How to play D&D (5th edition) - the basics

Why this guide?

D&D is a fun but also complicated game with a lot of rules. The 5e Player's Guide alone is close to three hundred pages long and while it is rich on details, it is lacking in examples of actual gameplay. This guide aims to present the minimum you'll need to know to jump in and start playing.

This is not intended to be an authoritative guide, and your Dungeon Master (DM) may have their own rules about what is and what is not allowable.

Roleplaying your character

D&D is a roleplaying game (with dice and rules), so get to know your character as you create them. Their personality and motivations may reveal themselves to you a bit over time. Think a bit about what has driven them to risk life and limb. A divine calling? Boredom? The need to feed their thirty-seven children?

To help everyone get in character, address your fellow players by their character's names during the game - unless you're asking them to pass the chips, that is. Remember that your character may not know what you know, and your character may feel differently about another player's character than you might feel about the player who is playing them.

The DM is responsible for describing the environment the players are in, roleplaying the non-player characters (NPCs) which can include hostile monsters, villagers, your employers, etc, and deciding what rules apply to a given situation.

Anatomy of a character

Your character is basically a combination of class (fighter, wizard, druid etc - think of this as your profession), race (human, elf, dwarf) and various ability scores (strength, intelligence, wisdom, etc). Different classes benefit from emphasis on different abilities. Wizards need high intelligence (which gives them more effective spells), where fighters need high strength (so they do more damage with melee weapons).

Briefly, this is what a high ability score does for your character:

STRENGTH: adds to the damage you do when you hit with any weapon, feats of strength
DEXTERITY: makes you more likely to hit, avoid damage and perform acrobatics
CONSTITUTION: makes you tougher by increasing your hit points
INTELLIGENCE: benefits spell-casting for wizards, etc
WISDOM: benefits spell-casting for clerics, etc
CHARISMA: benefits spell-casting for bards, etc, adds to persuasion abilities

There are many great online tools for creating your character. Here is one that is particularly easy to use: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/builder

Your DM may give you guidance on how you should create your character, but when in doubt accept the defaults.

There are different methods for calculating your character's Ability Scores (if your DM allows it, the Point Buy method gives you the most control). Each score translates into a modifier. A strength of 8 gives you a -1 modifier on strength related activities (damage when clobbering your foe, for example), where a strength of 18 gives you +4 modifier on strength.

Your level reflects how seasoned your character is. You typically start at level 1 (unless your DM tells you to roll higher level characters), and go up as you have adventures and gain experience points. Going up a level increases your ability to take damage, gives you more spell casting ability, unlocks special class abilities, etc.

Game mechanics

During the course of the game, you will either be in combat or not. When you're not in combat, you can walk around, talk to NPCs or other players, interact with your environment etc.

When the DM says "roll for initiative" that's usually (but not always) a sign that combat is imminent. So each player should roll a d20 (that is, a 20 sided die), add their character's initiative modifier and tell the DM. The DM will likely roll initiative for some foul slimy thing as well. The player/beastie with the highest initiative has the first turn, then the next highest and so on until everyone has had a turn, and then it starts over again at the character who had the highest initiative.

If you need it, here's a simple online dice roller you can use: D&D Dice Roller

When it's your turn during combat, you can move, take an action and in some cases take a bonus action (depending on your class etc). A turn lasts about six seconds in game time. During your turn you can move before and/or after you take an action, as long as your total movement during your turn is less than or equal to your character's movement speed. An exception is if you take the Dash action, which allows you to essentially double your speed instead of taking another action such as attacking, casting a spell etc.

The complete list of actions you can do is this 5e Actions. The most common ones you're likely to use are Attack, Cast a spell or Hide.

If at any point during a character's turn they are within a foe's melee weapon range and leaves it, this gives their foe an opportunity to attack them immediately. For example, If you try to run past an orc on your turn and pass within five feet of it, it gets a free attack at you with its Greataxe (reach 5 feet) immediately - and will still get to attack on its upcoming turn. To prevent this "opportunity attack" you could use Disengage as your turn's action.

