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

[takasi]

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.

I don't understand how the question is irrelevant. "How do you feel about average damage?" is a rather generic question. The first response was a (attempted) funny way of either saying I don't like it or I don't care about it. You have dice and you want to use them. It doesn't explain why you want to keep rolling dice, but I wasn't designing a poll to figure out why people don't want average damage. If you want to express that then that's what the board is for.

Honestly, I did not intend for the poll to assume that average damage speeds up combat. My post assumes it, but the poll wasn't intended to. I thought the first response was generic enough to include people who feel that there's no point in using average damage. Maybe you don't have enough dice, maybe the reasoning isn't exactly because you have a bunch of dice and want to use them, but I thought the majority of people would understand that it's a joke.

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.

What you're looking for then is a "What slows down combat at higher levels?" thread or poll. I posted this thread for venting about average damage and discussing its use in DDM, how the mechanics of D&D might break down at low levels, and to what degree it (not everything else at the table) slows down combat at high levels.

As a threadjack though on high level combat:

IME players who have built their characters from the ground up have few problems with high level tactics. By the time it's their turn they know what spell they're going to try, what buffs the party needs and when to activate their class abilities. I have trained them well on this, because if they don't decide quickly then I decide for them: they delay. You can control this response, but you can't speed up die rolling and number crunching (unless you go with computer spreadsheets, which IME isn't very fun).

On the other hand, the unprepared DM can waste a great deal of time if he doesn't understand what his monsters can do. Players only have to worry about one (or two) sheets that they've built from scratch for months, whereas the DM is often flung into situations where he must ad hoc very complex monsters that he may be unfamiliar with. This is another good topic: Who slows down the high level game more, the PCs or the DM? It depends on the table of course, but in most cases the DM clearly has more on his shoulders. If you're well prepared though you should know the first 5 rounds of combat for pretty much every villain, with a few backup plans here and there.

 

[Fishbone]

I actually like base damage, speeds it up. I really don't like rolling big fat fistfuls of dice, its slow and bogs the game down like a mofo. Got hooked on average in HERO, especially with the option of partial rolling/partial average. Cuts the time down a lot.
The OP was also giving out another 1.5 damage a dice so it had to have sped things up, too.

 

[Lanefan]

The dice work both ways. If the player had 20 hp and the creature attacks for 4d6 there's a chance he could drop if you rolled the dice. In the long run whatever adds more randomness to the game is going to end up screwing the PCs, because they're the ones who have to survive.

Who says they *have* to survive? Never mind randomness works in favour of the PC's as well; when it's 8 PC's vs. one big opponent (a frequent occurrence) chance is on the side of the PC's in a big way.

The operative word above is chance. Rather than knowing my 12 h.p. PC's going down on the next auto-15-point hit, I'd rather have the chance he'll keep going after eating 4d6...and I'm more than willing to accept the counter-chance he'll be pulped at -14 rather than down at -3 from said next hit.

I'll hazard a guess here that those who use average damage to avoid randomness also use point-buy rather than roll-up for generating PC stats...how dull.

Oh, and DDM means D+D Mini's game, for whoever was asking.

Lanefan

 

[Agamon]

I have a happy medium. My laptop calculates hits/damage/saves/skill checks for monsters and NPCs. My players get to roll their fistfull of dice. It's all good.

 

[megamania]

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.

There is no such thing as an overkill



My group is the same way.

 

[Abraxas]

Honestly, I did not intend for the poll to assume that average damage speeds up combat. My post assumes it, but the poll wasn't intended to.

This may be the problem - your post attached to the poll assumes something you didn't want the poll to be about - which (IMO) colors peoples perception of the poll and what their answer may be interpreted as.

I think you would have gotten responses in accordance with what you wanted the queston to be about if you had not posted about speed of play issues, not included the DDM option - (which, by the way, made no sense to me), and not included the "dice bog down combat" descriptor in one of the options, and not ended with "Why just damage? I could take 10 on all d20 rolls too and get rid of dice completely!"

 

[takasi]

I think you would have gotten responses in accordance with what you wanted the queston to be about if you had not posted about speed of play issues, not included the DDM option - (which, by the way, made no sense to me), and not included the "dice bog down combat" descriptor in one of the options, and not ended with "Why just damage? I could take 10 on all d20 rolls too and get rid of dice completely!"

Thanks. Don't include this, don't include that. No reasoning at all, just don't include it. Got it. Thanks for the input.

 

[Lanefan]

... not included the DDM option - (which, by the way, made no sense to me)

The DDM option was what *did* make sense to me, as the only place I've ever seen average or flat-rate damage used is in that game.

Lanefan

 

[Conaill]

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.

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?

For what it's worth, I didn't vote in the poll either, simply because I didn't identify with any of the statements to choose from.

No big deal, mind you - this is hardly something I could imagine anyone getting "annoyed" with. You'll just fewer votes on your poll, and more people that feel they need to leave a more nuanced opinion in the thread itself rather than clicking on any single poll option.

No need for anyone to get their hackles up, and it's *still* an interesting issue, no matter how it was phrased...

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I would have to say no.

The use of average damage instead of rolling dice is not something I would endorse. There are a number of reasons for this.

- Tradition: It may not be a rational arguement, but this is not an issue that requires a rational counter arguement. I happen to like using dice

- Not using dice alters the basic psychology of the game: Consider this situation

Your a fighter with 9 Hp. Your opponent is a warrior using a longsword that does 1d8+3 damage with a reach weapon. Your certain the next hit you inflict will kill him.

If your using pure averages, you can just eat the AoO and take 7 or 8 damage, depending on how your round it out. There is no way you can die on the next attack. You know for a certaintly that you can close to melee and if your attack hits, you will finish him

If your using dice, you will die 3 times out of 8. Law of averages is still in your favour, but your probably not going to be so eager to close to melee to finish him.

When you know the outcome of your actions in advance, it will have an impact on your decision making.

- There are better ways to deal with the preceived problem: If you can get access to a laptop, you can use all sorts of programs to automate the dice rolling. Barring a flaw in the random number generator, it preserves the element of chance.

- There are more rolls than just damage to consider: In most cases, rolling damage is not going to be the bottle neck. You also have to account for things like the attack roll, saving throws, spell resistance checks, opposed rolls for various actions, and ability checks. Not all of these can be reasonably reduced to average rolls without harming the integrity of the game. If you remove the to hit roll, you also remove criticals, or you have to factor them into the average damage. If you remove saving throws, your players will probably murder you the first time you use something like a sorcerer with a hold person spell that none of the players can succeed against on average.

The only situation that I even come close to considering using average rolls for is when I have masses of archers shooting at a player. And even then, I used a percentile roll to decide how many of the attacks hit rather than assuming X hits from Y attacks.

END COMMUNICATION