Is Penetration Damage (!p) allowed as an option on attack damage rolls on character sheets? If so, how do I set that up? How can the attack rolls be modified?
Is Penetration Damage (!p) allowed as an option on attack damage rolls on character sheets? If so, how do I set that up? How can the attack rolls be modified?
That's not a damage type in the game. Do you mean piercing? Or something else?
Thank you for letting me know. It's something my group uses in Roll20, and has for a long time before we moved there.
No, Piercing damage is a specific form of damage dealt by specific weapons, such as arrows.
Penetration damage is extra damage dealt when your damage die maxes out. if you have a 1d6 as your damage dice on an attack and you roll a 6 as damage, and ONLY if you roll the 6 on that d6 damage dice, you get 1 extra d6 damage die as Penetration damage. On other damage dice you get THAT die as the extra roll for damage. If you get 2d6 for damage, and you roll a 6 and a 4 for damage, you get 1 extra d6 of damage. If you roll a 6 and a 6, you get 1 extra roll for each maxed damage dice. And so on for however many damage dice of whatever type applies to your weapon or attack spell. This can result in a lot of damage in 1 hit, either to the character or the monster. This rule DOES NOT APPLY to attack rolls, only to damage rolls (crit or no crit).
That's an optional rule not made by WotC, so DDB doesn't have it.
True thought I think you could extrapolate something like this if you really wanted to with the "hitting cover" and "cleaving" rules options in the DMG DM's Workshop chapter. I mean a lot of structures, doors, etc do have hit points that one could ascribe to things like sections of wall allowing a particularly powerful attack to penetrate the object (or humanoid shield) and carryover to the whoever is on the other side with a subsequent attack roll.
But yes, no official rules on "penetration" damage.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Is Penetration Damage (!p) allowed as an option on attack damage rolls on character sheets? If so, how do I set that up? How can the attack rolls be modified?
You mean piercing I presume, which is already an option for many weapons like arrows, crossbow bolts, rapiers, shot swords and daggers?
Edit: just read your second post, no that does not exist as a thing in DnD 5e. Blow through as result of massive damage does exist for some weapons in other systems such as firearms in GURPS but not in D&D
Exploding dice can be a serious power issue in D&D. It seems like a fun idea for weapons, maybe...but when an upcast Fireball throws 10+d6 and scores multiple bonus damage dice, which themselves can also score multiple explosions? Shit gets overtuned as hell in a blazing hurry. Be super careful when experimenting with this sort of thing in your games.
Thank you for letting me know. It's something my group uses in Roll20, and has for a long time before we moved there.
No, Piercing damage is a specific form of damage dealt by specific weapons, such as arrows.
Penetration damage is extra damage dealt when your damage die maxes out. if you have a 1d6 as your damage dice on an attack and you roll a 6 as damage, and ONLY if you roll the 6 on that d6 damage dice, you get 1 extra d6 damage die as Penetration damage. On other damage dice you get THAT die as the extra roll for damage. If you get 2d6 for damage, and you roll a 6 and a 4 for damage, you get 1 extra d6 of damage. If you roll a 6 and a 6, you get 1 extra roll for each maxed damage dice. And so on for however many damage dice of whatever type applies to your weapon or attack spell. This can result in a lot of damage in 1 hit, either to the character or the monster. This rule DOES NOT APPLY to attack rolls, only to damage rolls (crit or no crit).
Due to this being a house rule and not an official rule for D&D (optional/variant or otherwise), and as such is not something that will be displayed on the character sheets, or anywhere else on D&D Beyond. DDB only supports the official rules for D&D as published by Wizards of the Coast
Exploding dice can be a serious power issue in D&D. It seems like a fun idea for weapons, maybe...but when an upcast Fireball throws 10+d6 and scores multiple bonus damage dice, which themselves can also score multiple explosions? Shit gets overtuned as hell in a blazing hurry. Be super careful when experimenting with this sort of thing in your games.
