Right, bang my head against it Got it. *grin and laugh* Thanks Dark.

:} Elorithryn

Okay, now there are a bunch of different editions and while the most recent 3.0, 3.5 and 4th have a considerable overlap, that's less applicable against prior editions. For the most part I'll explain the common terms in these latest editions, but some calculations and methods changed in 4th, so my explanations probably wont be 100% correct for any one version, but should give you an idea.

The core statistics from which everything else is derived is as follows:

Strength (STR) - this is a measure of your characters strength and raw physical ability. How hard you can hit things with melee weaponry, how well you can perform strenuous physical activity like climbing, how much you can carry are examples of things derived from this.

Dexterity (DEX) - this is a measure of your agility and dexterity. How well you can avoid being hit, dodge, how well you can use ranged weaponry such as bows and arrows, how quickly you react to things and how stealthily you can sneak around are examples of things derived from this.

Intelligence (INT) - this is a measure of how intelligent you are and effects things like how knowledgeable you are, what kind of specialist attack manoeuvres you can learn, complex tasks like searching for things, crafting items - anything that requires some kind of study to know is the kind of thing derived from this.

Wisdom (WIS) - similar to intelligence, Wisdom is mostly about intuition and common sense. Being able to infer things from your perceptions, guess someones motives or use an affinity with nature to determine something are examples of things derived from wisdom.

Charisma (CHA) - this is a measure of how charismatic your are. Lying to people, gathering information, performing in public. Any action you take where your personality or manner is important to the success is derived from this.

Constitution (CON) - this is a measure of your endurance. Your health and endurance derive from this, as well as your concentration whilst performing tasks in distracting circumstances and resisting the effects of poisons and disease.

Virtual every other number in the game is derived from these 6 basic attributes. For player characters, a value of 10 is considered base-line human capability.

From these basic statistics, you typically use modifiers. Modifiers are used, funnily enough, for modifying other statistics to end up with the final score you will use in any test or challenge. You can derive the modifier from the attribute by using the lookup tables the game provides, or the following algorithm:

Divide attribute by 2. Round down to nearest whole number. Subtract 5.

Thus a baseline value of 10 has a modifier of 0, an attribute of twenty would have a modifier of 5, an attribute of 8 would have a modifier of -1.

The other most important statistics derived from these are:

Armour Class (AC) - these represents not only how well you can avoid damage, be that from the type and strength of armour you are wearing, any magical effects, physical abilities and your ability to move and avoid attacks.

AC is derived slightly differently in different editions, but roughly based around 3.0, it goes something like:

AC = 10 + DEX modifier (limited to maximum allowed by the armour you are wearing) + armour modifier + deflection bonus + natural armour bonus + other misc bonuses.

The 10 is a baseline upon which you apply everything else. Some armours artificially limit your DEX modifier to represent the limitations wearing such armour places on movement (a person in full plate could not expect to be as agile as a person wearing soft leather). Armour provides its own AC bonus (from which the overall stat AC takes it's name). Deflection bonus comes from items and abilities that grant you the ability to automatically deflect objects away from hitting you. Natural armour comes from physical attributes - if you were a dragon of other creature with a scaly hide, you might expect to have a natural armour bonus, a typical person has none without magical assistance.

There are also certain rules about 'stacking'. Generally, you can't wear a full plate set of armour on top of a set of leather armour. Why not? Well, generally there are the issues of physically doing it. Secondly, even if you could do it, the other penalties would make doing anything rather difficult. The general logic applies for all the components of AC, so instead of stacking, you only ever have the highest value in each component for whatever is granting bonuses in that category.

For example, if you were a creature with scales granting a +2 natural armour bonus and wore an amulet that magically granted you a +6 natural armour bonus, you would have +6, not +8 in total for natural armour. This is because if someone were to hit you and beat the strength of your +6 natural armour, that same hit would be strong enough to also penetrate the +2 layer below.

AC is not a statistic you would roll a d20 for when others attack you. Instead it is a target number that opponents have to beat with their own rolls in order to hit you at all.

Initiative (INIT) - this determines in what order you go in combat. Typically it is equal to your DEX modifier + any other bonuses you may get. Bonuses can come from magical items or 'feats' - special abilities your character can take during the course of their 'levelling up' or gaining of experience.

You roll a d20 with this to determine your 'readiness' for a combat encounter.

Saving throws (FORT, REF, WILL) - saving throws come in 3 flavours, Fortitude, Reflex and Will. They are used for avoiding the effects of things that allow you a chance to avoid them. They are based off a baseline score that is determined from the level you are in the various character classes your character has.

Characters progress through levels as they gain experience (which is typically won by defeating enemies in combat, mechanically, but can be awarded for roleplaying by the GM). Each level is a level of 'class'. Classes in D&D are sort of character professions/archetypes, such as Rogue, Cleric, Fighter, Wizard, Druid, Barbarian, etc. Different levels of different class provide different baseline scores for each of the saving throws, to represent what those classes excel at and suffer at. Characters can have multiple classes (assuming they are above level 1 of course) in which case the baselines from both are cumulative - a character who is a level 7 fighter would have level 7 fighter baseline scores whilst another level 7 character that was a level 3 cleric and a level 4 fighter would have the cumulative total of the level 3 cleric baseline scores and the level 4 fighter baseline scores.

The way these scores or derived is different between Editions 3 and 4, so I'll list 4th's version.

