[RPG] How to figure the dice and bonuses for attack rolls and damage rolls

As I'm wielding a crossbow, would I add my attack missile bonus (+12) to my attack roll to see if I get past the AC, or to the damage roll to see how much damage I deal?

The listed missile attack bonus is used to determine if you hit something; it's added only to your attack rolls. The damage rolls are determined seperately. For a crossbow, by default the damage is only the flat roll from the weapon.

You add the magical enhancement bonus, if it has one, to both the attack roll and the damage.

It's even weirder for bows. When shooting with a bow, you also attack with the listed missile attack bonus, but you have to use your strength modifier on the damage roll if it is negative. Which means with a bow your character would deal -1 damage because of low strength, but a high strength character would not add his strength to the damage roll unless it's a special (expensive) Composite Bow.

Hope this helps clear it up a little.

You're right. It's only base dice, no modifiers.

This probably sounds terrible, however, there is a good reason:

It's more balanced than it seems.

It's hard to tell sometimes; believe me I know. But, until you get more hands-on experience with the game, you have to give the game you're playing a "grace period" where you trust that the designers made the correct decisions, even if it seems like they didn't at first. Every campaign you play or DM is going to be different. If you change players or DM, then the campaign will be completely different. Some of those games, you will have players that built weak casters, and experienced grognards that built martial types. Although it is a roleplaying game, the "player skill" of the game comes in with decision-making during game time, and character building during creation.

That said, if you GM a game and you consistently encounter the same balance issues across encounters, then yeah, you should feel confident that houseruling whatever the issue is will improve your experience.

Your Wizard's spell slots are pretty big.

Bear with me a moment and imagine that the Wizard class is actually Batman. The biggest strength of the Wizard is that they have a tool ready for every situation -- at least, if they're a good Wizard. That's the player-skill-decision-making part. The spells your Wizard picked aren't bad, they just make him very good at things that aren't combat. Your Wizard has a ton of tools for dealing with non-combat situations. Imagine if Batman didn't bring his Batarangs when he went out on a mission. He's still the best detective on the planet, but now he isn't as effective as he would be in a fight. Spells are really, really good at solving specific problems.

That said, given the nature of the encounters you described, you might try throwing your Wizard a bone if you haven't already. D&D is more than just combat, and if you aren't giving your non-combat specialist Wizard any non-combat to specialize in, he'll feel like a useless player. If your player is concerned about his build, then you can allow him to switch out a cantrip, or give him a couple of good AOE scrolls in the next loot pile to scribe.

In addition, cantrips scale at certain levels. It's not immediately, but you can be sure that the cantrip will be a good standby at later levels.