Speeding up Combat

[aceofgames]

Combat takes too long in D&D and the d20 system breaks down into very long math sessions at high levels, at least for me it does. And it gets especially annoying at higher levels.

I'm a artist. I hate math. This system clearly is broken, to me anyhow, when it comes to the length of combat. I've read Iron Heroes, it has a system of combat that is brilliant, but still suffers from the same problem.

A 15th level fighter or wizard rolls their dice and adds numbers together, and depending on the player, tells the DM the result with screwing it up or messing up the math angle. I love the role section of D&D, but combat does come up on occasion, so I ask you:

Why put up with this crap? You could use a computer, but I treat computer dice rolling as just as troublesome.

I have a house rule, that is still in the theory phase really, to try and handle this issue:

Fixed damage. Get rid of rolling damage. The flavor reasons for it aren't worth the sacrifices made for efficiency.

The idea is simple, any spell or weapon that deals a damage in a dice rolling form, take of the average of it:

1d3=1.5
1d4=2.5
1d6=3.5
1d8=4.5
1d10=5.5
1d12=6.5
2d4=5
2d6=7

This idea sacrifices the radical random element of the die, and instead allows people to have the damage prefigured out on their notes or character sheets- in other words, it becomes like AC. The number is constant and easy to figure. You get a +1 bonus, its easy to figure it out.

And all damage sources would recieve the change, so despite the beauty of it, the 10d6 fireball becomes 35 points of fire damage; Sneak attack becomes a static number as well, which in some cases could create scary characters (Executioners from Iron Heroes for example).


So. Whatcha think? Too much?

 

[Ilium]

Not too much. Especially at higher levels where modifiers often swamp a weapon's damage die anyway.

But for a single die, I would just round it off for convenience (up or down doesn't matter as long as everybody does it the same). So 1d4 would be, say, 3 points and 1d12 would be 7.

On the other hand, I would not want to do this for a game I was playing in. The damage roll is the single biggest YIKES roll for me. Especially when you use something like a greataxe with that one big die. Will I do (or take) enough damage to end the fight here?

 

[aceofgames]

That seems to be the big issue, because no one wants to give up the gambling chances of a 12 or a 1. However, most of my group is learning D&D and one or two are just plain slow with simple arithmetic, so I thought of this as a solution, but it seems to not be well recieved.

I agree with the rounding part. I personally wouldn't mind using this fixed damage system over the regular system, simply because it makes combat go faster.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'm good at math but I hate it just like most people I know. That said, I think that I would be dissapointed to not roll for damage. I do make an exception for certain high-level damage effects like spells and sneak attacks; my solution is a compromize between average damage v. counting up ten dice at a time. If an effect tells me to roll more than four dice (it's a convenient number and well, I have four of each type), I take the average of two dice at a time until I only have to roll 3 or four dice and then roll those 3 or 4. For example, if my fifth level mage casts fireball, I roll three dice and then add 7 points of damage. It's pretty much the same as rolling all those dice anyway because the more dice you actually roll, the closer the total is likely to be to the average anyway.

 

[The Levitator]

This is the number one reason I use DM Genie and I enable the autoroll feature and we play diceless. You want to talk about speeding combat up, this is my answer. Not only does the program handle the math but it also handles the die rolling which is the second biggest thing that slows combat down. It frees us up to focus on description and decision making, not calculations or die fondling. As far as speed goes, we just had a major battle with a 5th level party and some orogs. It consisted of a 4 person party with 3 NPC's against 12 orogs. The fight was in the forest, so it took them a while to track them all down, but the combat was over in 16 rounds. It took less than 40 minutes of real time. 19 creatures in 3.5 combat taking 16 rounds takes a LOT longer than that with pen, paper and dice. I should add that we are also using the Defensive Opposed Roll, Armor as DR and Facing variants which also slow conventional gaming to a crawl. My DM Genie has custom scripts built in to do it all automatically at the touch of a button and generates a detailed log that allows me as a DM to describe the action in pretty exacting detail considering the abstract nature of 3.5 combat.

