Don't Add Up Damage - Use a blank d6

[varden]

I just can’t add. Quickly.

When my rogue hits with a combat advantage daily it takes me so long to add up the 5d8+3+5 that the DM jumps in most times. It’s getting to be a joke.

In a couple months I’ll be the DM (Trollhaunt Warrens) and I’ll be playing a cave full of monsters that do 2, 3 and 4 dice of damage with a hit.

I don’t want the combats to bog down every time I hit a player, so I’m going to figure the average damages ahead of time and write them on a blank d6.

Let’s take an easy example: 2d6.

We know the range is 2 to 12. The average is 7, occurring 16.67% of the time. I would write a ‘7’ on four sides of the blank d6. 4 and 10 come up 8.33% of the time so I would write a ‘4’ and ‘10’ on the remaining two sides.

The average comes up the most often, and the two outliers come up exactly half as often. There is still a little variety and it’s fair to everyone.

Another example is Skalmad the Troll King who does 3d8+8 on a hit.

The range is 11 to 32, the average split between 21 and 22, which each occur at 9.375%. There are no outliers that occur exactly half as often as the averages, but 16 and 27 come close at 4.102%.

The blank d6 gets numbered: 16, 21, 21, 22, 22, 27. Plenty of variety, and still fair to King Skally and the party too.

And speaking of trolls, I await your feedback…

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Cool idea. The guy selling the blank d6's are going to love you.

When we're playing at higher levels, we often just use average damage -- especially as DMs, but even sometimes players do that as well, just to speed things up. Our house rules offer it as an option for players, though -- some guys love the feel of a fistful of dice.

-rg

 

[kitsune9]

I think you're better off just using averages as DM then.

Either that or instead of creating a whole bunch of blanks use a spreadsheet instead and print it out.

 

[amerigoV]

If your DMing, screw that! Just do max damage all the time!

(and you can still roll the dice behind the screen if you want, just keep saying "Oooooooooo").

 

[kitsune9]

If your DMing, screw that! Just do max damage all the time!

I'm totally supportive of that idea 100%!

 

[WampusCat43]

There's got to be a phone app for that.

 

[the Jester]

Just be careful not to mix up which monsters get to use which dice!

 

[Rune]

Looks neat, but I have some bad news for you (if you really hate math). If your party is even slightly optimized, they will cleave through that adventure without feeling challenged once, unless you update the monsters to use the current math. At least, when I played through it, we were never challenged.

 

[the Jester]

Looks neat, but I have some bad news for you (if you really hate math). If your party is even slightly optimized, they will cleave through that adventure without feeling challenged once, unless you update the monsters to use the current math. At least, when I played through it, we were never challenged.

Very good point.

It's easy to approximate the correct math by simply adding +1/2 level to the monsters' damage but there are a whole lot of other tweaks that improve P1 a ton. (I ran it not too long ago- we're prolly finishing P2 on Friday, also with tweaks and updates for my campaign.)

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Using a phone app or a spreadsheet would be my suggestion as well, or instead of making a custom die for each monster, indicate in each stat block what each number (1-6) represents (maybe that's what you were planning to do and I didn't understand well).

AR