Because you’re actually trying to destroy the object. If you’re trying to hack through a door with a spell or weapon, it should have hit points. Or the DM can set a DC for a Strength check to break and object. The current rules, in 5E, which you can reference on PHB 185, run like this: if you want to break an object, you can make an attack roll and the DM will set an AC and HP for the object and when it takes enough damage it breaks. But skill challenges were very divisive and a lot of folks didn’t like them and the implementation kind of sucked.īut if you want to see the real weirdness of the damage roll in D&D, look at the rules for breaking things. When you had enough success steps, the task was completed. Each check moved you toward success a certain number of steps. Skill challenges in 4E were basically another attempt to do the same thing: create an extended task and give it a certain threshold for success. Each craft check cost time and materials. When you’ve “crafted” enough SP, the item is done. For example, crafting in 3.5 worked like this: translate the cost of the item into SP, roll a craft check, and based on that check, mark off some SP. The funny thing is that D&D flirts with other progress indicators from time to time, and they never really catch on. It’s a progress indicator on a task that can’t be completed with one action. That’s essentially what hit points and damage rolls are in their most abstract. You can keep rolling until you’ve added up enough points to find everything, with each roll eating up a certain amount of time. Imagine if things hidden in the room were hidden at certain “thresholds.” Each period of time you search the room, you roll a roll for thoroughness and that determines what you find. It’s an extended task that could take multiple actions and you could realistically set a “health” on the lock and determine how much “damage” lockpicking did. We don’t track how many points you need to pick a lock, even though you sure could. Even if a task takes a long time, in D&D, we don’t track the progress. If you assume, instead, that an attack either INJURES or DOESN’T INJURE, you can suddenly see how the idea of numerical progress is weirdly out of place. But that assumes the outcome for an attack is either KILL or NOT KILL. And people will argue that “well, that’s because you can’t have a single attack roll kill someone or else combat becomes a mess.” And I sure do agree.

It’s a role to see how successful you were. Everything else – that is to say the actual consequences of the outcome and how the world changes as a result – is added by the DM.īut the damage roll is really a roll for progress. You state an action, the action succeeds or fails, end of story. It’s concerned with the outcome of single actions. D&D doesn’t care how much you succeed or fail.

That’s why some shrieking elitists call it a “binary system” like that’s some kind of insult. The modern d20 system is built around this very simple idea of using a single die roll to determine success or failure. Because if you’d REALLY read the article carefully, you’d already have the answer.

You’re actually not the first person to ask this, but you’re the most recent, so you win LTRFTW. If you want politeness, go ask the Hippie-Dippie-Sunshine-and-Rainbows-and-Bunny-Farts-GM.Ĭould you please go there? That is to say, could you elaborate on how the damage roll may be out of place in D&D? Furthermore, if you were to remove the damage roll, and being the solution-oriented GM that you are, what would you replace it with? And include your name so I know I can make fun of you, your name, your question, your inability to proofread, or your poor understanding of the concept of a BRIEF question using your proper appellation. Just e-mail your BRIEF question to and put ASK ANGRY in the subject. Do you want to Ask the Angry GM a question? It’s easy to do.

Using roll with it pathfinder