So I’ve been thinking about how combat in dnd either lacks teeth or takes particularly long. I was kicking around the idea of utilizing exploding dice in order to up the lethality of monsters and to generally expedite combat. Using an automated system to calculate the total damage I thought wouldn’t lead to combat being slowed down by the additional manual calculation. I’m still uncertain if implementing this in my game is a good idea. Should this mechanic only be applied to attacks? Should it apply saving throws? I’m curious as to the community’s thoughts regarding exploding dice in dnd.

Seems risky. Especially at low levels when 1-2 more damage dice could drop a lot of PCs. And crits would just be deadly. 

I mean, i think chaos bolt already has a pseudo-exploding dice mechanic in it. and a d20 is swingier than a d8, to hit a crit. so screw it, do it. tell players its not concrete and if i messes the game up too much, youll revert. giving a heads up on that stuff will almost guarantee player buy in.

I don't think exploding dice is a good solution to your stated problem. It wouldn't consistently speed up combat or really even be very noticeable if its just an automated roller, it would just make things more swingy. And in most cases of extreme swing I've seen at the table, the DM was just as distraught about it as the PCs. If your goal is faster, bloodier battles, I'd recommend that you do it in a more reliable way, like implementing a flat multiplier to damage and reducing HP.

But if you like danger to be represented by the knowledge that RNG could kill you at any time (and I know some folks love this), by all means give it a shot. For me personally, too much randomness diminishes the impact of player choices. I'd rather my players die of stupid decisions they made than just a highly improbable roll.