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?
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?