You have to roll equal or higher of a certain DC or AC. The advantage gives the same probability to hit as the disadvantage does to fail.
Right, so if a number is greater than the DC it doesn't really make a difference. While strictly speaking if you need a 15, you have a 30% chance of success normally, 50% with advantage and a 9% with disadvantage, and roughly that amounts to a +/- of about 20% to the normal roll. So while have around a 1/3 chance to hit moving to a 1/2 chance of hitting is a nice benefit and gives you a better chance of hitting. Dropping down to only a 1/10 chance of hitting, is far worse penalty. Even if numerically it is the same as you have a decreased chance of hitting of 20%.
So yeah, it is more of on opinion of mine that losing 20% chance of hitting is far worse than gaining 20% chance of hitting.
You have to roll equal or higher of a certain DC or AC. The advantage gives the same probability to hit as the disadvantage does to fail.
Right, so if a number is greater than the DC it doesn't really make a difference. While strictly speaking if you need a 15, you have a 30% chance of success normally, 50% with advantage and a 9% with disadvantage, and roughly that amounts to a +/- of about 20% to the normal roll. So while have around a 1/3 chance to hit moving to a 1/2 chance of hitting is a nice benefit and gives you a better chance of hitting. Dropping down to only a 1/10 chance of hitting, is far worse penalty. Even if numerically it is the same as you have a decreased chance of hitting of 20%.
So yeah, it is more of on opinion of mine that losing 20% chance of hitting is far worse than gaining 20% chance of hitting.
What you describe is situational. You assumed you have to roll 15. Do the same reasoning but assuming you have to roll 5. Once you do, you realize that there is nothing wrong with the advantage that goes well for the disadvantage.
You have to roll equal or higher of a certain DC or AC. The advantage gives the same probability to hit as the disadvantage does to fail.
Right, so if a number is greater than the DC it doesn't really make a difference. While strictly speaking if you need a 15, you have a 30% chance of success normally, 50% with advantage and a 9% with disadvantage, and roughly that amounts to a +/- of about 20% to the normal roll. So while have around a 1/3 chance to hit moving to a 1/2 chance of hitting is a nice benefit and gives you a better chance of hitting. Dropping down to only a 1/10 chance of hitting, is far worse penalty. Even if numerically it is the same as you have a decreased chance of hitting of 20%.
So yeah, it is more of on opinion of mine that losing 20% chance of hitting is far worse than gaining 20% chance of hitting.
The math would work out almost the same with modifiers instead of advantage/disadvantage. If you normally need a 15 but now you need a 19 because of a circumstantial -4 penalty, your chance of success drops to 10% (as opposed to disadvantage's 9%). Likewise, if you gain a +4 your chance of success goes up to 50% (as opposed to advantage's 51%).
Disadvantage is kind of like a -4 and that can be pretty severe when your odds are already low, but it can't get any worse. You can't get double or triple disadvantage, and all you need is a single source of advantage to cancel out the penalty.
Compare that to the 3.5 Combat Modifiers table. Sure, some of those are only +/- 2 instead of 4, but it's not hard to see how you could end up with -6 or worse; just being prone is already a -4. And that's before taking into account spells, feats, class features and magic items.
I decided to do an experiment with a 1,000 dice rolls assuming a DC of 10 and then a 15. Of interesting note, the +4 did on at least one occasion result in success when Advantage would have resulted in a failure. I've listed the number of successes in 1,000 rolls. The +4 bonus is assumed to be condition modifiers and the DC of 10 is assumed to be what is needed on the dice minus class abilities/proficiency and such.
Needing to Roll a 5 on the Dice While I think this is only going to apply to high level adventures, I included it since it was brought up.
In this particular case, there is a massive difference in the +4 bonus as compared to Advantage.
A couple of notes, I believe that Advantage and Disadvantage more closely resemble a +5/-5 rather than the stated +4/-4.
To bring this back to hitting in the dark, by effectively nullifying the penalties, You essentially double the chances of hitting. In essence this is a dispute on whether or not someone relying on armor and not their dex should have a penalty against attackers they can't see. To that end, it is essentially enjoying the third edition idea of being flat-footed where you still benefit from armor in those moments you can't use dex. Anything else about advantage and disadvantage really needs its own thread.