Fortitude (FORT) = FORT baseline + (highest of STR or CON modifier) + misc
Reflex (REF) = REF baseline + (highest of DEX or INT modifier) + misc
Will (WILL) = WILL baseline + (highest of WIS or CHA modifier) + misc

Fortitude is for avoiding the effects of poison, disease or fatigue. Reflex is for dodging out of the way of or otherwise reacting to things like rolling boulders or fireballs. Will is for resisting the influence of mind altering enchantments.

Base Attack Bonus (BAB) - this is the base skill from which the effectiveness of all your physical attacks are based (including ranged attacks, excluding attack done with magic). Like saving throws, the BAB is determined from your classes. However, unlike the saving throws, it gets 'split'.

As you progress and gain experience, your character will eventually gain the ability to attack multiple times in a turn, having multiple base attack bonuses, one for each attack they can make a round. This is handled differently in different editions and can be rather complicated to work out, so I wont cover exactly how it's derived here as I'll probably get it wrong. Suffice to say it's something like:

BAB = BAB baselines (e.g., 10, 5, 1 for 3 attacks per round)

You then have a separate BAB for Melee attacks and ranged attacks, derived as:

Melee BAB = BAB + STR modifier
Ranged BAB = BAB + DEX modifier

You can however get 'feats' that allow you to use your DEX modifier for both to represent that while your character may not by strong, they can make use of their increased ability in melee combat to be just as if not more effective.

Hit Points (HP) - this represents the health and well being of your character. When this value reaches 0, you are unconscious, when it reach the negative of your 'full' HP value, you are dead. The way this is derived is different for different editions, but in 4th Ed, it is taken as a fixed number from your primary class + your CON attribute and goes up by another fixed number taken from your primary class each level. In 3rd Ed, it based on CON modifier + a dice roll result, the size of die being determined from the level of class you are advancing in.

There are many, many more numbers and specialist rules about when and how these numbers apply for varying circumstances, but those are the core ones and enough to be getting along with for now.

So if you hit the negative value of your HP you can no longer be resurected?

(Yes, that is the healer class in me speaking. I've found I'm not bad playing that class, plus I RP it better...)

Awesome explanation by the way.

:} Elorithryn

@Elorithryn

Nah, to be unrezzable (as we abusers of our fine language call it) you either have to have no physical remains left or have an anti-rez curse on you. It gets harder the longer the character's been dead and the manner of their demise is important - if they got nobbled by a sphere of annihilation you need some hefty magic to bring 'em back.

I think it's always possible to rez someone using the Miracle spell, so long as you can convince your deity it's in their best interests to restore the character.

@Elorithryn @kristanigrad has it right. When you're in the negatives, that just means you're dying. When you surpass a certain threshold, you're dead. You can still get resurrected though except in certain circumstances.

Awesome! This game sounds like fun, but I don't know anyone nerdy enough to play it with me.

So if you get knocked out of the fight and are dieing, and no one bothers to damage you further, you will likely slowly heal without the age of magic? (Providing you don't have some sort of damage over time effect on you like bleeding or posion, etc.)

:} Elorithryn

@Elorithryn if you are dying, then no, you wont heal by yourself (though you get 3 death checks to stop the dying - after failing all of them, dead). Negative HP can be seen as bleeding out, so without intervention or luck (succeeding a death check) you'll die and either need rezzing or have to make a new character. However, any heal spell/potion starts from 0HP, so if you were on -10 and drank a potion that healed 1 HP, you'd be on 1HP, not -9. Characters with the heal skill can also stabalize you, resetting you to 0, so still unconscious but not dying.

Of course (I don't wish to toss an apple of discord in here) there are plenty of alternatives, potentially infinite variations of which, since games such as T&T positively encourage you to tinker with the rules to your own satisfaction.

D&D is comparatively rule-heavy, which makes it slightly less accessible to people entirely new to tabletop RP, but of course since all the rules are standardised, you know what you're going to expect (up to a point :P) and can jump right in with a character you may have been using in other D&D sessions.

Being an antagonistic left-winging chaotic non-conformist - I would suggest you check out some of the many free rulesets bouncing around the web if you'd prefer to play something without the oppressive Holy Writ ruleset that D&D has, strangling the imagination, constraining all creativity to produce samey, lifeless...

Ahem. No. Go for it :D

Personally, I love the FATE system and other strong-collaborative-narrative, weak rule systems. The WEG d6 system is awesome in it's simplicity as well White Wolf's Storyteller system for their World of Darkness games.

I'm running a Dresden File RPG at the moment which is based heavily on the FATE system and it's awesome. There is a good overview of the (free) FAT3.0 rules here, based around Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century setting: http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html

I like how they include Snakes on the list of useful things.. Ah well maybe I"ll have more time later to delv into things. I need to get to work.

:} Elorithryn

@Elorithryn Snakes? Every tabletop RPG require one live reptile in my experience.

FATE actually looks really shiny. Could take a game or two to really get into it - since it's a fair bit different to your average tabletop RPG... Think I might add that page to my favourites, just in case :D

@kristanigrad Damnit! The typo monster has struck again! (It have been the Harry Potter influence as I just finished reading the last book.)

:} Elorithryn

D&D can be complicated when starting and I'm sure the previous insight has given you some wisdom, but if you want a change of pace from dungeon crawling and spell &sword combat, there is a good, relatively easy starter RPG set in a scifi world named Traveller that I used as my starting game. It has similar mechanics, but the operation is simpler, and the books and accessories are cheaper. If you're interested, the newest version was made by Mongoose Publishing.

and now i can play DnD without looking like a total failure.
Thank you Protagonizers, mainly directed at Dark.