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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 1:24PM
#11
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2010
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It's also worth pointing out that the question of "burden" of lots of dice rolling already exists, in the form of the Avenger class in 4e.
If you're playing it properly, every attack you do is a double-roll, take the highest. There's lots of precedent involved, so it's not exactly a mysterious subject. And the class can run the gamut from the standard one-attack-per-round model to the "critfisher" - as many attacks as possible to maximize critical rate, banking off of the double-roll.
I've never had anyone playing the Avenger who didn't think the double-roll was just flat out cool, all the time. Not a single report of anyone thinking it was burdensome.
Food for thought.
D&D Next = D&D: Quantum Edition
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 1:28PM
#12
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I find it hilarious that this article is just repeating the stuff that the forum figured out within 10 minutes of looking at the play test packet...
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 1:34PM
#13
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2005
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dis/advantage is a strange mechanic i'm on the fence with. i understand the basic math of it and how it can apply to a game with flat math.
my main issue is twofold:
1) how easy should it be to get dis/advantage.
now, noting that having advantage means your average roll on a d20 is about 13-14 while disadvantage means your average roll will be in the ballpark of 7-8.
you'll note that's about the ballpark of 2 aid another actions
could the rogue use his action to pin the bugbear cheif's boot to the ground, giving him a disadvantage VS the wizard's fireball spell? can the fighter distract the bugbear's attention and give the wizard advantage with his "Disintigratorinator Ray"? can the monk grab the bugbear in a full nelson to give the rogue advantage/easy access to the bugbear's bugbits?
remember that in both 3rd and 4th you could foresake your action to give someone else a +2 to succeed. advantage/disadvantage is twice that amount.
food for thought.
2) more chances but never better.
the lack of the old "GM's best friend", the +/-2 guideline, means even with someone helping you, IE: giving you an advantage you'll never be able to acheive something you couldn't do by yourself.
now, i understand 5th wants to keep most math flat but the lack of that guideline irks me in a weird way that reaches beyond advantage/disadvantage. i could go into detail, but that would be a major derailment on my part.
my 2nd beef is that, as it stands, it only fosters minimal cooperation between the party. in 5th ed, due to the lack of advantage stacking and "GM's best friend" there is little reason for two PCs to work together to give the best one advantage while the others wait. in 3rd and 4th, even if it could be ridiculous to see everyone grab their d20s and yell some variation of "aid another!" it shows the PCs are all coming together to better their odds by doing together what no single PC could do by their own.
as it stands, a PC with 18 str in 5th ed can at best acheive a 24 via nat20 with the party giving him advantage, which is no better then he could do himself, though it gives him a higher chance of doing so. a party in 3rd & 4th could acheive up to 32 by all workting together.
i don't know if they have "group effort" rules in the works, but advantage doesn't seem too advantageous in that light.
3rd ed SRD, character sheets, errata & free modules4th ed test drive - modules, starter rules, premade characters and character builder & character sheet, errata Free maps and portraits, dice, printable graph paper, campaign managing website, image manipulation program + token maker & zone markers"All right, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. GET MAD! I DON'T WANT YOUR **** LEMONS! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE?! DEMAND TO SEE LIFE'S MANAGER! Make life RUE the day it thought it could give CAVE JOHNSON LEMONS! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! I'M THE MAN WHO'S GONNA BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN! WITH THE LEMONS! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that's gonna BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN!" -Cave Johnson, Portal 2
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 1:38PM
#14
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dis/advantage is a strange mechanic i'm on the fence with. i understand the basic math of it and how it can apply to a game with flat math.
my main issue is twofold:
1) how easy should it be to get dis/advantage.
now, noting that having advantage means your average roll on a d20 is about 13-14 while disadvantage means your average roll will be in the ballpark of 7-8.
you'll note that's about the ballpark of 2 aid another actions
could the rogue use his action to pin the bugbear cheif's boot to the ground, giving him a disadvantage VS the wizard's fireball spell? can the fighter distract the bugbear's attention and give the wizard advantage with his "Disintigratorinator Ray"? can the monk grab the bugbear in a full nelson to give the rogue advantage/easy access to the bugbear's bugbits?
remember that in both 3rd and 4th you could foresake your action to give someone else a +2 to succeed. advantage/disadvantage is twice that amount.
food for thought.
2) more chances but never better.
the lack of the old "GM's best friend", the +/-2 guideline, means even with someone helping you, IE: giving you an advantage you'll never be able to acheive something you couldn't do by yourself.
now, i understand 5th wants to keep most math flat but the lack of that guideline irks me in a weird way that reaches beyond advantage/disadvantage. i could go into detail, but that would be a major derailment on my part.
my 2nd beef is that, as it stands, it only fosters minimal cooperation between the party. in 5th ed, due to the lack of advantage stacking and "GM's best friend" there is little reason for two PCs to work together to give the best one advantage while the others wait. in 3rd and 4th, even if it could be ridiculous to see everyone grab their d20s and yell some variation of "aid another!" it shows the PCs are all coming together to better their odds by doing together what no single PC could do by their own.
as it stands, a PC with 18 str in 5th ed can at best acheive a 24 via nat20 with the party giving him advantage, which is no better then he could do himself, though it gives him a higher chance of doing so. a party in 3rd & 4th could acheive up to 32 by all workting together.
i don't know if they have "group effort" rules in the works, but advantage doesn't seem too advantageous in that light.
You missed where the rogue will be doing +20d6 at level 20 with sneak attack damage. At that point anyone granting them advantage each round will be an action sacrifice worthy goal...