My third edition books are in storage, however, in Pathfinder, Full Plate does allow a dex of +1, while half plate doesn't.
Basically according to the rules, If two people are blinded, the effects cancel out. Basically I think that you shouldn't have the same chance to hit the person you can't see as you have the person you can see. Especially in those situations where you are fighting both. What I did fail to account for is that technically you would have advantage in such a situation, and therefore have a better chance of hitting such a person than you do the person fighting in darkness, while they have less of a chance to hit you. Granted if Blinded always applies in the night, my original argument would still hold (or at least still credible) as everything gets nullified and you would have equal chance to hit someone you can't see as you do someone you can see.
InquisitiveCoder, the primary reason I dislike advantage/disadvantage is because it is always a +5/-5. Disadvantage almost guarantees a failure (this could mean that at some point you end up risking turning to stone to attack a medusa because you have less chance to turn to stone than you have chance of dying while having disadvantage), while advantage gives you a slightly higher chance of success.
So yes, it is faster, but there are just somethings that shouldn't have that high of a penalty.
5th still has the same skill problems. Rogues for example will have x2 prof. bonus to four skills after a certain point. While everyone else has a bonus of about half that to the skills they are good with, and even less on the skills they aren't good with. Advantage/Disadvantage doesn't really help here.
How does disadvantage "almost guarantee a failure", but advantage is just "a slightly higher chance of success"?
I think it has to do with the fact that you only have to hit the target number, so anything above that target isn't important Rolling a 15, then an 18 doesn't matter much, as both would be a success. While disadvantage tends to have more ranges that will cause you to fail.
Except that's not how statistics work. Just because an average roll of 10 results in a hit doesn't mean that an 11-20 is superfluous any more than a 1-8 is superfluous when a 9 would be a failure. This is especially true of attack rolls when there is also the chance to critical or skill checks where there is a degree to successes and/or failures.
A 55% chance to hit is going to be a 55% chance no matter what arbitrary method you use to decide hit or miss. Whether it be because you rolled a d20 with a target of 10, a d100 with a target of 46, or a d20 where you have to roll an odd number (with 20 still being a critical hit or an automatic success).
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
InquisitiveCoder, the primary reason I dislike advantage/disadvantage is because it is always a +5/-5. Disadvantage almost guarantees a failure (this could mean that at some point you end up risking turning to stone to attack a medusa because you have less chance to turn to stone than you have chance of dying while having disadvantage), while advantage gives you a slightly higher chance of success.
So yes, it is faster, but there are just somethings that shouldn't have that high of a penalty.
5th still has the same skill problems. Rogues for example will have x2 prof. bonus to four skills after a certain point. While everyone else has a bonus of about half that to the skills they are good with, and even less on the skills they aren't good with. Advantage/Disadvantage doesn't really help here.
How does disadvantage "almost guarantee a failure", but advantage is just "a slightly higher chance of success"?
I think it has to do with the fact that you only have to hit the target number, so anything above that target isn't important Rolling a 15, then an 18 doesn't matter much, as both would be a success. While disadvantage tends to have more ranges that will cause you to fail.
Except that's not how statistics work. Just because an average roll of 10 results in a hit doesn't mean that an 11-20 is superfluous any more than a 1-8 is superfluous when a 9 would be a failure. This is especially true of attack rolls when there is also the chance to critical or skill checks where there is a degree to successes and/or failures.
A 55% chance to hit is going to be a 55% chance no matter what arbitrary method you use to decide hit or miss. Whether it be because you rolled a d20 with a target of 10, a d100 with a target of 46, or a d20 where you have to roll an odd number (with 20 still being a critical hit or an automatic success).
My point is that disadvantage can keep you from hitting a monster for enough rounds the monster can kill you. While having advantage will help you kill the monster faster, it isn't as beneficial to your success as disadvantage can be detrimental to your success. So it does matter if you have less numbers to hit on than more numbers to lose on. And disadvantage is far worse in an actual combat situation than the benefits of having advantage. Primarily because D&D is set up to be a game that will end in 4-5 rounds or so. So a higher chance of missing is far worse than the extra chance of hitting. If we were looking at everything as being one round and it being over, sure. But you have to survive long enough to kill your opponent and that because very unlikely once you get disadvantage.
