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D&D 5E Pros and Cons of using the average damage on the Monster's stat block.
- Thread starter georbit
- Start date
Yep, so far so good!
We're halfway through part 2, so there is still much much more for the players to do but so far its going well. We only meet once a month, so I haven't had a need to convert the entire module yet, but lots of the encounters I've ran as presented in the adventure, dragging and dropping the same monsters from the current edition. Others, I've worked up versions of the creatures (like all the hobgoblins with class levels) that try to match the theme or feel of the encounter, sometimes beefing up monsters, or tweaking them back from their 5e equivalent.
No deaths yet in the party, but lots of close fights, and its been lots of fun.
We're halfway through part 2, so there is still much much more for the players to do but so far its going well. We only meet once a month, so I haven't had a need to convert the entire module yet, but lots of the encounters I've ran as presented in the adventure, dragging and dropping the same monsters from the current edition. Others, I've worked up versions of the creatures (like all the hobgoblins with class levels) that try to match the theme or feel of the encounter, sometimes beefing up monsters, or tweaking them back from their 5e equivalent.
No deaths yet in the party, but lots of close fights, and its been lots of fun.
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I was completely against using average damage. You lose the thrill of the roll, players can game the system, it's too much information to quickly since you know exactly what they can do, etc.
Then I ran 13th Age (an OGL from Tweet and Heinsoo that came out during the Next playtest) which uses average damage as default. I found that none of my concerns held water. There is so much going on in combat that it's not missed, and the little simplification adds up in terms of time, especially when running lots of opponents.
So my advice is to try it - it's not the monster it seems. I can easily argue against it until I realized that my points had little weight at the table and the simplicity sped combat more. It's not a big win, but it is a net win.
Then I ran 13th Age (an OGL from Tweet and Heinsoo that came out during the Next playtest) which uses average damage as default. I found that none of my concerns held water. There is so much going on in combat that it's not missed, and the little simplification adds up in terms of time, especially when running lots of opponents.
So my advice is to try it - it's not the monster it seems. I can easily argue against it until I realized that my points had little weight at the table and the simplicity sped combat more. It's not a big win, but it is a net win.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
That's exactly how I felt about Advantage/Disadvantage.
It's almost as if they'd put a lot of time and effort into testing all of this.
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I think we're on the same page. I knee-jerk didn't like it until I tried it, and comparing the two average damage wins out, especially with lots of combatants.
Though perhaps I was more on-board with advantage/disadvantage. In high level 3.5 I've written freaking dynamic spreadsheets for a character to track all of the modifiers that he either cast himself or were common from teammates plus items. And common debuffs. 4e then had condition salad, enough that I felt compelled to buy alea tools (colored magnetic mini bases to stack) to keep track. Having all of that simplified I could see was a big win at the table.
the Jester
Legend
I always roll damage and generally prefer to roll monster hit points.
The main "con" for me not rolling is- I love to roll my dice. That's really all I need.
That said, I sometimes take the average hps for monsters when I'm trying to keep things moving quickly... but when I do, it always rubs me the wrong way.
Mephistopheles
First Post
Here are a couple of quick ideas for reducing damage calculations without making it entirely static. (I'm shooting from the hip halfway through my morning cup of coffee, so I haven't really thought these through).
One alternative would be to scale damage based on how convincingly the attacker hits the target. Just making up some numbers for this example, but maybe minimum damage if the attack equals the target AC, average damage if the attack is 1-5 points higher than the target AC, and maximum damage beyond that. Some problems I see with this are that you'd always need to make the extra comparison of the attack relative to the target AC, and I think it would scale damage up in favour of hard hitters down in favour of high AC targets (and vice versa).
Another alternative could again go with the minimum-average-maximum idea, but roll a second universal damage die that indicates whether the damage is minimum, average, or maximum. Perhaps a d8 roll indicating minimum on a 1-2, average on a 3-6, and maximum on a 7-8. This would be faster in play than the first option and shouldn't have scaling issues.
For both alternatives, critical hits could just double the indicated damage. If you want to add a bit more randomness, they could be the only attacks you roll damage for as normal (doubling the result as usual).
One alternative would be to scale damage based on how convincingly the attacker hits the target. Just making up some numbers for this example, but maybe minimum damage if the attack equals the target AC, average damage if the attack is 1-5 points higher than the target AC, and maximum damage beyond that. Some problems I see with this are that you'd always need to make the extra comparison of the attack relative to the target AC, and I think it would scale damage up in favour of hard hitters down in favour of high AC targets (and vice versa).
Another alternative could again go with the minimum-average-maximum idea, but roll a second universal damage die that indicates whether the damage is minimum, average, or maximum. Perhaps a d8 roll indicating minimum on a 1-2, average on a 3-6, and maximum on a 7-8. This would be faster in play than the first option and shouldn't have scaling issues.
For both alternatives, critical hits could just double the indicated damage. If you want to add a bit more randomness, they could be the only attacks you roll damage for as normal (doubling the result as usual).
Me too -- I use average rolls for mooks because it's faster, especially when they gang up on PCs or have multiple attacks ("let's see, 3 hits, that's... 18 damage").
But for "boss" monsters or similar, I roll damage. The potential for high damage is one of the things that makes bosses scarier.
But for "boss" monsters or similar, I roll damage. The potential for high damage is one of the things that makes bosses scarier.
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