I've been looking at the ever growing number of dice being rolled in any given encounter (I DM for 5 10th level PCs) and thinking if there was a way to keep the complexity of the game while still speeding things up a bit what would it be?
Taking a cue from the DnD Miniatures rules i started looking at how they dealt with damage by just factoring the average damage any given attack could deal and rounding it to the closest value divisible by 5.
Not wanting to have to force the group to recalculate their set damage value every time they try a new weapon, or raise a level, or get a buff spell cast on them, I tried to devise a good way to just apply set damage for each damage value for all the various weapons, spells, and natural attacks.
I came up with something like this:
1d3 or lower
Set value: 1
1d4
Set value: 2
1d6
Set value: 3
1d8
Set value: 4
2d4
Set value: 5
1d10
Set value: 6
1d12
Set value: 7
2d6
Set value: 8
2d8
Set value: 9
3d6
Set value: 10
2d10
Set value: 11
3d8
Set value: 13
4d8
Set value: 18
My question is: Has anyone else experimented with something like this, and if so how did it go?
It seems like it would speed things up at least a little--but would it be at the expense of most of the fun of not knowing if you’re going to deal out massive damage (or roll all ones and hang your head in shame)?
What I usually recommend along these lines is only for when you're rolling a ton of dice (for example, 24d8 for a dragon's breath weapon, etc). Anyway, if you take the average of half the dice (12*4.5 = 54 for 24d8) then roll the other half, you preserve the average result while still keeping the randomness and the interest from rolling dice. What you do is reduce the huge variance in results. For the example, 24d8 could result in anywhere from 24 damage to 192 damage, with an average of 108. Using the half-and-half method, it instead deals 66 to 150 damage, with an average of 108.
If you want to cluster the results more tightly around the average, decrease the number of dice you roll and increase the number of dice you take the average of. For example, if you roll only 1/4 of 24d8, you get a result from 87 to 129, with the same 108 average.
Most of my games are online, so rolling a lot of dice isn't difficult. Even offline, it's not my cup of tea - I like my rolling where things can be incredibly awesome or incredibly hilarious, and I say that as someone who rolled four 1's in his 4d6 sneak attack once.
I don't think I would like set damage. Knowing my longsword would do 4 HP every time I swing it would be uninteresting to me.
To solve the OP's problem a different way (the problem isn't random damage, the problem is lots of dice), I would try what we used to do in our Champions (Hero System) game. For those not in the know, it's a game originally designed to make superheroes. Anything from a lame 1-trick guy who barely has even a single super power on up to Superman and beyond. And everything was done in D6. For example, a normal human might punch you for 1d6 damage, while the Hulk might punch you for 80d6 damage.
We usually found when going into double digits, we would only roll 1/2, or 1/3, or 1/4, or 1/5, etc., of the total number of dice. The larger the number of total dice, the smaller the fraction we would chose. So if we needed 16d6, we would roll 1/2 (8d6), but if we needed 40d6, we would roll 1/4 (10d6). Then we would roll the dice and add them up, then mulitply by the inverse of whatever our fraction was.
(It's easier to do it than it is to explain it - this became second nature for us very quickly.)
This method also "widened" the range of results. For example, actually rolling 40d6 you hardly ever roll much less than 120 or much more than 160. That's a fairly narrow range. Meaning a super-punch of 40d6 is fairly predictable. But rolling 10d6 and multiplying by 4, while still maintaining an average roll of 140, can sometimes be as low as 90 or 100, and sometimes as high as 180 or 190. Makes the results less predictable.
Although, truthfully, the numbers of dice and the rarity of using large pools of dice in Pathfinder is far far far less of an issue than it was in those good old Champions days, so I've never had a problem just rolling the actual dice when I play D&D/Pathfinder.
Tried several systems in other peoples' games, but never really saw one I cared for. That said, I had doubts about 3.0 till I saw it, so EXCELSIOR!
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dice roller on my iPhone... easy, type in the number and die, give it a little shake and all done, all added for me and everything.
To be honest as GM, if I have a screen, I just pick up a die whatever is closest to make the noise, and pick a number myself. I want combat to go the way I want it to go. I want combat to be fun and thrilling, and not have to rely upon an overwhelming amount of randomness to determine what happens in my story. I suppose that is the difference. I look at a game as a story and not a video game on dice.
We like rolling dice. Including rolling large numbers of dice.
That having been said, sometimes, when I am the GM, I use dice rollers for big rolls. I use my laptop for MapTool, the PDFs and PRD site, and there's dice rolling sites/apps out there.
If push comes to shove, I have a dice roller on my cellphone. Haven't used it yet, though.
dice roller on my iPhone... easy, type in the number and die, give it a little shake and all done, all added for me and everything.
To be honest as GM, if I have a screen, I just pick up a die whatever is closest to make the noise, and pick a number myself. I want combat to go the way I want it to go. I want combat to be fun and thrilling, and not have to rely upon an overwhelming amount of randomness to determine what happens in my story. I suppose that is the difference. I look at a game as a story and not a video game on dice.
We are on opposite ends of the spectrum I see. As a GM I gave up rolling behind the screen and do everything in the open (except the few occasional hidden roles) so the players know I am not cheating them. I have been in games where the GM just does what he wants and that frustrated me as a player as it really didn't matter what I did or said. The randomness, to me, is the whole point of the game otherwise I could just be reading a book.
We are on opposite ends of the spectrum I see. As a GM I gave up rolling behind the screen and do everything in the open (except the few occasional hidden roles) so the players know I am not cheating them.
While I don't just pull numbers out of my backside all the time (what's the point? Why would the players even play if the GM decides everything) I do roll behind the screen.
Gotta surprise the players.
I do occasionally change the outcome of some rolls, but that's reserved for very special occasions.
And, of course, without the screen, you cannot just roll the dice, look at them, smile evilly to yourself, and continue playing as if nothing happened. Always great to freak players out!
I have been in games where the GM just does what he wants and that frustrated me as a player as it really didn't matter what I did or said. The randomness, to me, is the whole point of the game otherwise I could just be reading a book.
Well, not quite randomness, but your (deliberate) choices do need to count for something.
And agonising over the dice is half the fun.
Well, not quite randomness, but your (deliberate) choices do need to count for something.
And agonising over the dice is half the fun.
Yeah I love both beating the odds with crazy good dice rolls, and also love (at least later as a story but not at the time!) when something should go your way and horrible rolls sink you.
I haven't even considered it. I might do it for another system, but set damage values are kind of silly. Every time the Tarrasque hits me he always does 36 damage? Is... is the Tarrasque some kind of giant machine whose natural weapons deal a d1 and has a really high strength score? Because strangely enough, given my history with the Tarrasque, that would make sense.