this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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The article doesn't get into the math of how much of an equivalent bonus/penalty that Advantage/Disadvantage gives, and that is the actual complicated part of the mechanic.
On average the bonus or penalty equates to about +/- 3 on a roll. However, it can swing higher or lower depending on the difficulty of the check compared to the character's inherent modifiers. If a character can only pass by rolling a 20 (or can only fail by rolling a 1) after their other modifiers are accounted for, then the effective bonus/penalty is only +/- 1. Conversely, if the necessary roll is 11 or above to pass (or 10 or below to fail) then it is +/- 5.
The reason Advantage/Disadvantage feels so powerful is because D&D is balanced around players needing to roll somewhere between 7 and 14 to be successful in most of their actions, and that is the range at which Advantage and Disadvantage are most impactful.
I thought Advantage/Disadvantage was so powerful/hurtful because you roll 2 dices and take the better or worse roll.
That is what is done, but they're attempting to explain how that actually effects the odds. If you only had a 5% chance to succeed to begin with, advantage only bumps that up to about 10%. On the other hand, if you were at about a 50% to succeed, you jump up to a 75% chance with advantage. Bounded accuracy means that most rolls are balanced to have somewhere between a 30-70% chance to succeed; right in the range where advantage is most impactful.
This is exactly right. I was trying to explain the mechanic in terms of effective bonuses/penalties to show its effect more concretely.
Advantage doesn't actually confer a +5 when the needed dice roll is 11, bur statistically that's what it feels like.
I dropped my statistics class, but I remember the teacher to this day because of the story he told us.
He said he came from India to the US and he didn't eat meat. He went to a restaurant and ordered a hamburger without the meat--just bun and lettuce, tomato, etc. They said sure. He then asked if it was be cheaper because the meat was the most expensive part of the burger. They said that they had to charge him extra for a special order.
Anyway, here is your upvote for your math. Thanks!