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

[takasi]

There is no 'yes' and 'no'. There are five 'yes, but' and (from what I can tell) two 'no, but'. I don't agree with any of the 'buts', so which should I choose? The fact that it's 5-to-2, however, will bias the result.

Anyway, my answer is 'no'. It is not 'no' because I want to use all my dice (I would be happy to let someone else roll). It is also not 'no' because of 'DDM', whatever that is (and you still refuse to tell me?)

DDM is D&D Miniatures, which uses average damage.

You're off topic. The original statement of "bias" involved this statement: "the original question is based on the false premise that it is the rolling and adding of many dice that is a notable cause of slow gameplay at higher levels."

The question is simply "How do you feel about average damage?" The first two responses do not make this premise.

I'll admit most polls have some type of bias including this one. Perhaps I did not include every possible response on the poll, so you can reply here with more information if none of the responses (which I originally intended to be light and comical) accurately record your perspective.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

No. I would not do this in my games, if there was a HELL NO! option I would have taken it.

I seem to be in the majority in this regard. Nor was Infiniti2000 off topic - he was giving his opinions of a very biased poll. No further explanation of why yes, or why no is needed, but there are more ways of answering yes than of answering no.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Ah yes, I remember being annoyed with other topics that have been posted by the OP... not surprising, really.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

I did not answer the poll since there wasn't any thing even close to what I wanted to say.

My answer would be - Yes, but only if I needed to roll 100 sets of 5d6 damage (or similar).

Our group has no problem rolling 20 dice of spell damage. We have no problem rolling "decent" (take 'decent' to be whatever you want it to be) sized rolls four times a combat round. We have, however, in the past used average healing from a wand of Cure Moderate Wounds when it was the only thing available to us (I don't recall why that was) in order to quickly get back to the story.

99.9% of the time: heck no. There have been times where we didn't want to waste a half hour on the chance of saving two charges off a wand that was too low a level anyway, though.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Average damage: sounds remarkably dull to me. Also unrealistic: one hit that gets through your armour might connect somewhere it doesn't hurt very much, while the next hit might hurt a whole lot more.

What's next: not rolling to hit?

Lanefan

Heh. In another thread (can't remember which one) I suggested using average damage as a sorta sarcastic method of pointing out how much averaging something else would affect the game. Can't remember what thread it was.....

I wouldn't average damage, personally.

Of course, I seriously hacked into the whole "multiple attack" thing, replacing it with a skill-based weapon system that allows for some flexibility in how weapons are used. So, even in high-level games, the sheer number of dice is greatly reduced.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The only time I'd do it (or allow it) is once it got to 20+ dice, and that is only because mathematically it is very unlikely to deviate far from the average. In practice this means the disintegrate spell and pretty much nothing else in any game I'm likely to be running.

 

[Imruphel]

Good question... badly-designed poll (but that's normal for these boards!).

I use average damage a lot of the time as the DM and give the players the option to do so too but I don't do it if it's a "life or death roll". I just prefer it for speeding the game up particularly after 5th or so level (as soon as fireball is used basically).

 

[Raven Crowking]

Not biased?

There is no such thing as a poll without a bias, IMHO. To be honest, I'm not sure that we're better served when the bias is hidden.

RC

 

[takasi]

You guys sure do like to insult the poll design, but what did you really expect?

Really?

Essentially I was looking for this:

If you like average damage at what level would you use it?

-Don't like it
-20+
-15+
-5+
-1+

I was trying to be entertaining, I'm sorry if I annoyed everyone with my horribly inaccurate poll that is so incredible biased that people refuse to participate in it.

If someone would please post how they would have designed the poll I would be glad to change it.

How about:

Do you like average damage:

Yes
No

Gee, there's no way we could figure that out from this poll could we? And if you can't find exactly what you want to say in the poll I guess there's no place for you to express your opinion is there?

 

[Raven Crowking]

I wouldn't worry about it, takasi. Every time I design a poll, it turns out that I am the Avatar of Asmodeus.

IMHO, every poll is biased. If the bias is concealed, you might end up with better results, or you might end up with people voting for something they don't actually believe. If the bias is clear, you might end up with clearer results, or you might end up with people voting for something they don't actually believe. Polls are interesting, and they might point you in the direction you want to go, but they aren't really proof of anything.

Apparently, though, a lot of people have an obsessive/compulsive need to vote in polls that they hate (and post in threads they despise).

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Okay, I don't speak for what OTHER people may have wanted, expected, etc. All _I_ meant was exactly what I said. It seemed that any response I selected would additionally infer that use of average damage DOES have a significant effect on how much time it takes to complete a round of combat. The poll responses, while humorous as is typical and perhaps even expected on ENworld, just didn't give me the clear option I wanted which was that the question - IMO - was largely irrelevant.

Essentially I was looking for this:

If you like average damage at what level would you use it?

-Don't like it
-20+
-15+
-5+
-1+

I DID understand that you were looking for a level range for which average damage was most suited and thus my lack of response. My experience is that the single most time-consuming factor as levels increase is simply the vast array of options that players have for their characters. Once they finally decide what to do there is little or no delay and thus for purposes of speeding up gameplay there are other places to look first. It's the time it takes to make that initial decision of what to do that slows the game down, not arithmetic. That delay gets worse as the fight gets more intense and players start to PORE over their character sheets looking for the first time in months at what their character REALLY has in equipment, skills and feats when the standard procedures of "just throw damage at it" won't work.

I was trying to be entertaining, I'm sorry if I annoyed everyone with my horribly inaccurate poll that is so incredible biased that people refuse to participate in it.

For MY part, the intent was not to actually criticize the poll itself but to spark discussion about what ARE good ways to speed up combat since my belief was that average damage really wasn't addressing the problem.

If you really want a better example poll the one you just gave above IS better. Not as amusing, but much clearer in terms of what kind of information sampling you're after. One other thing I'd do would be to be sure that the question posed in the thread title, the title of the poll and the poll options all work together. After all the thread title is: "Would you use or allow average damage to speed up gameplay?" while the question at the top of the poll itself is, "What do you think about average damage?" (a FAR more general topic) and the poll options are then intended to produce very specific level ranges for use.