In essence this is a dispute on whether or not someone relying on armor and not their dex should have a penalty against attackers they can't see. To that end, it is essentially enjoying the third edition idea of being flat-footed where you still benefit from armor in those moments you can't use dex.
But a flat-footed person still has their dexterity. They've just been brought down to the same level as the average person (10 Dex). Everyone starts with 10 AC, even unarmored, so that must be their base evasion (it's not armor so what else could it be?)
Someone who really can't use their dexterity has the helpless condition (e.g. paralyzed) and is reduced to 0 Dexterity (-5 modifier) and has a -4 penalty to AC, leaving them with 1 AC + their armor.
A blinded attacker in 3.5 had a 50% miss chance while in 5e they have disadvantage. A blinded defender in 3.5 had a -2 penalty to AC and lost their DEX bonus, while in 5e the attacker gets advantage. The main difference between the two editions is that 3.5e penalizes the attacker far more severely than 5e does.
Depending on the AC, a 50% miss chance, might actually be better than having disadvantage. I suspect this really depends on the original AC you need to hit as well as the +'s you have to hit.
InquisitiveCoder, the primary reason I dislike advantage/disadvantage is because it is always a +5/-5. Disadvantage almost guarantees a failure (this could mean that at some point you end up risking turning to stone to attack a medusa because you have less chance to turn to stone than you have chance of dying while having disadvantage), while advantage gives you a slightly higher chance of success.
So yes, it is faster, but there are just somethings that shouldn't have that high of a penalty.
5th still has the same skill problems. Rogues for example will have x2 prof. bonus to four skills after a certain point. While everyone else has a bonus of about half that to the skills they are good with, and even less on the skills they aren't good with. Advantage/Disadvantage doesn't really help here.
How does disadvantage "almost guarantee a failure", but advantage is just "a slightly higher chance of success"?
I think it has to do with the fact that you only have to hit the target number, so anything above that target isn't important Rolling a 15, then an 18 doesn't matter much, as both would be a success. While disadvantage tends to have more ranges that will cause you to fail.
Except that's not how statistics work. Just because an average roll of 10 results in a hit doesn't mean that an 11-20 is superfluous any more than a 1-8 is superfluous when a 9 would be a failure. This is especially true of attack rolls when there is also the chance to critical or skill checks where there is a degree to successes and/or failures.
A 55% chance to hit is going to be a 55% chance no matter what arbitrary method you use to decide hit or miss. Whether it be because you rolled a d20 with a target of 10, a d100 with a target of 46, or a d20 where you have to roll an odd number (with 20 still being a critical hit or an automatic success).
My point is that disadvantage can keep you from hitting a monster for enough rounds the monster can kill you. While having advantage will help you kill the monster faster, it isn't as beneficial to your success as disadvantage can be detrimental to your success. So it does matter if you have less numbers to hit on than more numbers to lose on. And disadvantage is far worse in an actual combat situation than the benefits of having advantage. Primarily because D&D is set up to be a game that will end in 4-5 rounds or so. So a higher chance of missing is far worse than the extra chance of hitting. If we were looking at everything as being one round and it being over, sure. But you have to survive long enough to kill your opponent and that because very unlikely once you get disadvantage.
Advantage and disadvantage incurs the same percentage difference +/- 5 (+/- 25%). Unless your chance to miss drops to below 0% you are always going to benefit from advantage. And even then, you halve the chance for an automatic miss that comes with a natural 1. What's more, advantage also doubles your critical hit chance; something that the bonuses/penalties system could never account for.
You are also indicating that a miss is worse than a hit, because the monster can kill you if you don't hit it, but I'd offer that the monster can't cause you to expend more resources if you kill it faster (and D&D is first and foremost a resource management game more than anything else).
Your main argument for the topic was that it should always be disadvantage because you don't like the advantage/disadvantage system.
You argued that 3e was better, because of the penalty/bonus system worked better (though it's been proven that for most encounters it's relatively the same, minus the natural 1/20 and critical hit rules which greatly favor the advantage/disadvantage system).
You then said that misses matter more than hits, which is patently false as statistical analysis shows that at best it is a zero sum game, and at worst the chance for critical hits makes increasing your chance to hit far more important.
