MT Only: Advantage in Tasks

[trb456]

One of the purposes of the MT Task system was to reduce sources of situational DMs. Each Task is usually limited to 2-3 characteristics and/or skills as DMs, and total DMs are limited to +/-8, so reducing the Difficulty class becomes an important strategy (e.g. Cautious).

D&D 5e introduced Advantage, designed to do something similar. Instead of many dice mods, (Dis)Advantage involved rolling 2 d20 and keeping the (lowest) highest roll. Advantage and Disadvantage cancelled each other, and neither stacked, so the final outcome could only be (Dis)Advantage. It's a very elegant mechanic, but its outcome is perverse: Advantage is a super +4, meaning the average mod is +4, but the most common roll (the mode) is now 20! That may be fine for the high fantasy of D&D, but it seems odd for believability.

But an Advantage system applied to MT is a lot more reasonable. We define (Dis)Advantage as 3D dropping the (highest) lowest 1D. This Advantage has much better properties. The mean is 8.5 (+1.5), median (exact middle) is 8.1 (+1.1), and mode is 9 (+2), making Advantage roughly equivalent to 1/2 Difficulty reduction. It also reduces variance, meaning that it is more likely that an Advantage roll will be 9 than an ordinary 2D roll will be 7. We can even add Double Advantage as 4D dropping lowest 2D, which is mean 9.3 (+2.3), median 9.1 (+2.1), and mode 10 (+3), and can be use as 1/4 Difficulty.

The idea is that (Dis)Advantage does not count towards the -/+8 DM limit, but acts as a change in Difficulty. For example, I allow attacks for the rear at Advantage.

What do you think about this mechanic as another way to reduce Difficulty, which is a key tactic in MT?

 

[mike wightman]

Mongoose Traveller calls this boon/bane and has used it successfully for years.

After we were done playtesting the Mongoose rules my group decided the one thing they wanted to keep as we switched back to CT was the boon/bane or advantage/disadvantage mechanic.

So yest it works well in MT too.

 

[trb456]

Cool! I've only scanned the Mongoose rules for certain things and missed that. Thanks

ETA: Just looked this up, and they seem to use the same philosophy as d20 of not stacking Advantage. As I note above, the probability structure of Double Advantage works just fine, doesn't even amount to a full Difficult level decrease. Just FYI.

 

[mike wightman]

Stacking advantage or disadvantage makes the game run much faster.

Instead of looking up DMs and the like it is much easier to weigh up advantages and disadvantages - you can also have them cancel each other.

So say you are trying you convince a doorman to let you into the VIP lounge - you may get advantage from a high soc, a high rank in an Imperial service. You may get disadvantage due to not meeting the dress code (or a poor reaction roll for the doorman) - but we'll say he was neutral).
So 2A-1D=1A, roll 3D keep the highest 2 (adding a DM for an applicable social skill)

A sniper taking aim at the head of an enemy commander. Advantage for aiming, for being in a prone and braced position, disadvantage for target size and range. No overall result - aim for the centre of mass and the target size disadvantage goes away so you would roll to hit with advantage,

That sort of thing.

 

[trb456]

Indeed. My view is that MT limited Task DMs to +8, and so options to reduce Task Difficulty become important player tactics. Cautious Tasks reduce Difficulty by 1, and Advatage (Double) reduces Difficulty by 1/2 (3/4). Therefore we should permit many options from interacting with the environment or situation to allow Advantage.