How can I use Animate Objects in combat, without slowing combat down for everyone?

Question

My wizard has acquired the animate objects spell, and I'm discussing with my GM how I'm going to use it in combat. We are concerned that using the spell may slow down combat and make it less fun for everyone.

My intent in typical usage would be to animate 10 tiny or small objects (coppers being an obvious choice) and then command them to attack one or more opponents. We're aware that the same command must be given to all the objects, so we know the wording will need to be carefully constructed. I am confident I can do that quickly.

Our specific concern is rolling hits and damage.

So my question is:

How can I roll hits and damage for up to 10 objects against a single opponent, several opponents with the same AC, or several opponents with different ACs, without bogging down combat while I roll tons of piddly little dice combinations? What has worked for you?

If it makes any difference, we play over Discord using D&D Beyond. We typically roll dice in D&D Beyond, but we occasionally use Avrae in Discord for one reason or another. We're pretty open to streamlining the rules to make things faster (for instance, I expect that all the objects will have the same initiative, probably immediately after mine).

Answer 1

Share with your party!

When our Druid used his conjuration spells, he usually asked the party members to help with his attacks. There were 4 players, and basically each player (Druid included) rolled attacks for 2 of the beasts. This slows down combat, but each player is playing twice or thrice the turns, so it doesn't bother them too much.

The Druid still kept control and decided what the beasts were doing. But all players enjoying rolling them and felt part of the action.

Answer 2

I'd recommend using the Handling Mobs section on page 250 of the DMG. With 10 objects to attack, it's perfect for it. This will forgo the need for attack rolls, though it means there's no chance of a crit. For damage rolls, you can go with the average.

Answer 3

First, use average damage: rather than rolling attack, finding out how many hit, and then rolling that much damage, using the average damage means you can just multiply hits by a static number: much easier and faster.

For determining the number of hits, the fastest way would be to use a dice roller that handles the concept of “dice pools,” a mechanic used in some games where the result of your roll isn’t the sum of the dice you rolled, but instead the number of dice that were above some threshold. So, for instance, instead of checking 1d20+6 against DC 15, they work by rolling, e.g., four d6 and counting how many rolls of 5 or 6 you got.

This maps perfectly onto your needs: roll a d20 for each animated object, and set the threshold at the target’s AC minus the objects’ bonus. A roller that handles dice pools will then spit out how many hit, and that is the number you multiply by the average damage.

There are two problems here:

1. D&D doesn’t use dice pools, and so it seems D&D Beyond didn’t bother to include them in their rollers, including Avrae. I say “seems,” however, because the documentation I could find on either was really sparse. Maybe there is a way and it’s just not prominent since it’s but used in D&D. Otherwise, many, many other rollers out there can handle them.

2. Setting the threshold requires knowing the target’s AC. That means either the DM has to roll the attack in secret, or they have to tell you the AC. Ultimately, 10 attacks against a target is probably going to determine the AC anyway, and D&D groups imagine vastly greater significance to keeping it secret than it really has: I strongly suggest the DM just tell you when you make the attack. Realistically, trained warriors should have a very good sense of that kind of information just from seeing how someone stands and moves, anyway.

So I think it’s fairly easy to work around these issues, but YMMV. If either of these is a no-go, there is always the possibility of just rolling 10 attacks, and the DM just manually counts the hits. This can be tedious (and thus error-prone), but not game-haltingly so.

By the way, on the subject of tedious-and-thus-error-prone, you probably want the computer to do the subtraction and multiplication for you. Neither is hard, but in the middle of a game with a lot going on, and wanting to keep things moving, errors tend to creep in. Better to be sure.

Answer 4

To add to KRyan's answer, KRyan suggested using dice pools in a dice roller.

That is a very helpful suggestion. It turns out that Avrae does support dice pools, although it doesn't call them that.

As an example, this Avrae command will roll 10 d20s and tell you how many are above 15:

!rr 10 (1d20 > 15)

You can add bonuses to the dice and then use the resulting number of dice meeting the threshold to multiply against damage.

I poked at Avrae until I was able to do pretty close to what is needed in this circumstance:

This Avrae command:

!rr 10 (1d20+6 > 18) * (1d8+2)

calculates the combined damage for 10 small objects attacking 1 creature with an AC of 19.

This command:

!rr 8 (1d20+8 > 19) * (1d4+4)

calculates the combined damage for 8 tiny objects attacking 1 creature with an AC of 20.

This looks like it will work pretty well. I can keep these commands in notes, and roll them very quickly.

One downside . . . this doesn't calculate critical hits. I may just forego that squidge of damage, or further investigate how that can be implemented.

Answer 5

You can use this tool to roll automatically for multiple creatures. All srd creatures and animate object variants can be loaded automatically

Disclaimer: I made the tool

Answer 6

Seeing your description, I immediatly thought of your objects as a cloud or swarm of tiny annoying things. So I will put forward the suggestion of using your 10 tiny objects as a swarm and applying the swarm rules used for monsters.

You and your DM will should decide how many objects need to be grouped at minimum to form a swarm and the size of their influence, but it easily reduces the amount of rolling done, as you just have to roll damage for all characters within their zone of influence.

The amount of damage rolled could also change depending on how many of your tinys are within the swarm (ex: adding a d4 for every 3 objects within the swarm, or d4 to d6 to d8 for every x objects).

Answer 7

I recommend trying it and see what happens. In 5e usually you won't be rolling much more than a dozen dice at once, but in other systems (PF for example) you can start rolling dozens of dice at once fairly quickly into the game.

Does it bog down the game? No, not really.

Animate Objects is even simpler as the DM gets to do all the rolling and controlling. Worst case you animate 10 tiny objects, and your DM has to roll 10 attacks. It's not particularly slow when you think about it; roll hit, roll miss, roll miss, etc.

A quick tip is to roll damage and hit together as one. If you're the kind of group that rolls each one individually this may not have occurred to you as an option for simple attacks.

Definitely give it a try and see if there actually IS a problem, then you can look at solutions after.

My experience is the same online or in person. The only difference is that if you are rolling 10 attacks at once in person you need 10 d20s plus 10 of whatever damage die. In PF this isn't a problem since everyone tends to have a ton of die, but in 5e this is quite unusual and most people probably only have 1 or 2 sets at the table.