D&D 5E Average damage or rolled damage?

[Mouseferatu]

I think there's absolutely a middle ground. Players are pretty good at figuring out, after just a few hits, what a monster's apparent average damage is, at least roughly. I think saying it has to be, or should be, either totally unknowable or totally fixed leave a wide excluded middle. I want there to be a degree of uncertainty (as both player and DM), but not total uncertainty. This helps provide that for us.

That said... As for what rolling adds to the equation? For me and my group, it's just more fun. I don't worry about analyzing why. I don't try to figure if it has to do with perceived randomness, or how much information they do or don't have. We just enjoy it more, and I'm quite content to let it lie at that.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that either you go full-on one way or the other on this, and find any middle-ground to be rife with self-contradictions and double standards: either damage and hit points are entirely unknowable as anything the character can get a sense of and thus the player gets no more than a vague description of their current state from their DM who is keeping the character's hit points and magnitude of recent changes to them secret, or damage and hit points are an abstraction of what the character can get a sense of so no harm is done by the player knowing the numbers, rolled or otherwise.

Characters know about themselves. Their players know their current h.p. as a hard number, the character knows its own fairly specific "this is the physical condition I'm in right now", without necessarily having a number attached...but only when they stop and think about it. In the middle of a battle a character really doesn't know the difference between being hit for 6 or 16 unless those are getting down to being the last 6 or 16 it has; the player knows the actual numbers but still shouldn't be able to predict what comes next. That said, if I roll 5 points of damage on 3d10 I'll tell the character/player it was obviously just a glancing blow; but if I roll 26 on the same 3d10 I might just say "you get clobbered" and leave it up in the air whether that's normal or low or high, particularly if it's a creature they haven't met (or haven't met often) before. (I roll behind a screen)

They also know how much damage they can give out - players know from the dice, characters come to learn what it usually takes to bring down monsters of varying degrees of sturdiness - again without hard numbers - once they've met a few the same. Example: my current crew have recently beaten up so many Hill Giants they could give lessons in it and though the Giants don't always have the same starting h.p. totals the characters have pretty much learned what it takes to drop one; but they've never seen an elephant thus if one of those attacked them they'd probably have no idea what it could do and - depending how the battle goes - may or may not learn all that much accurate information from just fighting one.

For the declaration of "too much information" I can only say that I disagree. My goal is to provide fun for myself and my players, and more unpredictability than not knowing whether an attack will miss, hit, or crit does not improve the fun in any way but does increase the chances of less enjoyable outcomes (such as rolling low damage often enough to seem like a pushover, which spoils the feeling of a monster being threatening, or rolling high damage often enough to leave the player feeling that their character can't handle even supposedly easy combat challenges).

Where for me that's just realistic. If you think a foe is easier or harder than it really is after only fighting one or two that's probably going to change how you approach it next time: "Aw, this thing's a pushover - we killed three last week and didn't take a scratch!" can be music to my ears. Conversely, having them think twice about taking on what in reality is an easy opponent because the three they fought last week bent some noses before dropping is also good.

Lan-"players also never know exactly what h.p. an opponent is at, but they get a general idea along the lines of 'untouched', 'fatigued', 'hurting', 'wobbling', 'bleeding', etc."-efan

 

[ehenning]

I don't see the big deal here. I have always used average stats (HP, dmg, etc) when working with larger groups of foes, and rolling for smaller ones. It's all about keeping the rhythm of the story going.

 

[Blackwarder]

I roll for everything, mostly i use anydice.com for roll for a bunch of creatures in the middle of the session, although i like rolling with actual dice when I'm prepping for a session.

Warder

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I always roll damage. (I use fixed MaxHP of monsters, but I don't tell my players how much it is so they have to learn it from experience.)

Rolling makes combat simply much more interesting and dynamic and players have to adapt to the situation every single round. That's why it's important for me.

