Hey there, everyone! You might be thinking right now: “Wow, Nova. This is your third blog this day? You must have a lot of things to talk about”. Well, yes and no. I might have to explain in one of the next blogs I will be posting today (haha XD i live a sad life D:). But today, I will be explaining the basics of the greatest role playing game on earth: POKEMON!! No, I mean DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (D&D or dnd for short).
Dungeons and Dragons lets you make a creative campaign that lets you go on an adventure, meeting new people and stopping the BBEG from getting his or her way. But WAIT. What does BBEG stand for? Big Butthead Eating Gerbils? No. You will get the answer for this and more in this (possibly) short guide. But, if you do not want to read this blog, then you can just purchase the Players Handbook online (but I recommend getting the Dungeon Masters Guide and the Monster Manual to have an easier understanding to play the game). Now, lets get started!
REMEMBER: IF ANY TEXT IS BOLDED OUT (like this), THEN THE TEXT DEFINES A TERM THAT IS BOLDED ALONGSIDE. IS A VERY IMPORTANT TERM DEFINITION AND IF ANY TEXT IS IN ITALICS (like this), THEN THE TEXT IS A FOOTNOTE THAT ADDS MORE DETAILS TO THE INFORMATION.
ACCURACY AND ARMOR CLASS
In your adventures (or misadventures depending on how your campaign goes), whether you are fighting the classic and easy as pie orc to the overpowered “just why did they invent this” tarrasque, you need to know the rules for combat! Like other RPG games, D&D makes you attack in a game, but not all of those attacks can hit the creature. Before you roll for how much damage an attack does you have to roll a special 20 sided die (which you can buy online or something) to see if the attack hits. If the attack is higher than the opponents armor class (armor class is a stat that you have to determine if your attack hits or not, since armor protects you from attacks that might kill you) and then add the modifiers that the attack description says to include (example includes “+4 to hit” or “+3 to hit”).
FOOTNOTE: IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FIND AN OPPONENTS ARMOR CLASS, BUY THE MONSTER MANUAL AND IN THE TOP LEFT CORNER OF THE STAT BLOCK (the area where it shows a monsters health points and possible attacks) BELOW THE NAME OF THE MONSTER SHOWS THE MONSTER’S ARMOR CLASS. FINDING OUT YOUR OWN ARMOR CLASS IS A HARDER TASK I WILL LEAVE TO THE PLAYERS HANDBOOK AND THE INTERNET
Then add up the number you rolled on the 20 sided die (aka d20) with the number that says “+(number) to hit” and if the number equals or is greater than the opponents armor class, then the attack hits! Then go ahead and attack!
RESISTANCES AND VULNERABLITIES
If you thing right now at this point with all this information you have with you and your books thinking that you have gotten everything down, YOU ARE WRONG. With attacks that have separate categories of types of attacks (cold damage, fire damage, etc), there are resistances and vulnerabilities that are very important while you are battling monsters on your journey. For example, let’s say that you are battling a treant (awakened trees that protect ancient forests) for some reason. If you have an attack that does piercing damage to the treant (piercing damage is like a poke from a sword and other things), the damage will only be halved, due to the treant’s resistance to piercing damage (so instead of 6 hit points/health points taken away from the treant’s total hit points, there will be 3 instead).
However, if you attack the treant with a fire related weapon or spell, then the attack will do twice more damage than usual, due to the treant’s vulnerability to fire damage (so instead of doing 6 hit points taken from the treant’ss total hit points, there will be 12 instead!). This is why the Monster Manual is really important during battles! Knowledge is power!
BONUS: BBEG
At the start of this blog, I promised that I would state the meaning of when D&D players say “BBEG”. The term originated in the dark fantasy show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as BB, as in “Big Bad”. So the meaning of BBEG literally stands for BIG BAD EVIL GUY/GAL!
Hope this helps!
– Nova S