Help with Dungeons and Dragons!?

Question

I am a complete debutant with D&D. I have little to no knowledge in regards to tabletop rpgs, however I reeeallly want to get into this, despite that I know of noone who plays. My girlfriend and I purchased a box set that included some minis, instruction booklets and a v3.5 rulebook, but have had a lot of difficulty understanding the terminology in regards to the rules and especially the character creation. We have gone as far as to determine base stats, however are completely stumped as to what to do beyond that, and have made no further progress using online guides or forums. It would be great if someone who is experienced with D&D would help run us through character creation step-by-step. Again, a lot of the terminology is very confusing as well as the actual handbook. Thank you very much!

Answer 1

OK, this may end up being a rather long and potentially confusing post since I haven't actually played in 3.5 in about 6 months and don't have my books but I have made hundreds of characters and can do most of it from memory (yep, I have no life)

I'll go through the steps as I make a sample character. In an effort to keep it simple I'll go with a basic Human Fighter.

Step 1. Pick a Race. Simple enough, just pick something you think you'll enjoy. As I said, however we'll be going with the simple Human for this step. Make a note of any racial abilities there might be. Humans for example get an extra feat, and an extra skill point (both covered later)

Step 2. Pick a Class. Still pretty simple, read through the class descriptions til you find something that strikes your fancy. In our example it'll be a Fighter. Basic hack n slash brute type of guy.

Step 3. Determine Base Stats (I belive you said you'd already done this so I won't go into too much detail here. There are various methods of doing this but since this is just a fictional character that I won't actually be playing I'll make em up.

Strength: 16 (+3)

Dexterity: 14 (+2)

Constitution: 16 (+3)

Intelligence: 10 (+0)

Wisdom: 12 (+1)

Charisma: 10 (+0)

*note, we're using human so there aren't any adjustments, but if you were a different race they can have modifiers. Dwarf for example would add 2 to his Constitution making it an 18, and subtracting 2 from his Charisma making it an 8.

**note2 those are the ability scores, those determine your ability MODIFIER which is what you'll add to various things throughout the rest of this. the Modifier in our example is the number beside the score in ( )

Step 4. Feats. Feats are special abilities or bonuses that help differentiate your character from others.

I love feats heh. Human Fighters get more feats than anyone else in the game.

I won't describe every feat here (obviously) but just read their descriptions and check the pre-requisites to see if you qualify and if they feel useful to the style of play you prefer.

For our example We get 3 feats (every character gets 1 at first level, Humans get a bonus feat, and Fighters get a bonus feat but the fighter's one has to be from a special list located under the fighter's description in the players handbook).

I'll select Dodge, which gives me a +1 to my armor class (covered later), Toughness, which gives me +3 hp, and finally Weapon Focus: Greatsword which gives me +1 to hit with greatswords.

Step 5. Skills. Skills are what you know and/or can do. For example you want to jump across a pit? Roll a jump check. Jump is a skill so you roll 1 20 sided die (called a d20 from here on) and add your modifier.

What modifier you ask? Well each skill has an ability score attatched to it. Jumping is a strength related task so you add your strength modifier to it. +3 in our example. In addition to this ability modifier you have  skill ranks.

Each level you get a number of skill points (determined by your class; fighters get 2)  to spend in skills that your class is good at. I don't recall all the fighter's class skills off the top of my head but I know Jump, Ride, and Intimidate are on there so we'll go with those. If there's a skill you want but isn't on your class list (such as search) you can still put points in it but they cost 2 points for each rank (this is called a cross-class skill)

a human fighter has a total of 12 skill points and at first level a skill can only go up to a max of 4 ranks, you could put fewer points in something to put more in others but we're keeping it simple for now so we'll put 4 ranks in each skill we selected.

For our Example character

Ride (dex based) 4 ranks + 2 ability modifier = +6 total modifier

Jump (str based) 4 ranks + 3 ability modifier = +7 total

Intimidate (cha based) 4 ranks + -1 = +3 total

We're just about done now. We just have to select our equipment, and figure up our basic stat information such as Hit Points, Armor Class, Saving Throws and attack modifiers

Step 6. Equipment

We'll go with Scale Mail for our armor, and a Greatsword for our weapon. Any extra cash can be spent on basic adventuring supplies such as rations, bedroll, backpack, etc. tip, buy several light sources... torches, sunrods (magic torch basically) some dungeons can be kind of dark heh

Step 7. Basic Information

Hitpoints. Each class gets what's called a Hit Die (dice) Fighters are listed as a d10 hit die class. This means when they roll for HP they roll a 10 sided die. First level however you don't roll for hp, you get maximum instead. So fighters have 10 hitpoints. This gets modified by your Constitution modifier (ours is a +3 so we have 13 hitpoints). If you took the toughness feat (like we did) you'll get +3 to that (bringing us to 16 hp).

Armor Class. When something tries to hit you it rolls an attack and tries to get a result equal to or higher than your AC. AC starts with a base of 10. To this you add any armor you're wearing (scale mail for our example gives a +4 armor bonus bringing us to 14)  you also get to add your dexterity modifier (+2 for us, bringing us to 16) (note some armors have a max dex, which means if you have a dex modifier higher than the armor then you lose the extra. If our example character wore full plate for example which has a max dex of +1 then we'd only get to add +1 of our +2 modifier. This only applies to AC though). And there are some feats and abilities that can modify it further. (our example character has the Dodge feat which gives us +1 dodge bonus to AC bringing it to 17)

Saving Throws. When something other than an attack hits you such as a spider's poison or a wizard's spell putting you to sleep, or a trap opening suddenly under your feet you get a chance to avoid or partially avoid the effects of it. This is called a saving throw. You roll a d20 and add you saving throw bonus to it. You get base saving throws determined by your class (Fortitude, Willpower, and Reflex are the 3 categories, Fighters get +2 to fortitude and +0 to the other 2 at 1st level for example). You also get a bonus to each save based on your attribute modifer associated with that save. Fortitude (fort) is modified by Constitution, Reflex (ref) is modified by Dexterity, and Willpower (will) is modified by Wisdom.

So our example figher has

Fort : 2 base + 3 from con = +5

Ref: 0 base +2 from dex =  +2

Will: 0 base +1 from wis = +1

I think that's about it. Looking back over it that might seem intimidating and confusing. It is a lot to take in all at once for a new player but once you get used to it it's really pretty easy.

I highly recommend finding someone who already plays the game. Chances are there's people in you're area that play. You can check local hobby shops, comic shops, bookstores, etc to see if they have a bulletin board you can post a flyer on seeking people that play. These boards also frequently have postings of games that are in need of players. Failing that, try message boards on the Wizards of the Coast website, and ENWorld (links below in sources) they usually have sections set aside for gamers seeking other gamers. Just post with what city/area you're looking to meet people in and I'm sure you'll find someone.

These message boards are also good places to find advice on how to play the game and such.

Answer 2

I would be happy to answer your concerns i have been playing D&D since 1973 i think i know how to do things in the world of D&D since 3.5 has been out for almost 10 years and 4.0 just came out on june 6th of this year are you sure you want to learn 3.5 since everything that is being published at this tim is 4.0?  Ill still help you with 3.5 but it might be benificial if you got into the 4.0 version since it is brand new you can email me at [e-mail] or set up a time on yahoo messenger or even msn messenger my name on yahoo is cplshultz2002 on msn it is cplshultz