D&D 5e - Spell damage roll

Hey people, I have a very strange thing that I don't seem to understand. We play D&D5e, I bought the PHB and MM. 3D dice are switched on. (Visual help for mostly newbie players.) One of my players characters is a half-elf Wild Magic Sorceror. Might be there is a rule I've overlooked but interestingly enough, every time this player uses one of his spells to cause damage (by clicking on the spell in the character sheet), Roll20 always rolls two damage dice instead of one as stated in the spells description (i. e. 2d8 instead of 1d8) but uses very often only the lower result in chat. What am I missing? Can I turn off that behaviour? I'm really struggling to explain this to my player and he (understandbly) feels a bit cheated. Can anyone help me out?

This is a commonly reported issue that is really not an issue. The dice roller must roll all dice possible for a given roll, in case of critical damage or in some cases (dis)advantage. This is because the dice roller doesn't know in advance which dice will be needed. Roll Templates control how those dice results are presented, because they come in after the dice are rolled and can "decide" which dice are presented to the use, and which ones are hidden. If you didn't crit, you don't see the critical damage dice, for instance. The 3d Dice are just a graphical representation of all the dice rolled. They don't have the equivalent of a Roll Template gatekeeper. My advice would be to either turn off or ignore the 3d Dice if you don't like seeing every die. In any case, the final report of the dice that matter is the chat display.

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately, most of my newbie players want the 3D dice as a visual helper, turning them off is not an option. So, in the end, I just have to "rule" that chat dice overrule visual dice. Don't know if they'll like it but I'll try to explain.

I ran into the same issue as my players. Eventually I convinced them, but some were harder to sell than others. It's really only an issue when rolling using sheet macros and roll templates. They can always roll dice manually, using the various methods, but then they lose the benefits of sheet automation. Good luck, whichever method they choose.

I think, in this case it is a simple "do or die" experience. Automation and convinience has it's price, I guess! *lol* They will get used to it.(I hope...)

If your players have to have the 3d dice, but also want the 3d dice to reflect the output results, then they should set their Roll Queries setting to "Advantage Toggle", "Query Advantage", or "Never Roll Advantage" and the Auto Roll Damage setting to "Don't Auto Roll Damage" If you have the Roll Queries setting set to "Auto Roll Advantage", then Roll20 will also roll 2 D20's for attacks/skills/saving throws and it is up the DM/players to determine which of the dice to use. If you have the Auto Roll Damage set to "Auto Roll Damage", this is the case you are running in to currently. To reiterate Keith's point, Roll20 cannot know if the attack will be a critical hit or not at the time of rolling, so the critical damage dice are rolled visually, but not displayed in the chat window unless the attack was actually a critical hit.

Thanks, Kyle. Also, the setting Kyle mentions are specific to the OGL by Roll20 official sheet. If you are using the Shaped sheet, there are similar options, but they will be named differently.

I guess the dice roller is some kind of randomizer routine, right? Why not wait a couple of milliseconds until the D20 has been "thrown" and then roll the appropriate number of dice in 3D? At least, that is what I would do.

I'm not sure how the physics engine works, but at the very least, each sheet would need to create 3d Dice rules to coordinate with their Roll Template. However, if the physics engine is somehow linked with the same act of random number generation and not just "aping" the result, it might not even be possible. If you are curious about the random number generation itself, here is some information about the QuantumRoll engine.

Whatever the reason, the roller works as it does and there is nothing we can do about it. My players will get used to it. Thanks again, guys.

I have a player with a 1st level Wizard. When he casts a Magic Missile it rolls 2 damage dice. The PHB says that it should roll 3 dice and each can be directed at different targets if wanted.

John E. said: I have a player with a 1st level Wizard. When he casts a Magic Missile it rolls 2 damage dice. The PHB says that it should roll 3 dice and each can be directed at different targets if wanted. Actually, RAW you roll 1d4+1 and that is the damage for each missile. Though, magic missile doesn't roll to attack, so I'm not sure why it's rolling multiple dice to begin with.