[RPG] Damage Points-Hit Points Calculation

damagednd-5ehit-points

I'm a first time player of DnD and I'm using the starter set (Lost Mine of Phandelver) and I think me and my party are calculating some things wrong.

We were confused on the damage points so we just went to hit points (we are all new so we have no real guidance). Then later on we searched up how to use damage points but couldn't find any real answers.

The only thing I saw was an example but no formula.

When we were first starting the game, we calculated the attack roll by 1d20+weapon stats+ability (but we changed it to 1d20+ability); for example, for how we are doing it currently, if I used a shortsword and roll a 10 then 10-1=9. We used that to see if our attack hits or not.

At the start we used weapon stats (5+1d6+3+proficiency bonus+-1+little number (under the modifier) for damage. We didn't know what to do w/ damage so we went straight to hit points (goblin ~7 HP but rolled a total of 10 and considered them dead.)

Best Answer

Lets break this down even more just to be clear. Here is an example:

Goblin has 7 Hit Points, 15 AC. Character swings a short sword which they are proficient with. Short sword has the finesse property, so the character can choose between Strength or Dexterity. Let's say they choose strength and a +1 STR MOD.

  1. Character rolls for attack -- rolls D20 to hit against the Goblin's Armor Class and succeeds with a roll of 14 + 1 STR MOD + 2 PROFICIENCY BONUS = 17 to hit (which is >= 15).

  2. Character rolls damage for short sword rolls a D6 and gets 3 + 1 STR MOD = 4 damage. Damage doesn't include proficiency. The modifier is the smaller derived from the larger ability score.

  3. Goblin calculates remaining HP. 7 - 4 = 3 HP left for the Goblin.

The goblin flees. Finds a place to take a short rest of 1 hour (or more) and chooses to roll its hit dice to heal some of that damage...