TL;DR advantage and disadvantage are the same as far as statistical and importance. An increase in your chance to hit is just as powerful as increasing your chance to miss (because hitting is the same as not missing)
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
D&D is really not a resource management game, especially once you get to 5th level, and resting becomes a perfectly safe thing to do via spells. Even then, once you run low on resources, you can rest and regain those resources. Also to some degree, resources only matter to spell casters, the more martial types have less resource management.
My main argument for the topic was that it should always be disadvantage because fighting in the dark should produce some disadvantage, rather than canceling itself out. I did state that to some degree my opinions may be colored as a general dislike for the advantage/disadvantage system. I didn't mean that was why it should always be disadvantage, just that there should be some penalty for firing in the dark.
The penalty and bonus system is only the same once you reach +5/-5. As many penalties are lower/could be lower, there is a difference. Advantage does double your critical hit chance, but that isn't going to make up for the fact of disadvantage making it almost impossible to succeed. I would even argue failing a stealth check is itself far worse than the benefit you would gain from the small extra chance to crit.
Misses very much matter, because if you can never hit a creature, then you will end up dead, so it doesn't matter how many resources you have. You can always recoup resources by resting, especially once you get to 5th level (Tiny Huts are really nice to have as long as everyone can fit in it).
Critical hits only become worthwhile once you get magic items and can get additional dice bonuses onto your weapons. Since technically magic items aren't a default assumed resource, a crit is like getting an extra action and hitting. Which is great, unless it is compared to never being able to hit at all. A crit doesn't make up for the risk of not being able to hit. A crit doesn't even necessarily always matter, as its great if you double your damage to 20...but if the monster only had 1hp left, doesn't matter. Essentially if the final blow to an enemy has enough left over damage to equal your crit, then it really doesn't matter in the combat. On the other hand, not being able to hit a monster is going to be far more devastating.
Basically it is better to have no resources left after an encounter, than to be dead after an encounter.
D&D is really not a resource management game, especially once you get to 5th level, and resting becomes a perfectly safe thing to do via spells.
D&D is a resource management game all the way through, since those spells you say make resting "perfectly safe" (which is inaccurate, but that's a topic for a different thread) are themselves resources, or if you prefer they are the result of appropriate management of the resource that is which spells are available to the party.
D&D is really not a resource management game, especially once you get to 5th level, and resting becomes a perfectly safe thing to do via spells. Even then, once you run low on resources, you can rest and regain those resources. Also to some degree, resources only matter to spell casters, the more martial types have less resource management.
My main argument for the topic was that it should always be disadvantage because fighting in the dark should produce some disadvantage, rather than canceling itself out. I did state that to some degree my opinions may be colored as a general dislike for the advantage/disadvantage system. I didn't mean that was why it should always be disadvantage, just that there should be some penalty for firing in the dark.
The penalty and bonus system is only the same once you reach +5/-5. As many penalties are lower/could be lower, there is a difference. Advantage does double your critical hit chance, but that isn't going to make up for the fact of disadvantage making it almost impossible to succeed. I would even argue failing a stealth check is itself far worse than the benefit you would gain from the small extra chance to crit.
Misses very much matter, because if you can never hit a creature, then you will end up dead, so it doesn't matter how many resources you have. You can always recoup resources by resting, especially once you get to 5th level (Tiny Huts are really nice to have as long as everyone can fit in it).
Critical hits only become worthwhile once you get magic items and can get additional dice bonuses onto your weapons. Since technically magic items aren't a default assumed resource, a crit is like getting an extra action and hitting. Which is great, unless it is compared to never being able to hit at all. A crit doesn't make up for the risk of not being able to hit. A crit doesn't even necessarily always matter, as its great if you double your damage to 20...but if the monster only had 1hp left, doesn't matter. Essentially if the final blow to an enemy has enough left over damage to equal your crit, then it really doesn't matter in the combat. On the other hand, not being able to hit a monster is going to be far more devastating.
Basically it is better to have no resources left after an encounter, than to be dead after an encounter.
I notice you always assume the optimal conditions for your situational usages. "If you never hit...", "if you do 20 damage when the enemy only has 1 hit point...".
Your hyperbole of "almost impossible to hit" is AGAIN patently false. It is the same increase and decrease to hit. What's more is there are already abilities, traits, and feats that grant you advantages (literal definition, not 5e definition) to overcome such situations. Things like Bardic Inspiration, Bless, Superiority Dice, etc... that give you actual bonuses to your roll, situational effectiveness that can grant advantage/disadvantage (5e definition) such as the Alert feat, Rage, or anything else that typically would grant advantage/disadvantage.