Hit points, armor class and damage

Your character has maximum and current hit points (HP). Hit points represent the amount of damage you can take before you fall unconscious (at 0 HP or less) and possibly die. Your current HP represents the health you have remaining, and it can never exceed your maximum. Your maximum will increase as you go up in levels.

Conceptually, a character with 100HP cannot really take ten times the damage that it would take to kill a character with 10HP, but it indicates that they are ten times better at taking blows without injury.

Your armor class (AC) is a number that describes how hard you are to hit. It's a composite of your dexterity, the armor you are wearing, and other factors.

When one character (player, monster, etc) attacks another with a weapon, the attacking player rolls a d20 and then adds their bonus to hit. The DM compares the result against the defender's AC. If it's a tie or better, the attack succeeds and the defender takes damage as described by the character sheet.

For example, let's say the following character uses a crossbow against a hapless orc. Their character sheet will list both the bonus to hit and the damage it wold inflict.

They have +5 to hit with the crossbow, so when they roll their d20 and get a 10, they will tell the DM "I got a 15".

The DM looks up the armor class of the orc and sees that it's 13, so tells the player "that hits, roll for damage." The cross bow does 1d8+3 damage, so they would roll a d8 (an eight sided die) and add 3.

If the player then rolled a 2, they would say "5 damage" and the DM would subtract 5 from the orc's current HP. If the orc had 4 HP left before the bolt hit, it would fall (and typically dead, but you could try to resuscitate it if you wanted to get information out of it).

Critical hits / critical fails

If you roll a natural 20 (that is, before you add any modifiers) when attacking, you've scored a critical hit. This means that your blow landed no matter what your foe's armor class is. Additionally, you score extra damage. Whatever dice you would roll to calculate damage for that attack, roll them twice and then add the bonus.

In the case of the crossbow attack above, if the player rolls a 20 they would say "critical hit" and then instead of rolling one eight sided die and adding three (1d+3), they would roll two eight sided dice and add three (2d8+3).

If you roll a natural 1, you automatically fail.

There are other cases when you might roll a d20, say if you're trying to use your Persuasion skill or your Acrobatics skill. Generally a 20 means success and a 1 means failure, but the DM needs to interpret this within reason. If a charming bard tries to use Persuasion to convince a king to give up his crown, a 20 might just result in the king laughing instead of having the guards take the bard to the torture chamber.

Spellcasting

Some characters can cast spells as an action. Every spell has its own requirements and effects. Your spellcasting character will have a certain number of spell slots (increasing as your level increases) which they can use. Once all your spell slots are used, you will need to take a long rest to restore them.

Cantrips are lower powered spells which do not use spell slots.

Here's an example of spellcasting using the following first level spell:

Example: the druid Ashoron Tree Bender spies five orcs stripping the bark off trees in a sacred grove. Filled with rage, he casts the Faerie Fire spell on them in preparation for an attack.

His character sheet lists a few specific details about that spell:

The last column indicates that the spell creates a 20 foot cube with the center up to 60 ft away. DEX 11 means that any one in the cube must make a dexterity saving throw by rolling a d20 and adding their dexterity bonus. If the result is less than 11, they will be affected by this spell. See the spell's description for details.

In this example, the DM rolls a DC (dexterity check) saving throw for each orc, adding their dexterity bonus (+1). To avoid the effects of the spell, they need an 11 or better. Let's say the DM rolled 10, 5, 15, 3, 9 for the orcs. For the next minute (10 turns) the second, fourth and fifth orc would be glowing - and anyone attacking a glowing orc would get to attack with advantage - that is, any character attacking a glowing orc would roll two d20s and take the better of the two numbers before adding their bonus to hit.

Recovering hit points

After the orcs have beaten up you and taken your lunch money, you may need to recover some hit points before tracking them down and getting vengeance. Here's a few ways you can recover hit points up to your maximum:

• A healing spell, cast by you or someone else, can restore HP
• A healing potion will do the same. You must be conscious (above 0 HP) to drink it
• Some classes have abilities that restore HP, for example, fighters have Second Wind
• A long or short rest can restore HP. See the rules here.