D&D 5E Tips for Resolving Area Effects

[Fanaelialae]

It's not an issue when the players are making saving throws, but when I have a large group of monsters inside a damaging area of effect it tends to take me a considerable amount of time to resolve it. Longer than I feel it ideally ought to. I'm hoping that some others here have come up with tricks for resolving AoEs more efficiently.

What I typically do is roll for each creature, tallying the number of saves I've rolled on one hand while trying to track failed saves in my head. Needless to say, I'm never fully certain that I'm accurately applying the correct amount of damage to the correct creature. There have even been times when a distraction occurred and I lost count of the failed saves completely. I'm terrible when it comes to multitasking.

The only tip I have to offer is to ask players to roll damage before you roll monster saving throws. Any creatures whose hit points are equal to or less than half damage (after accounting for factors like resistance) can be eliminated immediately, since they will die irrespective of the roll.

 

[Blue]

I have the player roll damage ahead of time. If using a map, I have them point to each mini and I'll find them on my combat tracker (=piece of paper w/ HPs & conditions), roll save, and immediately apply damage. Goes pretty quick with the player pointing them out and me just roll & recording.

 

[Plaguescarred]

What you can do to save time is do group save for monsters of a same group, type etc... and thus cut down the number of rolls made i.e if you have a combat encounter involving 4 goblins, 3 hobgoblins and 3 bugbears, you could use 3 d20 to resolve a saving throws that affect them, preferably using a different color die for each group and even cutting it down to a single roll of 3d20 by rolling them all togheter. You'd then use the result of each die adding the respective monster's ability score modifier to determine wether this group of monter sucessfully save or not.

 

[Prakriti]

Group saves are the default rule. Roll once for all monsters of the same type. 10 orcs? One roll. 18 goblins? One roll. 5 vampire spawns? One roll.

Voila.

 

[Satyrn]

At my table, the DMs tend to roll the saves for each monster, pointing out to the players which ones fail. It's only if a failed save drops the foe that we worry about damage at this point (by declaring that foe dropped - hurray! )

Then, after all the saves are rolled, the DM records the damage of the survivors, and if he can't recall wheter a specific one failed or not, he asks the players.

That's how 2 of us do it often, anyway, enough to consider it our go-to method.

I find that rolling all the saves together in a row gives the players a sense of action and immediacy. I know it does for me. I can picture the foes all dodging or whatever as the saves are rolled

What I want to know when I cast a spell is which foes are hit hard. The damage is secondary at this point. Book keeping, almost.

 

[Rhenny]

This is one of the best advantages for using Fantasy Grounds (lately all of my games have been online using FG) - select the foes and have them auto save - then apply damage. 1/2 damage is automatically applied to the ones that make the save, full to the others.

Overall, the die rolling and totaling of scores during in person games can actually add a surprisingly large amount of extra time to combats. Watching some of the streamed games from Critical Role and Dice Camera Action, etc. sometimes it takes players up to 40 seconds to find dice, roll them and then calculate results, another 20-40 seconds for DM to make saves and calculate results. That might add 2-3 minutes to each round (depending on how many players and how many are using spells/area effects, etc). In a 10 rounds that adds 20 to 30 minutes...yikes.

 

[Blue]

Overall, the die rolling and totaling of scores during in person games can actually add a surprisingly large amount of extra time to combats. Watching some of the streamed games from Critical Role and Dice Camera Action, etc. sometimes it takes players up to 40 seconds to find dice, roll them and then calculate results, another 20-40 seconds for DM to make saves and calculate results. That might add 2-3 minutes to each round (depending on how many players and how many are using spells/area effects, etc). In a 10 rounds that adds 20 to 30 minutes...yikes.

Ugh, that sounds like players aren't prepared. If I'm casting a spell on my action I have my dice out already before the start.

When I'm melee attacking, I roll d20 and damage dice at the same time. DM says hit, I'm not searching another die and rolling, it's already there. I know someone who also rolled a crit die as well, but that's a little much.

 

[Saeviomagy]

It's not an issue when the players are making saving throws, but when I have a large group of monsters inside a damaging area of effect it tends to take me a considerable amount of time to resolve it. Longer than I feel it ideally ought to. I'm hoping that some others here have come up with tricks for resolving AoEs more efficiently.

Simply put - don't worry too much about it.

Roll in secret.
Player rolls damage.
Roll all the saves at once on d20s.
Take each d20 to be for the monster that you most closely associate with it through whatever mechanism, be it left to right through dice and down your hit point list, or the relative position of the d20 to the other d20s compared with the relative position of the monsters on the grid, to what color each dice is - it doesn't really matter much. This is why you roll in secret - explaining this correlation will take longer than tallying the damage. So just be confident which monsters save and which don't, and as long as you're not consciously fudging it will all be fine.
If any monsters have disadvantage to saves and succeeded, re roll their die.
Tally each monster's damage.

 

[Tormyr]

I roll saves for all monsters simultaneously and use the relative position of each die on the table to correspond to each monster on the table. Then I just apply the damage accordingly. Takes maybe 30 seconds for 8 monsters.

 

[Horwath]

Group saves are the default rule. Roll once for all monsters of the same type. 10 orcs? One roll. 18 goblins? One roll. 5 vampire spawns? One roll.

Voila.

I hate group saves.

d20 is already bad enough. Lots of rolls actually helps to even out randomizing of d20.

Sure if group of 18 goblin bosses all fail the player will be happy, but he will feel much more worse about that, than happy about their fail roll. As their saves and your DC inclines to more of them should fail rather than succeed.