D&D 5E Great Weapon Fighting

[MarkB]

According to the text, if the melee damage die roll is 1 or 2, you can reroll the damage die.
For me, it means that unless the total melee damage die result is 1 or 2, you cannot do the reroll.
Any opinion?

I don't think so - the way it's phrased specifies a single die, not the total roll.

Die is singular, dice is plural. If you're talking about rolling more than one die, it's a dice roll, not a die roll.

 

[the Jester]

According to the text, if the melee damage die roll is 1 or 2, you can reroll the damage die.
For me, it means that unless the total melee damage die result is 1 or 2, you cannot do the reroll.
Any opinion?

When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2.

(Emphasis added.)

Die is singular, dice are plural. Therefore, I'd say it is pretty clear that you treat each damage die individually. I think that if the designers had meant the total damage dice were 1 or 2, they'd have used different verbage: When you roll a 1 or a 2 on the damage dice, for instance.

 

[Kobold Stew]

According to the text, if the melee damage die roll is 1 or 2, you can reroll the damage die.
For me, it means that unless the total melee damage die result is 1 or 2, you cannot do the reroll.
Any opinion?

I do not think that is a common-sense reading of the text.

"When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die" :
1d12: if the die reads 1 or 2, you reroll.
2d6: if one die reads 1 or 2, you reroll that die and keep the other; if both are 1 or 2, you reroll both.

EDIT: double-ninja'd, he *sai*'d

 

[redwizard99]

Thank you all.
I understand what you guys are saying.
But for the meaning of "damage die" in D&D, it is 2d6 for greatsword and 1d12 for greataxe.
They are just one "damage die roll" displays in different ways, it is not saying greatsword attacking two times with 1d6 each, right?
For me, it is just weird that the "Great weapon fighting" feature gives the 2d6 two rerolling chance instead of one. It is just a game balance concern.
Thank you for your opinion.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Thank you all.
I understand what you guys are saying.
But for the meaning of "damage die" in D&D, it is 2d6 for greatsword and 1d12 for greataxe.
They are just one "damage die roll" displays in different ways, it is not saying greatsword attacking two times with 1d6 each, right?
For me, it is just weird that the "Great weapon fighting" feature gives the 2d6 two rerolling chance instead of one. It is just a game balance concern.
Thank you for your opinion.

You may find it weird, but that's how it works. If you roll a 1 or 2 on either d6, you re-roll that d6, with the GS/Maul.

For the way you want it to be, to work, you would have to pretend the actual dice didn't exist, and instead some sort of magical, 36-sided die, with only one 2 and one 12 on it existed, and this imaginary die was what you were rolling.

5E is pretty clear that's not how it works - the only imaginary dice is uses are d100, d3, and d2.

 

[Nagol]

Here's a link to a anydice.com implementation of the rule comparing sword and axe

http://anydice.com/program/3fad

Note there is effectively an equal chance of rolls at least a 10 for both weapons. The axe only offers improvement at 11 and 12 and then the improvement at each is about 5%.

Combined with the sword's stronger extra point of mean damage and I think there is a clear winner as shown most clearly by the "at least" chart.

 

[Nagol]

A simple house rule that brings the weapons closer to parity and at the same time gets rid of rerolls is the following:

Roll the dice for damage. If the dice total less than your STR modifier, use that instead.

Here's an anydice visualisation of that from STR 20: http://anydice.com/program/3fae

It does mean Great Weapon Fighting only benefits very strong characters.

 

[Grazzt]

I do not think that is a common-sense reading of the text.

"When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die" :
1d12: if the die reads 1 or 2, you reroll.
2d6: if one die reads 1 or 2, you reroll that die and keep the other; if both are 1 or 2, you reroll both.

EDIT: double-ninja'd, he *sai*'d

That's how I read it.

 

[Paraxis]

Not something to worry about with just the Basic rules, but the way GWF is worded it works on all damage dice not just from the weapon. So if they introduce a versatile or two-handed finesse weapon multiclass fighter/rogues will be pretty fierce.

Right now it would work with the martial advantage racial feature of the hobgoblin if say the DM gave one a couple levels of fighter.

Wording matters, whatever people feel about 4e, they were pretty careful about things like this.

If rangers still get fighting styles and things like slayers momentum these will stack, all I am saying is I hope some thought was put into how this can be min/maxed at the table.

 

[Stalker0]

Has any run the math on TWF vs GW before extra attacks?


I know that at least several months ago, TWF was always better than GW (both in terms of accuracy to hit and average damage). I was curious if with the new math that had changed. As others have pointed out, extra attacks start skewing the math back towards GW.