| How to play Dungeons and Dragons® |
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Welcome to the game that has defined the fantastic imagination for over a quarter of a century. When you play the Dungeons and Dragons® game, you can create a unique fictional character that lives in your imagination, and the imagination of your friends. One person in the game, the Dungeon Master (DM), controls the monsters and people that live in the fantasy world. You and your
friends face the danger and explore the mysterious that your Dungeon Master sets before you.
Each character's imaginary life is different. Your character might
explore ancient ruins guareded by devious traps.
put loathsome monsters to the sword.
loot the tomb of a long-forgotten wizard.
cast mighty spells to burn and blast your foes.
solve diabolical mysteries.
find magic weapons, rings, and other items.
make peace between warring tribes.
get brought back from the dead.
face undead creatures that can drain life away with a touch.
That list is only a few examples of different imaginary life that can be created for your character.
To start playing the Dungeons and Dragons game, all you need are the following:
The Player's Handbook, which tells you how to create and play your character.
A copy of the character sheet.
A pencil and scratch paper (graph paper is nice to have, too).
One or two four-sided dice(d4), four or more six-sided dice(d6), an eight-sided dice(d8), two ten-sided dice(d10), a twelve-sided die(d12), and a twenty-sided die (d20).
(Optional) A miniture figure, or at least something to represent your character in the game
(even if it's just a mark on paper).
Additionally, the Dungeon Master needs the Dungeon Master's Guide, which is filled with advice, ideas, and guidelines, and the Monster Manual, which describes hundreds of monsters with which to challenge the players.
The Player's Handbook
This book gives you everything you need to create and play your character. It features the
following chapters:
Abilities (Chapter 1): A single, streamlined system for determining how each abllity affects combat, skills, and magic plus rules for increasing abilities over time.
Races (Chapter 2):Seven distinct charater races, each with unique features.
Classes (Chapter 3): Eleven character classes, each of which is available to each race. Each class has features to make it work at both low levels and high levels. A versatile system for multiclassing allows players to combine the skill and features of any class.
Skills (Chapter 4):Dozens of skills that govern everything from the rogues' stealth to a wizards arcane knowledge, including rules for gaining skills outside a character's class and for attempting to use skills in which a character isn't trained.
Feats (Chapter 5): Characters gain these special talents, such as Cleave and Lightning Reflexes, as they rise in level, allowing players to tailor their character capabilities.
Description (Chapter 6): Deatils about your character's moral alignment, religion, personality, and physical description, incliding an array of gods from Heironeous, god of valor, to the demonic Erythnul, god of slaughter.
Equipment (Chapter 7): Weapons and armor from the commone to the exotic-including the reliable longsword, double-bladed weapons, a repeating crossbow, and spiked armor-plus all the gear that adventurers need to stay alive.
Combat (Chapter 8): Critical hits, combat actions suck as charge or full defense, multiple attacks for high-level characters of all classes, and rules for all the unpredictable maneuvers and challenges that adventurers face on the field of battle
Adventuring (Chapter 9): Getting around the fantasy world, and gaining in power over time.
Magic (Chapter 10): Learning, preparing, and casting spells plus rules for creating and discerning illusions, summoning monsters, and bringing back the dead.
Spells (Chapter 11): Spells from level 0 to level 9 for clerics, druids, sorcerers, and wizards plus spells for bards, paladins, and rangers.
Dice
The rules abbreviate dice rolls with phrases suck as "3d4+3"(which means three four-sided dice plus 3," generating a number between 6 and 15). The first number tells you how many dice to roll (all of which are added together), the number after the "d" tells you what type of dice to use, and any number after indicates a number added to or subtracted from the result.
Some examples including the following:
1d8: One eight-sided die (generating a number from 1-8). this is the amount of damage that a longsword deals.
1d8+2: Two eight-sided dice plus 2 (3-10). This amount of damage that a longsword deals when swung by a character with a +2 Strength bonus.
2d4+2: Two four-sided dice plus 2 (4-10). This is the amount of damage that a 3rd-level wizard deals with a magic missle spell.
d%: The "d%" ("percentile dice") is a special case. When you roll d%, you generate a number between 1 and 100 by rolling two different-colored ten-sided dice. One color (designated before you roll) is the tens digit and the other is the ones digit. A roll of 7 and 1, for example gives you a result of 71. A 0 and 6 equals 6. A double 0 (two zeros), however, represents 100. Some pairs of percentile dice are both the same color. In this case, the tens digit is marked on the ten die in tens: 10, 20, etc., while the ones die has numbers from 1 to 0. With these diece, a roll of 70 and 1 would give you 71, and a result of 10 and 0 would be 100.
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