WHAT?! I demand an explanation. If there's one thing I liked MOST about 5.0 its the Advantage/Disadvantage rules... its quick, (assuming you throw both at the same time.) and completely removes the boring and arbitrary minuses and pluses DM's throw at challenges. It also reduces the amount of finger-counting arithmatic. Flavor-wise it CLEARLY feels like an advantage/disadvantage! What makes you say it's counter-intuitive???
I'll grant that it's quick, and rolling two dice clearly feels like it matters. The math doesn't back it up, though.
Dis/advantage is the new way to model the old large modifiers, the +4 or -4 (or more!) from a really significant situation: blindness/invisibility, prone, that sort of thing. The great thing about +4 is that it increases the chance of success by a hard +20% regardless of the base success rate. Advantage, however, increases success rate anywhere between ~5% to ~25% depending on the base success rate. The math which underlies the completely simple feeling system is not intuitive whatsoever.
Without checking any references, tell me who has the better chance to succeed at climbing the DC 20 wall: the ranger with a +18 bonus, or the rogue with a +15 bonus and advantage? Now, what if it's DC 25? DC 30?
If you were out of your league, and needed a 19 to hit, then a +4 would increase your chance from 10% to 30%, while merely rolling twice would increase your chance from 10% to ~16%. Even worse, since advantage doesn't stack, there's nothing more you can do. Under the old model, you could always try to add more situational modifiers to eventually possibly succeed.
And while that should be enough to condemn the system outright, the simplicity doesn't even live up to its claims. Because it only models large bonuses and penalties, the small bonuses still exist. Half-cover gives a +2 to AC, rather than granting disadvantage to attackers. When they get the grid rules in, I can guarantee that something as simple as high-ground or flanking are not going to grant advantage or disadvantage; they're too small, so also going to be a +1 or +2 to hit.
As it stands, you need advantage exactly once before it stops mattering, regardless of whether or not you have disadvantage. If you designate one character as the trip monkey, then the rest of the party can ignore any major tactical advantages because they would be redundant and pointless; rather, they can freely jocky for as many small bonuses as possible, because a +1 or +2 does stack with advantage. If you have the choice between blinding your foe (a major situational bonus), or getting behind half cover (a minor situational bonus), then the answer depends on what else is going on at the time - because blindness is meaningless to a target who is already prone or otherwise debilitated.
Long story short: if it's going to be a significant part of the system, then there will need to be many sources of dis/advantage; the more sources of dis/advantage that exist, however, the less valuable any of them are.
WHAT?! I demand an explanation. If there's one thing I liked MOST about 5.0 its the Advantage/Disadvantage rules... its quick, (assuming you throw both at the same time.) and completely removes the boring and arbitrary minuses and pluses DM's throw at challenges. It also reduces the amount of finger-counting arithmatic. Flavor-wise it CLEARLY feels like an advantage/disadvantage! What makes you say it's counter-intuitive???
I'll grant that it's quick, and rolling two dice clearly feels like it matters. The math doesn't back it up, though.
Dis/advantage is the new way to model the old large modifiers, the +4 or -4 (or more!) from a really significant situation: blindness/invisibility, prone, that sort of thing. The great thing about +4 is that it increases the chance of success by a hard +20% regardless of the base success rate. Advantage, however, increases success rate anywhere between ~5% to ~25% depending on the base success rate. The math which underlies the completely simple feeling system is not intuitive whatsoever.
Without checking any references, tell me who has the better chance to succeed at climbing the DC 20 wall: the ranger with a +18 bonus, or the rogue with a +15 bonus and advantage? Now, what if it's DC 25? DC 30?
If you were out of your league, and needed a 19 to hit, then a +4 would increase your chance from 10% to 30%, while merely rolling twice would increase your chance from 10% to ~16%. Even worse, since advantage doesn't stack, there's nothing more you can do. Under the old model, you could always try to add more situational modifiers to eventually possibly succeed.
And while that should be enough to condemn the system outright, the simplicity doesn't even live up to its claims. Because it only models large bonuses and penalties, the small bonuses still exist. Half-cover gives a +2 to AC, rather than granting disadvantage to attackers. When they get the grid rules in, I can guarantee that something as simple as high-ground or flanking are not going to grant advantage or disadvantage; they're too small, so also going to be a +1 or +2 to hit.
