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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I didn't pay much attention to it until I made a GWF-based character, and now I can't unsee it...
But the definition of Great Weapon Fighting is very clear and explicit:
When you make an attack roll and hit, you roll only 1 damage roll. You don't make an extra damage roll for each rider. So all the riders are part of the same damage roll.
And this description says very explicitly, without any ambiguity whatsoever, that you can treat any 1 or 2 of this damage roll as a 3. Any 1 or 2 on any damage die resulting from this attack can be treated as a 3, so long as the attack was made 2-handed. That means the entire damage roll.
These is simply no way to interpret this description like the SAC does without straight-up contradicting it. But the SAC is supposed to be about interpretation, not a collection of errata.
It's supposed to say "that's what we meant", not "we changed our minds"... So I don't know what to make of this.
The most frustrating here is that before this SAC, the rule was very clear and straightforward: you make an attack => you roll damage => you convert all 1s and 2s into 3s on that damage roll.
So instead of adding clarity to something confusing, it added confusion to something that didn't need clarifying...
SAC doesn't exclusively explain/clarify the text, it also will explain rules as intended. The intent is that GWF applies only to the weapon damage. The text (RAW) may not align with the intent.
What you make of this is either "Decide if you're using this info" if you're a DM, or "ask your DM how they run GWF" if you're a player
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To be fair, I've never even considered it could be interpreted the way you do it. I think the confusion here is that when you do an Attack Action with your melee weapon you only roll the weapon damage. You can then use your Bonus Action to cast Divine Smite (or other smite), and the damage for the Divine Smite is your Bonus Action, not part of your weapon attack Action. Hence, GWF bonus doesn't apply to Divine Smite. It's not part of the same action.
However, with the 5e rules, you don't use a bonus action to cast Divine Smite, you just expend a spell slot as part of your attack action. In this case, I would consider your interpretation to be valid, which is what I would a likely root cause for this confusion and why it has been included in SAC.
Yeah, which brings another issue: the SAC clarification is very limited, and it's unclear to what else it applies...
What about extra damage from abilities, features, magic items, and potions that don't do extra damage on their own timing but simply add damage to the attack?
What about the Enlarge/Reduce spell, for example, which directly modifies your weapon's damage? The way the SAC is worded, it's still unclear whether it applies or not...
It applies only to the things it explicitly covers. It doesn't apply to anything else.
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So only to the Divine Smite and Hex spells, got it... Makes no sense, but okay, I guess...
The SAC issue an official ruling that The Great Weapon Fighting feat benefits only the damage roll of the weapon used for the attack, which i take as excluding any other extra damage.
May be the Devs thought it would make it more powerful than intended otherwise but many people not using SAC treat all damage dice roll 1-2 as 3.
No, the SAC advises that it is literally only the dice from the weapon itself. Not Hex damage, not Smite. If some effect changes the damage roll of your weapon (like Shillelagh and arguably Enlarge) then that is also affected.
So to summarise, just the damage of your weapon, not all the damage of the attack.
Thus sayeth the SAC.
And that's where it gets hairy... What constitutes a change to the damage roll of the weapon is unclear and subject to interpretation.
Enlarge? Definitely. It's literally your weapon getting bigger, thus dealing more damage.
But then that means the bonus from Cape of Enlargement is also affected for the same reason.
Then if we say that an effect caused by a Magic Item which modifies your weapon in a way that makes it deal more damage counts, then the fire bonus from Helm of Brilliance also counts, for the same reason.
But the bonus from the Mythallar Cloak wouldn't, because that one affects any attack roll, and isn't described as a weapon buff.
Now you have to go on a case-by-base basis.
I don't think it's that much different than what many DMs already do for many rules they don't quite agree with. In this case, GWF is adding a little overhead for the DM where they have to decide whether a certain rider is part of the weapon's damage, or some other effect.
Take the Fire Opal Flames from above. It adds fire damage to the weapon. Since we are already applying logic to decide whether part of the damage should get a bonus or not, one could argue that the extra fire damage is NOT contingent on the weapon being two-handed, and so won't count. On the other hand, a larger weapon "can have more flames on it", I guess, and so could qualify for the bonus. The DM can choose the option that makes the most sense to them as per RAW (SAC).