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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 10:33AM
#51
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Date Joined:
May 29, 2012
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We only managed to get through 2 or 3 rooms during our first playtest due to time constraints, however I'd like to chime in on the rolling of lots of dice.
As presented there are many ways to handle it, and it really depends on what you think is a fair representation of 40 projectiles raining down on the hapless fighter.
Personally, I would have ruled advantage (#'s) and disadvantage of many missiles in a confined space (bouncing off each other, ect). So a straight roll for each.
I then would have grabbed (my g/f and I have bought 2 pounds o'dice and split them) 10 d20, and had each roll account for 4 kobolds.
In your case, where you had 3 d20, I don't think rolling them 3 times (plus one last lone roll) would have taken so long.
Add up the hits, and roll damage....
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13 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 3:00PM
#52
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Date Joined:
Nov 23, 2002
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Too many rats?
PCs wave a torch, rats scurry into holes, encounter over (rats fear fire).
Too many kobolds?
Why, the room states 40 (maximum). Aren't you having groups leave the room to see what is going on in the rest of the lair? Aren't some of the kobolds out hunting/raiding? The only certain encounter in the main room is the 8 that watch the whelps...is anyone actually reading the playtest? (ehm...10 foot squares...cough)
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13 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 3:27PM
#53
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Date Joined:
Oct 22, 2002
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That's beside the point. If a rule is causing problems, you don't handwave it away and say "Oh, just avoid situations where it would come up." You fix the rule.
Some things to consider
Show
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13 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 4:32PM
#54
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Date Joined:
Nov 23, 2002
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The rule works. If the DM doesn't want to roll 80 dice, then they control the encounter to their liking, which is their job.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 07, 2012 - 4:05AM
#55
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The cave rats were a little annoying to run, but at the same time it was fun to watch the players sweat while their hit points were ticked off one at a time. If it hadn't taken so long to roll all of the rat attacks the pacing wouldn't have been quite so nail biting, haha!
18 attacks with advantage, then the wizard drops his sleep spell... So many dice to roll! Not that combat wasn't still gloriously quick compared to all the most recent editions--even with the avalanches of d20s skittering across the table.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 08, 2012 - 8:57AM
#56
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Date Joined:
Jan 22, 2012
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That's beside the point. If a rule is causing problems, you don't handwave it away and say "Oh, just avoid situations where it would come up." You fix the rule.
True.
There have been some interesting ways that people handled this issue, and they're all well and good. Also true, this means that the playing experience varied from table to table because different groups were effectively using different rules, but that's not such a bad thing to me.
One thing I didn't see anyone mention was using a spreadsheet to generate multiple dice roll results... maybe I'm just a bigger nerd than usual in that regard. And no, that's not the Be-All-And-End-All Solution.
I understand the stance that, yes you can handle the issue that Advantage with large groups causes a large number of die rolls in lots of different / creative ways BUT I think the point of playtesting rules is to point out issues like this -- there may be a really easy change or inclusion to the rule to make that problem go away. Maybe the best solution is what it is right now... come up with your own solution.
Either way, interesting catch by the O.P.
What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion
Make yourselves scabs?
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13 months ago ::
Jun 08, 2012 - 10:29AM
#57
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The maths for Advntage/disadvantage work out such that needing a natural roll of 10 to succeed is equivalent to +5 while needing a natural roll of 20 is about a +0.5. so +/-3 is close enough to the middle to be a good rough approximation. The more you use it, the more the "loss" of +5 or the "gain" from +0.5 wash out.
Alternatively (and you can do the maths quickly), you can treat the "what I need to roll" number as an ability score and subtract its "bonus" from 5. Thus, a "need to roll 10" is like an ability of 10 with a bonus of 0, so I get a 5-0=5) +5 to hit. If you "need to roll 15 to hit" its like an ability of 15, which has a bonus of +2, so I get a (5-2=3) +3 to hit, etc.
The maths are not that hard, and for the uncommon mass combat, it may be the easiest to do rather than use adv/dis.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 08, 2012 - 12:53PM
#58
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Date Joined:
Mar 18, 2009
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The rule works. If the DM doesn't want to roll 80 dice, then they control the encounter to their liking, which is their job.
Just because something works as intended doesn't mean it can't be improved.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 08, 2012 - 2:58PM
#59
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Date Joined:
Dec 17, 2006
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The rule works. If the DM doesn't want to roll 80 dice, then they control the encounter to their liking, which is their job.
I want to have encounters with 40 combatants. I do not want to have to roll 80 dice to do it.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 08, 2012 - 3:17PM
#60
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Date Joined:
May 19, 2004
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The rule works. If the DM doesn't want to roll 80 dice, then they control the encounter to their liking, which is their job.
I want to have encounters with 40 combatants. I do not want to have to roll 80 dice to do it.
Wait a minute? You aren't cool rolling 80 dice, but you are cool rolling 40 dice?
Where exactly is your threshold?
Obviously the doubling isn't your problem or else you would have a problem rolling 2 dice instead of 1 for a single enemy encounter. Similarly, obviously spending about 5-10 minutes rolling dice isn't your problem because 40 dice still takes a long time to roll and tabulate. Also, physical dice limits clearly aren't your problem because you apparently either own 40 dice or are willing to reroll dice.
In short, how is your complaint anything other than a complaint that 40 combatants takes a lot of work to deal with no matter what?
-SYB
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