As it stands, you need advantage exactly once before it stops mattering, regardless of whether or not you have disadvantage. If you designate one character as the trip monkey, then the rest of the party can ignore any major tactical advantages because they would be redundant and pointless; rather, they can freely jocky for as many small bonuses as possible, because a +1 or +2 does stack with advantage. If you have the choice between blinding your foe (a major situational bonus), or getting behind half cover (a minor situational bonus), then the answer depends on what else is going on at the time - because blindness is meaningless to a target who is already prone or otherwise debilitated.
Long story short: if it's going to be a significant part of the system, then there will need to be many sources of dis/advantage; the more sources of dis/advantage that exist, however, the less valuable any of them are.
Saelorn... you're thinking too hard about the wrong mechanics. The math you're doing doesn't apply any more. There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)
A black dragon has AC 18 where in 3.5 he would have had AC 23. So with the best roll out of 2 you're upping your odds of hitting quite a bit.
And in reference to your Grid rules comment... advantage is advantage, if you've got the high ground, you get to roll two dice. Its as simple as that. There's no +2 bonuses for attacking with the sun behind you or some crap like that. The DC's are low for a reason, and IMO it works great.
There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)
While I disagree that DC 30 challenges won't exist, you can see the same effect by dropping the other bonuses by 5. If the ranger is +13, and the rogue is +10 with advantage, then their capabilities relative to each other change based on whether the DC is 15, 20, or 25.
A black dragon has AC 18 where in 3.5 he would have had AC 23. So with the best roll out of 2 you're upping your odds of hitting quite a bit.
There were level 1 PCs running around with AC 20+ in the last playtest. The idea that everything in the game will have AC between 5 and 20 seems unlikely, especially during late-game play. I can't foresee a world where that black dragon's angry mom isn't going to have at least AC 21. Numbers will go up, even if it's not via some pre-scribed formula that applies to everything based on level. Bounded Accuracy doesn't mean that objectively difficult tasks will not exist.
And in reference to your Grid rules comment... advantage is advantage, if you've got the high ground, you get to roll two dice. Its as simple as that. There's no +2 bonuses[...]
if that were the case, then cover (half cover or 3/4 cover) would grant the attacker disadvantage to attack rolls rather than granting the defender +2 or +5 AC. Even if that was true, then we'd be playing in a world where every melee attack ever gets advantage (or at least negates disadvantage) due to something as trivial as flanking or high ground. Blindness, tripping, spells that grant advantage - huge chunks of the game become meaningless, because advantage doesn't stack.
There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)
While I disagree that DC 30 challenges won't exist, you can see the same effect by dropping the other bonuses by 5. If the ranger is +13, and the rogue is +10 with advantage, then their capabilities relative to each other change based on whether the DC is 15, 20, or 25.
F-111 Interdictor Long (200+ squares) distance ally teleporter. With some warlord stuff. Broken in a plot way, not a power way. Thought Switch Higher level build that grants upto 14 attacks on turn 1. If your allies play along, it's broken. Elven Critters Crit op with crit generation. 5 of these will end anything. Broken. King Fisher Does an excellent job at keeping an enemy disabled in a few ways. Strong. Boominator Fun catch-22 booming blade build with either strong or completely broken damage depending on your reading. Very Distracting Warlock Lot's of dazing and major penalties to hit. Overpowered. Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square. Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong. Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked. Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic. Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation. Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses. Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. Sir Robin (Bravely Charge Away) He automatically slows and pushes an enemy (5 squares), while charging away. Hard to rate it's power level, since it's terrain dependent. Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof. Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it. Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways. Battlemind Mc Prone-Daze Protecting your allies by keeping enemies away. Quite powerful. The Retaliator Getting hit deals more damage to the enemy then you receive yourself, and you can take plenty of hits. Heavy item dependency, Broken. Dead Kobold Transit Teleports 98 squares a turn, and can bring someone along for the ride. Not fully built, so i can't judge the power Psilent Guardian Protect your allies, while being invisible. Overpowered, possibly broken Unnamed Avenger|Runepriest/Hammer of Vengance Do lot's of damage while boosting your teams. Strong to slightly overpowered. Charedent BarrageA charging ardent. Fine in a normal team, overpowered if there are 2 together, and easily broken in teams of 5. Super Knight A tough, sticky, high damage knight. Strong. Super Duper Knight Basically the same as super knight, only far more broken. Mora, the unkillable avenger Solid damage, while being neigh indestuctable. Overpowered, but not broken. Swordburst Maximus At-Will Close Burst 3 that slide and prones. Protects allies with off actions. Strong, possibly over powered with the right party.
