How do you do damage in D&D? What dice do you use and how do you know how much damage you've done after rolling the dice? When it says 1d10 does that mean you did one damage or ten?
[RPG] How to do damage
damagednd-5e
Related Solutions
You choose before you know the damage. Hitting and dealing damage are separate steps — if the ability was supposed to give the choice when damage was being resolved, it would say something like "… when you are damaged by a ranged weapon attack." Instead, it says "when you are hit". So when you're hit, but before damage is rolled (or revealed), you decide whether to deflect it or not.
Besides, it's a deflection. It wouldn't make sense to see how wounded you are first, and only then decide whether to make the missile hit you differently or not at all. The ability's use of a hit as the trigger instead of suffering damage as the trigger is in line with this intuition about how voluntary deflection ought to work.
1) Correct, as long as a Natural Weapon is used for the attack. Without a natural weapon things would have been different. Also no Astral Combat skill is needed, if a natural weapon is used.
p. 399, Natural Weapon critter power
A dual-natured critter with a melee Natural Weapon can use this power against astral targets that are within its reach. Use the critter’s normal Unarmed Combat skill and physical Damage Value for this attack.
2) You're wrong. Dodging is done using Logic+Intuition; "soaking" means reducing the damage after a successful hit. Since the mage is only astrally present, Willpower (see table p. 314) is used to soak damage. (Manifesting doesn't make the mage vulnerable to attacks that wouldn't hurt her, if she would project without manifesting, so it's still astral combat)
p. 315 Astral Combat
Astral combat is resolved in the same way as physical combat.
p.314 Manifesting
Manifesting is a psychic effect that lets you make yourself visible and audible on the physical plane through an act of will. [...]
You can’t interact with anything physically (or be harmed by physical attacks). [...]
You’re still on the astral plane, so astral attacks can still target you.
4) Even if the mage would not be dead immediately, filling all boxes would basically kill her, since finding the body (p. 314, While you were out) would be impossible, if she is knocked out.
What could the mage have done?
- This is Shadowrun. You don't just walk up to a potentially dangerous stranger and say "Hi"; you gather all info you can get, then maybe you talk. A better approach would be to stay in the astral and check that being using Assensing(assuming the skill rating is high enough to make it work with that INT attribute). Most paracritters shouldn't be too good at masking, so the mage would likely get the info that she is dealing with a dual natured being and would have approached it with more care. With the high move rate in the astral evading it shouldn't be too difficult unless the mage is in meele range and surprised.
- What about burning edge? Not Dead Yet (p. 57) could have saved her.
Best Answer
To deal damage, you roll X amounts of Y-sided dice, usually annotated with XdY. For example:
If you attack with a weapon, find your weapon's damage dice on the weapon damage table, on PHB pg. 149. For example a dagger's damage dice is d4.
If you deal damage with a spell or other effect, the description will tell you what dice to roll and how many. For example frostbite cantrip's damage dice is d6 (it becomes 2d6 at level 5, 3d6 at level 11, and finally 4d6 at level 17).
Add all the damage dice and the modifiers-taking into account reduction, resistance, vulnerability, and immunity, then subtract the remaining damage from the target's health point.
There is an entire section on PHB, pg. 196, "Damage and Healing". A section specifically deals about "Damage Rolls".