Base Damage Rating

Base Damage Rating
All weapons (except Handwraps) display a Base Damage Rating on the weapon's information page. This gives you a general idea of the effectiveness of a weapon’s “base” damage. It calculated from the weapons damage dice, enhancement and modified by the weapons crit profile.

The Base damage rating is calculated by taking the average result for the weapons damage dice roll (ie a weapon that does 2d6 has an average of 7) and working out the average for each possible result of a d20 roll, applying the weapons crit profile as appropriate (assumes a threat on the d20 is confirmed).

Hence a plain Great Sword (2d6, 19-20 x2) has a Base Damage Rating of (7 + 7 + ... + 7 + 14 + 14)/20. 154 / 20 = 7.7

It’s important to note that this number does not include:
 * Damage done by additional properties like Holy, Pure Good, Acid, Flaming, etc.
 * Strength modifier.
 * Situational modifiers.

Since damage from weapon properties plays such a large role in DDO, the Base Damage Rating of a weapon will play a lesser role in determining whether weapon X is better than weapon Y in many cases.