D&D 5E Additional weapon damage dice?

[Mouseferatu]

So, some features allow you to roll "an additional damage die" for your weapon when X or Y happens. (Crits being the obvious example.)

There are a few weapons that do multiple dice: 2d6 on the maul rather than 1d12 on the great axe, for instance.

Did we ever get clarification on whether the "additional damage die" just meant reroll the weapon damage, or whether it was literally limited to one die? I can easily make the call myself, but I'm just curious if any of the rules, or any tweets, made it "officially" work one way or the other?

(FYI, if it's just interpretation/DM call, I'm going to go with rerolling the weapon damage. It doesn't make sense to me that some weapons would only do an extra 50% rather than 100% under those circumstances.)

 

[Boarstorm]

Full 2d6.
I'd cite a source, but I don't remember where I saw it. Twitter, maybe?

 

[77IM]

Crits let you reroll ALL the damage dice, not just the weapon die, so this is moot for crits.

I think the barbarian feature is what you are thinking of, that lets you roll an additional damage die on a crit. I think it was written that way specifically to make the 1d12 greataxe more appealing to barbarians than the 2d6 greatsword.

Treating 2d6 as a single weapon "die" also has profound implications for the Great Weapon Fighting Style, which I think makes more sense to treat each die separately (and also makes the 2d6 greatsword slightly more attractive to non-barbarians than the 1d12 greataxe).

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Full 2d6.
I'd cite a source, but I don't remember where I saw it. Twitter, maybe?

Then you would be wrong. As the source was you roll one extra dice.

Anyway when it says roll an extra die it means roll a single extra damage die. Some weapons simply pack a bigger punch on a crit.

Say two Barbarians got a crit and they had the class feature. The one with the greatsword would do 5d6 while the one with the axe would do 3d12.

 

[Boarstorm]

If you know the source, would you kindly cite it?

 

[Parmandur]

Then you would be wrong. As the source was you roll one extra dice.

Anyway when it says roll an extra die it means roll a single extra damage die. Some weapons simply pack a bigger punch on a crit.

Say two Barbarians got a crit and they had the class feature. The one with the greatsword would do 5d6 while the one with the axe would do 3d12.

Yes, this what Mearls said; that was collected in a post by Morrus somewhere on the site.

That's the cost benefit of a 1d12 weapon versus 2d6.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Crits let you reroll ALL the damage dice, not just the weapon die, so this is moot for crits.

I think the barbarian feature is what you are thinking of, that lets you roll an additional damage die on a crit. I think it was written that way specifically to make the 1d12 greataxe more appealing to barbarians than the 2d6 greatsword.

Treating 2d6 as a single weapon "die" also has profound implications for the Great Weapon Fighting Style, which I think makes more sense to treat each die separately (and also makes the 2d6 greatsword slightly more attractive to non-barbarians than the 1d12 greataxe).

This is 100% correct. Note also that 2d6, without any special features, rolls an average of 0.5 higher than 1d12, which also makes it more attractive to non-barbarians. With Great Weapon fighting style (currently), 2d6 averages a full 1 point higher than 1d12.

 

[Scorpio616]

There really wasn't anything to clarify IMO. It read pretty straight forward. I find it a bit obnoxious to base rules off die sizes, but the Devs really wanted to protect the d12 as a damage die rather than phase it out.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I wish they had just made greatsword, maul and greataxe just all use 1d12 and had done with it.

 

[77IM]

Me too, except with a d12 then the greatweapon guys can't keep up with the vanilla twf guy with a pair of short swords who is dealing, essentially, 2d6 damage. I think that's where the 2d6 great sword comes from.