And, honestly, your assertion that disadvantage is basically death is another use of hyperbolic nonsense. "If you can never hit a creature, then you will end up dead". Well, if you can "never hit a creature" then you are fighting something that you shouldn't be fighting, in a way that you shouldn't be fighting it, and are either stupid for choosing (or continuing) to do so or playing with a horrible DM. I've literally never seen NOBODY hit an enemy before. I've seen bad rolls that resulted in a much harder fight, but I've never seen players blindly swinging at something that they have no chance of hitting and continue to do so regardless of being so unevenly matched (though my players are typically smart enough to know the difference between shitty rolling and "we can't take this thing")
Also, the lack of understanding that this is a resource management game and then stating that you can use a resource to get those resources back is kind of funny. Especially when you take your last sentence into consideration. "It is better to have no resources left after an encounter than to be dead after an encounter". And while given those two binary options, makes that statement true, in the game of D&D nothing is ever that absolute. Sometimes having someone die is the better option than using all your resources especially in a time sensitive adventure (have to stop that ritual) and more especially if one of your resources includes a spell like Raise Dead or Resurrection that you can use later.
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
The worst part of that statement is how many times are you ACTUALLY safe to just stop and rest? Generally speaking areas aren't safe to rest in until the surrounding area is completely cleared out.
I mean, unless you think a guard patrol isn't going to notice a rope floating in midair via Rope Trick or a 10 foot radius dome via Leomund's Tiny Hut.
And when that happens they just come back with more reinforcements than you can handle and a magic user that can cast Dispel Magic to automatically dismiss both spells without any kind of check (thus leaving you STILL without resources and in a much worse scenario than before).
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Also Rope Trick is Wizard only and Tiny Hut is Wizard/Bard only. So, your answer to "not a resource management game" only applies if you have one of those two classes in the party, and only in VERY specific circumstances (aka no time restrictions/requirements). And, if you're playing a game that allows you to rest so often that you are able to ignore the resource management part, wtf is the point of playing? When you can blow through all of your abilities every encounter, the encounters become boring (or extremely deadly, as every encounter must be built to make up for this). And when there's no sense of urgency, then every situation becomes, "why are we even here?"
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Dead is still worse than not having resources. Also since the classes that benefit most from having resources typically have few means to get a crit, I think it works out.
Realistically you only need enough time to short rest. So while a long rest would be nice, it wouldn't be required to regain resources, hp being the most important one.
Dead is still worse than not having resources. Also since the classes that benefit most from having resources typically have few means to get a crit, I think it works out.
Realistically you only need enough time to short rest. So while a long rest would be nice, it wouldn't be required to regain resources, hp being the most important one.
Again, that's only the case in the binary dead or empty resources scenario. You are STILL only looking at the two extremes.
As far as "classes that have resources have few means to crit": all classes (with the exception of non-Arcane Trickster rogues and Champion fighters) have limited resources.
Though, I'm assuming that you are talking about spellcasters, and those all have cantrips like Eldritch Blast and Fire Bolt that they'd use for damaging spells when they run out of/want to conserve resources.
And, with the exception of Warlocks, those spellcasters require long rests to get their spells and recovery abilities back
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
If you have neither advantage nor disadvantage, you roll 1d20, add your modifier, and compare the result to the target number. If your roll is equal to or greater than the target number, you succeed. If your roll is less than the target number, you fail. Your chance of failure therefore equals (([the target number]-[your bonus])-1)/20. The previous statements show that your chance of success can be calculated as 1-[your chance of failure], bearing in mind that x/x=1.
If you have advantage, you roll twice and use the higher of the two rolls, so you have to roll two failures to fail, so, using the equation at the top of this post, once you've calculated your chance of failure for a non-advantaged roll, square it and use that to calculate your chance of success.
If you have disadvantage, you roll twice and use the lower of the two rolls, so you have to roll two successes to succeed, so, using the equation at the top of this post, once you've calculated your chance of success for a non-disadvantaged roll, square it. You should then be able to use that to calculate your chance of failure without my telling you how.
