Replace Damage Dice with WHAT?! (#312)

You can't waste hours rolling dice to see if you hit and then how much dam you inflict.
1) never roll for dam, dam is the average of the roll (round up) plus usual stuff
2) stop building hp mammoth, max hit die + con bonus at lv 1, con bonus thereafter
3) you save tons of seconds for each character, hence tons of minutes in a fight

This is interesting! Take this rules and tables, roll a d100 instead of a d20 and and Voilà, you've got Rolemaster who is the first overhaul of AD&D combat system from 1980!
I love AD&D and D&D, but my games really shines when I use this Rolemaster combat tables rules, and my player love them too. This speed up everything, this makes your combat dangerous and player engage them carefully. I will stick with Rolemaster, but I'm happy to see this king of rules (re)appears to counter the hit-point attrition effect who bog down the game. :)
This said, in Rolemaster the tables are not so vague, they says where you're hit and what happens. You can change it or adapt it but it's there, so you don't have to imagine all the details.

You might like HarnMaster or HarnWorld. Its damage system can be brutal and unforgiven.

I do enjoy simplifying things, but for me this takes things beyond the point of "as simple as possible, but no simpler." It replaces the damage roll with a lot of DM judgment that I would prefer goes into other aspects of the game. I was a bigger fan of doing away with to-hit rolls and just rolling damage, as flawed as that is in some other respects, it doesn't add in any new work.

NO!
We need d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20.
The abstraction causes errors. It's wrong and makes the game stupid.
M 🦘🏏😎

DMs fudging dice rolls is basically the same thing. With this system rather than having HP pools, it would be better to have a description of what it takes to bring down a foe. Or category of foes.

I prefer scaling damage where it's 1 dice against against the correct difficulty level. The time spent on the math for multiple dice adds to and shows play. And multiple dice produce less dramatic average results more often.

But I never fudged dice n v the rules are sacred.

How is this differnt form the "Crit tables" that were used in early AD and D games, I had for instince at lest 3 shuch tables and 2 "fumble tables" that run form +1 damage to body split in twain, instance death, or you droped you weapon to take +1 damage to self, to critical hit nearest party member roll once on crital hit table, apply all damage..

The XDM 2E lost me when they tried to justify how the closed matrix was not a railroad with pretty decorations. Though I do give them points for addressing it.

I recently implemented this D20 roll for determining damage for a new 5e game that's heavily house ruled (some 4e tactical conditions, critical hit cards, story cards for players each session, alternate crafting rules adapted from 3.5 Craft Points, and many ICRPG concepts to see how the players like it such as fixed Room DC (with +/- for Hard/Easy), clockwise turn rotation, 'hearts' for enemy HP, and others), and holy cow does it speed up my DM turn. I like rolling dice as much as other folks, but I have no problem using options to speed up my turn to get it back to the players (who still roll all of their dice for funsies). I heavily endorse this!

Huh, makes me think of how "Man to Man" and "Chainmail" worked. Well, I would be forgetting tournament damage where the monsters all have their damage per hit averaged and only the players need to roll.
Still, fun concepts and thanks for the video!

I posted a bunch of detailed comments asking for advice. They got deleted?

Hi Professor, I think you made an excellent point (as usual) early on in your comment that a player spends at least an hour creating a particular character, and then, once actually in the game and in combat, all of the characters, statistically deal about the same amount of damage. Let's be honest, that is BY DESIGN. If any character build is dealing out significantly more damage than others, that build is clearly broken within game mechanics. If there is a build that consistently is more effective in combat, everyone will choose it. That is boring.

I have designed a few game systems over my 40+ years of gaming. One of the goals in the "tinkering/adjusting phase" of designing a game is to make sure no single class (or ability or race or "build") makes others useless. The same goes for weapons, armor, magic items, etc. The game designer wants all of these things fairly balanced so that a player who just plain wants to run a Hobbit wielding a Boar Spear two-handed without a shield can still be effective and useful within-game. The classic Long Sword and Shield combo ("sword and board") was for so long SO much more effective than other weapon/shield/armor combos that no one chose anything but sword and board. That is boring. Other weapons were "buffed" just enough to become useful possibilities. That leads to variety in the party. Variety tends to be fun.

This is all very goofy. The hit point system is already so simple. Some things I do: 1. Roll damage die at the same time you roll the attack roll. 2. For monsters, I don't often choose/roll individual hit points-- I'll most often just use increments of 5 HP for monsters (unless it's a boss or something). So, for example, a 4 HD creature almost always has 20 hp. Game is dragging? Pow. Next monster has 1 HP per level. Done. Don't blame the game that you rely too much on dice. Don't fix (too much) what ain't broken y'all. Hit Points were a great elegant invention why mess with it.

Shame your not in Wales - love to play at your table. A great, great channel.

