Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition, For The Easily Confused

The very top of your page is where you put all your basic character things: name, class, level, background, race, alignment, experience points, and your IRL name On the far left of your page is where you fill in your Ability Scores you rolled the four d6s for and the stat's modifier. The modifier is "Score" minus 10, divided by 2. Round down if you get a fraction. It doesn't matter which box you use for the Ability Score and which you use for the mod. It just has to make sense to you. To the right of the Ability Scores we've got Inspiration, Proficiency Bonus, Saving Throws, and Skills. Inspiration comes from above and beyond role-playing and is awarded at the DM's discretion. You can mark it in that box, put the dice you're awarded there, or just ignore it entirely. Remember all the talk about Proficiencies while you were creating your character? Here's where it comes into play. Your proficiency bonus is determined by level. For ex...

Your character's personality and background are for more than just role playing--though they will help in that aspect--they give you bonuses and proficiencies. Nothing is off limits here, unless you have an in-house rule that your DM tells you about. You also don't have to roll anything for this stuff, unless you want to choose at random. How high your proficiency is is determined by your level, and will be explained in Building a Character: Part 5 . Let's start with your Background.  Depending on which you select, you generally start with certain equipment, more known languages, and more things you're good at.  Here's another one of those handy tables to help you along. Remember to check the Handbook for equipment and gold! Now, Alignment. WTF is Alignment? It's your combination of Lawful or Chaotic and Good or Evil. These don't provide tangible bonuses, but they influence the actions of your character and therefore the path of the stor...

The PH5e has a handy table that describes the class, tells you their hit die, primary ability, saving throw proficiencies, and armor and weapon proficiencies. I'll put that down below, but mostly we're going to talk about WTF all that means . Let's start with hit die. Every time you level up, you get to add health (called hit points, or HP) to your character. You determine how much HP you get by rolling a dice and adding the roll to your CON modifier, which is your CON ability score minus 10, then divided by two. Round down if you get a fraction. Which dice you roll is determined by the class you pick. A Barbarian gets a 12 sided dice, a Bard gets an 8 sided dice, and so on as determined by the chart. Primary Ability is fairly self explanatory. This is the thing you should be best at, the thing with the highest ability score that you rolled/will roll. The way I was taught was spend the highest scores on the Primary, second highest for your CON so as to get the mos...

The PH5e gives you 9 main races to choose from. There are other possibilities, but that's for another post. Today, we're sticking with the 9 and their sub-race. Here they are in alphabetical order with their sub-races: Dragonborn* Dwarf Hill Dwarf Mountain Dwarf Elf High Elf Wood Elf Dark Elf Gnome Forest Gnome Rock Gnome Half-Elf Half-Orc  Halfling Lightfoot Stout Human** Tiefling Check out the PH5e or do a quick Google search if you'd like to know what they look like. *Dragonborn have different colors that tell you their element, but not a sub-race **Humans have different places they can come from, giving them different ethnicity, but not a sub-race. Below is a table with the races and sub-races that includes their Ability Score Increases, Size, Speed, whether they have dark vision, and their default languages. This doesn't include unique perks and proficiencies each race has, or how strong their dark vision is.  Now...

Many people will argue that choosing ability scores first is a dumb way to do things. So if you'd like to choose your race or class first, feel free to jump around these posts as needed. I like to start off my characters by rolling the numbers, though. First, here's a handy way to explain ability scores using tomatoes! Or to put it plainly... Strength (STR), is how physically strong your character is. Dexterity (DEX), is how nimble your character is. Constitution (CON), is related to your health and ability to take a hit Intelligence (INT), is book smarts Wisdom (WIS), is people/life smarts Charisma (CHA), is how charming/deceiving you can be Now that we all understand what these are, let's roll for them. Take four d6 (six sided dice), and roll them all once.  Optional: Ask your DM about their rules for re-rolling 1s and 2s for stats.  Take off the lowest number Add the three remaining. Write it down. Repeat until you have 6 numbers. ...

Okay, y'all, first thing is first. The Player's Handbook is an invaluable item for a player to have. Every game needs at least one because the Dungeon/Game Master (who I'll be referring to as the DM) will definitely use it, but having a few extra on hand for everyone else makes things go much more smoothly. As a side note, Amazon has pretty good price ranges for D&D books. Now we can get to the bare bone basic mechanics, according to page 6 of the Player's Handbook, Fifth Edition (hereby referred to as the PH5e). The DM describes the environment The players decide what they want to do The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions Sometimes these actions require dice rolls to find out whether they succeed or fail. To determine this, the DM will have/set/roll for a number requirement--called the DC for difficulty class--for the player to match or surpass with their own roll. These rolls are done with a 20 sided dice, called a d20, and the p...