How to learn about Dungeons and Dragons!
And some extra resources if you want to do some looking outside of this page.
This page will be for beginners and veterans alike to learn new things, and be exposed to more ways to play their own game of make believe with numbers and math rocks.
I’ll do what i said i would now, and explain what dungeons and dragons, or D&D, is, some history, random facts, builds I’m running, and how to power build.
Okay, what is D&D?
DnD it a tabletop role playing game, or ttrpg. It is played with 5-7 people preferably, and each person has a piece of paper or some sort of digital file that has their character on it, which has one of 12 different base classes.
Example character sheet
If you want to make your own charater, and don’t have the Player’s Handbook, or PHB, use this website to get all the information you will need.
http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/#toc73
After character creation, one person, who is called the DM or GM which stands for dungeon or game master. The DM has created or is using a written adventure with things called plot hooks for the players to look for. A plot hook is a piece of plot the players can interact with. Once the players choose a plot hook, in this case, it’s a quest, and they interact with it. In our case, that mean that the party, or all the characters, do the quest, usually for some reward.
What can happen when doing quests or other plot hooks?
Almost every plot hook has these three things
- Combat
- Puzzles
- N.P.C. (Non-player-charater) requests
How do these thing happen?
Combat happens through random encounters, which vary from setting and environment to setting and environment.
Puzzles can happen when trying to open something like a door or chest.
NPC requests happen usually at the start of plot hooks to start the quest, like the town mayor offering 500 gold pieces for someone to exterminate the goblins in the valley.
How do you play combat?
You play combat by first rolling initiative, where you rolled a d20, or 20 sided die, and add your dexterity modifier, which was decided during character creation.
Whoever had the highest total goes first, and has an action, bonus action, and during someone else’s turn has a reaction.
During your action, you can do quite a few things, like cast a spell, attack with a melee weapon, Like a sword, prepare an action, take the dodge action, and use class abilities.
During your bonus action, you can use certain spells that say they only use a bonus action, and a few other actions.
During reactions, you can use spells like shield, or class abilities.
If you attack someone, you roll a d20, and add your attack modifier, which is your proficiency bonus and either dexterity or strength for melee attacks which depends on the weapon.
The person you are attacking has an AC or armour class, which is 10+dexterity modifier. If you wear armour, it can change the ten to 11, 12, or even 13. If your roll is the same or higher as the targets AC, your attack hits. Your DM will tell you if it hits or not.
If it hits, you roll a die, which depends on the weapon, and add either your strength or dexterity modifier, the same you used for your attack modifier.
Spell attacks work the same way, except for some which use a saving throw. Saving throws work by having a DC, or difficulty, and then you roll, and you try to roll higher. With spellcasting, you calculate your spell save DC like this 8 + proficiency bonus + intelligence modifier
Now, gather your friends and have fun playing D&D!
Character creation in D&D
How does one make a character in D&D?
In D&D, I like to start my character creation with a concept or idea. In this case the idea behind my character will be a peasant who rose up against the local lords, which was inspired by my current humanities sector about the Middle Ages. To start actual character creation, we start by picking a class, which there are thirteen of. Those thirteen classes being, the artificer, the barbarian, the bard, the cleric, the druid, the fighter, the monk, the paladin, the ranger, the rouge, the sorcerer, the warlock, and the wizard. In our case, I imagine this character being a fighter. My DM has said to create level 5 characters, so this character will be a level 5 fighter
Race selection
After class selection, we can pick our race. People different races for different reasons. Some people pick Serbian races for optimization, while others pick some for the memes. For this character, I’m going to pick the variant human race. The difference between a variant and regular human is, variant humans get a feature, or feat, at 1st level. Regular humans get a plus one to all ability scores.
Ability scores
Next is rolling stats. Your DM will tell you to roll either 1d20, or 4d6. In our case, I’ll be rolling 4d6. I rolled an 18, 17, 19, 14, 16, and 14. In D&D, there are six different core stats. Those being strength(str), dexterity(dex), constitution(con), intelligence(int), wisdom(wis), and charisma(cha).
In our case, i am going to put 19 in strength, 17 in dexterity, 18 in constitution, 17 in intelligence, and 14 in charisma and wisdom.
Now that we have the raw numbers, we use a modifier table to find the modifier.
| 1 | -5 |
| 2-3 | -4 |
| 4-5 | -3 |
| 6-7 | -2 |
| 8-9 | -1 |
| 10-11 | 0 |
| 12-13 | 1 |
| 14-15 | 2 |
| 16-17 | 3 |
| 18-19 | 4 |
| 20-21 | 5 |
One you have your modifiers, put them next to the raw number.
Class Abilities and Features
After that, start writing down class abilities and feats. Our first class ability for a fighter is the fighting style. I will be selecting the great weapon fighting style. Next is the second wind feature which allows you to regenerate 1d10+your fighter level, in our case, 5. Next is action surge, which allows us to have another action instead of a bonus action once per long or short rest. Next is our martial archetype. In our case, I think the battle master subclass works best for the character. The main idea of the battle master subclass is the use of techniques, which allow you to do certain things, like parry to reduce damage, or rally, which gives temporary hit points. Next is an ASI or ability score improvement. This allows us to improve one ability by 2, two abilities by 1, or gain a feat of our choice. In our case I will be taking the feat Inspiring leader, which allows me to give six people who can hear and understand me temporary hit points qual to my level and charisma mod, which is 7. And finally, at fifth level, fighters can attack twice when they could usually only attack once. So now instead of attacking with our longsword once, we can attack twice.
Hit Points
Next is hitpoints. In D&D, all the classes have “hit die” which are used to determine hit points, or hp. In our case, as a fifth level fighter, we have 5d10 hit dice, or five ten sided dice. After determining hit die, we roll those dice, I rolled a 27. After that, we add our constitution modifier for every dice rolled, so 5 in our case, out total number being 47 hit points.
Skills
In D&D, there are skills to represent tasks, some more broad, like athletics, and some more specific, like intimidation. All skills are based off of one ability score, where you use the modifier as the base, and if you chose to have proficiency, add your proficiency bonus, which is 3 for us.
Here’s a list for all the skills, and which ability they derive from.
SKILLS
Acrobatics d
Animal handling w
Arcana i
Athletics s
Deception c
History i
Insight w
Intimidation c
Investigation i
Medicine w
Nature i
Perception w
Performance c
Persuasion c
Religion i
Sleight of hand d
Stealth d
Survival w
Your class and background give you a list of skills you can choose to be proficient in.
Now Go and Have Fun!!
In the Geek Out blogging challenge, I used D&D as a topic, this section is about reflecting on the past 5 days i spent doing the geek out blog challenge, here’s my recollection
How was the blogging process?
The blogging process was fun, and I hope my website sparks an interest for D&D with someone.
How was page creation?
Page creation was fun because it allowed me to re-evaluate my website, and I ultimately changed themes.
Will you keep updating this page?
I definitely want to keep updating this page, and continually put my current builds in the page.
What’s different about this page compared to your other posts and pages?
All my other posts and pages are more school related, this is about a current hobby of mine, which has been labeled as schoolwork because of the geek out blog challenge.
Thanks for reading!
-Parker.