5e Yahtzee (advantage/disadvantage)

[goatmeal]

The most interesting thing to me about 5e are the possibilities with advantage/disadvantage. This is mostly because I once tried to make up my own rpg system that had a similar theme to it that I called rpg yahtzee because of all the dice you got to roll at once. The biggest difference was in the system I was trying to develop, you weren’t limited to just one advantage (you could roll three dice and take the top result, for example), and could also choose to roll advantage dice on the damage (which was especially important with critical hit damage). There were also ways to use the multiple dice system to affect the momentum of a fight and other strategically things like that. I got hung up on the magic though, that and finding anyone to play it.

Anyways, was wondering what people’s thoughts were on playing with advantage/disadvantage and if it was something that could be worth expanding on more the way I’ve outlined above. I don’t think adding more dice will break the game much, as the biggest change will be from the first die. I think it was more of a way of trying to keep things simple.

[furby076]

I think it can get boring just doing straight damage. Attack roll, damage roll, done. But invoking special effects (trip, shove, disarm, etc) are fun. Some of those effects cause advantage/disadvantage

[goatmeal]

hmmm, I wasn't really referring to combat maneuvers. I was thinking of advantage stacking. So if there are two things that give you advantage, you would be able to roll 3 dice and take the top one instead of just rolling 2 dice and taking the top one. Same thing with disadvantage. The other twist was that you would have the option of "saving" one of those three rolls and using it for damage if you did happen to hit.

[JellyPooga]

If you like the idea of rolling multiple dice, "yahtzee style", then alter the core mechanic; instead of rolling 1d20, how about rolling 5d4? Then, because of the (extremely!) steep bell curve you might want to consider granting critical hits on something other than a "natural 20". How about something like...

3-of-a-kind - Lesser Crit (Double damage dice if the total hits)
4-of-a-kind - Critical Hit (auto-hit, double damage dice)
5-of-a-kind - Double Crit (auto-hit, triple damage dice)

Advantage would work as per normal rules, except instances of Advantage are cumulative (i.e. two instances of Advantage grant two additional dice, pick the best five rolled). Disadvantage would deduct from the pool of dice being rolled (i.e. one instance of Disadvantage would mean you're only rolling with 4d4). Given that crits no longer occur based on the "nat 20" and instead on multiples of a kind, taking away d4 still allows someone to get a crit unless they've got so much Disadvantage stacked up that they're rolling 3 or less dice (even then, they may have enough static modifiers to still hit!).

I'm no statistician but eyeballing the odds, I think this works out roughly the same as the crit chance of a d20 (I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong!), with the following differences;
- Rolls will tend far more toward the mean because of that bell-curve
- The impact of Advantage is slightly reduced.
- The impact of Disadvantage is increased.

It also opens the possibility for introducing effects for a "run" of three or four numbers and potentially (if you use different coloured dice numbers) flushes too. That may be going too far though :smallwink:

[Grey Watcher]

If you like the idea of rolling multiple dice, "yahtzee style", then alter the core mechanic; instead of rolling 1d20, how about rolling 5d4? Then, because of the (extremely!) steep bell curve you might want to consider granting critical hits on something other than a "natural 20". How about something like...

3-of-a-kind - Lesser Crit (Double damage dice if the total hits)
4-of-a-kind - Critical Hit (auto-hit, double damage dice)
5-of-a-kind - Double Crit (auto-hit, triple damage dice)

Advantage would work as per normal rules, except instances of Advantage are cumulative (i.e. two instances of Advantage grant two additional dice, pick the best five rolled). Disadvantage would deduct from the pool of dice being rolled (i.e. one instance of Disadvantage would mean you're only rolling with 4d4). Given that crits no longer occur based on the "nat 20" and instead on multiples of a kind, taking away d4 still allows someone to get a crit unless they've got so much Disadvantage stacked up that they're rolling 3 or less dice (even then, they may have enough static modifiers to still hit!).

I'm no statistician but eyeballing the odds, I think this works out roughly the same as the crit chance of a d20 (I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong!), with the following differences;
- Rolls will tend far more toward the mean because of that bell-curve
- The impact of Advantage is slightly reduced.
- The impact of Disadvantage is increased.

