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<blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7646626" data-attributes="member: 6857506"><p>Apologies for going a bit off-topic, but here's a follow-up thought. Even though my players are level 6, I was still finding myself wincing when contemplating the maximum damage that <em>might</em> be inflicted by an encounter that was perfectly reasonable on average. However, using a constant (average) for the damage just sort of leaves me feeling a little flat - I like to see some variation, not to mention I like rolling dice. So I've started using an intermediate approach - rewriting damage specs to make them less swingy in general and to reduce the maximum in particular while keeping the same average. Of course, there are lots of ways to do this, but I've settled on a couple of substitutions that are quite straightforward. One is to just reduce the number of dice by substituting the average for <em>some </em>of the dice - for example 3d8 + 3 can become 1d8 + 12. One small limitation with this is that if you're concerned with exactness in the arithmetic, you have to substitute for even numbers of dice. The other easy substitution is to reduce the size of the dice: 1d12 = 1d10 + 1, 1d10 = 1d8 + 1, 1d8 = 1d6 + 1, 1d6 = 1d4 + 1. So that 3d8 + 3 could instead be 3d6 + 6 or 3d4 + 9, or 1d6 + 13.</p><p></p><p>Of course, it is probably a good idea to tell the players about this beforehand. Otherwise, if they see a 3 rolled on 1d6 and then you announce 16 damage, the surprise could be a bit unpleasant. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/cry.png" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":.-(" title="Cry :.-(" data-shortname=":.-(" /></p><p></p><p>EDIT: Also, to keep track of how to handle crits, I would actually write that example as (1d6 + 10) + 3.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Harzel, post: 7646626, member: 6857506"] Apologies for going a bit off-topic, but here's a follow-up thought. Even though my players are level 6, I was still finding myself wincing when contemplating the maximum damage that [I]might[/I] be inflicted by an encounter that was perfectly reasonable on average. However, using a constant (average) for the damage just sort of leaves me feeling a little flat - I like to see some variation, not to mention I like rolling dice. So I've started using an intermediate approach - rewriting damage specs to make them less swingy in general and to reduce the maximum in particular while keeping the same average. Of course, there are lots of ways to do this, but I've settled on a couple of substitutions that are quite straightforward. One is to just reduce the number of dice by substituting the average for [I]some [/I]of the dice - for example 3d8 + 3 can become 1d8 + 12. One small limitation with this is that if you're concerned with exactness in the arithmetic, you have to substitute for even numbers of dice. The other easy substitution is to reduce the size of the dice: 1d12 = 1d10 + 1, 1d10 = 1d8 + 1, 1d8 = 1d6 + 1, 1d6 = 1d4 + 1. So that 3d8 + 3 could instead be 3d6 + 6 or 3d4 + 9, or 1d6 + 13. Of course, it is probably a good idea to tell the players about this beforehand. Otherwise, if they see a 3 rolled on 1d6 and then you announce 16 damage, the surprise could be a bit unpleasant. :.-( EDIT: Also, to keep track of how to handle crits, I would actually write that example as (1d6 + 10) + 3. [/QUOTE]
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