Also gets nuts on fighters with greatswords and great weapon fighting. It might not have the flash of a big fireball but the amount of times your gonna roll a 6 or reroll into a 6 gets up there when your making 2-3 attacks a turn
Games that utilize exploding dice (Savage Worlds is the one I'm familiar with, but there are others) are generally predilected on only ever throwing one, single die. Savage Worlds, as an example, uses a single roll of one die to determine success or failure of a game action, ranging from 1d4 for skills/actions you suck at up to 1d12 for skills/actions you're extremely well-versed and highly trained in. If you max out the die it explodes and you get to roll it again, for both skill checks and damage. The game was built from the outset to take this into account however, and instances where you roll multiple dice all at once in SWADE are pretty heckin' rare (been a hot minute since I've played it, but I actually can't recall one rule that requires a fistful-of-dice roll) and if they did exist, exploding likely wouldn't be a thing for those rolls.
Games like D&D where many rolls hinge on throwing entire fistfuls of dice kinda come apart when you start adding exploding dice to the mix. I would recommend the rule only for high lethality games, or games where the world itself is more chaotic due to environmental factors or the like. Perhaps a game about correcting the weakening of the planar veils and restoring the laws of reality could benefit from the sort of chaotic swinginess exploding dice offer, but short that justification I have to recommend against it.
Shadowrun has an exploding dice rule, but only if you permanently burn an Edge point, so it's a Hail Mary move of desperation rather than a common occurrence.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
So as someone who is more accustomed to putting "!" at the end of exclamatory statements rather than coding formulae on a VTT, can someone be kind to bring me up to speed re: penetration damage and or exploding dice? I'm familiar with the "wild die" in one edition of the d6 Star Wars game (where one die is designated "wild" with a range of options on 1s and 6s depending on how wild the GM wants their table to be). I'm imagining from context here that penetration/explosion means that if a roll "breaks" a certain barrier/threshold, additional rolls take place? This may be migrating off topic, but alt mechanics and mechanics from other systems interest me (having got my head spinning from FFG Star Wars dice system this weekend).
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
When you get the highest number on the specific die you rolled, re-roll and add the number you get to the total. If you got the highest number possible on *that* die, keep rolling and you keep right on doing so until you stop getting the maximum on the die.
With multiple dice, that is indeed Explosive. The numbers generated will swing wildly. Take the most simple example, the tried and trusty D6. Roll it once, get a 6, roll again, add on, and so on. If you get three explosions you get 6 points, and three more D6s worth. At least 19 no more than 23. A 24 could cause yet another explosion. So imagine a Fireball, cast at 5th level by a Wizard. 5D6. Any one of the dice might explode. The amount of damage could be remarkable.
When you get the highest number on the specific die you rolled, re-roll and add the number you get to the total. If you got the highest number possible on *that* die, keep rolling and you keep right on doing so until you stop getting the maximum on the die.
With multiple dice, that is indeed Explosive. The numbers generated will swing wildly. Take the most simple example, the tried and trusty D6. Roll it once, get a 6, roll again, add on, and so on. If you get three explosions you get 6 points, and three more D6s worth. At least 19 no more than 23. A 24 could cause yet another explosion. So imagine a Fireball, cast at 5th level by a Wizard. 5D6. Any one of the dice might explode. The amount of damage could be remarkable.
Got it. The "wild die" mechanic is sort of a half measure. You have _one_ die designated as the wild one, and when you reach the highest number, you reroll. It can lead to some pretty chaotic results, so "explosive" dice pools where all the die can do it would be hefty.
Of course the wild die, also has consequences from rolling a 1. There's a few ways of doing that, but one involves taking that one and the a die that rolled highest away, etc. So I guess the corollary here would be something like a "fizzle" effect to counteract the explosions.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Slightly off topic, but... The first printing of the first edition of Shadowrun had a fizzle/fumble rule. The dice were rolled against a target number, which varied based on assorted modifiers for the situation, like the recoil on your gun. Multiple dice, all of which could explode, were used. All D6s. They called it "open ended rolls". The joker was that a natural 1 on any of the dice (not an explosion, just the base roll) cancelled out a die that exploded. If all your explosions were negated, and none of your dice were at or above the target number, you failed. Gloriously.
This didn't happen often.
The only real problem was that as written, you were more than likely to fail (not fumble/fizzle) at any given task than to succeed. The more dice you used, the worse your chances were, which is pretty much backwards of the intent. Higher target numbers also made it worse. They pretty much fixed it by removing the "Ones Cancel" rule in later printings, like the second or third I think.
Also strange was how the target number and modifier system worked statistically. There was no effective difference between a 6 and a 7 target number. If you got a 6 at all, you couldn't get less than a 7. The same break point happened at 12/13. Higher target numbers were the same, but I never saw one that high. Difficulty modifiers didn't scale the way results jumped up with explosive dice.
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Is Penetration Damage (!p) allowed as an option on attack damage rolls on character sheets? If so, how do I set that up? How can the attack rolls be modified?
That's not a damage type in the game. Do you mean piercing? Or something else?
I'm rather hoping he means piercing...
Thank you for letting me know. It's something my group uses in Roll20, and has for a long time before we moved there.
No, Piercing damage is a specific form of damage dealt by specific weapons, such as arrows.
Penetration damage is extra damage dealt when your damage die maxes out. if you have a 1d6 as your damage dice on an attack and you roll a 6 as damage, and ONLY if you roll the 6 on that d6 damage dice, you get 1 extra d6 damage die as Penetration damage. On other damage dice you get THAT die as the extra roll for damage. If you get 2d6 for damage, and you roll a 6 and a 4 for damage, you get 1 extra d6 of damage. If you roll a 6 and a 6, you get 1 extra roll for each maxed damage dice. And so on for however many damage dice of whatever type applies to your weapon or attack spell. This can result in a lot of damage in 1 hit, either to the character or the monster. This rule DOES NOT APPLY to attack rolls, only to damage rolls (crit or no crit).
That's an optional rule not made by WotC, so DDB doesn't have it.
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I also make maps.(That's a link)
True thought I think you could extrapolate something like this if you really wanted to with the "hitting cover" and "cleaving" rules options in the DMG DM's Workshop chapter. I mean a lot of structures, doors, etc do have hit points that one could ascribe to things like sections of wall allowing a particularly powerful attack to penetrate the object (or humanoid shield) and carryover to the whoever is on the other side with a subsequent attack roll.
But yes, no official rules on "penetration" damage.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You mean piercing I presume, which is already an option for many weapons like arrows, crossbow bolts, rapiers, shot swords and daggers?
Edit: just read your second post, no that does not exist as a thing in DnD 5e. Blow through as result of massive damage does exist for some weapons in other systems such as firearms in GURPS but not in D&D
The thing OP is describing is sometimes called "exploding dice."
Exploding dice can be a serious power issue in D&D. It seems like a fun idea for weapons, maybe...but when an upcast Fireball throws 10+d6 and scores multiple bonus damage dice, which themselves can also score multiple explosions? Shit gets overtuned as hell in a blazing hurry. Be super careful when experimenting with this sort of thing in your games.
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Especially if enemies also get exploding dice.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I hate when my dice explode. Those little shards of plastic *hurt*.
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Due to this being a house rule and not an official rule for D&D (optional/variant or otherwise), and as such is not something that will be displayed on the character sheets, or anywhere else on D&D Beyond. DDB only supports the official rules for D&D as published by Wizards of the Coast
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As others have said you can't set it up automatically, that said you can manually roll dice on the sheet so that would be the current work around.