This isn't the be-all-end-all way to game either. Some groups like the old school feel of the dice and making calculations. Some groups aren't in a hurry to get through combats. This system is perfect for us, because our group considers itself tactical roleplayers. The combats aren't the most important part of the story, but they feel it should move as quickly as possible while still offering as many tactical options as possible. The biggest factor for our groups was that the combat scenes should be exciting and feel like action scenes, not laborious calculations and cross referencing and bookworming.

I am fairly confident that there is not a gaming group on the planet that can get through combat as quickly and accurately as we do it with DM Genie using pen, paper, and dice. I'm not saying we have the best system out there, but it might be one of the fastest. If you have the need for speed, DM Genie is a great way to go. If you want to travel at warp speed, try gaming diceless. And if you truly want to feel like you are travelling through time, try them both together.

 

[Stalker0]

I think at high level not rolling damage is perfectly fine. At high level a hit means big damage, so to me the to hit roll is the most exciting part, and as mentioned the weapon damage doesn't make up a lot of your damage by that part.

For spells, might I suggest for 10d6 doing 5d6x2 instead of pure averages. Rolling a lot of dice is a big thrill for spellcasters, and since you are hitting quite a lot of people its nice to have some variation. Now 5d6x2 has a much more variable curve than 10d6, but on average its the same.

 

[Nel]

Of course, throwing buckets of dice can be pretty boring if it happens too often, and sometimes you even have to do 2 or more rolls for 1 test (hands have their limits in size too).
So an electronic simulator is often of a big help, plus you can potentially use every kind of dice (d7, d38, and so on).

But when the roll is important and stressful, I would feel somewhat...wronged if I couldn't do it with my own hands.

 

[The Levitator]

But when the roll is important and stressful, I would feel somewhat...wronged if I couldn't do it with my own hands.

That was my biggest concern when we decided to try diceless gaming. I have 2 gamers in my group with over 20 years experience, and I'm a bit old school myself. It was so surreal after the first session. We were looking at each other like, "that was pretty cool!" Besides the speed factor, the other fun aspect of diceless gaming for the DM is that we have many more opportunities for suspense. Things like spotting ambushes are so much more suspenseful because I can click 1 time and roll Spot checks for the whole party. Even their normal skills are more dramatic because they aren't seeing the actual numbers. They can be be winning an opposed Bluff/Sense Motive check with a low roll but better than their opponent. It could be because they have a high bluff skill and they are bluffing a commoner. So I might describe it as, "the wizard in your party would be able to shoot 30 holes in this story, but the guard seems to be buying it. They must rely on my descriptions and it's a much more fun way for me to DM. By the above description I'm hoping to show the player that his bluff was weak and wouldn't have worked against a more intelligent person. He succeeded in bluffing the guard because the guard couldn't follow the story and gave all of your big words more credibility than they deserved. The numbers also help me describe other aspects of the game more colorfully than just matching up numbers. I hate spending a half hour designing a really cool trap or ambush, only to have the suspense killed by having to say the dreaded, "roll d20 for me please". That was such a buzzkill! Now they just tell me what they are doing, and I tell them what is happening around them.

I don't even give exact damage during combat. I describe the damage in as much detail as I can to give them a fair estimate of how deadly the blow is. We also use the clobbered variant, so they always know when they or their adversaries have suffered at least 50% of their current HP total. Once combat is over and the wounded are tended to, I give them the specific numbers. What's funny is that we've been doing it this way so long now that when they guess their totals they are always within a few points. Burying the HP total away is another way to increase suspense and perception of danger. And it also speeds up the game because you don't have people sitting there with calculators trying to determine their foe's max attack damage and trying to calculate how many rounds they can stay in the fight.

Diceless is definitely a different way to game and probably isn't for everyone. I only suggest that people try it and see before passing judgement. And I only suggest it if rolling dice is causing game problems for the players or the DM and you think the group can benefit from it. Actually, I would also suggest it to any DM's who like to be very colorful in their descriptions and relate information more like a storyteller than a court reporter.