Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Ello friendos, i'm in a west March server and a rules question came up regarding the great weapon fighting
"When you roll damage for an attack you make with a Melee weapon that you are holding with two hands, you can treat any 1 or 2 on a damage die as a 3. The weapon must have the Two-Handed or Versatile property to gain this benefit."
Was it intended for it to work on the extra dmg of flame tongues, vicious weapons or even dragon wrath weapons? Or was it only intended for the weapon's base dmg die? One of the new designers from DND's team insight would be helpful.
The designers of D&D don't really frequent these forums.
This Sage Advice answer clarifies that Great Weapon Fighting is meant to work with the weapon's damage roll, but not with any separate add-on damage effects. So, the question is whether the extra damage from weapons like Flame Tongue and Vicious Weapon is part of the weapon's damage roll. It certainly seems to me like it is, since these weapons say that the extra damage is "from the attack" and not from an external source, and that's the way I've always ruled it.
I don't think there's been any official ruling on it.
It is worth pointing out that Great Weapon Fighting is a pretty weak feat already, and if you don't allow it to be used on things like this, it's probably not worth bothering with at all.
pronouns: he/she/they
Yeah, it's just like Savage Attacker: it works for the weapon's damage, but not from external sources. However, it can be tricky to determine what qualifies as an "external source" when there are many abilities, magic items, and spells that say "you weapon attacks deal extra damage", implying that these modify the weapon's damage directly rather than inflicting damage in parallel from a different source.
For example, the Helm of Brilliance lets you set your weapon ablaze and makes it deal an extra 1d6 fire damage. One could argue that the flame comes from an external source, but the fire damage comes from the flame itself, which is now part of the weapon.
Then you have Hex, which says "you deal an extra 1d6 Necrotic when you hit with an attack roll", which doesn't mention what the source of this extra damage is besides "you".
Spirit Shroud, on the other hand, explicitly says "any attack you make deals extra damage", making it clear that this extra damage comes from the triggering attack itself.
And of course, you have Smite spells, which all say "The target takes an extra [...] damage from the attack" which also makes it clear that the triggering attack is the source of the extra damage.
If it helps, there's a some old Sage Advice from Crawford that supports this.
Not true, there is a simple mental test to determine what is a weapon damage die and what is from an external source. Simply imagine a Commoner picking up the weapon and attacking with it a week later. Any damage the Commoner would do is inherent to the weapon itself.
That's a bad test. By that definition, the damage done by a Club is 1d4 even when under the effect of Shillelagh...
The "a week later" — i.e., after any spell like that has expired — is an important part of it.
pronouns: he/she/they
Yeah, that's what I'm saying... So a week later, the damage would be back to a 1d4. So by this "mental test", we should consider the damage of a club to always be 1d4, because that's what the damage would be after being picked up 1 week later by a commoner.
Player, after rolling 2 1s on their 2d6 damage: "I use Savage Attacker on my attack with Shillelagh"
DM: "Okay, roll me a d4"
Player: "What?!"
DM: "What?"
This "test" is intended to help you figure out which dice in a damage roll are part of "the weapon's damage dice" as a general rule when it otherwise might be unclear due to ambiguities in the rules.
Since Shillelagh explicitly tells you that "the weapon's damage die becomes a d8", there isn't any ambiguity; it's a specific rule overriding the general rule.
pronouns: he/she/they
My point is that any temporary modification to the weapon's damage for any reason whatsoever would be thrown away by this rule... If you have to make an exception for every time the temporary damage increase actually counts, then your mental rule doesn't really help much.
In pure game balance terms, it would probably be fine to just assume it applies to any weapon damage. I believe that the intent is that it only applies to the weapon's base damage, however.
"base" damage is a video game concept, where programming is involved. It doesn't apply to a tabletop game like D&D. It's like saying that if you dash twice, your speed is 90ft instead of being doubled twice to 120ft because the dash would apply to your "base" speed.
To quote a famous character: "we don't do that here"
That...is unfortunately a poor example, because Dash does not double your speed (or change it at all). It gives you extra movement equal to your Speed. If your Speed is 30 and you Dash twice, your Speed is still 30, but you can move up to 90 feet that turn. You can call that a "video game concept" if you want, but that's what the description of the Dash action actually says.
pronouns: he/she/they
It absolutely can apply in tabletop game. Just looking at your example
True, but you know what I mean. The concept of "base" anything isn't mentioned anywhere in the PHB or the DMG.
We're familiar and comfortable with it because I'm pretty sure most of us play video games, but this concept is foreign to tabletop.
I'm not really sure I do. The concept of a game stat having a "base" value that can conditionally have modifiers applied to it is not at all unique to video games, and is very common in tabletop RPGs.
The 5.5e rules do, in fact, describe "Base Armor Class" as a thing, for instance.
pronouns: he/she/they
Seconding this. We also see terms like "base walking speed", "base weight", "base price", and the term "base damage" specifically comes up in the description for Delayed Blast Fireball. It's inaccurate to suggest that the concept of a "base X" is somehow alien to D&D.
Regardless, whether or not the term "base damage" crops up regularly in the rulebooks, it's common shorthand in D&D/tabletop community for a weapon or spell's unmodified damage dice.
Might I suggest we stay on topic? This post is specifically asking about how to run Great Weapon Fighting, not about the etymology and theoretical basis of gaming terms.
I'm not sure how much more there is to say on the topic. Sage advice tells us it "benefits only the damage roll of the weapon used for the attack.", but, other than giving divine smite as an example of things that are not affected, does not explain what that means.
It's not that simple, because Shillelagh, and other edge cases. Nobody in their right mind would use the weapon's unmodified damage die on a Shillelaghed weapon.
And if we consider this edge case, there's no reason not to consider other edge cases too.