Also gets nuts on fighters with greatswords and great weapon fighting. It might not have the flash of a big fireball but the amount of times your gonna roll a 6 or reroll into a 6 gets up there when your making 2-3 attacks a turn
Games that utilize exploding dice (Savage Worlds is the one I'm familiar with, but there are others) are generally predilected on only ever throwing one, single die. Savage Worlds, as an example, uses a single roll of one die to determine success or failure of a game action, ranging from 1d4 for skills/actions you suck at up to 1d12 for skills/actions you're extremely well-versed and highly trained in. If you max out the die it explodes and you get to roll it again, for both skill checks and damage. The game was built from the outset to take this into account however, and instances where you roll multiple dice all at once in SWADE are pretty heckin' rare (been a hot minute since I've played it, but I actually can't recall one rule that requires a fistful-of-dice roll) and if they did exist, exploding likely wouldn't be a thing for those rolls.
Games like D&D where many rolls hinge on throwing entire fistfuls of dice kinda come apart when you start adding exploding dice to the mix. I would recommend the rule only for high lethality games, or games where the world itself is more chaotic due to environmental factors or the like. Perhaps a game about correcting the weakening of the planar veils and restoring the laws of reality could benefit from the sort of chaotic swinginess exploding dice offer, but short that justification I have to recommend against it.
Please do not contact or message me.
Shadowrun has an exploding dice rule, but only if you permanently burn an Edge point, so it's a Hail Mary move of desperation rather than a common occurrence.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
So as someone who is more accustomed to putting "!" at the end of exclamatory statements rather than coding formulae on a VTT, can someone be kind to bring me up to speed re: penetration damage and or exploding dice? I'm familiar with the "wild die" in one edition of the d6 Star Wars game (where one die is designated "wild" with a range of options on 1s and 6s depending on how wild the GM wants their table to be). I'm imagining from context here that penetration/explosion means that if a roll "breaks" a certain barrier/threshold, additional rolls take place? This may be migrating off topic, but alt mechanics and mechanics from other systems interest me (having got my head spinning from FFG Star Wars dice system this weekend).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
When you get the highest number on the specific die you rolled, re-roll and add the number you get to the total. If you got the highest number possible on *that* die, keep rolling and you keep right on doing so until you stop getting the maximum on the die.
With multiple dice, that is indeed Explosive. The numbers generated will swing wildly. Take the most simple example, the tried and trusty D6. Roll it once, get a 6, roll again, add on, and so on. If you get three explosions you get 6 points, and three more D6s worth. At least 19 no more than 23. A 24 could cause yet another explosion. So imagine a Fireball, cast at 5th level by a Wizard. 5D6. Any one of the dice might explode. The amount of damage could be remarkable.
<Insert clever signature here>
Got it. The "wild die" mechanic is sort of a half measure. You have _one_ die designated as the wild one, and when you reach the highest number, you reroll. It can lead to some pretty chaotic results, so "explosive" dice pools where all the die can do it would be hefty.
Of course the wild die, also has consequences from rolling a 1. There's a few ways of doing that, but one involves taking that one and the a die that rolled highest away, etc. So I guess the corollary here would be something like a "fizzle" effect to counteract the explosions.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Slightly off topic, but... The first printing of the first edition of Shadowrun had a fizzle/fumble rule. The dice were rolled against a target number, which varied based on assorted modifiers for the situation, like the recoil on your gun. Multiple dice, all of which could explode, were used. All D6s. They called it "open ended rolls". The joker was that a natural 1 on any of the dice (not an explosion, just the base roll) cancelled out a die that exploded. If all your explosions were negated, and none of your dice were at or above the target number, you failed. Gloriously.
This didn't happen often.
The only real problem was that as written, you were more than likely to fail (not fumble/fizzle) at any given task than to succeed. The more dice you used, the worse your chances were, which is pretty much backwards of the intent. Higher target numbers also made it worse. They pretty much fixed it by removing the "Ones Cancel" rule in later printings, like the second or third I think.
Also strange was how the target number and modifier system worked statistically. There was no effective difference between a 6 and a 7 target number. If you got a 6 at all, you couldn't get less than a 7. The same break point happened at 12/13. Higher target numbers were the same, but I never saw one that high. Difficulty modifiers didn't scale the way results jumped up with explosive dice.
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