D&D 5E do you still roll for damage?

[Davelozzi]

I'm just coming back to D&D after a seven year hiatus (and probably even longer from these boards). I've only had one session of 5e so far but I have been reading through all the core rulebooks, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and Storm King's Thunder and one thing that keeps jumping out at me is the way all the damages for all the different monsters/NPCs are given as a static number with the die range in parentheses. Its' cool that they list it both ways so you can roll or not if you choose, but to me as a life-long player, rolling for damage just seems like such a basic part of the game. I am curious to what the consensus is. Do most DMs out there roll for damage for enemy attacks or just deal out the standard damage every time the monster/NPS connects?

 

[thethain]

While DMing, Rolling for lots of NPCs can be time consuming so I will often just use the average. However if the party is doing particularly well or unwell I might roll and use the lower/higher than the average to adjust the difficulty. (IE if party is dying, roll and take lowest of average or roll).

I also usually will roll crits, or if it is a boss type npc.

 

[LapBandit]

At my table all damage is rolled as I feel it's more dramatic. Also at my table, critical hits have their first die maxed. So if a fighter with a greatsword crits, its 12(max of 2d6) + 2d6 + Strength.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As a DM, I just use the average. When I go through and make my notes before a session, I transcribe all of the monster stats that might come up, and I only record the average/crit damage instead of writing down the whole thing.

Using the average damage doesn't make monsters any more or less dangerous, on average, but it does make them more consistent and faster to run. When you're already dealing with uncertainty on whether or not they'll hit, adding in the conditional uncertainty of how well they hit is not really worth the complexity. It also makes critical hits more important, since you're never going to get higher damage from a non-critical hit, and you never risk rolling a crit that somehow deals below-average damage anyway.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[CydKnight]

In the current campaign I'm running I took the average until the characters got to level 5 then I started rolling all damage dice.

 

[Oofta]

When DMing I only roll for damage on crits. I find average damage just means one less thing I need to think about/futz with so I can concentrate on tactics and flavor.

 

[pukunui]

I started using the average for a while but I eventually found I missed rolling. I'll still use the average for ongoing damage, though, like when someone's on fire and it makes sense that they'd keep taking a steady amount of damage round after round.

 

[alienux]

As a DM, I always roll damage. My players do, too. We like dice.

 

[jaelis]

In Soviet Russia, damage rolls you!

(But at my table, we roll damage )