the stack of advantage and disadvantage

[Torpin]

if you get multiple advantages from different source and 1 disadvantage is that still advantage or is that a neutral roll?

[Calen]

Per the PHB it is neutral regardless of the stacks of either. (I don't have the page # in front of me ATM)

[Man_Over_Game]

Per the PHB it is neutral regardless of the stacks of either. (I don't have the page # in front of me ATM)

P.173 of the Player's Handbook:

If circumstances cause a roll to have both advantage and disadvantage, you are considered to have neither of them, and you roll one d20. This is true even if multiple circumstances impose disadvantage and only one grants advantage or vice versa. In such a situation, you have neither advantage nor disadvantage.

[Samayu]

advantage + advantage = advantage
advantage + disadvantage = 0
advantage + advantage + disadvantage = 0

But what about advantage + disadvantage = 0, followed up with advantage later in the turn. Then you have: 0 + advantage

[JoeJ]

advantage + advantage = advantage
advantage + disadvantage = 0
advantage + advantage + disadvantage = 0

But what about advantage + disadvantage = 0, followed up with advantage later in the turn. Then you have: 0 + advantage

Advantage and disadvantage are not cumulative over the turn; they only apply to one specific die roll. If you have any number (greater than zero) of advantages and any number (greater than zero) of disadvantages on the same die roll, they cancel out.

[Samayu]

Yeah, I suppose you're right.

[Samayu]

I don't suppose somebody ccould explain this rule in a way that can prevent me from thinking it's the stupidest rule ever?

[Torpin]

I don't suppose somebody ccould explain this rule in a way that can prevent me from thinking it's the stupidest rule ever?

i dont know if you ever played 3/3.5 but a lot of combat was just adding and subtracting various buff and conditonal modifiers and it took for friggin ever. now fifth in my limited experience playing is a lot more streamlined and this seems consistent in the steam lined manner upon which it was redone

[Lunali]

I don't suppose somebody ccould explain this rule in a way that can prevent me from thinking it's the stupidest rule ever?

Once you have one source of each, it's far less likely for any additional sources to make as big of a change in the odds.

Think of having both as rolling 3d20 and taking the middle result. We can keep the average the same and increase the chance of 1s and 20s (which is appropriate for having both advantage and disadvantage) by changing that to 1d20. Now if another advantage or disadvantage shifted that 3d20 to 4d20 taking the second highest or lowest (as appropriate) that's a much smaller difference than shifting the 1d20 to 2d20.

[RSP]

I don't suppose somebody ccould explain this rule in a way that can prevent me from thinking it's the stupidest rule ever?

I dislike it for taking away meaningful decisions with abilities. For instance, why ever Reckless Attack if you have Advantage from another source?

The Raging Barbarian forgoes defense for offense, unless the target of his strikes is lying prone on the floor (storywise when they’d be going for the kill), in which case he’s like, “nah, I’m gonna keep my defenses up this time.”

I’d prefer the system account for choosing to use abilities that stack Advantage or Disadvantage.

If the Bard puts on a performance at a tavern, and gets help from a fellow PC in his Performance check, that’s Advantage. If they’re vain enough to be willing to spend a 2nd level slot casting Enhance Ability (Charisma) because that’s what their character would do, why not give them the best roll out of three, rather than two? Shouldn’t the spell actually make them better than if they hadn’t cast it?

Just my 2 cents on it though.

[Jerrykhor]

One simple houserule that my table use is to net off Advantage/Disadvantage on a 1 to 1 basis.

This prevents a blind, prone, poisoned, restrained Barbarian from negating the disadvantage to attack just from Reckless Attack.

[JoeJ]

One simple houserule that my table use is to net off Advantage/Disadvantage on a 1 to 1 basis.

This prevents a blind, prone, poisoned, restrained Barbarian from negating the disadvantage to attack just from Reckless Attack.

It seems pretty thematic to me for Reckless Attack to be able to negate all of that.

[OvisCaedo]

It's just... part of the simplicity direction as a whole. I don't really care much for it, but the game's definitely not built at all to handle multiple advantages or disadvantages stacking for a greater effect. It COULD probably still handle "maybe one advantage shouldn't discard five disadvantages", but the designers seemed to just not want people having to bother counting up each side.

So instead two blind restrained poisoned fighters on the ground next to each other fight each other at full, natural, unhindered effectiveness. Or, less dramatically, just kind of means that two people fighting each other blind in general do so virtually unhindered. Makes fog cloud a sort of silly "neutralize everything".

[Rukelnikov]

It is made so it is simple.

3.5 (as glorious as it is) can quickly become a labyrinth of bonuses and penalties, especially since you need to keep track of the types of the bonuses, and while certainly more accurate at depicting many situations, it tends to make combat far slower when you need to check just inside how many auras a given character is and how many spell effects are affecting it.