I suppose that's what I get for making up numbers on the spot, though. See how counter-intuitive it is? Their relative advantage gained by advantage does change (from a 3.75% difference to a 10% difference), but not quite to the point where the rogue actually falls behind the ranger. That might just be from my specific examples, though.
If you have the time, mellored, could you see which values are that extreme? Is there any set of bonuses for which the rogue would only pull ahead on DC 20 but fall behind for DC 15, or any such values?
Totally agreed on pretty much all of the OPs nitpicks.
Although many things in DnD 5E sounds good (and I hope it will be called 5E) and I am excited about it, there are plenty of things that I'd do differently.
My dislikes are the following:
Red flags: Too much canon flavor. It's only a playtest, but we already have things like halflings having a default deity (a lame one, at that). The 4E pantheon was way more lovable to me, choosing a deity as a flavor, matching your religion to your character instead of boxing up all halflings (and maybe others) for a single deity. Leave more to interpretation about the races. In 4E, all we had about dwarves was many of them worship Moradin, (yet this got countered right away at the first adventurer example, with a dwarf worshipping Kord, letting us know that it's okay to worship others) they live in the mountains, they use geometric shapes in decorations, and that was enough. That was a good way of going about it. Let the campaign settings set the specifics if they want it to.
Change the make your own background system - more generic and more choices. If you choose a trait from the existing backgrounds, that trait has a big neon sign on it saying which background you picked it from. It doesn't feel like you are being creative, it just looks half-assed. Make the make-your-own-background THE default system, (with each trait having a generic name and an easy to interpret flavor, like the 4E backgrounds) and make the existing backgrounds into examples. Remember the podcast you did with the Penny Arcade guys and Scott Kurtz? They made backgrounds up on the spot, and it was WAY better.
Balance. I didn't get to play yet, but I can do math in my head and imagine in which scenarios who's good at what. Currently, it seems like you are taking the old-school route and making the players do the party setup the old-school way too: "We'll need one of each base class, fighter wizard rogue cleric, who's who?". Seems like rogues will be trap-monkeys who are way subpar unless they are sneak-attacking, clerics are (once again) walking medkits... That's tunnel vision on nostalgia and putting gameplay balance on the back burner. It's not good.
Yellow flags: Subraces. You are either a Hill Dwarf or a Deep Dwarf. Can't I just be a dwarf, like I am a human in real life instead of "White Human"? It's just another useless bracket of unneeded background info and annoying canon. I liked the 4E system better where we had Dwarves and Duergar. They were different too, but their races were one word instead of three, like Dwarf (Hill Dwarf). It just bugs me. Nitpick.
Expertise dice nitpicks: On top of balance problems (which I'm sure you'll fix), there are the d4s. Everyone hates rolling d4s. Please don't make us roll d4s.
Low HP: Okay, I see that this is old-school D&D again, but first-level wizards having to tremble at every single goblin dagger is not cool. You fixed that in 4E. Now you're about to go back to the subpar system just to comfort the nostalgics. Eh.
Use Rope and their kin: Come on. These skills were useless and far-fetched even in 3.5, why return to it? Ugh.
Now, let me repeat that I did not play 5E yet, but I did play 3.5 and didn't like it as much as I did 4E. I'm just saying, please don't walk back into old mistakes just so the new game will feel old-school. Thanks.
There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)
While I disagree that DC 30 challenges won't exist, you can see the same effect by dropping the other bonuses by 5. If the ranger is +13, and the rogue is +10 with advantage, then their capabilities relative to each other change based on whether the DC is 15, 20, or 25.
A black dragon has AC 18 where in 3.5 he would have had AC 23. So with the best roll out of 2 you're upping your odds of hitting quite a bit.
There were level 1 PCs running around with AC 20+ in the last playtest. The idea that everything in the game will have AC between 5 and 20 seems unlikely, especially during late-game play. I can't foresee a world where that black dragon's angry mom isn't going to have at least AC 21. Numbers will go up, even if it's not via some pre-scribed formula that applies to everything based on level. Bounded Accuracy doesn't mean that objectively difficult tasks will not exist.
