Rolling Hit and Damage dice together.

L

Les Moore

Explorer

• Aug 18, 2018

• #1

It saves time, and you can use an optional "to hit" bonus.

Say HD is 15. Your player rolls a 13 to hit, and 6 to damage. If you divide the damage by 3(2), and add the result to the hit die,
you then have a hit, at the reduced damage of 2, rather than 6. You could call it a glancing blow.

Has anyone else tried this? I've found players enjoy it, and it speeds up the game. Also helps characters struggling in lower levels.

 

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T

The Crimson Binome

Hero

• Aug 18, 2018

• #2

What is HD, in this context? Why would you divide the damage by 3, in your example?

Rolling the attack and the damage together is a common trick from speeding up play. Using the margin of failure as a modifier that allows some missed attacks to become glancing blows is another matter altogether, and I can't imagine it being anything but a giant mess.

 

Y

Yaztromo

Explorer

• Aug 18, 2018

• #3

I can't understand the context. Are you referring to a specific ruleset?

 

L

Les Moore

Explorer

• Aug 18, 2018

• #4

It's pretty simple. House rules. Sorry, I call D20 "hit dice", my bad. So you role a just below par hit die. IF you roll your damage die, (or dice) and you roll
high damage, dividing by 3, and using it as a modifier to the hit die, it can make a miss a hit with lighter damage. It's only difficult if you make it so. AFAIK,
it's just a house rule we used for a few years which we thought was fun.

If you roll a low D20, it's a miss, the damage die don't count. If you roll a natural hit, you use the damage dice at full value.
I can't imagine how you extrapolated "the margin of failure as a modifier", just divide the hit points by three, in the event
your to hit roll is close.

 

Last edited: Aug 18, 2018

ajevans

Explorer

• Aug 20, 2018

• #5

We regularly roll the damage die with the 'to hit' dice to save time, but the result of the damage dice has no bearing on whether the character has hit or not.

Saves time. Kind of annoying when you roll max damage on a miss, but can be used for narration purposes.

 

P

Pauper

That guy, who does that thing.

• Aug 20, 2018

• #6

I could see where this would be useful to mitigate some of the frustration that comes with rolling a great damage roll but not getting enough on the d20 to get a hit.

I suspect you'd have to just use the base weapon damage die, though, because if you add in things like Sneak Attack and the like, you pretty much break bounded accuracy. Which also means you can't use this for spells -- if you only need a 10 on the d20 to hit, a roll of 3d10 for damage (which is the base damage for the 1st level cleric spell Inflict Wounds) means that even as poor a roll as 4 is likely to result in a 'glancing blow'. And if you're raising monster HP to compensate, then you're just increasing the length of every combat to avoid an occasional frustrating moment.

--
Pauper

 

Y

Yaztromo

Explorer

• Aug 21, 2018

• #7

When I roll "hit dice" I roll 2d6 and not d20, for example.
If you don't specify what ruleset you are following, it is impossible understanding what you mean.