Hey all,
Been loving what I've been seeing thus far for 2E, but one thing I have noticed is a sharp increase in the number of dice rolled, especially at later levels. Rolling 2 or 3 dice isn't too bad normally, but if you end up in a situation with more, especially if you crit, that's a lot of maths, and can slow down the game.
This is especially problematic for one of my players who has Dyscalculia (Dyslexia with numbers essentially) so she wouldn't do well with this at all, and to be fair I don't think she'd be alone in struggling to work it out around our table- more numbers mean more likely mistakes.
As an example (and hopefully I get this right from what I've seen), if you crit with a +3 Flaming Greataxe that's Deadly 1d8, and thus roll 8d12+1d8+1d6+8 (consisting of double normal dice for crit, deadly bonus, plus the extra d6 for flaming quality); that's both a lot of maths, and probably more d12s than you have at the table.
What's a viable alternative option for this? Two things come to mind at first: rolling one dice and multiplying it (ie. 1d12x8 instead of 8d12), but this still involves much maths, and can be pathetic or brutal if you roll min or max. The other is to just have a flat damage value, no dice rolled, at half the dice value (ie. the above example would be 33 non-crit and 68 on the crit); this would certainly speed up that aspect of play, but probably take away from that feeling of risk/reward. Players would probably only need to bring d20s to games too.
What are other people's thoughts on trying to help with the mathematically challenged?