And in reference to your Grid rules comment... advantage is advantage, if you've got the high ground, you get to roll two dice. Its as simple as that. There's no +2 bonuses[...]
if that were the case, then cover (half cover or 3/4 cover) would grant the attacker disadvantage to attack rolls rather than granting the defender +2 or +5 AC. Even if that was true, then we'd be playing in a world where every melee attack ever gets advantage (or at least negates disadvantage) due to something as trivial as flanking or high ground. Blindness, tripping, spells that grant advantage - huge chunks of the game become meaningless, because advantage doesn't stack.
Hmmmm, to me it sounds like you're not following the rules as given. If you're playing by the current rules, its impossible for your players to be running around with AC 20, much less 20+. If they dodge or are using cover, that doesn't count as having AC 20. Dodging and using cover are tactical choices that have serious drawbacks. (Like being stuck in one location, or not being able to attack.) So please explain how the level one characters were able to acquire +1 Plate to go with their shield?
And again, as far as the advantage/disadvantage rules go, you're confusing things and misunderstanding the purpose of advantage. Advantage is great, in that rolling two dice and picking the higher one will always be better than rolling one. It will always feel like an advantage even when you roll both of them low. It's that feeling that matters, and is the very definition of Intuitive. (Using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive.) Also, it has nothing to do with cover, blindness, tripping or other things that have rules and modifiers for.
Also, stop arguing about the DC's. It's clearly stated that they do not go above DC25. *period* The equipment, creatures and abilities are all catered for lower numbers. Complaining about what "might become" is counter-intuitive. (To use your words.)
Advantage is great, in that rolling two dice and picking the higher one will always be better than rolling one. It will always feel like an advantage even when you roll both of them low. It's that feeling that matters, and is the very definition of Intuitive.
Everything else aside, because some of it is speculation, this is still a fundamental disagreement. The feel is not more important than the underlying system math, in my opinion, and catering to feel rather than math is a huge red flag marking this as a game I would never want to play.
Totally agreed on pretty much all of the OPs nitpicks.
Yellow flags: Subraces. You are either a Hill Dwarf or a Deep Dwarf. Can't I just be a dwarf, like I am a human in real life instead of "White Human"? It's just another useless bracket of unneeded background info and annoying canon. I liked the 4E system better where we had Dwarves and Duergar. They were different too, but their races were one word instead of three, like Dwarf (Hill Dwarf). It just bugs me. Nitpick.
Because actually making human subraces would cause cries of 'RACISM'! Although, frankly, the idea of a 'Barbarian' human, who gets like a +2 to Strength or Constitution and then gets a free proficiency with a heavy (twp handed) weapon of choice is pretty cool to me.
But I am SICK AND TIRED of the Human Monoculture. Living in the mountains is not going to create the same type of human as one who lives in the desert. Or near rivers and seas.
If you don't want to worry about stats, then don't change them. Give every human that +1 to every thing, but at least give some cultural packages. And don't bother basing them off real life...
Expertise dice nitpicks: On top of balance problems (which I'm sure you'll fix), there are the d4s. Everyone hates rolling d4s. Please don't make us roll d4s.
I have to agree with this one, D4s are best used as weapons agains break-ins and thieves.
Low HP: Okay, I see that this is old-school D&D again, but first-level wizards having to tremble at every single goblin dagger is not cool. You fixed that in 4E. Now you're about to go back to the subpar system just to comfort the nostalgics. Eh.
The problem is that with 3 and 4e hit points were obscene, and damage didn't match. It was more prevalent in 3.x, but it's still there at 4e.
Use Rope and their kin: Come on. These skills were useless and far-fetched even in 3.5, why return to it? Ugh.
The issue here is that some skills, which people would need don't exactly fit. And let's face it 'Use Rope' would be a Boating and Survival skill, and when it would matter people wouldn't even know it existed, despite the fact that the tension and adventure created by needing to tie a rope can be kinda fun.
Now, let me repeat that I did not play 5E yet, but I did play 3.5 and didn't like it as much as I did 4E. I'm just saying, please don't walk back into old mistakes just so the new game will feel old-school. Thanks.
Maybe you should play the game before complaining about some of these things.
