User:Guybrush42/DamageExamples

Test run for damage example tables.

Damage Expressions

The intent is to replace the paragraph of examples in the Damage rolls article with a table, so that the full in-game style damage expression can be shown for each example.

Table of examples

Examples of damage expressions

Source	Simple expression (no modifiers)	Dice	Damage range
Dagger	1d4 (1~4) Piercing damage	One four-sided die	1 to 4 piercing
Greatsword	2d6 (2~12) Slashing damage	Two six-sided dice	2 to 12 slashing
Fireball	8d6 (8~48) Fire damage	Eight six-sided dice	8 to 48 fire

Current example paragraph

For 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.

A note on multiple damage dice

A re-write of the "A bit of Mathematics" section to use a more realisitic example of greataxe vs greatsword.

Weapons and spells that roll multiple dice for damage do not just have a higher minimum damage. A single die is equally likely to produce any result, since there is exactly one change of getting each one. When adding dice together, there are multiple dice rolls that add up to the same total, meaning that some results - esepcially those in the middle of the damage range - are much more likely. For example, a Template:Weapon does 1d12Slashing, and is equally likely to roll a 1 or a 12 or anything in between. A Template:Weapon does 2d6Slashing, and cannot roll lower than 2 damage - but it is statistically much more likely to roll 7 damage than either 2 or 12.

This is most easily explained with a table of all possible outcomes:

Possible results of a 2d6 roll, highlighing results of 7

First roll	Second roll
	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
6	7	8	9	10	11	12

The 7 appears as the result in 6 out of 36 possible rolls, while the 12 appears only once. This means a 2d6 roll has a 16.6666% (1 in 6) chance of resulting in 7 points of damage, but only a 2.7777% (1 in 36) chance of resulting in 8 points of damage. Meanwhile, the 1d12 roll actually has a higher chance of resulting in the maximum damage value of 8, since 1 out of 12 possibilities (8.3333%) result in an 8. This is also true of the lowest damage, though, and the lowest value is lower for 1d12. So a greataxe and other single die weapons are "swingier" - more likely to deliver very high or very low damage damage - while a greatsword and other multiple dice weapons are more consistent - more likely to produce a result in the middle of their damage range.