In 5e once you know you have one source of advantage you don't care if you have more, same with disadvantage.

Sure, this have stupid side effects like 2 blind people fighting each other being effectively immune to a lot of statuses. If one of them is prone and restrained, he is still fighting as effectively as the other one. Normally its a small price to pay for the simplicity and speed of rounds gained (I wish they were faster, but players have a lot to do with that too)

[Mordaedil]

I don't suppose somebody ccould explain this rule in a way that can prevent me from thinking it's the stupidest rule ever?

In combat any number of things can swing things one way or another. Gaining advantage can be a huge boon and getting disadvantages can be a huge detriment. Simplifying the process into a matter of "the wind blows behind me", "but the plywood is rotten" and agreeing then it is simply a straight roll instead of factoring in extra advantages or disadvantages ad infinitum.

It also allows certain class features like the barbarians reckless attack to used more strategically. Are you really going to risk allowing the enemy advantage on you for a simple straight roll or will you save it for when it can grant advantage, gaining the strongest benefit?

So it's not a stupid rule, it just is expedient. You don't need to think of gaining more than one advantage and the DM needs not apply more than a single disadvantage.

[Jerrykhor]

I disagree. Its a stupid rule because it cheapens the abilities that have those effects. Them not stacking is already one thing, but by completely negating them altogether with just one instance of advantage is just straight up bull****. Balance is more important than thematics. Also, its nowhere near 3.5's tediousness of calculating a bunch of floating numbers. All you need to know is whether which source of advantage or disadvantage is more than the other.

Fortunately, it doesn't come up very often at the table.

[R.Shackleford]

I don't suppose somebody ccould explain this rule in a way that can prevent me from thinking it's the stupidest rule ever?

Fiddly bonuses are fiddly and take up time. No stacking is the easier and quicker solution.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I disagree. Its a stupid rule because it cheapens the abilities that have those effects. Them not stacking is already one thing, but by completely negating them altogether with just one instance of advantage is just straight up bull****. Balance is more important than thematics. Also, its nowhere near 3.5's tediousness of calculating a bunch of floating numbers. All you need to know is whether which source of advantage or disadvantage is more than the other.

Fortunately, it doesn't come up very often at the table.

Darkness+Devils Sight is already contentious enough with the fact that some believe it benefits the warlock too greatly.

The side effect of your perceived solution is that, with enough sources of advantage, not only can the enemies under that spell somehow end up attacking at advantage despite attacking a target they can't see, but with enough sources of disadvantage the Warlock (who by all accounts should be the master of the sphere of darkness, as the only one who can see through it) could be made a joke of and make every attack at disadvantage.

So, in the efforts to make things simple, you don't bother trying to find out which has applied more and just neutralize it if both apply.

Let's not even get started on the mess it would make for Sneak Attack as well.

[Greywander]

I don't suppose somebody ccould explain this rule in a way that can prevent me from thinking it's the stupidest rule ever?

It means that on any given roll, you only ever have to worry about whether you have at least one source of disadvantage or advantage. It doesn't matter how many, specifically, you have. As soon as you find one source of (dis)advantage, you can stop looking and move on with the game. So, it makes the game run faster and easier.

And really, people have done the math, and the more dice you roll, the less benefit each one provides. Sure, rolling with double or triple advantage is better, but only marginally, and at some point it stops being worth the effort to tally up.

As to why many sources of advantage will cancel out with one source of disadvantage, and vice versa, again it's because it's easier to just find one source of (dis)advantage and stop counting, otherwise you get bogged down. It also affects tactics, and forces you to avoid sources of disadvantage when otherwise you would be able to just stack enough advantage to cancel out and still have advantage. Remember, you can do the same to your enemies to negate their advantage.

A lot of the criticisms posted in this thread have merit, but no one can deny that the way it's written does help speed up the game and prevent things from getting overly complicated. This is why there will never be one perfect RPG to rule them all, because different people are looking for different things in a game, and no one ruleset is able to deliver everything.

[Chronos]

In real life, combatants will seek out every source of advantage they can. If you can get advantage by fighting from the high ground, or fighting with the sun at your back, or taking the enemy by surprise, or by denying them steady footing, you're not going to just choose one: If possible, you're going to try to do all of them. But there's no reason to do that in the game.

I can understand that "roll five dice and choose the best of them" gets silly, and for very little gain. But if advantage combined with disadvantage as "whichever one there's more of" instead of "any amount is total cancellation", then there'd still be some reason to want multiple sources of advantage: You'd be in better shape if something imposed disadvantage.

[Samayu]

Various explanations of streamlining play

OK, that's fair. It's not the stupidest rule ever. But it's still up there.

Once you have one source of each, it's far less likely for any additional sources to make as big of a change in the odds.

