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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7065809" data-attributes="member: 6775031">There is no certainty; there are only probabilities. After all, you don't know that they're going to hit; and even if they do hit, you don't know if it might be a crit.Look at your typical Air Elemental, for example. It has two attacks at +8 that each deal 2d8+5 damage. If you're rolling for damage, then it can deal anywhere between 0 damage and 74 damage on its turn, depending on how many attacks hit and whether they are critical hits and how the damage rolls out. If your AC is 19, then there's a relatively high probability that it will deal about fourteen damage on its turn, with a non-negligible possibility of dealing zero or ~28, and a much smaller chance that it would deal less than ten damage or greater than fifty damage.If you're just taking the averages, then the possible outcomes for damage dealt in a round are: 0, 14, 23, 28, 37, 46. The certainty that you gain is that it will deal one of those numbers to you in a round.When you weight all of the possible outcomes by the probability of them occurring, the information comes out the same either way. Rolling damage does present the possibility of outcomes which are impossible by averages, but they aren't statistically significant in most cases. If someone had 47 hit points remaining, I don't think that the certainty of being able to survive a 1-in-400 chance double-crit would alter their actions much. And while it might affect their decision if they had 13 or 15 hit points left, since the chance of rolling outside that range on 2d8+5 is statistically significant, it wouldn't change the probabilities by enough to outweigh the ease-of-play benefit of not rolling extra dice.</blockquote>

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