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D&D 5e: The Advantage System

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When I first read 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons I didn’t pay much attention to new Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic, I thought it was interesting but really didn’t consider its implications to the game. After having played about 100 hours of 5th edition D&D I have discovered that not only is this a foundation mechanic for the system, but when used to its full effect creates one of the best role-playing experiences I have ever had D&D or otherwise. How does such a small, seemingly simple mechanic make such a huge difference? Well, its all about application and understanding its purpose as a narrative tool.

To really understand why the advantage system is such a piece of genius in D&D you have to understand the core problem with all editions of Dungeons and Dragons, one that each edition has tried and failed to fix. That problem is that as long as D&D has been around, the line between the story of the game (the narrative) and combat has always been very thick. It’s a massive gap really. The moment combat starts there is a subtle but noticeable shift from seeing the game as a role-playing game and seeing it as a tactical combat game.

Each edition has handled this differently. In AD&D, combat was very fast and swingy. One way or the other it would end in a short few rounds so in essence AD&D didn’t do anything about it other than just keep combat fast so the temporary lull in the narrative is, well very temporary. It worked well enough but combat wasn’t particularly narrative, in particular if you brought out miniatures.

3rd edition tried to make combat more simulationist and as such, the mechanic defined a lot of the narrative for us as players were able to perform a large amount of actions during their turn covered by a very detailed rule system. Combat was extended a great deal in 3rd edition, but it depicted the action in greater detail. Still it wasn’t narrative, it was mechanical and it was easy to lose yourself in the nuances of the rules rather than maintain the nuances of the story.

4e very aware of this effect if you consider how it was designed, tried to simplify the rules, but elaborate a great deal on depicting the action. It worked wonders, the tactical game really told us a story. The drawback of this system though was that your actions where narrow, defined by what was on your character sheet and combat was extended even more, taking so long in fact that it could swallow up entire sessions. One of the longest standing criticisms of 4e is “not enough role-playing”, but that isn’t a stab at the combat systems depiction of the action, but rather the fact that it took so long you never got to the role-playing part of the game.

It’s clear that since Gygax’s original vision, the designers of the game have been aware of this problem on some level. How do you maintain the narrative element of the game and still have an interesting, tactical combat system that D&D deserves? Their answer is the Advantage and Disadvantage system. In an amazingly simple way they have not only merged mechanics and narrative flawlessly, but created the motivation for players and DM’s alike to be more descriptive and involve themselves deeper in the narration of the story.

Now I can’t be certain if it was the designer’s intention to make the advantage system the solution to this issue, but whether intentional or not they have done it. The thing is that when we are not in combat, we are doing collaborative storytelling, acting and speaking on the behalf of our characters, describing their actions and rolling the dice to see how our intended actions fared. So why is this approach not used in combat? In a sense that’s what 5e asked and the 5e combat system in particular the advantage system answered with.

See D&D has a tactical element, it always had, but no edition in the past has ever really tried to infuse the same narrative approach we have to the rest of the game into combat, into this tactical element. Another words, combat was always about working out the math, rather than working out what happens narratively (as is the case at every other moment when playing the game.).

The advantage system represents a non-mathematical way to maintain a tactical element in the game and encourage players to think about combat in a narrative way. Players describe their actions and can gain advantages and disadvantages based on what it is they actually attempt in combat. Do you rush a guy and grab for his weapon? Do you try to use your sword to reflect the sun into the eyes of the archer in the tree? Do you slide under the Ogres feet and attempt to cut him where the sun don’t shine? It’s difficult to come up with mathematical formula for those things. You can guess or you could create a complex series of rules that attempt to account for every conceivable situation but really, for a DM the “pick a value that represents this action” game is a burden. The advantage and disadvantage system however makes this easy by allowing you to simply respond with a positive or negative effect on any given action when considering its impact and like a roll at any time, create a narrative resolution which notably is backed by a rather traditional D&D combat mechanic (HP, AC, To Hit etc..).