(Note to Moderators: I'm just trying to make sure they're doing the probability calculations correctly; please don't kick me.)
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
How does disadvantage "almost guarantee a failure", but advantage is just "a slightly higher chance of success"?
Hyperbole mixed with pessimism?
Very bad luck? I have a player with that kind of luck; 8 natural 1s in a single 3-hour session.
I have a similarly bad-luck player... but in our 3-hour sessions he usually makes a lot more than 8 d20 rolls so 8 natural 1s isn't that big of a deal (and objectively speaking, meaning not skewing the data through his selective memory that counts up all the low rolls and ignores the rest as if they never happened, his luck isn't actually much worse than anyone else's at the table other than mine, which is ludicrously good to the point that I've frequently been accused of cheating in person and lying about how well I roll online).
It also doesn't actually have anything to do with disadvantage being considered a huge penalty while advantage is only consider a small bonus, even though the player's bad luck can manifest by way of finally rolling a natural 20 (or other high result) but it is on a roll with disadvantage so it's not actually relevant - the other, probably still successful despite being lower because 5th edition just doesn't require that high of rolls for success, die being the one taken. He still thinks of disadvantage and advantage as equal in their impact.
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No.
You have to roll equal or higher of a certain DC or AC. The advantage gives the same probability to success as the disadvantage does to fail.
I decided to do an experiment with a 1,000 dice rolls assuming a DC of 10 and then a 15. Of interesting note, the +4 did on at least one occasion result in success when Advantage would have resulted in a failure. I've listed the number of successes in 1,000 rolls. The +4 bonus is assumed to be condition modifiers and the DC of 10 is assumed to be what is needed on the dice minus class abilities/proficiency and such.
Needing to Roll a 5 on the Dice
While I think this is only going to apply to high level adventures, I included it since it was brought up.
Normal Rolls: 791
Advantage: 948
Disadvantage: 616
+4 Bonus: 1000
-4 Bonus: 602
Obviously the +4 bonus is going to always win if you only need a 5.
Needing to Roll a 7 on the Dice
Normal Rolls: 687
Advantage: 900
Disadvantage: 482
+4 Bonus: 903
-4 Bonus: 489
Need to Roll a 10 on the Dice
Normal Rolls: 540
Advantage: 807
Disadvantage: 301
+4 Bonus: 745
-4 Bonus: 359
You are certainly better off with a -4, as you fail less times. You can certainly argue the extra 58 failures out of a thousand rolls is irrelevant.
Need to Roll a 14 on the Dice
Normal Rolls: 354
Advantage: 575
Disadvantage: 107
+4 Bonus: 541
-4 Bonus: 130
The Hail Marry (I.e. needing a 20 to hit)
Normal Rolls: 49
Advantage: 97
Disadvantage: 2
+4 Bonus: 238
-4 Bonus: 0
In this particular case, there is a massive difference in the +4 bonus as compared to Advantage.
A couple of notes, I believe that Advantage and Disadvantage more closely resemble a +5/-5 rather than the stated +4/-4.
To bring this back to hitting in the dark, by effectively nullifying the penalties, You essentially double the chances of hitting. In essence this is a dispute on whether or not someone relying on armor and not their dex should have a penalty against attackers they can't see. To that end, it is essentially enjoying the third edition idea of being flat-footed where you still benefit from armor in those moments you can't use dex. Anything else about advantage and disadvantage really needs its own thread.
My third edition books are in storage, however, in Pathfinder, Full Plate does allow a dex of +1, while half plate doesn't.
Basically according to the rules, If two people are blinded, the effects cancel out. Basically I think that you shouldn't have the same chance to hit the person you can't see as you have the person you can see. Especially in those situations where you are fighting both. What I did fail to account for is that technically you would have advantage in such a situation, and therefore have a better chance of hitting such a person than you do the person fighting in darkness, while they have less of a chance to hit you. Granted if Blinded always applies in the night, my original argument would still hold (or at least still credible) as everything gets nullified and you would have equal chance to hit someone you can't see as you do someone you can see.
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Depending on the AC, a 50% miss chance, might actually be better than having disadvantage. I suspect this really depends on the original AC you need to hit as well as the +'s you have to hit.
