I'm a first time player of DnD and I'm using the starter set (Lost Mine of Phandelver) and I think me and my party are calculating some things wrong.
We were confused on the damage points so we just went to hit points (we are all new so we have no real guidance). Then later on we searched up how to use damage points but couldn't find any real answers.
The only thing I saw was an example but no formula.
When we were first starting the game, we calculated the attack roll by 1d20+weapon stats+ability (but we changed it to 1d20+ability); for example, for how we are doing it currently, if I used a shortsword and roll a 10 then 10-1=9. We used that to see if our attack hits or not.
At the start we used weapon stats (5+1d6+3+proficiency bonus+-1+little number (under the modifier) for damage. We didn't know what to do w/ damage so we went straight to hit points (goblin ~7 HP but rolled a total of 10 and considered them dead.)
