Speed up your combat, roll fewer dice.

[Darcand]

A while back I got into a debate over the Great Axe, d12 x 3 on a natural 20 vs Great Sword, 2d6 x 2 on 19-20 and the effects bonus damage had on each. I won't bore you with the results, but it gave me an idea; I stopped rolling damage for enemies.

I now just take the average damage an attack would deal, round down, and move on. I find this helps to streamline the combat process and removes some of the randomness. I also give my players the option of either rolling their own damage, or using the average, rounded up because PCs are better then average.

[JusticeZero]

Sounds fine. The only thing I would worry about is when people start noticing things like "Don't use a d8 weapon on those, with your build you will always leave them with 1hp. Use the d10 weapon, even with the penalty."

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Sounds fine. The only thing I would worry about is when people start noticing things like "Don't use a d8 weapon on those, with your build you will always leave them with 1hp. Use the d10 weapon, even with the penalty."Vary the monster HP up and down a little, as though you were actually rolling for it, and at the very least the metagaming becomes more involved.

[Knaight]

Something a few other systems do is roll the damage into the attack - the more you beat the defense, the more damage there is. Burning Wheel uses an IMS system, which stands for three different wound types. Something similar could be worked in, with a low, mid, high, and crit value. It gets the variation across, but cuts out a roll.

[Vitruviansquid]

I could see this working pretty well for DnD 4e, where the combat kinda grinds on steadily.

For other games, rolling for damage provides a lot of the highs and lows that make them so fun. I can't imagine imposing this rule in, say, the Pendragon game I'm playing right now or in Savage Worlds. God, anywhere but Savage Worlds.

[Galen]

A while back I got into a debate over the Great Axe, d12 x 3 on a natural 20 vs Great Sword, 2d6 x 2 on 19-20 and the effects bonus damage had on each. I won't bore you with the results, but it gave me an idea; I stopped rolling damage for enemies.

I now just take the average damage an attack would deal, round down, and move on. I find this helps to streamline the combat process and removes some of the randomness. I also give my players the option of either rolling their own damage, or using the average, rounded up because PCs are better then average.
This is actually a suggested method of handling enemy damage in 5E. Every monster has a listed damage both as range and average, for example, "2d6+2 (9)".

[TheIronGolem]

For my own PF campaign, I created a "minion/mook" class of enemies that automatically do small amounts of damage, with no to-hit or attack roll. It helped a lot with speed-of-gameplay issues when running big fights. I wrote up the rules here (http://theirongolem.com/2014/11/11/pathfinder-minions/).

[Milodiah]

Something a few other systems do is roll the damage into the attack - the more you beat the defense, the more damage there is. Burning Wheel uses an IMS system, which stands for three different wound types. Something similar could be worked in, with a low, mid, high, and crit value. It gets the variation across, but cuts out a roll.

I've always wanted something like this, it seems silly to be able to roll minimum damage on a crit, then out-roll yourself on an attack that beats the AC by 1 the very next turn.

[LibraryOgre]

It's not a bad system; it's more or less how I handle their HP, anyway.

[Jay R]

When running a D&D convention tournament in 1978, we had pre-rolled each monsters hits and damage for 20-30 rounds. This was primarily to give all teams the same challenge, but it also speeds things up without losing the randomness.

And in Excel, it's trivial to produce all the die rolls your encounters will need in advance.

[Gnome Alone]

I kinda dig the randomness, personally. "Whew, turns out those claws just grazed me." But I definitely agree that it'd be good for 4E. Anything at all to speed up 4E is fine by me.

I think I actually will give it a shot for the next time I run a one-shot, or some such.

What I do do to speed things up, as both player and DM, is roll all the dice I might need to roll during a turn all at once. Like, if I'm playing my duskblade, channeling shocking grasp through a falchion, I'll roll the d20, 2d4 and 5d6 all at once and tell the DM the result of the attack roll while tallying up the damage that I might need to say in a moment, if the attack hits in the first place.

I know this is not revelatory or unique (I think I read this idea on these verra boards, Cap'n) but it does speed up my turns nicely. If only I could figure out a way to get everyone else at the table to do this without sounding like a passive-aggressive and/or busybody butt in the proposing of it, maybe we could have us some battles that last less than an hour of real time.

[Xuc Xac]

A game called "The Whispering Vault" had a system where only the players rolled. NPCs and monsters had static attack and defense values. PCs rolled their attacks against the NPCs' defense value and rolled their defense against the NPCs' attack value. It's mathematically identical to everyone rolling attacks against a static AC value, but it puts all the dice rolling on the players. It makes things easier on the GM and the players feel more involved during the NPC's turn.

[Milodiah]

Dungeon World has all the combat fall on the rolls of the players, actually. Rolling low means you miss and the enemy hits, rolling in the middle means you both get a hit in, rolling high means you hit and the enemy misses. Always thought that was kind of an interesting way to go about it. Of course it really isn't applicable to D&D, it'd play hell with initiative and all that...Dungeon World is perhaps the most rules-light high-fantasy system I've seen in a while, though, as compared to D&D.