Diminishing returns. That makes sense. But I think there are other aspects mentioned in this discussion that also make sense. I don't think your argument cancels out all of them.

[Greywander]

It sounds like maybe 3.x (or, more likely, Pathfinder) would be more up your alley. It has a different design philosophy from 5e that caters to trying to stack every possible bonus you can in order to make a beast of a character. Which can be a lot of fun. You can do some crazy things in 3.x.

5e seems to strike a balance between being rules-light and rules-heavy. It's light enough that the game can move along without getting bogged down, but heavy enough that you have interesting character options to work with and meaningful tactical choices to make. Probably some playtesting showed that stacking (dis)advantage didn't add enough meaningful value to the game to justify the time spent on it.

If you don't mind spending a bit more time going through the crunch (rolling dice, adding numbers, etc.), then a heavier ruleset like 3.x might be more enjoyable. Or, if you want to try something different, maybe Exalted or GURPS. Again, it all depends on what you want. A lot of people disliked 4e, but from what I understand it wasn't actually a bad game, it just didn't appeal to the folks who would be drawn to either 3.x or 5e because, again, it had a different design philosophy.

To be honest, I've never liked D&D (I made a thread about this a while back, and my list of grievances with D&D was basically everything that made it different from other RPGs), but I find 5e to be the most appealing edition. In fact, 5e is most of what I've played, plus a couple sessions of Pathfinder and a couple more of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I'm still looking for my ideal system, but it can be hard to find people to play with, and harder if it's not D&D.

Edit: There's also Pathfinder 2, which IIRC continues more in the tradition of 3.x rather than being more like 5e. Not super familiar with it, I'm not even that familiar with 3.x/Pathfinder, so I don't know that I can tell you anything else useful about it.

[Rukelnikov]

You can do some crazy things in 3.x.

Oh yeah, yeah we did. In the times of the active wizards forums we did stuff like becoming colossal an be surrounded by a cloud of thousand mentally commanded automatons, nuke any city with a single spell, crash the Moon into the Earth, and of course, the Dimplomancer, who would turn an angry mob into fanatics of him by jumping 300 ft.

It was theorycrafting's Valhalla.

Edit: There's also Pathfinder 2, which IIRC continues more in the tradition of 3.x rather than being more like 5e. Not super familiar with it, I'm not even that familiar with 3.x/Pathfinder, so I don't know that I can tell you anything else useful about it.

Don't wanna dis PF2 since I haven't played the playtest version, but from reading it, no, its pretty far from 3.x I find it much more similar to 4th ed, for starters there's no multiclass, you can get some of other classes features by taking feats, and also your level is factored into lots of formulas including att, ac, etc.

[RSP]

It sounds like maybe 3.x (or, more likely, Pathfinder) would be more up your alley. It has a different design philosophy from 5e that caters to trying to stack every possible bonus you can in order to make a beast of a character.

For the record, there’s a whole lot of space between 3.5 and stacking Dis/Advantage. I don’t think it slows the game down at all (or adds to the complexity) if I roll 3d20 rather than 2d20 and pick the highest number. That’s a far cry from “trying to stack every possible bonus.”

The way they designed the Advantage system is fine, but the non-stacking removes a lot of choices characters/players could have, which I believe is a detriment to the game: players should have choices that matter, such as whether to use a limited resource for a little extra umph.

Nothing is added to the complexity of the game: the characters already have these abilities. There’s no having to add various modifiers from seven different sources. It’s literally rolling 3 dice instead of 2, and then picking the highest number out of the three results, instead of picking the higher out of the two.

[JoeJ]

For the record, there’s a whole lot of space between 3.5 and stacking Dis/Advantage. I don’t think it slows the game down at all (or adds to the complexity) if I roll 3d20 rather than 2d20 and pick the highest number. That’s a far cry from “trying to stack every possible bonus.”

The way they designed the Advantage system is fine, but the non-stacking removes a lot of choices characters/players could have, which I believe is a detriment to the game: players should have choices that matter, such as whether to use a limited resource for a little extra umph.

Nothing is added to the complexity of the game: the characters already have these abilities. There’s no having to add various modifiers from seven different sources. It’s literally rolling 3 dice instead of 2, and then picking the highest number out of the three results, instead of picking the higher out of the two.

So you'd limit it to two sources of (dis)advantage instead of one?

[RSP]

So you'd limit it to two sources of (dis)advantage instead of one?

Nope. I’d allow what characters want to do with their abilities to matter. There’s a pretty limited pool of ways to get Dis/Advantage, most of which are either limited resources or come with a drawback (like Reckless Attack), that I’m not worried about it.

I don’t foresee any issue of “nova-ing” Advantage, though I also haven’t really looked for exploits, as, again, it’s usually tough to find one way to get Dis/Advantage, let alone two or three.

