Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
Are there any rules in 2024 or has there been any errata that answers the question in the title of this thread?
Nope. The wording of the spell has not changed and there has been no official ruling on it.
When I'm DMing I have people roll a single damage roll, just because that's simpler and faster.
pronouns: he/she/they
The spell is the same, but the PHB section on damage and healing is different. The 2014 PHB says "If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target at the same time, roll the damage once for all of them." while the 2024 one states "When you create a damaging effect that forces two or more targets to make saving throws against it at the same time, roll the damage once for all the targets." Because Magic Missile does not involve any saving throw, some argue that you have to roll separately for each dart in 2024.
I’ve always rolled for each dart individually: until now, it had not occurred to me that there was an alternative interpretation. I can’t see anything in the language which definitively favours one over the other.
Personally, I prefer rolling individually, as it’s less swingy that rolling once for all the darts. The highest and lowest results much less frequently with the former method than with the latter. Magic Missile is for reliable, not spectacular, damage, so I prefer the method that gives more reliable results.
Honestly, that's pretty definitive. It would also apply to any other abilities that do damage to multiple targets without a save, if any others exist (I can't think of any off hand).
Previously you rolled once due to the 'affects multiple targets' thing. Under that ruleset, did you roll for each missile if you were only targeting ONE creature?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
In play I don't think anyone actually made that distinction -- either they rolled once or they rolled per missile.
There were some effects that added damage to a single damage roll for spells, which if you roll all of the darts from Magic Missile together, would multiply the effect by the number of darts. In 2014, there was a build called the "Nuclear Wizard" where an Evocation Wizard 17/Fighter 2/Hexblade 1 multiclass could use both Empowered Evocation and Hexblade's Curse on every dart, causing each dart to deal 1d4+12 force damage. At high levels, this build could Action Surge and use 8th & 9th level spell slots for the castings, sending out 21 darts in a turn for a total damage of 21d4+252 (304.5 average). And if the Wizard had the foresight to cast Simulacrum before the fight....very few monsters could survive even a single round from this build if they had the spell slots to burn (the Tarrasque being a notable exception with it's Reflective Carapace feature).
Given the wording that was mentioned in Post #3, it would make sense under the 2024 rules to roll damage individually for each dart.
However, keep in mind that this spell description explicitly says that all of the darts strike simultaneously. So, even though people don't often play this way, the best way to run it is to have the spellcaster declare which darts are hitting which targets ahead of time before any damage is known / resolved.
Is this not how people play by default?
I would be honestly surprised if it were not. Folks don't do the "A takes *clatter* damage...B takes *clatter* damage"...
Or "I attack A and B ...A *clatter* is a miss...B *clatter* a hit for *clatter* damage."
Sorry off topic, I was just curious.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I'm not quite sure how to read your examples. But my point was just that the player / character should not be able to use knowledge of how the damage for the first dart resolved before targeting the 2nd dart, and so on. For example, an enemy might only have 1HP remaining but that's of course unknown to the player. If the player really wants to make sure that that enemy is reduced to 0 then he might decide to go ahead and target that enemy with all 3 darts, and of course the 2nd and 3rd darts in that case would do nothing. You don't get to see that the first dart was enough to bring the enemy down and then use that information to decide to target a different enemy with the second dart. Compare against the wording for Scorching Ray where it is more reasonable to run it such that the attack and damage is resolved one at a time.
The only time I've seen that in play was in a situation where the DM called for a spellcasting roll to see if they could "bend" the spell to hit a different creature and not waste the shots that were called beforehand. This is obviously not RAW, but it's the closest I've seen to "roll damage for one and see how it shakes out before rolling the next". Have you actually seen people play that way?
I have my players roll as many d4s as there are missiles. Rolling on one d4 has 25% chance to lead to a very strong outcome, but it also has 25% to lead to a complete dud, and that sucks.
Evocation Wizard empowered evocation relies on the assumption that magic missile is a single damage roll for all beams:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/phb-2024/character-classes-continued#Level10EmpoweredEvocation
If each beam gets a different roll, then evocation wizard gets a big nerf.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
If each beam gets a different role, that feature's power matches its intended power level. It's removing a bonus that was never intended to exist in the first place.
That's a very big assumption. In particular, it lets you triple-dip (or more) the bonus onto a single target, which is very likely not the intent.
I havent played an evoker wizard since 2024 came out.
In 2014, you rolled 1 damage die per beam. And evoker wizard could max it out every dart.
Looks like 2024 found another way to nerf spellcasters.
2014 used to be one concentration check for magic missile per twrget no matter how many darts hit a target. Looks like each dart gets its own concentration check, which at least is something to take some of the sting out of nerffing the damage in magic missile.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
No, that was the same in 2014; the Evoker feature you're talking about hasn't changed. It was always improving the damage of "one damage roll of a spell", so it only improves all the darts if you're rolling one damage roll for all of them. That's exactly the same in both 5e and 5.5e. Nothing got "nerfed".
Nothing about that has changed in 5.5e either. Each dart causes its own separate Concentration save in both editions.
pronouns: he/she/they
Curious how you came to this conclusion?
From the 2014 rules:
From the 2014 Magic Missile spell description (which has not meaningfully changed):
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/basic-rules-2014/combat#DamageRolls
"If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target at the same time, roll the damage once for all of them."
Magic missile spell description says they all land at the same time (simultaneously) therefore, one damage roll
The equivalent section in 2024 rules doesnt say either way whether you must roll once or roll for each effect that deals damage "at the same time".
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/phb-2024/playing-the-game#DamageRolls
Which, i suppose could be interpreted as saying you COULD ask to roll fireball damage separately for each target in the aoe.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire