- Sep 5, 2020
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My time has come!Okay, I'm having a problem understanding something in, 'The Legacy of Thaum Pt. I' when everyone is playing DnD. Rin is a Warlock with a d8 and has been failing all her checks for perception and attack by rolling a 5, I'm assuming 5 is below the threshold to land a hit. Later she finally rolls a 6 and tries to use the ranged attack Eldritch Blast, but Molly says the attack modifier for that spell is +5 and so she actually rolled a natural-1. WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT MEAN. I don't know much about DnD, but I'm pretty sure you can't roll negatives. Even if it was a typo or something and she said natural 1, how does that make sense? Shouldn't positive attack modifiers add to the damage not take it away? And she only rolled once to see if it would hit she didn't roll again for the attack damage So what does the attack modifier do here? This is driving me insane.
I need a DnD expert to tell me what's going on here. Here is the chatlog.
Molly doesn't say "negative 1," she says "Natural 1."
Common D&D speak -- "Natural" means "that's the number showing on the die," while "modified" would be "the number on the die + any modifers applied." A natural 1 always misses, and a natural 20 always crits (or creates the potential for a crit that has to be confirmed by a second roll, depending on which edition you're playing).
The sequence of play is -- roll to hit, add modifers, and compare the result against the opponents armor class. So when she asks "does a 6 hit" she means she's added the modifier already, and Molly caught on to the nuance.
Note: AC starts at 10 and goes up from there, which is why 5 almost never hits, but a 6 (modified to 11) might.