After experiencing 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, I've become fond of the advantage and disadvantage rule. Particularly, I like how it can allow roleplaying to add an effect to dice rolls rather than add a vague bonus to one's skill check.
To put it simply, Advantage allows you to roll twice and take the higher result; Disadvantage forces you to roll twice and take the lower result.
For instance: In 5E, a PC tells the DM that she would like to ask a stranger for directions by showing him a map of the city. She passes herself off as innocent and confused as she sidesteps to give the stranger a good look at the map. Meanwhile, she is reaching for his coin purse. A DM could reasonably say she has Advantage on a Sleight of Hand check to steal the man's purse.
Alternatively, in Pathfinder, if a PC were to attempt the exact same strategy, what is there to give besides a bonus, the amount of which you need to determine on the spot? How would you calculate a bonus or penalty in such situations?
This is my predicament: I see no reason NOT to incorporate Advantage/Disadvantage to my Pathfinder game(s), but do other players think it is balanced?
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I advise against it. Part of why it works in 5E is because of "bounded accuracy". The relationship between bonuses and DCs in 5E is such that you almost never have a near-automatic success or near-automatic failure; always somewhere in the middle. As a result, advantage gives you good odds, but still leaves a very real chance of failing (or of succeeding with disadvantage). In Pathfinder, however, the math much more frequently moves toward "only fail on a 1" or "only succeed on a 20", and when you're that far to the extreme, the power of (dis)advantage scales up tremendously. (This is why so many GMs dislike the few reroll abilities that exist in Pathfinder, such as Fortune/Misfortune.)
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Alternatively, in Pathfinder, if a PC were to attempt the exact same strategy, what is there to give besides a bonus, the amount of which you need to determine on the spot? How would you calculate a bonus or penalty in such situations?
I don't know if this was carried over into the Pathfinder rulebook, but in D&D 3e there was a guideline of giving characters a +2 or -2 modifier to a roll if the GM wasn't certain what value to give for a situational modifier.
I don't know if this was carried over into the Pathfinder rulebook, but in D&D 3e there was a guideline of giving characters a +2 or -2 modifier to a roll if the GM wasn't certain what value to give for a situational modifier.
If that seems to be the norm, then I'll incorporate that with my campaigns. I guess I needed confirmation from a third party about whether there should be a bonus/penalty and how much it should be.
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Rule of thumb for pretty much any tabletop RPG is that you're the GM. You get to make the rules. The biggest advice I - and, if humility allows, anyone - can give you about running a tabletop game is to not let the rules define you, your players, or their actions. Use the rules as a guideline, but if there's something a character wants to do that the rules don't cover, come up with something on the fly to adjudicate how it works. One thing that sticks with me from the moment I first picked up the DMG for 3.5e was an example of play that described a monk jumping off a balcony, grabbing a chandelier, swinging across to an opposite balcony, and booting an enemy in the face. This is something that no rules system could reasonably be expected to have a ready answer for how to run because of how incredibly situational it is. So it tells you how to cobble things together: Jump check to reach the chandelier, grapple check to grab it, and treat the attack like a charge, ignoring the movement requirements.
This is the sort of thing that is the main advantage of tabletop games over computer games - as the GM, you are able to adjust the rules as you see fit to allow players to (attempt to) do whatever they can think of. True, I'm not talking about bonuses here, but the principle is the same. Pathfinder uses bonuses to convey various advantages and disadvantages a character may have to certain actions. If you think a player should have a greater advantage than the rules-dictated numbers grant them, give it to them. Likewise for disadvantages.
(Incidentally, this finer degree of modularity is why I greatly prefer the bonus/penalty system to 5e's advantage/disadvantage system which is a pretty significant downside for me. Sadly, that sole mechanic is enough to keep me from ever being able to like 5e. But I'm not here to rekindle edition wars, so that's all I'm going to say on the matter.)