It also opens the possibility for introducing effects for a "run" of three or four numbers and potentially (if you use different coloured dice numbers) flushes too. That may be going too far though :smallwink:

Actually, Fantasy Age (https://greenronin.com/fantasyage/) does pretty much this (except for the adding/removing dice from the pool part): where D&D would have you roll 1d20, FA has you roll 3d6 and if you roll doubles (and still hit the DC) you get to add additional riders to whatever it was you were trying to do (the higher the doubles the better). I forget what happens on triples, but I triple sixes is pretty amazing... and triple ones are really bad.

[ClearlyTough69]

I'm toying with doing this in my next campaign, for Stealth and Perception only. This is because there are so many factors that can affect these skills and sticking to straight advantage and disadvantage does not adequately reflect the subtlety and range of in-game situations in my opinion.

I've done a lot of simulations and have been very pleased with the results, but it's still early days: I haven't yet discussed this with my players for example!

[JellyPooga]

Actually, Fantasy Age (https://greenronin.com/fantasyage/) does pretty much this (except for the adding/removing dice from the pool part): where D&D would have you roll 1d20, FA has you roll 3d6 and if you roll doubles (and still hit the DC) you get to add additional riders to whatever it was you were trying to do (the higher the doubles the better). I forget what happens on triples, but I triple sixes is pretty amazing... and triple ones are really bad.

Yeah, it's one of the things that attracted me to the Fantasy Age system. It's got some nice bare-bones, but it also has a weird disjunction between "generic crunch" and "fluff-related crunch"...on the one hand it seems to be trying to portray any kind of fantasy and the other it seems to have a very specific vision of the style it's going for. Kind of jarring.

As to the matter at hand, I considered 3d6 but there's a couple of issues; 1) it tops out at 18, which means adjusting DC's. 2) the odds of doubles/triples is higher than four/five of a kind, a little too much higher to coincide with the "normal" 5% chance of a d20. 3) I was kind of thinking about poker dice when the OP mentioned Yahtzee and 5d4 nicely marries the idea of 5 dice for a "hand" and a number range that tops out at 20.

As I mentioned before, running with the "poker dice" notion opens up a bit of wiggle room. X-of-a-kind, Runs and Flushes are all things that you could potentially include;

- The Champions Improved Critical, for instance, might trigger a Crit on a Run of 4 (as well as X-of-a-kind) at 3rd level, improving to any Run of 3 for Superior Critical at 15th level. Or perhaps have Runs instigate a "free" combat maneuver; disarm on a Run of 3, trip on a Run of 4, maybe.

- Including Flushes would mean tailoring some dice to include different coloured numbers; using 12-sided d4 (numbers 1-4, three times), you could easily paint in the numbers as red, blue and green. This opens up colour combinations as well; perhaps getting any flush could add the highest die to damage if you hit, or something similar.

[goatmeal]

Thanks for the feedback, both of you. Didn’t know about that mechanic in Fantasy Age, so that’s an interesting option, and adding more dice to it could prove to make it even more fun.
Having said that, this is a bit more of a change than I had in mind. I like the randomness of the d20 more than xd6 for most things and I think that could be quite an adjustment to make such a big change. The actual Yahtzee mechanics could add some more randomness back in, but I think it would be hard for many people to get their mind around, say 1-1-1 being a good roll. (At least it’s hard for me to get my mind around that.) Would have to look at the probabilities closely and do lots of playtesting. A bit more work than I had in mind.
I was thinking more along the lines of if you had two things that gave advantage you could roll three dice and take the top rolls. If more than one of those dice would have hit, then you get advantage on damage dice as well. Then depending on that roll, you might get a critical hit.

[goatmeal]

I'm toying with doing this in my next campaign, for Stealth and Perception only. This is because there are so many factors that can affect these skills and sticking to straight advantage and disadvantage does not adequately reflect the subtlety and range of in-game situations in my opinion.

I've done a lot of simulations and have been very pleased with the results, but it's still early days: I haven't yet discussed this with my players for example!

I missed this reply earlier: let me know how it goes. I'd be interested to find out.

[Knaight]

Crunching the numbers on advantage and disadvantage stacking does suggest that it's generally pretty functional. With that said, if rolling lots of dice is something you're interested in, there are systems that do that - most are different enough from 5e to make transfering concepts over, but you should really give Legends of the Five Rings and Legend of the Wu-lin a look. The second one includes mechanics for saving dice that aren't used, and might be up your alley. Advantage/Disadvantage is a limited case of a broader roll and keep mechanic, and while they're not the most ubiquitous core die mechanic they do crop up every so often.