Would you use or allow average damage to speed up gameplay?

[takasi]

After a year of playing from 1st lvl to 20th, our Age of Worms campaign has come to a close.

Maybe it was the fact that we had 7 or 8 players, but after 15th level our combat sessions began slowing down to a point where we could only run one or two encounters in a 4 hour session. To speed things up as DM I began using average damage on all dice rolls and gave people the option of choosing either method.

Average damage is determined by adding the lowest and highest values and dividing it by 2. That number is rounded to the nearest increment of 5. As an added incentive to use this method, single bonuses of 1d6 are rounded to 5 and 2d6 are rounded to 10.

So instead of:

+35/+35/+30/+25/+20 (3d6+30 / 19-20 plus 1 CON plus 1d6 fire plus 2d6 holy plus 2d6 undead bane)

You had the option of using:

+35/+35/+30/+25/+20 (40 / 19-20 plus 1 CON plus 5 fire plus 10 holy plus 10 undead bane)

So if you're going up against an evil creature that's not undead and not resistant to fire then you know the damage is going to be 55 every hit.

With a high level encounter of 8 PCs with 2 cohorts going up against 6 monsters, you're looking at about 500 dice rolls versus 50 with average damage PER ROUND, with the DM making more rolls than anyone else at the table.

Using average damage was much easier for us IMO, allowing the group to go through 4-5 combat encounters in our 4 hour sessions even at very high levels. It also seems to benefit the party, since randomness in general usually ends up hurting the PCs at some point.

What is your experience with rolling dice at higher levels? If you were to go with average damage, at what point would you prefer to use it?

Of course no matter how many dice you roll, at higher levels it can take just one to kill you.

Note that while I'm viewing this from a D&D perspective, it could apply to RPGs in general.

 

[Chaldfont]

I kind of informally did this in my high level game. Usually with area attacks. Big fireballs and dragon breath attacks from NPCs usually did average damage unless I just felt like rolling a big buncha dice.

I'm sure if we had played much longer in that campaign, I would have gone your route. It just gets unreasonable otherwise. And when you roll so many dice, your chances of getting a really high or really low roll go down quite a bit.

I also considered recalibrating hit points: Just divide all hp and damage by 5 or even 10 and recalibrate damage rolls accordingly.

 

[eris404]

I probably wouldn't use averages - in our group, the players take too much pleasure in rolling out handfuls of dice. They enjoy the drama of it, especially the idea that someone could just as easily roll all ones as maximum damage. Now, I get that there are groups that dislike this and there are times when averages would be very helpful, such as in PbEM games, so I don't discount it as an idea.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I would consider (and have done in the past) this with certain caveats.

I've done it frequently with big damage spells, especially when dealing with mooks. I could also see doing it for most damage types. I'd probably still have the base damage rolled and let the '+' be the sum of the average of the other dice, just to preserve some randomness and the fun of rolling the max.

But I would do it to cut down on the amount of variables the players had to keep track of, not to reduce the actual number of rolls.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I love rolling dice so this method is evil to my POV.

 

[Stormborn]

Average damage is perfectly fine as long as Hit Points are done the same way. However, my group loves rolling dice so I would never impliment it in a full campaign, maybe for a one-shot just to try it. Also, averages like that make me wonder if an even more abstract system wouldn't serve as well, one with damage slots that get checked off for succesful attacks.

 

[diaglo]

I love rolling dice so this method is evil to my POV.

QFT.

i'm all about the dice.

 

[wayne62682]

Get back to th' depths from whence ye' came, evildoer! In the name of Pelor, begone foul demon!

Uhh.. I mean.. I don't agree with it.. but I think it'd be cool to try out.. I would play with these rules, but not my cup of tea.

 

[Henrix]

Sounds terribly boring to me. And I can't see that the dice rolls take that much time, really.

As long as everyone is clear on what they're fighting and what damage they do they just have the correct dice ready and roll them. Summing them up is quick work.

 

[Barak]

My players roll their damage even when I tell them "He had 1 HP left, you do a minimum of 26. He's dead." So no.