[RPG] How are damage rolls defined

damagednd-4ewarlord

I play a warlord with

Warlord's Strike Warlord Attack 3

One convincing cut is all you need to reveal the enemy’s weakness and
spur your allies into finishing him off.

Encounter     Martial, Weapon

Standard Action     Melee weapon

Target: One creature

Attack: Strength vs. AC

Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier damage. Until the end of your next turn, all of your allies gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls against the target.

Inspiring Presence: The bonus to damage rolls equals 1 + your Charisma modifier.

So what exactly is a damage roll?
Several possibilities we came up with :

  • Our Wolf can leave a mark, target gets damage when he is not attacked
  • Hunters quarry of our Elf
  • Every single hit of The two-shot abilities of the elf
  • sneak attack + attack afterwards count as two damage rolls, gaining twice the bonus?

Somehow this seems hilariously imba to me. Elf would get this bonus 3 times with hunters quarry+ twoshot?

can someone clear this up for me? Help is appreciated.

Best Answer

The bonus is applied to every damage roll the Warlord's allies do.

In order to comprehend what a damage roll really is, read Rules Comendium, page 222. To short it up, any expression of dice (or [W]) that you can find in a power, feat, monster stat block, etc. The following are examples of damage rolls.

  • 2d8 + Wisdom modifier damage
  • 1[W] + Strength modifier damage
  • 3d10+4 fire damage

Damage roll modifiers can be applied to such expressions. If a power, class feature or else allows you to perform multiple attacks (like the Ranger's Twin Strike at-will attack power) or multiple damage rolls, the bonus damage is applied to all relevant expressions involved.

However, any expression referred as extra damage is itself another modifier to a damage instance. See Rules Compendium, page 223.

Extra Damage Many powers and other effect grant the ability to deal extra damage. Extra damage is always in addition to other damage and is of the same type or types as that damage, unless otherwise noted. Because of this rule, an effect that deals non damage cannot deal extra damage. However, a power doesn't necessarily have to hit a target to deal extra damage - it needs only to deal damage to the target.

Under this category fall many Strikers' features, such as (but not limited to)...

Hunter's Quarry may be used once per turn; let's suppose the Ranger uses Twin Strike, hits both times, applies Hunter's Quarry (1d6) to the first attack, and benefits from his ally's Warlord's Strike for another +4 bonus damage.
1st hit: he deals basic weapon damage [W] (damage roll) +4 (bonus damage) +1d6 (extra damage).
2nd hit: he deals basic weapon damage [W] (damage roll) +4 (bonus damage).

Note that the extra damage from Hunter's Quarry is not modified by the Warlord's bonus: it is a modifier itself. For many aspects, you can consider it a still-to-be-rolled static damage bonus.

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