What if advantage and disadvantage didn't directly cancel out?

[Rusvul]

It's bothered me for a while that several sources of advantage can be neutralized by a single source of disadvantage (and vice versa). I feel as if, for instance, a prone (1), restrained (2) character attacking a concealed target (3) shouldn't get to make a flat roll without advantage or disadvantage just because their target is also within the concealed area and cannot see them. It's not necessarily a problem at anyone's table but mine, but it just feels kind of wrong to me.

Consequently, I'm considering ruling that advantage and disadvantage cancel out on a 1:1 basis. So, the above hapless adventurer would still roll with disadvantage, because they have 3 sources of disadvantage and only one source of advantage. If they had a familiar helping them (2) and had cast true strike (3), they'd make a flat roll, and if they're a Samurai using their class feature they could even get advantage on the roll. No matter what, though, you're rolling two dice tops: even if you had three sources of advantage and no disadvantage, you're still only taking the best of 2d20s.

Has anyone used a houserule similar to this? I know it adds a level of complexity that isn't desirable at every table, but that's something that I personally enjoy, and as far as I can tell it shouldn't break anything. Abilities and effects that impose advantage or disadvantage become marginally less useful if you only have one, but potentially significantly more useful if you manage to stack several of them.

Thoughts? Are there any significant implications of this rule that I might be missing?

[Kane0]

I have done exactly this for a few years and it works perfectly fine

[Eldariel]

I've went step further and just allowed advantage and disadvantage to stack. So if you have disadvantage from being poisoned, prone and restrained, you roll 4d20 and take the worst. Similarly, if you have advantage against a blinded, prone, restrained target, you get 4d20 attack. Elven Accuracy adds an extra die. This coupled with advantage from unseen attacker working only if you yourself can see the enemy (so Fog Cloud is a two-way disadvantage if neither can see) addresses my biggest gripes about the way advantage and disadvantage work. By necessity, when fighting armored enemies, attacker has to put more work into seeing the target.

Works great in my games. No issues thus far. Since you need to track the state of advantage/disadvantage anyways, it's not even a significant amount of extra work.

[Glorthindel]

My issue with doing this is it undoes one of the benefits of the advantage system; it turns it back into a mini-game of 'hunt the bonus'.

Players (obviously) like succeeding, and one of the occasional annoyances with earlier systems is that some players would spend significant amounts of time trying to eke out every +2 (or whatever depending on system) bonus they could to improve their chances of success. Advantage removed that - either you have it or you don't, and if you have Disadavantage you can either negate that with Advantage or not, but there was no point wasting table time trying to justify having Advantage from 2-3 different sources to negate the (possibly multiple) sources of Disadvantage.

If it works for your table, then that's fine. After all, it is probably a more sensible way to apply the system if you can all be trusted. But the system as it stands is great for removing one source of possible disruption from the table and help keep the game running.

[Eldariel]

My issue with doing this is it undoes one of the benefits of the advantage system; it turns it back into a mini-game of 'hunt the bonus'.

Players (obviously) like succeeding, and one of the occasional annoyances with earlier systems is that some players would spend significant amounts of time trying to eke out every +2 (or whatever depending on system) bonus they could to improve their chances of success. Advantage removed that - either you have it or you don't, and if you have Disadavantage you can either negate that with Advantage or not, but there was no point wasting table time trying to justify having Advantage from 2-3 different sources to negate the (possibly multiple) sources of Disadvantage.

If it works for your table, then that's fine. After all, it is probably a more sensible way to apply the system if you can all be trusted. But the system as it stands is great for removing one source of possible disruption from the table and help keep the game running.

OTOH this means that class features like Samurai's Fighting Spirit don't frequently spend time being useless if the party is good at generating advantage. In general, this makes all kinds of "I have Advantage"-class features more stable: if the party has some Shield Master Battlemaster bashing everyone Prone all the time or a Druid conjuring a bunch of snakes to Restrain everyone, your Shadow Blade users and so on may be sad since their shtick doesn't do anything most of the time but this way, you don't have to worry about whether your thing is redundant with your allies'.

[Pex]

My issue with doing this is it undoes one of the benefits of the advantage system; it turns it back into a mini-game of 'hunt the bonus'.

Players (obviously) like succeeding, and one of the occasional annoyances with earlier systems is that some players would spend significant amounts of time trying to eke out every +2 (or whatever depending on system) bonus they could to improve their chances of success. Advantage removed that - either you have it or you don't, and if you have Disadavantage you can either negate that with Advantage or not, but there was no point wasting table time trying to justify having Advantage from 2-3 different sources to negate the (possibly multiple) sources of Disadvantage.

If it works for your table, then that's fine. After all, it is probably a more sensible way to apply the system if you can all be trusted. But the system as it stands is great for removing one source of possible disruption from the table and help keep the game running.

It's mitigated by only counting game mechanics that specifically say you get advantage. A player cannot just ask for advantage because of reasons. He needs some ability that invokes it.

[gameogre]

My House Rule is that they both stack. They still cancel at a one for one. It's just now if you end up with multiple of one at the end there is a effect.

Advantage/Disadvantage

Advantage/Disadvantage +/-2

Advantage/Disadvantage +/-5

[EggKookoo]

Thoughts? Are there any significant implications of this rule that I might be missing?

