D&D General Why do we Round Down???

[BluejayJunior]

Can you please give some examples here ? Because, as I've said, I can't recall any, and you seem to find that there are a lot, or at least a couple, in the PH alone...

Off the top of my head, is the Wizard's Arcane Recovery. I know there are a few more that I've read. I don't think it's nearly as much of a problem that OP thinks it is. And it's not like you have to memorize the exceptions. Every exception explicitly calls out that it rounds up in the description, so you just need to read it.

 

[Lyxen]

Off the top of my head, is the Wizard's Arcane Recovery. I know there are a few more that I've read. I don't think it's nearly as much of a problem that OP thinks it is. And it's not like you have to memorize the exceptions. Every exception explicitly calls out that it rounds up in the description, so you just need to read it.

Good point, that one did not stick in my mind, still, it's only one, and if others don't stick up in yours, it's probably not a big bother overall, right ?

 

[cmad1977]

I round up for the heroes and down for the villains.

 

[77IM]

OK, a quick search of D&D beyond shows these things rounding down:

• Ritual Caster feat in the PHB
• Shield Guardian monster stat block from the MM
• Cleric variant feature from Tasha's
• Living Armor from Eberron

DDB will only return 35 results, and that's just for sources I have unlocked and only 1st-party sources. In fact my original query was prompted after I saw a particularly elegant mechanic in a homebrewed class that was marred by a functional-yet-ugly "(rounded up)."

However... There are also like a bazillion results for "(rounded down)" which kinda shows that the global round-down rule isn't even very effective if they feel the need to re-specify it all over the place!

I don't want to blow this out of proportion and seem like I'm crying and losing sleep over this "always round down" rule. It's just that I've lived with the rule for so long and I never really questioned it, and now that I do, it seems vestigial.

 

[toucanbuzz]

We round down so a Raging Barbarian...

or one of these...

doesn't get killed by this.

To be thorough, if you don't know how much damage a housecat can do, here's your link.

 

[Charlaquin]

OK, a quick search of D&D beyond shows these things rounding down:

• Ritual Caster feat in the PHB
• Shield Guardian monster stat block from the MM
• Cleric variant feature from Tasha's
• Living Armor from Eberron

DDB will only return 35 results, and that's just for sources I have unlocked and only 1st-party sources. In fact my original query was prompted after I saw a particularly elegant mechanic in a homebrewed class that was marred by a functional-yet-ugly "(rounded up)."

However... There are also like a bazillion results for "(rounded down)" which kinda shows that the global round-down rule isn't even very effective if they feel the need to re-specify it all over the place!

I don't want to blow this out of proportion and seem like I'm crying and losing sleep over this "always round down" rule. It's just that I've lived with the rule for so long and I never really questioned it, and now that I do, it seems vestigial.

They put in the parenthetical (round down) for the same reason they have started including a sidebar reiterating that temporary HP don’t stack next to any new feature that offers a repeatable source of temporary HP: Because they recognize that most people don’t actually read all the rules, they just read the specific rules that are relevant to their character. I’d be willing to bet the majority of casual D&D players (i.e. not forum-goers like us) don’t even know “always round down unless otherwise specified” is a rule.

 

[Stormonu]

I dunno. Seems like a bad idea to me.

I mean, what's to stop someone from coming up with some spell that takes all those fractional HPs and stores them in some secret Bag of Holding?

I’m having flashbacks to Superman IV, but where some priest invents a spell where he gets all the fractional hit points his god has been accumulating from protection and healing spells over the years.

 

[embee]

I’m having flashbacks to Superman IV, but where some priest invents a spell where he gets all the fractional hit points his god has been accumulating from protection and healing spells over the years.

Superman III.

There was no Superman IV.

And there certainly was no Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, where Lex Luthor steals a strand of Superman's hair from a museum and uses kryptonite to make an evil Bizarro knockoff (Bizarro Bizarro?) called Nuclear Man, culminating in a terrible fight scene on the Moon.

 

[77IM]

To be thorough, if you don't know how much damage a housecat can do, here's your link.

What if the housecat is also raging? Those things can get pretty scary.

 

[Stormonu]

Superman III.

There was no Superman IV.

And there certainly was no Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, where Lex Luthor steals a strand of Superman's hair from a museum and uses kryptonite to make an evil Bizarro knockoff (Bizarro Bizarro?) called Nuclear Man, culminating in a terrible fight scene on the Moon.

Wow, those two movies were honestly so bad, I forgot they weren't the same movie. Not Brainiac and not Bizarro, I'm not really sure which was worse. A dozen of one and half a dozen of the other scenario?