Say I decide I want to attack a Gnoll Pack Lord 10 feet away from me and I have 3 attacks. I roll 3 times and each roll is a hit. If my first two attacks kill the Gnoll, can I use the third on one of his buddies (assuming they're within my range) or is the attack lost?
Only asking because on Critical Role, it seems like they roll all their attacks and then roll for damage after all of the attack rolls are made.
Here is what the rules say regarding attacks:
The most common action to take in combat is the Attack action, whether you are swinging a sword, firing an arrow from a bow, or brawling with your fists.
With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack. See the "Making an Attack" section for the rules that govern attacks.
Certain features, such as the Extra Attack feature of the fighter, allow you to make more than one attack with this action.
Whether you're striking with a melee weapon, firing a weapon at range, or making an attack roll as part of a spell, an attack has a simple structure.
Choose a target. Pick a target within your attack's range: a creature, an object, or a location.
Determine modifiers. The DM determines whether the target has cover and whether you have advantage or disadvantage against the target. In addition, spells, special abilities, and other effects can apply penalties or bonuses to your attack roll.
Resolve the attack. You make the attack roll. On a hit, you roll damage, unless the particular attack has rules that specify otherwise. Some attacks cause special effects in addition to or instead of damage.
You declare that you are making an Attack action, and pick your first target, determine modifiers, then resolve the attack. Then you begin making your second attack, pick your next target, determine modifiers, resolve the attack. Finally begin your third attack, pick your third target, determine modifiers, then resolve the attack.
When Two Weapon Fighting, the additional attack is a bonus action. It does not happen simultaneously.
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you're holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you're holding in the other hand.
With the Extra Attack feature you can make two attacks when you take the Attack action. This does not force you to roll them simultaneously, you take one then the next.
Rolling multiple attacks at once is for convenience to speed up combat. If you play with this house rule then your DM may come up with a way for you to use the excess die, but there are a number of questions.
Some suggested solutions:
In my opinion, is it best to roll 1 at a time. But if you do want to roll all at once, then you have the inherent disadvantage of possible overkill.
Per Player’s Handbook page 194-195 (mostly 195), “an attack” is choosing a target, rolling the attack roll, and then rolling the damage. So when you have more than one attack, you do those three things for each attack—separately. And attacks don’t get broken up—when you attack, you choose a target, roll the attack, and roll damage, and then worry about whatever you’re doing next—attacking again, attacking something else, moving, whatever.
Critical Role probably just does that to speed things up. Most likely if it ever came up, they’d just change things—something like, “I’m attacking the gnoll pack lord three times—oh wait, killed it with just two, ok, last attack goes against that gnoll next to me.”
The most common action to take in combat is the Attack action, whether you are swinging a sword, firing an arrow from a bow, or brawling with your fists.
With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack. See the "Making an Attack" section for the rules that govern attacks.
This section may lead to some confusion, as it might make you think that the "Attack" action and "attacks" are one and the same; there is a general issue with 5th Edition rules and the capitalisation of certain words in certain contexts.
Certain features, such as the Extra Attack feature of the fighter, allow you to make more than one attack with this action.
This section should be clarifying that issue though, showing that it allows you to "make more than one attack", suggesting from a language or RAI point of view the attacks within a string of Extra Attack attacks are separate attacks, this is why you roll to hit multiple times and it's not just one roll for all the attacks.
Yes! The reason for this is that, per the "Attack" rules, each attack is a separate attack made within the "Attack" action. So each time you make an attack within the action, you would run through the "Making an Attack" rules again, the very first step of which is:
- Choose a target. Pick a target within your attack's range: a creature, an object, or a location.
So if we were to break down your turn, it would look a little like this:
This is assuming you are using the Extra Attack feature of a level 11 Fighter but it would also work with a character using Two Weapon Fighting alongside an extra attack, only difference would occur with how the modifiers are determined:
You don't add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
Critical Role is not an accurate representation of Live Play using RAW as they use Homebrew Classes, Houserules, and bend the way Initiative works to suit the media format they are creating, they roll all the stuff at once because it's both more dramatic, and more practical for getting quick turns out of the way in what could be lengthy combat encounters. At the end of the day, their goal is entertainment and not a strict following of the rules.
