D&D 5E Average damage or rolled damage?

[Xorne]

We play over Fantasy Grounds (have for a decade--I'm an FG hipster) and the combat tracker shows monster hit points as Healthy, Light, Moderate, Heavy, Critical, Dead/Dying, with 25% break points. I started using those descriptions in face-to-face play because it's about how much information I want to give.

And I roll all damage, because I'm playing D&D, and I want to roll damage dice too.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

And as a player, I would hate this. It doesn't help me play the game in any meaningful way. It makes it more difficult for me to stay in character, to think in-character. Will it harm my role-playing? Probably not in any way you'd see as DM. But it would absolutely damage my immersion and my enjoyment.

It sounds like you are confusing "I don't hide it" with "I force the players to know it."

As for the difficulty of "thinking in character", I've actually found that once I get a player to stop thinking about what their character does/doesn't know that they know and figuring out the various ways in which their character actually can make the decision that initially seems like "metagaming" (i.e. there is no difference between your character choosing not to spend more limited resources because the monster looks like it is on its last legs according to description of events leading to this point with the player having no idea how many HP are actually left, and your character choosing not to spend more limited resources because the monster looks like it is on its last legs according to both the description of events leading to this point and how many hit points it has left, since hit points are an abstraction of various things which are actually visible to the characters).

So yes, meta-gaming is a thing that absolutely exists--at some tables. It may not at yours, because of your chosen playstyle, and that's fine. But it's not a playstyle that appeals to everyone.

Yeah, I already covered that meta-gaming exists at tables that supposedly try to avoid it, since it is impossible to avoid having what the player knows affect what the character does, since trying to avoid doing so requires you to do so.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

And I roll all damage, because I'm playing D&D, and I want to roll damage dice too.

I think "because I want to" is the absolute best reason to roll damage, but I hope that the implication that anyone not doing so isn't playing D&D was unintended.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Add one more voice to the votes of using random damage because when you know how much damage is coming each round, almost always the player plans around around that knowledge.

 

[Mouseferatu]

It's not about worrying whether my PC knows what I know. It's about the fact that I have more fun when I don't know the stuff my PC wouldn't. Obviously, this being a game, there's only so far you can take that, but I prefer games/groups/DMs where the effort is made to avoid giving us the meta-knowledge.

 

[sleypy]

I prefer rolling damage. Even in 4e, I converted minions damage to dice rolls. I have never seen damage take a significant amount of time (the hit that seems to take all the time.)

When it comes to hp, I'm a bit more cavalier. Most creatures have rolled hp; some creatures will have average hp. A lot of the time, I just have average out hitpoints across the group. I mean, I'll roll hp and max or min a few. It is to keep the group at approximately average hp and to designate one as the leader of the group.

 

[Azurewraith]

Roll damage and auto max out HP for monsters ofc

 

[ad_hoc]

I concur. My players use an app for rolling initiative. It has everyone's bonuses and I just tell the Initiative Keeper the names of opponents and their bonuses. With the click of one button each round, we have a new order. The only person who knows the order is the IK and he calls out each person when they're up. It adds almost zero overhead to do it this way.

And as far as NPC/monster damage, I have been using average since it's very quick. However, I recently watched a Critical Roll episode and noticed the DM there rolls all of his damage. I might tinker with doing that to see if it slows things down or not. I think it's good for the players to be sure how much damage a particular opponent can do and it adds more drama to the battle.

What is the app for initiative rolling? I would like to try that out.

As for rolled HP for PCs. My players insist on it so I have changed HP to a 2dx format. This gives an average that matches the fixed amount that you can choose in the book and curves the results toward the average as well.

 

[Galendril]

I don't know which one he uses but there are a bunch out there on iTunes. I have RPG buddy on my phone that does initiative easily

 

[Dausuul]

It's along the same lines of a character in-character knowing its turn in the initiative order - an equally outlandish concept solved by rerolling initiatives each round.

It is indeed, and it was introduced for the same reasons: Simplifying and speeding up play.

I might roll damage for a boss monster (a dragon or some such), but in general, I prefer to go with average damage for the monsters. I have not noticed players strategizing around the damage value when the DM picks this option. Many monsters get multiple attacks, creating a range of results (0 hits, 1 hit, 2 hits, etc.), and there's always the possibility of a crit or a special ability you weren't expecting. Plus the encounter often involves a mix of monsters with different damage values, so calculating all the combinations is seriously non-trivial.

Lan-"wondering both what monster does 13-68 points on a hit and what set of dice one rolls to get that range"-efan

11d6+2 or 5d12+8 would be the simplest options.