 

[IlluminatedSeraph]

I think that either you go full-on one way or the other on this, and find any middle-ground to be rife with self-contradictions and double standards: either damage and hit points are entirely unknowable as anything the character can get a sense of and thus the player gets no more than a vague description of their current state from their DM who is keeping the character's hit points and magnitude of recent changes to them secret, or damage and hit points are an abstraction of what the character can get a sense of so no harm is done by the player knowing the numbers, rolled or otherwise.

As for the wondering, that example was a Chasme demon which does 4d6+2 piercing and 7d6 necrotic with it's probiscus attack - which was fresh in my mind because a recent session involved one.

For the declaration of "too much information" I can only say that I disagree. My goal is to provide fun for myself and my players, and more unpredictability than not knowing whether an attack will miss, hit, or crit does not improve the fun in any way but does increase the chances of less enjoyable outcomes (such as rolling low damage often enough to seem like a pushover, which spoils the feeling of a monster being threatening, or rolling high damage often enough to leave the player feeling that their character can't handle even supposedly easy combat challenges).

I actually sit exactly on the middle ground of this with my own campaigns, because I have the following premise: not all monsters are created equal. Some of them are functionally dangerous scenery, and some of them are meant to be prominent, lively characters that the PC's remember strongly and may fight again. What does that have to do with damage?

In my games, getting to roll your damage is a function of narrative importance. Mob of skeleton archers? Minions, average damage. First dragon fight of a campaign? Not only will I roll damage, I will try to make a point to roll it in front of the players where they can see the numbers come up. Basically, using averages is more efficient and reduces random nonsense from not-too-dangerous enemies - mooks, in other words - while rolling is more dramatic and helps give the players moments of "Oh, thank the Powers that didn't hit as hard as it could have" or "Oh Bright Ones, it bit him nearly in half!"

Credit for the basic concept goes to Exalted, which specifically uses averaged rolls and a shorter health track to distinguish the mooks you're expected to plow through from the serious threats.

 

[Bayonet]

I always roll attack and damage rolls in the open (just so that the players know I'm not babying/murdering them). I kind of like the pucker factor involved in combat rolls; is the fighter lucky enough to come out of this with only a scratch, or is the Bugbear's club crushing his head like a grapefruit?

I may start using average damage rolls for mobs of 'minion' characters and save the rolls for more important enemies, though. Seems interesting.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

I actually sit exactly on the middle ground of this with my own campaigns, because I have the following premise: not all monsters are created equal. Some of them are functionally dangerous scenery, and some of them are meant to be prominent, lively characters that the PC's remember strongly and may fight again. What does that have to do with damage?

In my games, getting to roll your damage is a function of narrative importance. Mob of skeleton archers? Minions, average damage. First dragon fight of a campaign? Not only will I roll damage, I will try to make a point to roll it in front of the players where they can see the numbers come up. Basically, using averages is more efficient and reduces random nonsense from not-too-dangerous enemies - mooks, in other words - while rolling is more dramatic and helps give the players moments of "Oh, thank the Powers that didn't hit as hard as it could have" or "Oh Bright Ones, it bit him nearly in half!"

Credit for the basic concept goes to Exalted, which specifically uses averaged rolls and a shorter health track to distinguish the mooks you're expected to plow through from the serious threats.

The only reason I don't do it this way - which I think is objectively superior - is that they will get my damage dice - whether I am a player or a DM - when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. Then they will find that those dice are coated in a contact poison I have spent years developing an immunity to, and they will suffer, yes suffer, for expecting me to take average damage when I could be feeling the satisfying clatter of plastic on table.

One more time.

Every action. Every round.

Forever.

Welcome... to Night Vale.

 

[delericho]

Yep, rolled damage for me too. And fixed (average) hit point totals.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

Yep, rolled damage for me too. And fixed (average) hit point totals.

Using rolled HP makes you a bad person.

Not really. It just makes you a person whose ideas of good design are utterly baffling to me.

And baffling me is mean, and THAT makes you a bad person.