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You're comparing a reroll to taking 10, though. Situational bonuses like this are more frequent in combat on your attack rolls and the like where you can't take 10. In any case, we're talking about dis/advantage versus floating modifiers, which tend to be fairly small for the sorts of conditional situations that dis/advantage is used in - usually +2, +4 in an extreme case. In comparison, taking 10 is essentially a +10 bonus.
When comparing the impact on a result that a +2 bonus has compared to rerolling, rerolling has a much more significant boost to success rate. On a 20% chance of success, rerolling almost doubles that to 36% while a +2 bonus only increases it to 30%. On a 80% chance of success, rerolling bumps that up to 96% while a +2 only gives you 90%. Not to mention the fact that rerolling makes it more like you could roll a natural 20, which a floating modifier has no effect on.
I'm with Jiggy. It is not a good idea to introduce Ad/Disad into a Pathfinder game, at least with skills and attack rolls.
Skill checks and attack rolls in Pathfinder scale quickly and largely, and those numbers are deeply entwined in how the game is supposed to work. Furthermore most of the advantage/disadvantage circumstances aren't GM fiat but rather from situations or spell effects. (flanking, helping another with a skill). There is plenty of room for a GM/DM to allow for advantage/disadvantage, but most skill checks in Pathfinder already have circumstance modifiers already baked into the DC, eliminating the need for a new system to correct for it.
5e doesn't put nearly as much mechanical emphasis on skills and gives almost no room for skill growth as the character's level up. The 'bounded accuracy' concept is intended to keep crunch numbers down to earth, which is counter to Pathfinder's notion of ever-growing bonuses. Advantage/disadvantage plays into this notion, giving the players a much needed edge when they work for it. Adding this to a Pathfinder game is a slippery slope.
Now on a side note, I love 5e and have actually incorporated advantage/disadvantage into my weekly Pathfinder/Dark Sun game in other ways. My halfling player's psionic wild talent is precognition (she gets 'advantage' on initiative checks). My thri-kreen player (voluntarily, for fun RP reasons, to go along with the original 2e source material) has imposed 'disadvantage' on all sense motive checks regarding races other her native bug-like thri-kreen. The latter has presented some rather funny RP moments, and so we've stuck with it.
TL;DR-
Pathfinder and 5e are very different games mechanically, and it can be dangerous to use the ad/disad system in Pathfinder.
I don't know if this was carried over into the Pathfinder rulebook, but in D&D 3e there was a guideline of giving characters a +2 or -2 modifier to a roll if the GM wasn't certain what value to give for a situational modifier.If that seems to be the norm, then I'll incorporate that with my campaigns. I guess I needed confirmation from a third party about whether there should be a bonus/penalty and how much it should be.
I wish my GM would use this. I'd like to feel that there is actually a benefit to making a compelling case to an NPC or coming up with a clever solution, as opposed to having the same odds with minimal thought or effort. Maybe he does it but makes no mention. I'll never know. The only downside I can think of to advantage/disadvantage or simply a +2/-2 is that some players just aren't as good at roleplaying, puzzle solving, etc. and this could possibly feel like a benefit that is not available to them. Even if that is so, I think such a reward is worth giving out, and that a less-eloquent player should still receive the reward for trying.
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I wish my GM would use this. I'd like to feel that there is actually a benefit to making a compelling case to an NPC or coming up with a clever solution, as opposed to having the same odds with minimal thought or effort. Maybe he does it but makes no mention. I'll never know. The only downside I can think of to advantage/disadvantage or simply a +2/-2 is that some players just aren't as good at roleplaying, puzzle solving, etc. and this could possibly feel like a benefit that is not available to them. Even if that is so, I think such a reward is worth giving out, and that a less-eloquent player should still receive the reward for trying.I don't know if this was carried over into the Pathfinder rulebook, but in D&D 3e there was a guideline of giving characters a +2 or -2 modifier to a roll if the GM wasn't certain what value to give for a situational modifier.If that seems to be the norm, then I'll incorporate that with my campaigns. I guess I needed confirmation from a third party about whether there should be a bonus/penalty and how much it should be.
