Ennie nominated TTRPG designer and writer of small fictions. Pancreatitis survivor.
TTRPG folks: If my core mechanic has Advantage (+1 dice to roll), Bonus (+1 dice, player removes one dice after rolling) and Difficulty (GM removes one success before resolution) is that one too many things?
I feel like Bonus (least frequent, most transient) has a lot of potential to get forgotten and is possibly a mechanical 'trip hazard', something that crops up and disrupts the flow from action to resolution.
I would probably consider combining Advantage and Bonus, yeah. There's a distinction there mechanically but it seems really easy to conflate the two.
(And while you're there, double check the math on what Difficulty looks like - for dicepools, which I assume this is, that can get pretty hairy and lower the probability of a single success more than you expect.)
I think Advantage and Bonus are too close to really combine. I could fold all instances which would grant Bonuses into Advantage, but my inclination would be to scrub bonuses altogether; the instances which it serves in my broad concept are not tentpoles of the design.
I'm not worried about the maths on difficulty, partly because in the abstract the success threshold isn't set.
It's a little hard to immediately get the difference between advantage and bonus. Particularly because your bonus is closer to what "advantage" is in other systems.
And as described here, bonus seems to be weaker AND rarer. If they were more distinct, then it would probably be less of a hazard.
I can futz the naming, but I think you're right about the lack of distinction. I don't feel like there's an elegant solution to keep the bonus mechanic and I don't think it adds enough to the system to justify complicating the core mechanic to accomodate it.
In the abstract, I think your instincts are right. If it isn't occurring frequently or isn't flagged prominently on something like a character sheet, it probably will be forgotten or conflated with advantage. In practice, I'd have to see it in play to know whether it matters. If it's positioned as something players can seek out and makes a meaningful numerical difference, that may keep it relevant in-play.
I think it would be difficult to test it organically, and I don't imagine it would play very differently from the concept. That coupled with it not being the focus of the core mechanic inclines me to think this is something I could cut.
I'd consider swapping the names on advantage and bonus, if nothing else. D&D cemented what "advantage" means and most other games use it to mean that same thing.
"Too complicated" depends on how the mechanics are deployed and explained; the rarer of the two should probably get explicitly called out and explained everywhere it is used.
We could move it out of the core mechanic to specific exemptions, and while I think that would improve its visibility and adherance I still think it disrupts the mechanical flow. That's not always a bad thing but I think in this instance it is not what I want from this mechanic, and as such I'm inclined to scrap it.
