Unexpected Token Error

is there any reason adding this variable to a script causes an SyntaxError: Unexpected token }? var dam = rawDamage.replace("d", "d6");

I would want to see the line above and below it, but no, it looks good. 

var notes; var dam = rawdamage.replace("d", "d6");

I would recommend running your script through the Google closure compiler (or another compiler of your choice) to get more detailed information on where the error actually is. With syntaxerrors especially, the Roll20 generated error text can be very misleading about what is actually missing.

did that and it comes out clean. In fact without that line in the code it runs fine

I notice in the first post above and your reply, rawdamage is written in two different ways.  If the script runs fine without that line, do you not call dam anywhere? No-one is going to be able to diagnose this issue without a lot more information, like what is the script for, what does it do? how are the dam and rawdamage variables used? show every part of the code where they are relevant.

If your script runs through the compiler fine, then I'd look at beginning to disable other scripts. All API scripts are concatenated into one long script which is then run in a game. If one of the other scripts you have installed is missing a syntactical element, the failure can Cascade down to other scripts making it seem like the issue is with the script you are currently working on.

Now that makes sense