Talk:Rain (5e Equipment)
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DM Notes[edit]
Regarding Critical hits:
- What about champion's Improved and Superior Critical? Those features would still adjust your critical threat range as normal. Thus, a level 15 champion who rolls 18 & 19 on an attack would score a critical hit.
- What about features like Savage Attacks?' RAW and RAI would be that you roll an additional 1d20 as bonus damage because that is, technically, the weapon damage. Thus, a half-orc wielding Rain would, upon scoring a critical hit, deal 40 + 1d20 damage.
- FURTHER NOTE: A design consideration for this weapon was that the 1d20 damage die has a very high range of possible results. This weapon also scores critical hits very infrequently because the alternative was scoring them too regularly. To make up for this rarity, critical hits deal a flat 40 damage (twice your maximum damage) instead of calling for another roll—imagine your player scoring that 0.25% chance critical hit... and then rolling a 1 for bonus damage. So, for that half-orc, I might house-rule it to stick with that flat-damage theme. Either their bonus damage roll is maximized as well (for a flat 60 damage) or give them the option of taking 10 on the bonus damage roll (for a flat 50 damage.)
- What if they have advantage and roll three 20s? Deal a flat 40 damage as normal and buy a lotto ticket after the game.
- What about Elven Accuracy? The cheap answer is that that feat can't apply to mauls, so the point is moot. But what if you have a feature just like it that could apply to Rain? Either it has no effect, or you roll 4d20 and discard the lowest two. RAW is a little ambiguous, but RAI would indicate the latter.
Regarding General (two-handed) Use:
If Rain's the wielder rolls 9 & 12, and they know for sure that they'll only miss on a 7 or lower, they'll go with the 12 damage. So, there's gamesmanship in cutting it as close as possible—ideally you would only ever choose to deal damage with the lower result if the alternative is missing, but doing so would require knowing your target's exact AC. Assuming a +9 to-hit (+4 proficiency +5 Str) and a target AC of 17, your average damage per attack of would be 13.07, if your play is theoretically perfect. Blindly picking the higher result for to-hit and the lower result for damage nets an average damage per attack closer to 6. So, the damage this weapon can do is clearly very dependent on how precisely the wielder knows their target's AC. This makes metagaming something of a concern.
- As the DM, if your players have this weapon, be careful saying things like "you barely hit" or "you just missed", and do not tell them whether a result would hit before they choose between it. If you're using it against the players, be careful not to abuse your perfect knowledge of the player's AC. Stick with the higher result for to-hit and the lower result for damage until it would "make sense" to do otherwise.
- As a player, you're not looking up monster ACs, right? So this isn't a concern for you, right?
