According to Jeremy Crawford, Magic Missile involves exactly one damage roll, and all the darts cue off that roll. So, if you roll a 1, you could empower it to reroll your d4.
Then Jeremy Crawford should have put that in the books. When the RAW and the RAI don't match, then the devs didn't do a great job writing that rule. Unfortunately, there are a few dozen rules that are like this (which is why I'm in favor of a PHB 2.0).
pretty sure it’s in the book?
And by in the book I mean: the book does not specifically say roll a 1d4 for each dart.
Where it does for Scorching Ray, and eldritch blast.
The book does not say that for Scorching Ray or for Eldritch Blast. It says each component is a separate attack roll, which 1) cannot be construed as "a separate damage roll" and 2) is not at all relevant to Magic Missile, which doesn't involve any attack rolls at all.
yeah Noticed this right as I was editing. (Smartphones are slow)
the damage is constant with them. The attack rolls are separate.
According to Jeremy Crawford, Magic Missile involves exactly one damage roll, and all the darts cue off that roll. So, if you roll a 1, you could empower it to reroll your d4.
The book does not say that for Scorching Ray or for Eldritch Blast. It says each component is a separate attack roll, which 1) cannot be construed as "a separate damage roll" and 2) is not at all relevant to Magic Missile, which doesn't involve any attack rolls at all.
yeah Noticed this right as I was editing. (Smartphones are slow)
the damage is constant with them. The attack rolls are separate.
The book does not say that for Scorching Ray or for Eldritch Blast. It says each component is a separate attack roll, which 1) cannot be construed as "a separate damage roll" and 2) is not at all relevant to Magic Missile, which doesn't involve any attack rolls at all.
Regardless of how you handle Magic Missile, it's the nature of ALL attacks that damage is rolled separately for each attack. That's part of the reason Jeremy Crawford rules as he does for Magic Missile, it involves no attack roles. Other reasons are because it's easier to manage then "This guy takes... 3 damage, and this guy takes... 2 and, 5 damage, and this guy" etc., also to help prevent people from trying to roll them all together, then assigning the amount of damage that they want to deal to each target, gaming the spell. It's just the easiest, fastest, most fool proof way to handle it. It also makes sense if you consider that it's a guaranteed hit spell that has very consistent damage compared to other spells if you roll for each dart separately. It means that rolling a 1+1 is MMs equivalent to missing or getting saved against but that's still 6 force damage at minimum for a level 1 spell, while it has 1/4 chance of getting a 4+1 and feeling beefy reasonably often.
Magic Missile also strikes simultaneously per the spells wording, which lends itself to one damage roll, while the other “ray” spells don’t specify that. I envision it as Iron Mans multi-targeted shoulder gun attack from the first movie (in the first scene with the “real” suit) whereas Eldritch blast (and others) are more His hand energy blasts firing shots in quick succession (fireball being the tiny missile he uses on the tank)
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yeah Noticed this right as I was editing. (Smartphones are slow)
the damage is constant with them. The attack rolls are separate.
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^ no truer words.
people just love to roll more dice.
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Regardless of how you handle Magic Missile, it's the nature of ALL attacks that damage is rolled separately for each attack. That's part of the reason Jeremy Crawford rules as he does for Magic Missile, it involves no attack roles. Other reasons are because it's easier to manage then "This guy takes... 3 damage, and this guy takes... 2 and, 5 damage, and this guy" etc., also to help prevent people from trying to roll them all together, then assigning the amount of damage that they want to deal to each target, gaming the spell. It's just the easiest, fastest, most fool proof way to handle it. It also makes sense if you consider that it's a guaranteed hit spell that has very consistent damage compared to other spells if you roll for each dart separately. It means that rolling a 1+1 is MMs equivalent to missing or getting saved against but that's still 6 force damage at minimum for a level 1 spell, while it has 1/4 chance of getting a 4+1 and feeling beefy reasonably often.
Life is the game.
Magic Missile also strikes simultaneously per the spells wording, which lends itself to one damage roll, while the other “ray” spells don’t specify that. I envision it as Iron Mans multi-targeted shoulder gun attack from the first movie (in the first scene with the “real” suit) whereas Eldritch blast (and others) are more His hand energy blasts firing shots in quick succession (fireball being the tiny missile he uses on the tank)