Whirlwind semantic.

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

But, does it really matter? Does it really change anything? (Other than it may be more fun to roll a lot of attacks.)

Yes.

Probabilistically speaking, X separate rolls are very different from 1 roll applied X times.

 

[AuraSeer]

But, does it really matter? Does it really change anything? (Other than it may be more fun to roll a lot of attacks.)

Yes. If you roll only once, you're liable to either miss all the opponents, or hit all of them. If you roll multiple times, you will almost certainly hit some and miss some.

This distinction is similar to the one between rolling additional damage dice on a critical (which is what the rules say), versus rolling once and multiplying the damage. The idea is to make combat slightly less random, so your survival isn't based on the outcome of a single die roll.

 

[DemonAtheist]

it makes sense if you think of it in terms of coin flipping. with one coin, you have a goo chance of all heads, and a good chance of all tails. With lots of coins you have a good chance of some heads and some tails, but more importantly, a very low chance of NO tails.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The key is to compare it to the two phrases:

"I am going to give one pie to each of you", and "I am going to give one pie to all of you".

"One attack roll against each opponent" results in more attack rolls than "One attack roll against all opponents".

-Hyp.

 

[brehobit]

The key is to compare it to the two phrases:
"I am going to give one pie to each of you", and "I am going to give one pie to all of you".
-Hyp.

But now I just want my pie.

...

Sorry, long day.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

There's an orc guarding it.

Roll for initiative!

 

[Nyarlathotep]

There's an orc guarding it.

Roll for initiative!

 

[Someone]

Please, mother tongue posters, help me showing Italian players how bad translated our PHB edition is!

At least your books are in Italian: ours are in High Devirian, a strange variation of 16th century Spanish.

 

[Egres]

At least your books are in Italian: ours are in High Devirian, a strange variation of 16th century Spanish.

?? ??

 

[Someone]

The High Devirian thing is a running joke at the spanish D&D yahoogroups. The book´s editorial is Devir, and the translations were polemic from the start, particulary for the use of archaic-sounding words of pedantic overtones (translations of Forgotten realms names are particulary hilarious). Last week we had an example of what I´m saying; the party´s wizard cast Scry and I says that Message (literal translation "mensaje") could be helpful. However, there´s no "mensaje" in the "manual del jugador", but "cuchichear mensaje" -literal translation of "whisper message"-

Why the introduction of the extra and unneded word "cuchichear" was beyond us, specially when no one uses that instead of the much common word "susurrar". The same history repeats many times. (however, I must admit that the current translation is better than the 2nd edition one from Martinez Roca. I nearly fell to the floor laughing with the spell "palabra de poder atontante")