I'm a rules junkie: Degrees of Advantage/Disadvantage

I've always liked creating games or tweaking existing rules, maybe even more than playing. After I got my first "serious" war game Starship Troopers from Avalon Hill in the late 70s/early 80s, I used the board and units to create my own Star Wars game.

Anyway, I'll post some of my RPG rule ideas here on this blog - probably with little or no play testing.

Degrees of Advantage/Disadvantage in D&D 5e

The advantage/disadvantage mechanism is a real nice simplified means of handling conditions. You don't need to remember and add together a dozen different modifiers. Unfortunately, it's either you have an advantage/disadvantage or you don't. There is no variance, no degrees of, no means of cumulative effect. Could we add this without too much complexity?

My thought is what if different degrees of advantage/disadvantage gave different size of advantage/disadvantage die. So instead of the additional die always being a d20, the lowest degree of advantage/disadvantage provides a d10, the next degree provides a d12. Now in the standard set of dice the next size is of course a d20. Which is a significant jump from a d12. Fortunately there are d14, d16, and d18 dice available. There are even d24 available. I already have a d16.

Using the different sizes also allows a cumulative effect. You have two conditions that grant an advantage? The first advantage would grant you a d10. The second advantage would increase it to d12.

I'm already using this in my flanking advantage rule. At least for now I won't implement this rule. I'll run D&D5e as written, with the exception of flanking - 5e has no specific rules for how flanking affects combat, except rogue's backstab.

If you don't mind a little more complexity you could allow combinations of multiple advantages and disadvantages rather than simply one disadvantages negating multiple advantages. You have three conditions, two granting advantages and one granting a disadvantage? Subtract the difference. Two advantages minus one disadvantages results in gaining a d10 advantage.