Click Here to Download my Lancer Class w/ Dragoon and Legionnaire Archetypes via DM's Guild - Pay What You Want
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
D&D is really not a resource management game, especially once you get to 5th level, and resting becomes a perfectly safe thing to do via spells. Even then, once you run low on resources, you can rest and regain those resources. Also to some degree, resources only matter to spell casters, the more martial types have less resource management.
My main argument for the topic was that it should always be disadvantage because fighting in the dark should produce some disadvantage, rather than canceling itself out. I did state that to some degree my opinions may be colored as a general dislike for the advantage/disadvantage system. I didn't mean that was why it should always be disadvantage, just that there should be some penalty for firing in the dark.
The penalty and bonus system is only the same once you reach +5/-5. As many penalties are lower/could be lower, there is a difference. Advantage does double your critical hit chance, but that isn't going to make up for the fact of disadvantage making it almost impossible to succeed. I would even argue failing a stealth check is itself far worse than the benefit you would gain from the small extra chance to crit.
Misses very much matter, because if you can never hit a creature, then you will end up dead, so it doesn't matter how many resources you have. You can always recoup resources by resting, especially once you get to 5th level (Tiny Huts are really nice to have as long as everyone can fit in it).
Critical hits only become worthwhile once you get magic items and can get additional dice bonuses onto your weapons. Since technically magic items aren't a default assumed resource, a crit is like getting an extra action and hitting. Which is great, unless it is compared to never being able to hit at all. A crit doesn't make up for the risk of not being able to hit. A crit doesn't even necessarily always matter, as its great if you double your damage to 20...but if the monster only had 1hp left, doesn't matter. Essentially if the final blow to an enemy has enough left over damage to equal your crit, then it really doesn't matter in the combat. On the other hand, not being able to hit a monster is going to be far more devastating.
Basically it is better to have no resources left after an encounter, than to be dead after an encounter.
D&D is a resource management game all the way through, since those spells you say make resting "perfectly safe" (which is inaccurate, but that's a topic for a different thread) are themselves resources, or if you prefer they are the result of appropriate management of the resource that is which spells are available to the party.
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
The worst part of that statement is how many times are you ACTUALLY safe to just stop and rest? Generally speaking areas aren't safe to rest in until the surrounding area is completely cleared out.
I mean, unless you think a guard patrol isn't going to notice a rope floating in midair via Rope Trick or a 10 foot radius dome via Leomund's Tiny Hut.
And when that happens they just come back with more reinforcements than you can handle and a magic user that can cast Dispel Magic to automatically dismiss both spells without any kind of check (thus leaving you STILL without resources and in a much worse scenario than before).
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Also Rope Trick is Wizard only and Tiny Hut is Wizard/Bard only. So, your answer to "not a resource management game" only applies if you have one of those two classes in the party, and only in VERY specific circumstances (aka no time restrictions/requirements). And, if you're playing a game that allows you to rest so often that you are able to ignore the resource management part, wtf is the point of playing? When you can blow through all of your abilities every encounter, the encounters become boring (or extremely deadly, as every encounter must be built to make up for this). And when there's no sense of urgency, then every situation becomes, "why are we even here?"
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Dead is still worse than not having resources. Also since the classes that benefit most from having resources typically have few means to get a crit, I think it works out.
Realistically you only need enough time to short rest. So while a long rest would be nice, it wouldn't be required to regain resources, hp being the most important one.
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
If x<1, then x^2<x.
If you have neither advantage nor disadvantage, you roll 1d20, add your modifier, and compare the result to the target number. If your roll is equal to or greater than the target number, you succeed. If your roll is less than the target number, you fail. Your chance of failure therefore equals (([the target number]-[your bonus])-1)/20. The previous statements show that your chance of success can be calculated as 1-[your chance of failure], bearing in mind that x/x=1.
If you have advantage, you roll twice and use the higher of the two rolls, so you have to roll two failures to fail, so, using the equation at the top of this post, once you've calculated your chance of failure for a non-advantaged roll, square it and use that to calculate your chance of success.
If you have disadvantage, you roll twice and use the lower of the two rolls, so you have to roll two successes to succeed, so, using the equation at the top of this post, once you've calculated your chance of success for a non-disadvantaged roll, square it. You should then be able to use that to calculate your chance of failure without my telling you how.
(Note to Moderators: I'm just trying to make sure they're doing the probability calculations correctly; please don't kick me.)
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)