This is awesome news about XDM 2nd edition. First one is a great read

I'm reading XDM right now. I have quite a few manuals and none of them get into what matters like this book. It's sits right next to my manuals where it belongs.

I've never understood why 5E creature stats are so involved. All you need is HP, AC, and some Abilities. Strahd's character sheet is 5 pages long. That is just plain silly. I want to play the game, not keep track of liar, and Legendary actions.

This works great for online games because electronic dice aren't random and fudging rolls is way too easy. This also scales enemies perfectly. It lets me run adventures which as written aren't challenging enough for the players. And it is easy to hand wave. Why are goblins equally challenging at 1st lvl and 3rd lvl? Waves hand, these are 3rd lvl goblins. Those were 1st lvl goblins.

We ended up just cutting everything's hp in half. Made all our fights go twice as fast. 🤔

Savage Worlds replaces hit points with three wounds (or just one for regular enemies). Beating the target's toughness score by 4 causes a wound.

Great video - more like this please.

I always think hit points are weird when ever I think about them for more than thirty seconds. I like the idea, but I don't know if I like it for my becmi runs atm, but then maybe it isn't all that different from what I do anyway maybe. But the book sounds cool, I'll pick it up for sure. I'm always trying to think of something to make this area of the system less dull, but most things I think of are too luck based, too lethal (which has its place ), or too complicated (and there by missing the point).

Though this is also why I'm always going back and forth on standard weapon damage, because you get through the AC then you've not just hit them but you've got past whatever armour they may have, be it getting stabbed in the mouth with a dagger, smashed in the skull with a mace, or impaled on the end of a spear, your life just got real sucky (or maybe splurty) real fast.

It's an interesting concept. I probably wouldn't use it, but I do find it interesting, although I might use the charts just to give myself extra description ideas.

Wouldn't you trust your gamemaster to walk your dog or watch your kid for a couple of hours?

Sure, but I actually care about my character, tho 😉

It sounds more like slowing things down more than speeding them up.

5e has the average damage number printed to speed things up. It mind ravages you for 45 damage.

Subtracting 45 is faster than rolling an additional die and making a DM judgement of the outcome.

As far as the timer ⏳ idea, that an AoE spell speeds up combat, but a cleric healing slows it down, that's further compounded by the cleric using up their actions for healing which means they're not directly contributing to removing the enemy's hitpoints. However, keeping a high damage output martial class alive long enough to get another turn to absolutely wreck the foe greatly speeds up an encounter.

Besides we like rolling our math rocks 🎲

I love how Open Legend RPG does it. You attack with a d20 + extra die/s based on how much points you invest into your damage stat. If the attack roll beats enemy AC, the damage done is (attack roll-AC), minimum damage you do is 3

My problem with "Hit Systems" like viking death squad is that it is Hit Points. Just lower numbers, but it's the exact same thing as normal Hit Points.

Huh, I ended up combining the to hit and damage roll in my home-brew system. It's always seemed weird to me they where separate. Especially in system where you get a bonus to both from the same attribute.

You make one attack roll and see if you beat the targets Defense score, if you did. They take the amount you beat it by as damage. Keep the numbers fairly low (20 is considered borderline superhuman) it all seems to move quickly enough.

One thing which I like about this system is that a Dagger can do more damage than a Greatsword. A high-level Fighter who was an expert in dagger combat would probably have their d20 roll of 11 interpreted higher than a raw recruit with a Greatsword with the same roll.

First impression:
More story telling, less meta / micro gameplay. Depends on the group how viable it'd be. People who like the stats and builds wouldn't appreciate it unless a more complex system was built around it.

What’s old is new again? Didn’t Boot Hill 3ed have something similar?

Im a new dm, I gave my boss 30 hp
The fight started strong, he was at half health from the first round. I upped his health to 50
Another round of damage, this time normal but Im bad at math so I just rounded 6+3+3+1 to "around 10"
A few rounds of fudged math later
A wolf got the killing blow and while it could be fun to describe, I left him at 1 hp and let the player get a sweet decapitation
Great game 👌

I can see why you would handle it that way, especially with the chaos combat initiave system combat will take 10 minutes, 15 at most.

But i like rolling dice. I want to hear the clickity clackity and the way i play my turns are usually relatively short and i don't mind another player needing to take some time for calculation.

But i understand that it's me specifically who feels that way.

Great advice: average damage is a useful approach to simplify and speed up routine combat. But for those moments that really matter - when the stakes are high! when epic enemy is fighting with their last ounce of strength! or when the exhausted party is on its heels and fighting for its life! Make your choice and roll the dice. Average damage is predictable, routine. If you want tension, it's time to let the dice tell the tale!

But die is just as likely to stop on a nat20 as on a 6 or 14, no? For that matter, a 10 or 11. So the outcome is pure, unadulterated chance - or am I missing something?

