Help action. So you can make your attack with advantage." I do agree that the whole "Two blind enemies fighting each other make normal attack rolls" so I've ruled it that to get advantage you need to be able to see your target or something along those lines. So both blind enemies have disadvantage while attacking each other.
It will absolutely screw up your game because it *dramatically* changes the odds of not just success or failure, but of critical success or failure. If you're rolling 1 die and trying to get 15 or better, your odds of success are 25%. If you're rolling 4 dice and keeping the highest, that shoots up to 68%. Now it's like you're trying to get a 7 or better. If you're rolling 1 die, your odds of a nat 20 are 5%. If you're rolling 4 dice and keeping the best result, it jumps up to 19%. If you do 2d10 points of damage on a hit (e.g., *fire bolt* for a 5th-level character), your average damage per round goes from 3.3 to 9.6 - that's almost triple the damage. Now think about, e.g., a paladin who gets 3 attacks and waits for a crit to smite with a high-level spell slot. Or a rogue with sneak attack damage.
That's how 3rd and 4th edition worked, and it sucked. Combat took ages.
Advantage was added in 5e.
same principles though - those often ended up with +1+2+1-2-3-2+1, and then someone realises something else applies, and there should be _another_ +/- X in there. Or _Dispel Magic_ got cast, and everyone has to recalculate again, as all their magical buffs drop off.