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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8220555" data-attributes="member: 42582">Sure. But how does a player know the goblin's hit points? If the target is instead a goblin or kobold with 4 hp, then the crossbow is better because with 1d8+1 only 1/4 of rolls are below 4, whereas with 1d10 3/10 of rolls are below 4.In any event I don't think [USER=20564]@Blue[/USER] was thinking of fights against goblins. The point was that in fights at mid- and upper levels, the players (via their PCs) defeat monsters by piling on the results of multiple damage dice rolls (from multiple attacks, spells etc) at which point there is a general trend away from extreme results and towards mean-ish ones. At which point the practical difference between (say) 1d10 and 1d8+1 tends to reduce.Leaving aside the playtime overhead of doing this sort of calculation, there is a mechanical overhead also - eg your wizard switching from spellcasting (with a focus?) to a crossbow has to engage the "changing held/wielded object" rules, which in turn impact the action economy.My feeling is that for this sort of thing to be worthwhile the optimisation benefits have to be bigger and more obvious. Eg in my long-running  4e game the fighter would switch between a really big axe (good damage) and a not-quite-as-buff polearm (lesser damage, but superb reach). The player also took proactive steps in making build choices in order to manage the action economy implications of changing his weapon from round to round or even sometimes within a round.</blockquote>

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