As a GM I was always open to handwaving the roll in certain situations (mostly social) where the PC has decent stats in the relevant skill and they did an excellent job with their lie, convincing, etc.
This has been discussed before and Jiggy summarized my thoughts fairly well. Advantage/disadvantage is a cornerstone of 5th Edition's math that doesn't quite work well in Pathfinder.
Personally, I love the idea of encapsulating circumstance bonuses into a single mechanic, but I hate how 5th Edition implements it. Namely that the math and the mechanics don't allow for stacking advantage/disadvantage. You have the same bonus for attacking someone who is prone as you do someone who's prone, restrained, and blind.
As a GM I was always open to handwaving the roll in certain situations (mostly social) where the PC has decent stats in the relevant skill and they did an excellent job with their lie, convincing, etc.I wish my GM would use this. I'd like to feel that there is actually a benefit to making a compelling case to an NPC or coming up with a clever solution, as opposed to having the same odds with minimal thought or effort. Maybe he does it but makes no mention. I'll never know. The only downside I can think of to advantage/disadvantage or simply a +2/-2 is that some players just aren't as good at roleplaying, puzzle solving, etc. and this could possibly feel like a benefit that is not available to them. Even if that is so, I think such a reward is worth giving out, and that a less-eloquent player should still receive the reward for trying.I don't know if this was carried over into the Pathfinder rulebook, but in D&D 3e there was a guideline of giving characters a +2 or -2 modifier to a roll if the GM wasn't certain what value to give for a situational modifier.If that seems to be the norm, then I'll incorporate that with my campaigns. I guess I needed confirmation from a third party about whether there should be a bonus/penalty and how much it should be.
While this is your right, it does devalue the worth of those skills if RP'ing turns something into an 'auto-success.' Just something to watch out for.
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Mathematically, it's sound; I think it worked out to +/- 2.5.
Otherwise, it's up to you. Just remember if you do add advantage/disadvantage that if you have advantage and disadvantage on the same roll, you ultimately roll 1d20.
(Mechanically, somebody figured out during the Fifth Edition playtest that the best fighter is a blind drunk guy who was on fire, using a polearm, and flanking an opponent.)
As a GM I was always open to handwaving the roll in certain situations (mostly social) where the PC has decent stats in the relevant skill and they did an excellent job with their lie, convincing, etc.While this is your right, it does devalue the worth of those skills if RP'ing turns something into an 'auto-success.' Just something to watch out for.
I think the phrase "decent stats in the relevan skill" has that concern largely covered.
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"Blind, Drunk, Burning, Reach, Flanking.." Que the next rules thread debate. :-)
I've seen that Adv cancels Dis, but I have a 2d Adv type thing come up on Matt Mercer's game Critical Role. So even though it seems like it'll make things simpler (and it certainly does seem to do that in the 5E game engine) at higher levels it can still start to create almost an endless "do loop".
The way it worked was if you're blind, you have disadvantage on attack rolls; if you're drunk, you have disadvantage on all d20 rolls and 1d6 damage resistance whenever you took it; if you're on fire, you take 1d6 fire damage/round (possibly negated by the damage resistance for being drunk, and yes, that's how it worked in the playtests, and anyone who melee attacks you takes 1d6 fire damage; having a reach weapon gave you disadvantage on attack rolls against adjacent opponents; and flanking an opponent gave you advantage on the attack roll. So you ultimately roll 1d20 to attack.
Not surprisingly, this was dealt with in the next batch of playtests. (I think that was the playtest round that said "You know, rogues don't really need Sneak Attack..." The next round came four days later and was pretty much "We were wrong!" Then again, playtest Sneak Attack was extremely lethal.)
Mathematically, it's sound; I think it worked out to +/- 2.5.
No.
It averages as a +-3.82 with the chance of rolling 10 or higher with advantage increasing to as high as a +5
I looked up the statistics on AnyDice in one of the many other discussions about adding advantage/disadvantage to Pathfinder.