Replacing advantage/disadvantage with stacking banes and boons

[dejarnjc]

Hi all,

I've been reading a lot about Shadow of the Demon Lord lately and so I've picked it up and read through the base book and found that there's a lot to like. I'm not sure if it'll replace D&D 5e for me yet but it has given me a lot to think about and I'm eager to try it out. One of my favorite things about the system is the banes and boons system. A bane or a boon is basically a d6 that you can roll to influence your D20 roll in either a negative (bane) or positive (boon) way. Banes and boons do stack and they do cancel out. So if you have 3 banes and 1 boon applied to a roll then you would roll your D20 with 2 banes essentially. When you do so, you choose the highest number of the dice rolled and then apply it to your D20 roll.


I like this a lot more than the advantage/disadvantage system presented in 5e due to the fact that boons/banes can stack whereas advantage/disadvantage cannot. I always found it kind of silly that if an enemy has been hit by faerie fire and is knocked prone and my Paladin has a vow of enmity on him and is invisible, I still would only get regular advantage on the attack. I'm also not a fan of the fact that 1 source of disadvantage completely cancels out 3 sources of advantage.

What I'm proposing trying out (with willing players) is implementing this system into 5e. As I understand it, rolling with advantage or disadvantage generally equates to a +5 or a -5 on a die roll. Accordingly, I think that I should use a d8 (avg roll of 5) in 5e versus the d6 used in Shadow of the Demon Lord.


Do you all foresee any major issues if I implemented this? Could this break down the game? Do the potential complications outweigh the potential gain from making this change?

[gkathellar]

What I'm proposing trying out (with willing players) is implementing this system into 5e. As I understand it, rolling with advantage or disadvantage generally equates to a +5 or a -5 on a die roll.

Er ... sort of. It equates to a higher or lower average, which is different from a flat +/-5 in a number of respects. It's probability, not normal arithmetic. Notably, advantage can never push your roll above 20 or beneath 1.

Boons and banes are cool, but they will mess with 5E's math, and they will make the entire system more swingy, which may not be desirable. Advantage is more of an assurance that you'll roll well, whereas a boon is just a +whatever.

[dejarnjc]

Er ... sort of. It equates to a higher or lower average, which is different from a flat +/-5 in a number of respects. It's probability, not normal arithmetic. Notably, advantage can never push your roll above 20 or beneath 1.

Boons and banes are cool, but they will mess with 5E's math, and they will make the entire system more swingy, which may not be desirable. Advantage is more of an assurance that you'll roll well, whereas a boon is just a +whatever.

Hmm great point. I also didn't consider the effect that it would have on crit chance which would hurt Champions, Rogues, Paladins, and Bladelocks in particular...

[Yakmala]

It sounds like an interesting system, but the fact that Advantages and Disadvantages don't stack is the entire point.

5e streamlined a system that was getting more bloated with every new iteration.

I started playing back in the 1st-2nd edition days. Got out of it during 3-3.5 and got invited back to play in a game during 4th edition. I lasted a month before I dropped out. The system was a mess and more of a watered down wargame/MMO hybrid than an RPG.

5th edition has, in my opinion, done an excellent job of cutting out the fat and creating a system that all players, especially those new to the hobby, could grasp very quickly. And nowhere is this better represented than in the Advantage/Disadvantage system. No stacking, no debating which of a dozens different things belong in column a or column b before making an attack roll. If you have both advantages and disadvantages, regardless of number, roll normally. Simple.

[Man_Over_Game]

Er ... sort of. It equates to a higher or lower average, which is different from a flat +/-5 in a number of respects. It's probability, not normal arithmetic. Notably, advantage can never push your roll above 20 or beneath 1.

Boons and banes are cool, but they will mess with 5E's math, and they will make the entire system more swingy, which may not be desirable. Advantage is more of an assurance that you'll roll well, whereas a boon is just a +whatever.

More on this, if you take the average gain of all possible rolls, it actually averages out to a 3.33 difference.

That is, someone with Advantage will roll 3.33 points higher, on average, than someone without it.

The 5 point difference comes from comparing the average roll of a d20 being 10.5 and the average roll of 2d20k1 (Advantage) being about 15.5. Sure, there's a +5 point difference when you're considering the most common rolls (when 50% chance occurs), but most people don't consider counting the other 19 outcomes which have less of a change. A 20% chance on a 1d20 is 17, but 20% chance on 2d20k1 is 19. A 2 point gain, much less than the commonly quoted +5.

[Segev]

If you like the stacking effect, rather than adding new dice that modify the roll, why not just keep stacking d20s?

So if you have Advantage x2, you roll three dice and take the best one. If you have Advantage x2 and Disadvantage x1, this sums to Advantage x1 and you roll two dice, keeping the best.

Same amount of bookkeeping, while staying more within the design space D&D 5e was built around.

[dejarnjc]

If you like the stacking effect, rather than adding new dice that modify the roll, why not just keep stacking d20s?

So if you have Advantage x2, you roll three dice and take the best one. If you have Advantage x2 and Disadvantage x1, this sums to Advantage x1 and you roll two dice, keeping the best.

Same amount of bookkeeping, while staying more within the design space D&D 5e was built around.

I've considered this previous lady but I'm concerned about the advantage it would lend to crit builds. Each added d20 significantly boosts the crit chance which would help out rogues, paladins, and bladelocks a lot. And I can envision builds built around getting 3+ sources of advantage and fishing for massive criticals. Maybe that's not a bad thing though.


As to advantage/disadvantage actually providing a 3.33 increase/decrease, well then maybe using a d6 is the way to go after all.

[Man_Over_Game]

I've considered this previous lady but I'm concerned about the advantage it would lend to crit builds. Each added d20 significantly boosts the crit chance which would help out rogues, paladins, and bladelocks a lot. And I can envision builds built around getting 3+ sources of advantage and fishing for massive criticals. Maybe that's not a bad thing though.

Critical hits don't usually do much in 5e, except in very niche circumstances (Rogue, Paladin). In most cases, a critical adds about 50% more damage to the individual attack. Even with 3d20, the chance to crit is less than 15% without some way of expanding the crit range.

[Vulsutyr]

Critical hits don't usually do much in 5e, except in very niche circumstances (Rogue, Paladin). In most cases, a critical adds about 50% more damage to the individual attack. Even with 3d20, the chance to crit is less than 15% without some way of expanding the crit range.

Well yes, normally it doesn’t add much, but if you make a Crist fishing character, you find a lot of extra damage dice to roll. That’s the whole point.

[Lunali]

If you want to stack advantage and disadvantage, add a d20 for every instance of advantage and disadvantage, after rolling, remove the highest for each disadvantage and the lowest for each advantage.

[Kane0]

Interesting. Doesn't seem broken on first glance, i'd say its worth a playtest at least. Perhaps go with d6s, and make sure to let us know how it goes!