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*TTRPGs General
Would you use or allow average damage to speed up gameplay?
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<blockquote data-quote="takasi" data-source="post: 3057210" data-attributes="member: 20194"><p>After a year of playing from 1st lvl to 20th, our Age of Worms campaign has come to a close. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>So instead of:</p><p></p><p>+35/+35/+30/+25/+20 (3d6+30 / 19-20 plus 1 CON plus 1d6 fire plus 2d6 holy plus 2d6 undead bane)</p><p></p><p>You had the option of using:</p><p></p><p>+35/+35/+30/+25/+20 (40 / 19-20 plus 1 CON plus 5 fire plus 10 holy plus 10 undead bane)</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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?</p><p></p><p>Of course no matter how many dice you roll, at higher levels it can take just one to kill you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>Note that while I'm viewing this from a D&D perspective, it could apply to RPGs in general.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="takasi, post: 3057210, member: 20194"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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Would you use or allow average damage to speed up gameplay?
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