EXAMPLE: Player: “Ok I position my sword to reflect the sun, shining the sun into the eyes of the archer in the tree”. DM: Make an deception roll, if you succeed the archer gets a disadvantage on his next attack roll, if you fail, you are unfocused and the next attack against you gains an advantage”. Done. No math, no fuss, great narrative, the players are imbued with endless possibilities for tactical action limited only by their imagination and the game doesn’t skip a beat.. next player!

What’s great is that you can utilize other parts of the system to help ensure the actions are driven by character abilities. Skill check, attribute checks, saving throws etc. In this case I chose a deception check but it could have as well been a dexterity check, an intelligence check. The idea being, that you and the player can work together to come to a conclusion about what makes the most sense.

The advantage system is so much more than just a narrative level to pull on however. Its built into the system, so gaining advantages and disadvantages creates opportunities to use different abilities and make decisions about your actions. For example in the above example if the character failed, he might decide that he is going to use the dodge action this turn since he is at a disadvantage, or if he succeeds in gaining the advantage he might decide to climb the tree and assault the archer knowing he has a good chance of being missed as he makes his ascend and a better chance of hitting him.

These opportunities for interesting narratives unfold very naturally, once players get into the mind set of using them, the game becomes about them and in turn becomes about narrative play. Yet the tactical element, the core rules of combat are maintained.

It’s a wonderful system but it does take practice and naturally like any mechanic it can be abused, maturity and understanding of its purpose and the larger purpose of the game as a whole as always is required for it to work well. None the less, it’s a wonderful system when you get it working and it really breathes new life into dungeons and dragons.

Yet another wonderful element of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition!

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From Mediocrity to Perfection: The Trials of D&D

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When it comes to D&D, truly I am a fan of the concept, I hold Gygax and his original vision in high regard, yet for the past 30 years I have considered D&D to be kind of a second class citizen of role-playing games. I always enjoyed playing it don’t get me wrong but I have always found a lot to dislike about it, mainly in its handling of mechanics.

To me the true D&D is 1st edition AD&D, it defined the original game and conceptually it is a masterpiece. The problem with 1st edition was mostly in practice. Mechanically speaking the narrative high’s where often contrasted by the mechanical lows. If I where to put it to words I would say the system got in the way of the game.

Since first edition, each new edition of the game had its own take on “the next step” and how to solve some of its problem and dare I say each failure has been worst then the next. 2e clearly felt the game required more rules and they added mountains of them, yet did little to streamline or make them manageable or balanced. 3rd edition seemed to steer the game towards an odd form of simulationist realism with a moderate focus on tactical gaming and while the rules where more coherent, the game itself pulled away from the narrative focus of its predecessors to the battle mat in what amounted to a terribly unbalanced mini game. 4e streamlined the rules even more, giving way for simplicity and a return to free form role-playing, yet countered this success by creating so much focus on combat and making combat so slow with such stringent rules it felt like playing a computer game.

In the end all of the editions addressed various aspects of the game, each edition seemed to focus on repairing the previous edition which in turn addressed the edition before that. The problem was that since 2e came out and addressed none of the real issues of 1st edition, the successors where fixing things that really weren’t broken in the original vision.

For example each new edition tried to address how tactical combat should work, when the reality was that the original vision of the game wasn’t for it to be a tactical combat game, quite the opposite, D&D was created with the very intent to not be another war game. Combat was also supposed to be quick, the game meant for us to have violent encounters often, being able to play out several in succession. Instead each new edition slowed it down even further, ending with 4e’s dreadfully slow and repetitive miniatures tactical game. 1st edition had quite a few issues that could have been solved with the experienced we got even back then, but no one ever really tried.

Now 5e has come out of a long, heatedly discussed and very public beta. When I first held the shiny new players handbook in my hand I have to admit I was bracing myself for disappointment. I honestly expected the new edition to be just another fix for the previous edition, without much attention given to the original vision of the game. I really only had one question for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. Are you really D&D or are you one of the others?

