The Dungeons & Dragons subreddit erupted into debate about a DM's controversial Sneak Attack ruling.
Redditor u/Jdimmick5 made a post on r/DnD titled "Sneak Attack Ruling." on Nov. 29, 2022. They explain that their party was battling an Ettin, a two-headed giant modified to be resistant to nonmagical attacks. The Rogue in the party pulled out a magical arrow and fired it at the beast with advantage, which activated his Sneak Attack ability, which adds extra damage when certain conditions are met, such as advantage. When he announced the attack dealt a total of 35 damage, the DM began searching through the official Player's Handbook and then decided to halve the Sneak Attack bonus damage as he interpreted it to be nonmagical, saying: "Sneak attack is ability based and so doesn't count as magical damage." u/Jdimmick5 said that this decision would severely nerf the Rogue, and expressed how confused the players were.
Redditors United Against the DM
Reddit's response was unanimous: The DM was very clearly wrong. As many pointed out, the ruling in the Player's Handbook states: "Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack..." if you qualify for Sneak Attack. The important phrase here is "extra damage." By not specifying what type of damage, it is implicit that the bonus is of the same type as the attack it's adding to. So in the case of attacking with a magical arrow, the Sneak Attack bonus would add to the arrow's damage, bypassing the Ettin's resistance.
All damage in D&D has a type associated with it. There are three kinds of physical attacks: Bludgeoning, Slashing and Piercing damage, which is what an arrow causes. Another user pointed out that the Paladin ability Divine Smite has a similar description but with important differences. Divine Smite states: "When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon's damage." The distinction is that Divine Smite specifically deals Radiant damage, dealt in addition to the weapon's damage.
The DM Didn’t Receive Any Support
Some snarky users took the DM's arguments to the extremes and began giving examples of how that logic would extend to the rest of the game. One said, "What's next? The strength bonus is not magical because it's purely human raw force (or elf, dwarf etc…)" Another quipped: "His logic would require Halving all of the damage, except the magical bonus (+1 in this case)." Not a single comment offered any support for the DM, which is a rare moment of unity for such a large website.
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Source: Reddit