Where does the damage bonus for the level 1 pre-gen characters come from?

Question

My friends and I have just started playing D&D. We have played through the Red Box and we decided to keep playing D&D so we downloaded the play-test materials for D&D Next. I read through the first adventure and as I was helping them to make their new characters, we realized that they had no damage bonus at all, just the dice roll. (i.e 1d8) I don't know if it is normal, but almost all of the pre-generated characters have damage bonuses. (e.g. the elf ranger has 1d8+3 damage) I've read through all the pdfs and searched for where the bonus comes from, but i cant find the answer. Please help us!!!

Answer 1

You get your Strength or Dex mod as your damage bonus for weapon attacks unless your class gives you an additional one.

The strength bonus is for non-finesse melee weapons, and the Dex bonus is for finesse weapons. For ranged weapons, they default to Dex except for Heavy thrown weapons which use Str.