Got a bit of pushback from a player today. They're kineticist used sanguivolent roots for the first time. When they described the ability to me, I said "if it's alright with you, I'm going to roll damage once and apply the result to everyone in the area so as to keep things moving along quickly." I didn't think this would be an issue since this is pretty much what myself and every GM I've known has done for area effects since time immemorial.
The player insisted that I rolled individually, since that would increase the odds of higher healing for the party and that, though my house rule would be more expedient, it would greatly devalue an ability they had invested in and actively weaken the party. After reading the ability more closely, and seeing verbiage that implied rolling damage separately for individual targets, I acquiesced and we got on with the game
It got me thinking about area damage effects and whether the expected norm is rolling damage once, or rolling for each target in the area. I'm sure there are examples on both end of the spectrum.
What is the expected norm? Do you follow that norm, or play it differently? What are some examples that follow the expected norm, or go against it?
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Wait, what part of this implies rolling damage separately for each creature?
This one?
living creatures in the area who aren't your enemies regain HP equal to half the damage a single creature took; calculate this using the highest damage a single creature took.
That doesn't mean that you need to roll damage separately for each creature. The affected enemies are going to take different amounts of damage based on their save results.
Yeah, I would still run it the same as any other save-based AoE spell effect. You roll damage once and roll the save for each creature affected. Each creature takes the damage rolled after adjusting for the save results.
A fine point! Totally missed it in the moment.
I'm now wondering if the player was aware of that, and was actively manipulating their GM in order to get a favorable ruling.
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I wasn't going to go there because I am getting their argument second hand from you.
But don't think I didn't notice that the argument is emotion-based (you are taking something away from me), has appeal to the crowd fallacy (look at what you are doing to the entire party), and uses prejudicial language (starting out by calling the ruling a houserule).
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Rolling dice is fun, but rolling the same dice 10 times not so much.
We usually use a fresh roll if a spell is sustained in a new round.
I think the "calculate with the highest damage" part is the one that is intended to avoid rolling for each target, you can just take the amount of the worst save result and multiply it with the number of targets.
Yeah I have a kineticist with this in my SoT game and I absolutely do not roll damage separately for every target. Nothing in the ability actually says you have to do that, and there's no reason to handle it differently than for all the other AoE spells (and impulses) where you don't.
Your player is just fishing for a bigger healing number by making dubious claims about the wording. Overrule that to keep the game moving.
Well, I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt, since I maybe kinda' inceptioned the idea into his brain by asking about it in the first place.
But yeah, I'm still gonna be reversing that ruling for future sessions.
Thanks for the help and advice everyone!
Best to keep the game running and resolve any issues afterwards!
Agreed.
My gut instinct on the probabilities is that yes, rolling the damage separately for each creature does have the chance of increasing the amount of healing done. But at a very low rate of having that happen.
Spitballing some math...
If you catch 3 creatures and they have a 50% chance of failing the save and a 50% chance of succeeding at the save (ignoring the chances of crits for the spitballing). Binomial calculator is telling me that there is about an 85% chance of at least one creature failing the save, a 35% chance that only one of them fails, and a 12% chance that they all succeed.
...
I'm not sure that I am reading that right. It's late and I am probably too tired to do math like this.
Anyway, in order to get a significant boost to the healing, the damage roll would have to be noticeably high for a particular target AND that target would need to fail the save.
The chances that a damage roll are noticeably high gets lower the more dice are rolled. Sanguivolent Roots starts at 3d6. At that casting level the typical damage is 10 or 11, and the chances of rolling more than 15 is at a rate of 10%. Going up to level 16 we are rolling 7d6. Typical damage is 24 or 25, and getting more than 31 is at a rate of 9%.
So for both of those we are looking at about a 10% chance of getting more than a 5 point increase in damage.
And then multiply that by the chance that this creature with the exceptionally high damage also fails their save. So... 0.1*0.5 = 0.05 or 5%. So at about the same frequency of getting a nat-20 you can get a 5 point boost to the healing amount done.
Which, I guess isn't terrible considering how people feel about things like Sorcerer's Sorcerous Potency. It is just... unreliable.