Advantage/Disadvantage is better than +- 4
It's really not that big a deal, but it is to me.
I have always really liked the advantage and disadvantage mechanic from modern D&D games. We all know that it’s basically a + or - 3.sum-ish, but it really is better than that.
Typically, the advice of OSR games is to give a +4 or -4 for circumstances where a character has a significant chance of succeeding or failing. This might work perfectly well for most, and it really is a fine way to resolve things. Mechanically it isn’t much different.
Saying “that’s gonna be pretty tough, you have a -4 penalty to your roll” is not much different than saying “that’s gonna be pretty tough, you have disadvantage on this roll.” It has a similar effect on the result, telling the player that their odds are much lower, and it has nearly the same mechanical effect.
But, I can’t get away from the fact that something is missing from the -4 penalty. The excitement just isn’t quite there. There is a certain feeling to rolling two dice, and taking a second to check them, and potentially being amazed by the result.
Advantage/disadvantage is superior when it comes to player experience, and I think that anyone who nixes it based on the fact that it “isn’t old school” should consider the effect it has on the game and how much it can lend to the suspense and excitement of their game.
You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Or, at the very least, nothing to gain. Which, really, is the same as nothing to lose. Give it a shot.
i totally agree with everything youre saying here, BUT i think modifiers have the advantage of being able to stack, compared to dis/adv being a binary state. this means the player can engage deeper in the fiction to haggle their way to better and better chances (or find themselves in worser and worser circumstances). allowing adv to stack doesnt do much statistically from 4d20 onwards, though the boon/bane mechanic of replacing adv with +d6, and allowing it to stack so you might roll 4d6 take highest, seems to work better (and is cleaner than stacking +2s). there are definitely cons to stacking modifiers, namely if you have to remember lots of random numbers or keep track of random situational conditions or whatever, but i think theyre covered by just making it the players problem to pay attention to and argue for bonuses, and by keeping it all the same modifier size. anyway, just sideways thoughts for context :^)
- niosis