It was with great pleasure and excitement that I read page after page of the Players Handbook and it wasn’t because I was blown away by the games “new” design, quite to the contrary what caught my attention first and foremost is the familiarity of the game, that in every way that mattered, 5e had within it the spirit of the original vision. Page after page it was clear that the game had come home.

5e isn’t a perfect mechanic by any stretch of the imagination but for the first time since the first remake that was 2e was released someone actually made a true successor to 1st edition AD&D.

I’ve always been amazed about how much misinformation and silly misconception there are about people who speak highly of 1st edition AD&D and play the original vision of the game. The reality is that very few D&D players I have ever met in over 30 years of gaming have claimed 1st edition AD&D rules to be any good. It wasn’t the rules that defined the game, it really was the principles on which the rules where founded. There are many of them, but as I read the 5e book it was evident the designers clearly knew more about the true foundation of D&D then I ever knew or thought I knew.

I was struck by a number of things so blatantly pulled from the original Gygax works, even though in many ways they were in contrast to everything that has been done design wise with D&D since the original.

For example the zero to hero effect so eloquently designed in 5e, I think if Gygax were alive he would say “yeah, I should have done it like that”. D&D was originally a game about ordinary would be heroes in extraordinary worlds and situations. It was a game that told the tale of their rise, the story of how they became heroes. This was the adventure. 5e took that concept but made it fluid, fun and with a assertive progression to stability so that once you took those first steps you wouldn’t be sitting around for many sessions before you could tell the next chapter of your heroic deeds. 5e created a progression that makes, one looking back at 1e would be easy to implement in that game and would make a world of difference in its design.

Another great example of 5e looking back and fixing It design is combat speed, which has such a huge impact of every other faucet of the game. By taking all that we have learned about D&D combat over the years, stripping away the unnecessary gibberish and zeroing in on the most fun aspects of it 5e has created the most effective and coherent combat system I have seen in years. A combat system that is not only fast, but manages to infuse itself with plenty of wiggle room for narrative play with simple systems like the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. Now DM’s can freely reward and punish players for their narrative risks in combat, fluidly mixing in with the mechanical aspects of combat without losing a step. Always pushing the adventure forward, always bringing us the narrative. Combat is so vivid in 5e, its everything I had always hoped 2e, then 3e and ultimately 4e would be prior to hearing the bad news and realizing that they have all missed the point.

Finally I think 5e pays proper tribute to other editions of the game. While I certainly find plenty of fault with every edition, there were many concepts and mechanics in all editions of the game that where going in the right direction, they just needed minor adjustments to make them practical and in so many places this is exactly what 5e did.

The Wizard for example with its handling of the familiar handling of the magic system. One of the biggest problems of 1e (and subsequent editions as well) was that mages had too few spells and even when they had a lot in their spell book in practical terms they only had access to very specific spells they prepared. Need a Detect Magic spell? Sorry you didn’t prepare it, see you in 8 hours. Now with the prepared spells and spell slots being separated without having to choose in advance you can cast the spells you want. In 3e from where this concept is clearly pulled, they did this with the sorcerer and they were so close to getting it right. Only problem was that they separated the Wizard and Sorcerer into separate classes and for balance reasons the Sorcerer had reduced selection, a decision clearly made to ensure the Wizards toes weren’t being stepped on. The merging of the two classes in 5e gives us really what the Wizard should always have been. The addition of at will cantrips a concept borrowed from 4e is another example of great design borrowed and implemented with balance in mind.

I could probably write a book about all the ways 5e got it right, but really what’s important here is that we finally got a worthy successor to 5e and I couldn’t be happier with it. For the first time in years me and my gaming group are excited about D&D again.

Thank you Wizards of the Coast, you got it right!

Dedicated To All Things Gaming