When you roll with disadvantage is the chance to get a 1 5+5 for 10% or 5X5 for 25%? Just sat down and rolled 100 times with disadvantage got 18 natural 1s and 0 natural 20s. Still don't know.
[RPG] When rolling with disadvantage what is the chance to get a 1?
advantage-and-disadvantagedicednd-5estatistics
Related Solutions
The rule on modifiers applies only after you've determined a base roll. And to do that you must first resolve disadvantage (PHB page 173):
Use the higher of the two rolls if you have advantage, and use the lower roll if you have disadvantage.
Therefore, you always take the lower roll.
This is a direct inverse of this answer here for rolling a critical miss with Advantage.
Assumptions
I'm going to be making the following assumptions, based on what you've already provided:
- 3rd level (since you get a crit on a 19 or 20)
- 16 Strength (no ASI to bump up to 18)
- Fighting a CR 3 creature (for base math)
- Average damage is 7.50 (4.50 from the die +3 Str mod)
- Average crit damage is 12.00 (4.50 per die +3 Str mod)
- Attack bonus is +5 (+2 prof, +3 Str mod)
- The enemy has AC 13 (per the DMG guidelines on page 274)
- DPR calculations are:
- Crit damage = Crit % x average crit hit damage
- Normal damage = Hit % x average hit damage
- hit % = 100 – [miss %] – [crit %]
Note that any flat modifier to the damage total won't change with a crit, since you only double the dice rolled, not the modifiers added.
Champion Fighter
Per the DMG page 274, a CR3 creature has an average AC 13, meaning you need to roll an 8 or higher.
With Advantage
AnyDice can tell us our miss chance and our crit chance. From there, we know our hit chance.
- A normal roll of 1d20 will have a 35% miss, 10.00% crit (1.20 DPR), and 55.00% normal hit (4.13 DPR) for a total DPR of 5.33
- A roll with advantage will have a 12.25% miss, 19.00% crit (2.28 DPR), and 68.75% normal hit (5.16 DPR) for a total DPR of 7.44
- A roll with your DMs +2 rule will have a 25.00% miss, 10.00% crit (1.20 DPR), and a 65.00% normal hit (4.88 DPR) for a total DPR of 6.08
With Disadvantage
AnyDice can tell us our miss chance and our crit chance. From there, we know our hit chance.
- A normal roll of 1d20 will have a 35% miss, 10.00% crit (1.20 DPR), and 55.00% normal hit (4.13 DPR) for a total DPR of 5.33 (unchanged)
- A roll with disadvantage will have a 42.25% miss, 1.00% crit (0.12 DPR), and 56.75% normal hit (4.26 DPR) for a total DPR of 4.38
- A roll with your DMs -2 rule will have a 45.00% miss, 10.00% crit (1.20 DPR), and a 45.00% normal hit (3.38 DPR) for a total DPR of 4.58
Rogue
How does this change affect other classes, specifically those who rely on bonus damage dice? I'm using a rogue for this example since sneak attack is easy enough to calculate, but a paladin falls under the same heading with their smite spells and the like.
We use the same percentages and base damage (assume Dex and a rapier) for our fighter, but we add sneak attack damage. That's 2d6 at level 3, so with advantage we add +2d6 (7) on a hit and +4d6 (14) on a crit. Attacks without advantage don't get sneak attack damage added in, so the disadvantage numbers from above carry over (I know you can get sneak attack damage without advantage, but we'll ignore that for simplicity).
With Advantage
- A normal roll of 1d20 will have a 35% miss, 5.00% crit (1.30 DPR), and 60.00% normal hit (8.70 DPR) for a total DPR of 10
- A roll with advantage will have a 12.25% miss, 9.75% crit (2.54 DPR), and 78.00% normal hit (11.31 DPR) for a total DPR of 13.85
- A roll with your DMs +2 rule will have a 25.00% miss, 5.00% crit (1.30 DPR), and a 70.00% normal hit (10.15 DPR) for a total DPR of 11.45
With Disadvantage
- A normal roll of 1d20 will have a 35% miss, 5.00% crit (1.30 DPR), and 60.00% normal hit (8.70 DPR) for a total DPR of 10
- A roll with disadvantage will have a 42.25% miss, 1.00% crit (0.12 DPR), and 56.75% normal hit (4.26 DPR) for a total DPR of 4.38 (identical to the fighter, as no advantage means no sneak attack)
- A roll with your DMs -2 rule will have a 45.00% miss, 5.00% crit (1.20 DPR), and a 50.00% normal hit (2.25 DPR) for a total DPR of 3.45
Conclusion
With your DMs proposed houserule, the expected DPR for any class is going to be decreased because of the fact that you're still only rolling 1 die, so the chance of a critical hit will not change. The biggest, well, advantage of rolling with advantage is it almost doubles your chance of a crit: 9.75% vs. 5.00% for a normal 20 crit and 19.00% vs. 10% for a champion fighter crit.
Indeed, that simple change reduces the overall expected damage output of the entire party, especially those classes that rely on burst damage in the form of more dice. As you gain in levels and get the extra attack feature, magic items/spells that add damage dice, and class features that change the damage dice done, the gap will only increase.
Related Topic
- [RPG] When do you have neither Advantage nor Disadvantage
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- [RPG] In what paradigm is +1 to hit the same as improving your chance to hit by 5%
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Best Answer
The odds of a natural 1 are 9.75% and the odds of a natural 20 are 0.25%.
When you roll 2d20 you have 400 possible combinations of numbers. For a natural 20 there is exactly 1 possible way to get a 20 when rolling with disadvantage (20 on both dice) so the probability of getting that value is 1/400 (or .0025 or .25%)
For a natural 1 there are 3 different possibilities that can result in a 1 when rolling with disadvantage, 1-1, 1-X, and X-1 (where X is not 1). There is 1 way to get 1-1, 19 ways to get 1-X and 19 ways to get X-1. Adding all of those up we get 39 different ways to get 1, so the probability is 39/400 (or .0975 or 9.75%).
As a note your 5% + 5% comes close, but you are double counting the 1-1 combination.