If hit dice track how many dice worth of hit points you have, and damage dice track how many dice worth of damage you can do, just calculate how many hit dice you knock off with each hit. "Fireball! Minus 8 hit dice to the ogre!"

I agree with a lot of this, but I personally avoid tying damage dice to weapon size, at it makes characters converge into sameness. The dagger is just as lethal as the greatsword when applied properly. To me, damage dice by weapons turns HP into meatpoints.

I like this, but dice are faster than tables. Why spend the time to look up the effect of every attack in a reference table rather than just apply the rolled number. I'll have to mull this one over.

MY players always bring beer. I have no complains on that regard.

I'm not using 'such things' for the campaign that I'm running. A Short-Bow's Arrow with a Flint Tip Does 1hp Damage, unless the 'Ranger' calls their shot, then they also roll with Disadvantage, but when they land that shot, depending where that shot is, it can do 2hp and as much as a Kill. They can chose to hit an artery to weaken their opponent an extra hp per round, or a Temple/heart shot for an instant kill. Every weapon (adjusted for the Character's Ability/Skill/Proficiency) does a Specific amount of damage. If the 'Ranger' was using a Compound Short Bow with Steel/Metal Tipped Arrows, it's be 2hp to 4hp based on the type of arrow tip they use. Needle Bodkin vs Armor Bodkin vs Leaf Point, etc...

I think the problem with 5e is it makes adding to the timer way too accessible. It makes the mistake of underestimating the strength of healing. So people will just repeatedly throw healing at their allies like it’s nothing. And there’s no way for most spells in 5e to fail either so all of those are doing what the player wants

Depending on the DM they may be filling your pockets with healing potions and scrolls so even more healing

It’s really a problem that I’m my experience can be circumvented by treating healing as the great boon it is.

“All 5e characters do about the same damage” this is a woeful misrepresentation of statistics

It may average out to similar numbers, but 5e characters have a wide range of damage per round depending on how you build them

I not sure about d6. Less than 10 is not evective. 20 i big wound with effect. In that system you still rol for hit? if yes it is possible do hit and do nothing? becaise you roll 9?

Get HeroQuest dice

Or massive darkness

You can also make custom dice

This reminds me of Mutants and Masterminds. True 20 system. Instead of hit points you had a toughness score. You would roll you damage (always d20s) and subtract the targets Toughness score from it. Difference of 5 was stunned (-2 to abilities which could stack) difference if 10 was staggered etc. It took some getting use to but it made combat a lot faster

i was a senior Pit Boss at a Casino for 20 years. In all those years, I never met a winner. The casino tracks everyone and what they spend. No one is luckier than anyone else. The numbers don't lie. Every last person loses a certain percentage. Anyone telling you any different is a liar. It's all averages and percentages. The problem I have with dumbing down rules goes hand in hand in what you would see in a casino. To make things easy, casino patrons should just write a check to the casino, and not even bother. The reality of it is that they like the illusion of chance. People pick up mostly on two things: Faces and patterns. It's simple psychology. People like rolling dice. They like drawing cards. It's all about what is in the moment. Even though everything eventually averages out over time, there is that memorable moment when the damage dice hover within 1 hit point of the total outcome. You take away too much of the randomness, you can take away those moments, and things start to get to be too predictable. Eventually you will give up all those pretty multi-faced dice for just flipping a coin. I can easily prove this by what goes on at a craps table for an 8 hours shift. It gets intense, and that game has only 2 dice. You can make rolling lots of dice at your D&D game very exciting just by using simple one liners whenever your players throw their dice. Get the entire table involved in the rolls. Never tell your players how many hit points you monsters have, or what they have left. Sure it's all an illusion, but the game is about moments. Not averages. No one will remember your average damage. They will remember when you defied the odds at a critical moment, or when you totally blow it. This is why we have dragon dice. Make it fun like a craps table. Don't make it boring like a late night poker broadcast.

Ooh! This is cool. Is there a way to simplify the math. I like the way Magic the Gathering does it. Most numbers are in the single digits. So that is easy to deal with. I have heard of systems in TTRPGS where each character gets a few hits before the die. The video mentioned that. This video talks about medium damage. Mind Blown. I am one who gets really frustrated by bad luck. So maybe a way to speed things up is to just use fixed base damage.

Dude! D20 is popular. I think a d20 is way too swingy. However it can be used as a health tracker instead of the usual function of being a randomizer. I have seen d20s used this way in Magic the Gathering games. A character gets 20 hit points. If you want to make some grunt opponent weak, you can make get 10 hit points. A regular attack from a spell or weapon deals 2 damage. If the opponent gets resistance, they get 1 damage. Offensive characters can damage twice in their turn. That leads to 4 damage. Maybe something like that would work. I don't know how this scales in level. This could be something to think about.