D&D For Dummies: New Player Dungeon Sign Up Thread

Guffy wrote: »

When will this start and what's the time requirements?

Guffy wrote: »

Ok I'll put my name in. Will figure out the character tomorrow or sat. But I'll also be carrying a cyanide pill for fear i hold people up cause i haven't a notion atm

Fourier wrote: »

Modifier table:
Below I'll be talking about how your Stats (e.g. Strength, Constitution) affect roles. This is based on the following table:

3 => -3
4-5 => -2
6-8 => -1
9-12 => 0
13-15 => +1
16-17 => +2
18 => +3

So a value of 17 in a stat adds 2 to rolls related to that stat.

I'll call this the modifier table.

Health:
At the start of the game your total health depends on your class, e.g. Fighter starts with 4, Thief with 2. Every level we add this number again, e.g. Level 2 Fighter has health 8, Level 2 Thief has health 4.
Your Constitution affects this based on the modifier table

So a Level 1 Fighter of Constitution 16 has health 6 (basic 4 + 2 from Constitution).

This happens every level, so a level 2 Fighter with Constitution 16 has health 12, because he gets a 4 again from the level up and he gets the Constitution bonus again.

For monsters, they have a stat called Hit Die, which is the number of d8 (eight sided dice) I roll to determine their health, e.g. a Medusa (p.87) has 4 hit die. So she could have any health from 4 to 32 when you encounter her, depending on what I roll.

Combat:
Combat is fairly simple in 1st Edition. p.52-54 of the pdf above if you want more detail. "Monster" just means anybody/thing you fight.

Order is:
1. Initiative, i.e. see who goes in what order. This is not as detailed as later editions, it's which side goes first, not which individual. So either the players or the monsters.
2. Movement
3. Ranged attacks, e.g. bows or thrown spears
4. Cast Spells
5. Hand to Hand
6. (2-5) repeated for the other side

To cast spells you just say you're casting them, fairly simple.

Ranged and Hand-to-Hand attacks work the same. You've to make a roll to hit and then roll to see the amount of damage. I'll talk about these rolls now.

Hitting:
Everybody in the game as a stat called AC, armour class, which represents a combination of how hard you are to hit due to your agility and your armour, i.e. it's what it takes to actually hurt you. The higher AC the easier you are to hit (opposite of later editions). Basic AC is 9. Armour and high dexterity reduce it. For example Banded mail (p.15) gives you an AC of 4. A dexterity of 16 will reduce it by 2, so Banded Mail and Dex 16 would give you AC 2.

To hit somebody you have to roll equal to or higher than a number that depends on AC and level (for player characters) or AC and what are called Hit Dice for monsters.

Now here is the odd part of the rules. The number you need to reach is given in the tables on p.60 in the rules above. There's one table for monsters to hit you (top) and one for you to hit monsters (bottom). As you can see, the one to hit you is based on your AC and level, for monsters it's their AC and hit die number.
So if you look at that table, to hit a Thief of level 7 and AC 2 you need to role 15 or better.
At low levels the number is 20 minus your AC.

I wouldn't bother too much with the tables, as this will basically be managed by me. Especially for you to hit a monster (second table on p.60), I'll just quote the number. You can always check the table to see if I'm right.

When you roll the dice, you add a stat modifier. It depends on your Strength for melee and Dexterity for ranged attacks, e.g. bows.

A basic example. Greg the thief with Dexterity 17 goes to hit a Vampire with a bow. A Vampire has AC 2 and 7 Hit Dice. So from the table on p.60 he needs to make an 11. Greg rolls a 10. Not enough, but because his Dex is 17, he gets +2 to the roll, from the modifier table, hence his roll is 12, which is enough. The Vampire takes an arrow.

Damage:
If you do hit, then you roll the damage, which depends on your weapon and your strength (mostly the weapon). So for example a battle axe (p.15) does 1d8 of damage (one eight sided dice). High and low strengths add or subtract from this.

Strength modifies damage based on the modifier table.

Let's say you're strength 16 and hit with the battle axe. You roll the 1d8, get 5. You then add 2 due to your strength modifier, so the damage is 7. This is directly subtracted off the target's health.

Dying:
In basic First Edition, if you hit 0 hit points you die. Later add-on books gave the rule that in certain circumstances I'll call for a death check and if you pass you can "hold on" at 0 hit points for a few rounds. I'll be using this in certain situations, otherwise everybody will die too easily from past experience.

Fourier wrote: »

I've written this to be useful to people who've never played and if you are familiar with 5th Edition. If you've watched Stranger Things on netflix, this is the game the young lads play. Sorry if I likely repeat stuff you know. Basics first, combat next post and then some minor stuff in the third. If this is a bit boring, there's the rules above or just go with it while we're playing.

First of all, the most basic rule. To see if you succeed at something, you roll a twenty-sided dice (d20 for short). Most of the rules are just about what number you have to roll.
There are three situations where you have to roll:
1. To see if you hit with an attack
2. To resist something like poison, dying from a lethal blow, a magic spell
3. This ones a bit vague, but to "see if you can do something". Or really whenever you do something not in 1. or 2., like jump across a gap.

Secondly, First Edition D&D has a very vaguely sketched out world. There are towns, wilderness and dungeons. Towns are where you start, hire people and get jobs. Dungeons are where you are sent and contain treasure and monsters. The wilderness are simply the forests, deserts etc between the towns and dungeons.
"Dungeon" is a very generic word, it refers to any building/structure with multiple floors with treasure in it (e.g. tower of an ancient wizard, underground city, ancient mine)

The main goal of the game is to get as much treasure out of the dungeons as possible. Treasure is what lets your character improve, buy new gear and hire help. If you've played later editions of D&D, treasure is where you get most of your XP (3/4s of it), not defeating monsters. Hence the game is more about surviving lethal dungeons than defeating monsters. Even defeating a monster can be different, eg. you can get most or all of the XP for defeating a dragon just by convincing him not to kill you. Although you will still get into fights.

Characters tend to be from a mercenary group and can die quite often, I'll discuss later how I might handle death.

Your character has six stats/numbers associated with them:
Strength
Dexterity
Constitution
Intelligence
Wisdom
Charisma

They can be any value between 3 to 18, 3 being poor and 18 being great.

Strength determines how strong you are, how likely you are to hit with a sword or dagger and the damage you do when you hit.
Dexterity determines ability to balance, chance to hit with a bow or ranged weapon and how hard you are to hit.
Constitution gives you higher health and your chance to survive poisons or a lethal blow.
Intelligence determines your ability to learn, especially important for magic users and your ability to read and write.
Wisdom is willpower, perception and intution. It also detemines how much you can resist magic attacks.
Charisma is used to see if you convince people and also how many followers/assistants you can hire.

When we get to making the characters I'll go more into how exactly they affect things, but for example a monster or human usually has to roll a 10 or better to hit you, but if you have Dexterity 15 they'll need to roll 11 or better.

You can be seven classes of people:
Fighter - Good at fighting, hard to kill, no magic
Magic-User - Poor at fighting, easy to kill, strong magic. Has to find spells to learn them.
Cleric - Moderate at everything, half way between Fighter and Mage, but closer to Fighter. Good against undead. Different spell list to Magic-User. Has access to all their spells, but has to pray to their God in the morning to get a subset of them.
Elf - Also half-way between Fighter and Magic-User, but closer to Magic-User.
Dwarf - Very like the fighter. Not quite as good at fighting, but good at detecting traps.
Halfling - Good at hiding and bows.
Thief - The special class. Easy to kill, but has loads of special abilities like picking locks, climbing.