Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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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).
If you want to argue about rules language sure, feel free to argue with your DM about every different possibility. The short answer however, is that Fighting Styles are supposed to be roughly balanced with each other, so the GWF is meant to be comparable to Dueling and Two Weapon Fighting. Dueling gives a +2 bonus to damage on each attack, Two Weapon Fighting gives +3-+5 on 1 or two attacks out of two-four attacks per turn (depending on level). Thus GWF should on average give 2-3 bonus damage to each attack with a two-handed weapon.
Assuming you are using a 2d6 weapon, there is 1/6 chance per die of a +2 bonus damage, and a 1/6 chance per die of a +1 bonus damage, which is expected benefit of +0.5 damage per die, or +1 damage per attack (its even worse with a 1d12 weapon). So there is definitely room to allow some additional dice to gain this benefit, however blanket allowing it for all added dice can easily become out of control when players start optimizing for it.
If you want a sensible rule: allow GWF bonus to be applied up to 3 dice per attack of the player's choice. This increases the expected benefit, but provides a natural "diminishing returns" in case a player decides to uber-optimize for it. Note that: even with a Greatsword + 5d8 Smite you only expect there to be 2 dice with a 1 or 2 on it on average so you could just allow it to apply to everything and it probably won't be game-breaking unless you have an uber munchkin (or are playing with some HB rules).
@Natrel I remember the thread Can True Strike and Savage Attacker work together? (2024) where you were posting about this feat and Savage Attacker.
TBH, as I commented there, I personally think it could be ruled as you're thinking, and I'd say more people seem to think the same, based on the different opinions (*)
But also IMO the SAC is trying to say that "when you roll damage for an attack you make with a Melee weapon that you are holding..." means something like "when you roll damage from the Melee weapon that you are holding..."
(for now, I'm sticking to the SAC answer)
(*) - New Great Weapon Fighting and additional damage dice
- Great Weapon Fighting style with bonus damage from weapons
- Great weapon fighting
- Great Weapon FS and Divine Favor
- Does Great Weapon Fighting Apply to Extra Damage Dice from Spells and Effects?
Well then they did a shitty job at it because Interceptor and Protector are total garbage.
The difference between Savage Attacker and Great Weapon Mastery is that Savage Attacker specifically refers to the weapon's damage dice - the specific subset of damage attributed to the basic weapon category itself - while Great Weapon Mastery refers to the damage from the attack - which includes all of the extra dice of damage you might receive from various sources.
I'd say that, RAW, SAC got it wrong here. They should have either said "oops... that's not what we meant" and issued an errata or simply ruled on the actual text of the rules.
The Protection fighting style isn't bad now that the effect lasts until your next turn.
As for the actual topic, I think the simplest interpretation would have been for Great Weapon Fighting to apply to every dice that a critical hit doubles. I don't see that being overpowered in any scenario as the effect is still pretty modest.
How exactly is no-cost straight damage reduction a bad thing? I'll grant it doesn't scale dramatically unlike... oh, look at that, none of the Fighting Styles scale up much with level. In fact, Interception seems to be the only one the grows in performance at all. And it works for anyone with a weapon, so it allows TWF or GW builds to dip into taking.
In the broad sense, yes. It is a well known fact that D&D has poor game balance, which is why lots of the mechanics-focused people move to Pathfinder instead. In the narrow sense, not exactly, Protection Fighting Style is actually pretty good, if you have an appropriate party composition. In party where you can trigger the Protection FS at least every other round it is numerically substantially better than the Defence Fighting Style - however there are plenty of adventuring parties where this is unlikely to be the case. Interception is the objectively bad defensive fighting style, just as GWF is the objectively bad offensive fighting style.
Having played with Interceptor, I can tell you for a fact it's not "objectively bad" assuming you take a mild effort to be shoulder to shoulder with someone and your DM doesn't actively metagame to negate it.