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.
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They're rolling a d20 for skill checks, saving throws, and attacks. The d8 that you reference was probably just for her starting hit points when she was creating the character.
Rolling a 1 on a d20 means you automatically fail whatever you're rolling for. If it's an attack, you miss spectacularly. If you're trying to jump on a table, someone spilled beer on it so you slip and hit your head. If you're trying to seduce a dragon, it eats you. Etc.
Rin rolled a 1 on the die for her attack so she automatically missed, even if she happened to add enough to hit it with her attack modifier - that's it.
It's only confusing because Selly called it a "natural-1" here for some reason, which reads like "natural minus 1". It's a dash, not a minus sign. Nothing is being subtracted. 1 on the die = miss.
Molly wasn't fucking Rin over here or anything, that's just a super basic rule of the game. If Molly wanted to get a little spicy as the DM, she could easily rule that on a nat 1, Rin misses the creature and hits one of her friends' characters who were standing next to it, but she didn't, she just had Rin hit a tree.
Note: AC starts at 10 and goes up from there, which is why 5 almost never hits, but a 6 (modified to 11) might.
The AC for
player characters starts at 10. Rin's attack of 6 (1 on the die + 5 modifier) was technically enough to hit the giant mushroom thing they were fighting if it hadn't been a nat 1.
