Calculating Damage

After rolling your damage dice, add their values together, then add any modifiers to determine the result. The GM marks Hit Points based on that damage.

Tip: In Daggerheart, there’s a difference between damage and Hit Points. Damage is the result of your damage roll, including your damage dice and modifiers. Hit Points reflect how hard that damage affects the creature who’s taking it. The number of Hit Points a creature marks depends on factors such as their damage thresholds, armor, resistances, and immunities.

Damage Without Modifiers

Some damage rolls tell you to roll a certain number and type of die without any modifiers. For example, “1d8 physical damage”. In this case, you simply roll as indicated and the result of that roll is the amount of damage you deal.

Damage with Modifiers

Some damage rolls come with modifiers, such as “2d6+2” or “3d8+5”. In these cases, you roll the dice, add their values together, then add the modifier to that total. This modifier is not affected by your Proficiency.

Critical Successes and Damage

If your attack roll critically succeeds, your attack deals extra damage! Start with the highest possible value the damage dice can roll, and then make a damage roll as usual, adding it to that value.

Multiple Sources of Damage

Whenever damage would be applied more than once to a creature during a PC’s move, the damage is always totaled before it’s applied to the adversary’s damage thresholds. For example, if a PC with orc ancestry makes a successful attack against a target in Melee range and decides to spend a Hope to use their “Tusks” feature (which gives them an extra 1d6 damage on a damage roll), they would roll their normal weapon damage and add a d6 to the result, then deal that total damage to the adversary.

If this orc then decided—with the table’s consent—to keep the spotlight and make another attack, this is considered a separate move. When this attack resolves, its total damage is counted separately from the damage of the orc’s first move.