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 1:58PM
#15
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Date Joined:
Dec 15, 2009
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You missed where the rogue will be doing +20d6 at level 20 with sneak attack damage. At that point anyone granting them advantage each round will be an action sacrifice worthy goal...
And I missed where that had actually been determined. The feature may stop gaining increased damage at some point. We don't know what they have planned, and it may be changed along the way as the Playtest progresses.
Frankly, I enjoyed reading about what the Dev's are thinking about concerning the (Dis)Advantage system, and what they have in mind.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 1:59PM
#16
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The only concern I have with its potency-and-associated-rarity is with Rogues, and Sneak Attack. I'd rather not see SA as collateral damage resulting from an otherwise excellent idea.
I hope that Sneak Attack does not become something built into the math for the rogue, but that the rogue will be able to play and be useful in combat without using it every round. I would like to see it as more of a real reward for good tactics or play. Make it hard to use, but when it goes off, make it a whammy. That has more of a feel to it that makes playing a Rogue more fun, IMO. If it is just like in 4E (which I love BTW in general) where it is part of the math to make the rogue do its job, it will miss out on this other aspect, making it potent, where because it is hard to obtain, it means when you get it, it is pure awesome.
In this approach, I can see SA allowing a rogue to in one shot drop a standard mob of its level, or bloody an "elite" mob. If you make it that powerful, it would be a real lure for the Rogue. But you can keep it from being abused by just placing limits on it, perhaps make it an Encounter Power, and give the Rogue more uses at higher levels, but make it so you must meet a tough requirement in combat to use it. It would be a power that may not always get used each encounter.
Some ideas of requirements: Must have Advantage against a Mob who also also has Disadvantage against you (or perhaps you must have 2 sources of Advantage or the target has 2 sources of Disadvantage, etc). So if you were Stealthed giving you Adv, and the target had Disad against you from another source, say you Bluffed a distraction making it focus in the wrong area.
I know this could be a module, but I hope they give some thought to this approach at least.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 2:01PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2005
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a potential 20d6. unless you have a time machine i can borrow to go in the future and check the final version of 5th ed, i'm not working with any absolutes.
it also leads to the question: if you run into a situation where your character could do something, but your best option for the most part is usually "help the rogue get more damage", i think you're running into a class design issue where you're simply someone the rogue takes advantage of (basically saying the rogue's singular sneak attack feature is superior to your class's ability to contribute).
i'm not saying that will be the case, mind you, but simply going "but you can help the rogue deal so much damage" doesn't help endear me to it.
i would much rather we cut the SA dice down and give that character the ability to do damage AND grant advantage then simply have one PC who always gives up his turn so another can do damage AND be more efficient then PC1's potential contribution.
3rd ed SRD, character sheets, errata & free modules4th ed test drive - modules, starter rules, premade characters and character builder & character sheet, errata Free maps and portraits, dice, printable graph paper, campaign managing website, image manipulation program + token maker & zone markers"All right, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. GET MAD! I DON'T WANT YOUR **** LEMONS! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE?! DEMAND TO SEE LIFE'S MANAGER! Make life RUE the day it thought it could give CAVE JOHNSON LEMONS! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! I'M THE MAN WHO'S GONNA BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN! WITH THE LEMONS! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that's gonna BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN!" -Cave Johnson, Portal 2
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 2:06PM
#18
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2010
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I hope that Sneak Attack does not become something built into the math for the rogue, but that the rogue will be able to play and be useful in combat without using it every round.
I'm pretty sure that I know what you meant, but I'd like to point out that you can't have these both be true. SA must be built into the math for the rogue, however it may not be necessary that 100% uptime of SA is assumed in the math of the rogue. But whether you decide 100% uptime or not, whichever choice is made must be incorporated into the entire damage math for the rogue.
D&D Next = D&D: Quantum Edition
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 2:14PM
#19
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Date Joined:
Mar 27, 2004
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It's also worth pointing out that the question of "burden" of lots of dice rolling already exists, in the form of the Avenger class in 4e.
If you're playing it properly, every attack you do is a double-roll, take the highest. There's lots of precedent involved, so it's not exactly a mysterious subject. And the class can run the gamut from the standard one-attack-per-round model to the "critfisher" - as many attacks as possible to maximize critical rate, banking off of the double-roll.
I've never had anyone playing the Avenger who didn't think the double-roll was just flat out cool, all the time. Not a single report of anyone thinking it was burdensome.
Food for thought.
I think the issue is less a charater rolling an extra d20 or two around, than with issues with loads of monsters on the table. One encountr is the play test has something like 30 rats. They all get advantage if theres another rat next to you. Hope you brough extra d20s tonight.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 20, 2012 - 2:37PM
#20
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I love the idea of (dis)Advantage, but I don't like the proposed solution of needing ot use an action to gain it. To my mind, Taking Turn 1 to gain advantage for Turn 2 is always a losing proposition. You have three possible outcomes:
- Both rolls miss, in which case you wasted Turn 1 for nothing.
- One roll hits and the other misses, in which case you have no idea whether it was worth it to lose Turn 1.
- Both rolls hit, in which case you again wasted Turn 1 for nothing.
Two out of three outcomes results in a wasted Turn 1, while the third outcomes makes you feel like it was wasted whether it was or not. This is a mechanic I would rarely if ever use. Given the option to make two attacks/skill checks/etc or roll twice for one attack/skill check/etc, that one attack/skill check/etc had really better be worth losing a second one to make the mechanic useful.
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