Edit: one caveat being the flanking rule variant, which I’ve never liked anyway, as it usually just means Advantage is the norm for any and all attacks. But again, if playing that way and not allowing stacking, any ability (such as Reckless) losses it’s value, meaning certain classes/subclasses get devalued.

[JoeJ]

Nope. I’d allow what characters want to do with their abilities to matter. There’s a pretty limited pool of ways to get Dis/Advantage, most of which are either limited resources or come with a drawback (like Reckless Attack), that I’m not worried about it.

I don’t foresee any issue of “nova-ing” Advantage, though I also haven’t really looked for exploits, as, again, it’s usually tough to find one way to get Dis/Advantage, let alone two or three.

Edit: one caveat being the flanking rule variant, which I’ve never liked anyway, as it usually just means Advantage is the norm for any and all attacks. But again, if playing that way and not allowing stacking, any ability (such as Reckless) losses it’s value, meaning certain classes/subclasses get devalued.

So when you said three dice, what you actually meant was as many dice as the player and/or DM can come up with a justification to use? That has the potential to slow down the game, not so much from the dice themselves as from the natural desire to come up with as many sources of advantage as possible.

[RSP]

So when you said three dice, what you actually meant was as many dice as the player and/or DM can come up with a justification to use? That has the potential to slow down the game, not so much from the dice themselves as from the natural desire to come up with as many sources of advantage as possible.

Not really. How long do you, or your DM, currently spend figuring out if there’s Disadvantage or Advantage on each roll? It’s that same amount of time.

Stating there would be some new time drag as the DM must now go through every possible instance of possible Adv and/or Disadvantage, is just creating a false problem for the sake of argument. That is, if that hypothetical DM isn’t already going through every instance to ensure there shouldn’t be Advantage, Disadvantage or both, already, then why would they suddenly start now?

This is only relevant if said hypothetical DM is already spending way too much time examining every roll from every angle and ending with a decision only after concluding there’s already both Adv and Disadvantage on every roll, and as such, stops their review at that point as there’s no need to proceed any further since no stacking or canceling out.

But in this case, the DM is already wasting too much time and no roll ever gets Adv or Disadvantage, as they’ll always both exist. The problem here isn’t the Adv/Disadvantage Rules, but rather the DM’s inability to assess a situation, make a logical ruling and move on. That problem isn’t going away just because one specific rule doesn’t allow multiple instance of occurrence.

[Max_Killjoy]

Reducing most imposed bonuses and penalties ("maluses" I guess was the word for a while there...) to just Advantage and Disadvantage strips away a ton of granularity. Further reducing it to "any one advantage offsets all possible disadvantages" and the opposite... sometimes I feel like 5e might as well just be flipping coins and giving the fight to the whoever called the result.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Reducing most imposed bonuses and penalties ("maluses" I guess was the word for a while there...) to just Advantage and Disadvantage strips away a ton of granularity. Further reducing it to "any one advantage offsets all possible disadvantages" and the opposite... sometimes I feel like 5e might as well just be flipping coins and giving the fight to the whoever called the result.

You may feel that way, but I have yet to observe it in play. Instead, it speeds things up to the point where you can have both a full fight (or several!) and do other meaningful stuff in a session. It also reduces the cognitive load on the DM by orders of magnitude. It means that I can actually have people do cool stuff without the action coming to a screeching halt while we try to adjudicate.

A core design principle of 5e was to prevent the "buff stacking" mentality of earlier editions, where everyone had to explicitly scramble for every small modifier they could to remain effective, and he who was most "clever" won. Instead, combatants are always doing this automatically, so only particularly large things matter. The rest is already baked into the static modifiers, which represent an average skill at doing so. The "swingy" d20 also helps here--we're only looking at the part on the overall distribution where the curve is nearly flat. Anything else is for narrative resolution (ie no dice needed).

The idea that we can mechanize all (or even any) of the multitude of small factors in a fair, consistent, meaningful way is puzzling. How much is being blinded worth? Depends on thousands of variables. Assigning it "-2" (meaning a 10% decrease in success chance) isn't actually simulating anything--it's just a lie that breaks my immersion. The only honest answer is "it contributes to the noise and weights things against the blind person to some varying degree". Advantage captures that nicely, without weighing down the system. Stacking modifiers often need a spreadsheet to keep track, especially if they're conditional. It also encourages 5D-chess style of play, which is annoying to lots of people.

I can easily run a combat with 10 participants and deal with their abilities and tactics, while still role-playing the individual actions, because modifiers are basically just a three-position switch: Advantage, neutral, disadvantage. If I had to track each thing independently, I'd max out at maybe 2 NPCs per combat. Max. And combat would slow down tremendously. I did this in 4e. It stank.