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Once.
I find it hard to accept that GMs have been 50/50 on this as I've never met somebody who individually rolled, this out of scores of GMs I've known and hundreds of players. This is the first I've heard of it in 40 years of gaming (in any system for that matter).
Spell does X amount of damage in an area. Example: Fireball
"A roaring blast of fire appears at a spot you designate, dealing 6d6 fire damage."
For those that haven't read it, that is the complete description other than its stats where it's called a burst. A burst affects each creature whose space is within the burst.
So technically, if you wanted to roll individually you could. It's a matter of how one imagines the blast. You could think of it as doing 6d6, so roll damage X as the spell's effects, determine victims, roll saves vs. damage X; OR as doing 6d6, determine victims, roll 6d6 damage for each individually, roll saves.
But who the heck would want to choose the latter?! That seems like going out of one's way to make Fireballs tedious.
So yeah, there's no RAW forcing either way, yet if one thinks about it, the rules would have to be more explicit if they wanted each creature to have its own individual effect rather than share one effect they then save against (which is also more straightforward).
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Oddly enough, I don't see an answer to this specific question in Chapter 7: Spells, but under Basic Saving Throws, we're told "If a spell’s Saving Throw entry specifies a “basic” saving throw, the spell’s potential effects all relate to the damage listed in the spell’s description".
So I would surmise that if "the damage listed in the spell's description" told us to roll separately for each target (such as with Magic Missile), then we would, but the default otherwise should probably be rolling only once.
FWIW, in my decades experience of tossing Fireballs in various Editions, I can't recall ever rolling separately for damage, either.
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I think that "the rules don't care about this, because it doesn't matter which way a table wants to do it" is about accurate. But yes, rolling separately would be less convenient for everyone involved.
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I think that "the rules don't care about this, because it doesn't matter which way a table wants to do it" is about accurate.
This.
I've never seen anyone roll separately, because that's just adding work ...
Until we started playing online. In Fantasy Grounds we can drag the spell to the targets and it automatocally rolls their save, deals damage and takes immunities/resistances/etc into account. Because of this it' easier to drag the dice onto the 5 enemies in the AoE than to roll the dice and then individually edit the HP/status-effects of the creatures.
TLDR: It doesn't really matter, but if one way is significantly less work then that's the one you should probably use.
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I was under the impression that this is why saving throws against AoE spells were created in the first place back in the day. So that one person didn't have to roll attack rolls and damage separately against every target in the spell's area. Instead roll damage once and have each target roll their defense against it.
But I wasn't actually playing D&D that long ago, so I could be wrong.
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I think that "the rules don't care about this, because it doesn't matter which way a table wants to do it" is about accurate.Until we started playing online. In Fantasy Grounds we can drag the spell to the targets and it automatocally rolls their save, deals damage and takes immunities/resistances/etc into account. Because of this it' easier to drag the dice onto the 5 enemies in the AoE than to roll the dice and then individually edit the HP/status-effects of the creatures.
You should probably just start targeting enemies instead. Rather than dragging the dice repeatedly.
Much faster.Also you can just drag dice results from chat in fantasygrounds so no manual entry was necessary. (Not that you need to do that if you target via ctrl click, targeting lasso or the target all enemies/allies buttons)
Some tables also rolls twice when the dice numbers are even. One for full damage and other for half just to avoid divide it by 2.
Now there's something weird that I'd never heard of anyone doing, before.
You should probably just start targeting enemies instead. Rather than dragging the dice repeatedly.
Much faster.Also you can just drag dice results from chat in fantasygrounds so no manual entry was necessary. (Not that you need to do that if you target via ctrl click, targeting lasso or the target all enemies/allies buttons)
Oh cool. We're also reasonably new oto Fantasy Grounds, so we haven't worked everything out yet. Thanks for the tip =)
I don't understand the part about gaining temp HP equal to the single highest amount of necrotic damage dealt.
If I make one roll, wouldn't all the damage amounts be equal? How could there be a highest one with a single roll?
The damage amounts can differ in a PF2 ability with that type of clause because the targets have different save results and some might have weaknesses or resistances to the damage type.
I couldn't tell you about whether 5E has something special for that. But there are plenty of better places to ask that.
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I've always rolled once. But I think it'd be amazing to make each player roll their own damage, then roll to save. It'd be like they were rolling for their own doom.