I haven't found the existing mechanism to be a problem. Thing to keep in mind is that, by and large, 5e avoids stacking much of anything. Obviously there are some stacking effects (+1 weapons, etc.), but for the most part it treats things as conditions that you either have or don't have. If you're stunned, being subject to a second stun effect doesn't somehow double-stun you. You're still just stunned. Same with advantage and disadvantage.

That probably doesn't change your feelings about the mechanic but I'm just saying the non-stacking thing isn't a byproduct of advantage/disadvantage but rather how a lot of the mechanics work.

[Anonymouswizard]

I remember seeing this house rule discussed as long ago as when 5e came out. It works fine, it's a bit more complex but doesn't really involve more tracking, but as has been said returns the game to having a 'hunt the advantage' element where players spend their time trying to justify multiple sources of Advantage.

As compared to the current system where players just stop after getting the first case of Advantage. I think the bonus hunters are going to hunt until rolling at the best they can anyway, and such an issue is best solved by discussing in your group who gets to bring up potential sources of Ad/Disad.

[Gale]

I feel that preventing advantage and disadvantage from stacking was a deliberate choice to prevent the system from having too big of an impact on the game overall. They are meant to help or hinder in small but significant ways while never having the potential to nearly guarantee success on a check or win an encounter outright.

For example, if you want to convince an NPC to do something, perhaps with a Persuasion roll, you don't actually need to think of anything clever to say, just cast Enhance Ability and have a fellow party member assist you on the check. Now you get to roll three times and be nearly guaranteed to succeed. This process can be applied to nearly everything. In fact, I'm overcomplicating this, as you could simply have your entire party use the Help action. A party of six can collaborate to make nearly every skill check with quintuple advantage.

Consider also how multiple disadvantages can affect a foe. Two or more instances of disadvantage to attack rolls can make many enemies completely helpless. Maybe this feels appropriate. But I do feel that the game designers wanted to avoid the possibility that players can essentially incapacitate enemies by simply stacking the same effect multiple times, which is why nearly all effects in this game don't stack. It also means that no matter if you are a player or enemy no disadvantageous situation is too dire to escape from. Nothing is ever an impossible hurdle.

I don't think the game was designed with advantage or disadvantage stacking in mind, as the examples above show. It's a bit too easy to get advantage or disadvantage, and when they stack even once they can nearly guarantee success or failure. It leaves the door open for abuse, and even if your players never enter it it can still create problems with the health of the game as a whole. D&D at its core is a game of chance where players plan and take calculated risk in order to succeed. If you allow advantage and disadvantage stacking then players can ostensibly skip out on taking risks and simply make plans that guarantee success. Which, in my opinion ruins a lot of the fun of the game.

5th edition works so well in my opinion because it's a game of strategy. You can't necessarily stack bonuses or penalties until they're so high that they can't be countered, which was definitely an issue in older editions, namely 3rd. Advantage and disadvantage was specifically designed to replace number stacking and eliminate issues like these. By allowing stacking you're working against the intent of the system entirely and in my opinion discouraging player creativity. I'm sure it's possible to permit stacking by adding in some additional rules to prevent abuse. But now it seems you're going against the grain to fix an issue that may have never been a problem to start with. The system isn't perfect, and definitely has some silly side effects, but I do think it works and prevents the game from breaking.

[Zhorn]

My issue with doing this is it undoes one of the benefits of the advantage system; it turns it back into a mini-game of 'hunt the bonus'.

I'm partly with you on this, but at the same time I don't see it as being AS bad as previous versions of bonus hunting.
At least with the advantage/disadvantage stacking, the overall range of a check is still unchanged, so if your best possible result was a 26 (1d20+6), taking the best of multiple d20's is not boosting you outside that range.

Not fond of the stacking, but not enough so to be against it. As a basic concept, it works and doesn't look to break anything with inflated values or multiple pluses.

[Osuniev]

In fact the stacking is fine. Unlike static bonuses, which get even more important the more they're stacked (Moving your AC from 19 to 20 is a much bigger change than from 12 to 13), multiple advantage becomes less and less important.

the best of 4d20 and the best of 2d20 are not that different, whilst the best of 2d20 is much better than a straight roll.

I used the same houserule and it worked fine. Unfortunately, my games have moved to roll20 which doesn't give me an easy and convenient way to do 3 or 4 d20 for most roll, so I'm not using it at the moment. I still keep cancel adv/dis on a 1:1 basis, though, cause it just makes sense.

[Greywander]

If you want to avoid the "hunt the bonus" issue, consider capping the number of advantages and disadvantages you can get. Three seems like a decent number. So once you have three sources of advantage, you stop gaining any benefit from more advantage. If you only have two sources of disadvantage, you still get to make the roll with advantage, but if you get a third source of advantage, then they cancel out and you can't stack another advantage.

This would still be somewhat of a "hunt the bonus" game, since you'd be looking for ways to insure all three sources of advantage (for you) or disadvantage (for enemies). And for a good chunk of the time it would probably be a wasted effort as there wouldn't be anything giving you disadvantage or your enemies advantage (so a single source of advantage/disadvantage would be sufficient). This is probably why it doesn't stack. But capping it would at least give permission to the players to stop hunting for bonuses after a certain point, as opposed to stacking indefinitely.