Damage

For a comprehensive overview of the game's damage calculations, see Damage mechanics.

Damage is a number that represents how deadly a threat is. When a creature takes damage, they subtract that amount of damage from their current amount of hit points.

Damage is dealt with attacks and other harmful actions, as well as by a variety of conditions.

Damage rolls

The base damage dealt by a weapon, spell, class action or condition is usually determined by a damage roll. Damage rolls are dice rolls made using the dice specified in the harmful source's description.

Notation

Damage rolls are expressed in the game using both dice notation: $xdN+y$, where x is the number of dice rolled, and N is the number of sides of those dice. y is the sum of all modifiers added to the damage roll.

The game also expressed damage using a range: $a\sim b$, where a is the minimum damage possible and b is the maximum damage possible.

Dice used when making damage rolls is usually any number of dice with a minimum size of d4 and a maximum size of d12.

Modifiers

When a creature deals damage,they make a damage roll and add any applicable modifiers to the results. Modifiers are only added once per source, even multiple dice are rolled.

Damage rolls typically have an associated ability, and creatures add their corresponding ability score modifier to the results of those rolls.

Weapon attacks

When making weapon attacks, the attacking creature's usually add their Strength or Dexterity modifier to the results of their damage roll.

Whether Strength or Dexterity is used depends on the weapon: usually Strength for melee weapons and Dexterity for ranged weapons. The exceptions to this rule are Finesse weapons, which automatically select Strength or Dexterity, whichever score is higher; and Thrown weapons, which use Strength for both melee and ranged attacks. If a weapon is both Thrown and Finesse, it uses the higher of Strength and Dexterity for both melee and ranged attacks.

Some examples, to make the possible combinations of Finesse and Thrown easier to understand:

• Using a Maul for a melee attack always uses Strength.
• Using a Rapier (Finesse) for a melee attack uses Strength or Dexterity; whichever the attacking creature has a higher score in.
• Shooting a Longbow for a ranged attack always uses Dexterity.
• Throwing a Handaxe (Thrown) for a ranged attack uses Strength.
• Throwing a Dagger (Finesse & Thrown) for a ranged attack uses Strength or Dexterity, whichever is higher.

Whether it's Strength or Dexterity that ends up being used, the following table defines the value of the modifier:

Spells

Casters typically do not add their ability score modifier to the damage rolls of spells, unless a class feature allows it. For example, warlocks with the  Agonising Blast Invocation can add their Charisma modifier to  Eldritch Blast damage rolls.

Example

A successful attack with a Dagger does a base of 1d4Piercing damage (1~4). This means a single four-sided die is rolled to determine the damage, for a total of 1 to 4 piercing damage. Most weapons use a single damage die, but some two-handed weapons use two: a successful attack with a Greatsword does 2d6Slashing damage (2~12), rolling two six-sided dice for a total of 2 to 12 slashing damage. Damaging spells typically roll more dice: for example, being caught in a  Fireball will cause 8d6Fire damage (8~48), though a successful Saving Throw can reduce it to half.

Damage types

All damage has a damage type, of which there are 13:

• 

  Bludgeoning

• 

  Piercing

• 

  Slashing

• 

  Cold

• 

  Fire

• 

  Lightning

• 

  Thunder

• 

  Acid

• 

  Poison

• 

  Radiant

• 

  Necrotic

• 

  Force

• 

  Psychic

Bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage are sometimes collectively referred to as Physical damage.

A creature's resistances determine which damage types they are immune, resistant or vulnerable to:

• Damage dealt to a creature with resistance to that damage type is halved.
• Damage dealt to a creature with vulnerability to that damage type is doubled.
• Damage dealt to a creature with immunity to that damage type is reduced to zero.

If a character has both resistance and vulnerability to the same damage type, they cancel each other out and the creature takes normal damage. Immunity always reduces damage to zero, even if a creature also has resistance and/or vulnerability to the same damage type.

If a source of damage mixes different sizes of dice or damage types, they will be listed separately with a plus sign between them, e.g. 1d8piercing + 1d4fire. Each type is considered separately for the purposes of resistance, vulnerability and immunity, so a creature immune to fire would take only 1d8 piercing damage in the previous example.

A bit of mathematics

Note that due to the mathematics of dice rolls, the difference between, say, 1d8 and 2d4 is more than just the higher minimum value of 2 on the 2d4 roll. With the d8, you have an equal chance of getting, say, a 5 and an 8. On the other hand, the 2d4 roll is statistically more likely to lead to a total value of 5, than a total value of 8. This is most easily explained with a table of all possible outcomes:

Possible results of a 2d4 roll, highlighting the number of possibilities resulting in a total value of 5

First roll	Second roll	Total value
1	1	2
1	2	3
1	3	4
1	4	5
2	1	3
2	2	4
2	3	5
2	4	6
3	1	4
3	2	5
3	3	6
3	4	7
4	1	5
4	2	6
4	3	7
4	4	8

Notice how often the 5 appears in the possibilities for the total value (4 out of 16 possibilities) vs. how often the 8 appears (1 out of 16). This means a 2d4 roll has a 25% chance of resulting in 5 points of damage, but only a 6.125% chance of resulting in 8 points of damage. Meanwhile, the 1d8 roll actually has a higher chance of resulting in the maximum damage value of 8, since 1 out of 8 possibilities (12.5%) result in an 8.

See also

• Category:Sources of damage