Mastering the Game: The ABCs of D&D - Part One

Welcome to episode one of Legends Loot and Lore. We are very excited to be here. We've got a lot of fun stuff to talk about today, so let's dive in. We're going to introduce ourselves first, so you get to know who is actually talking to you. I am Andrew, your one co host. I've been playing D&D for what, about three or four years, something like that Before the pandemic, right prior to the pandemic. Yeah, we started playing. We've been We were ahead of the curve.

We were playing online before everybody else was playing online, Right exactly.

So we had a head start. We played an all online game. We've got a couple people throughout the country so it's easier for us to just get on Discord and play on there. I've been familiar with Dungeons Dragons over the years. I've heard of other people playing the game. I've always been curious about it. So when Joe brought it up to me if I would be interested in playing, I was like absolutely I thought it would be something fun and I've really enjoyed playing over the years and creating different characters and doing all sorts of different things. So it's been a really exciting adventure for me. I love playing games. I'm always a board game player, so you can count on me anytime you want to play a board game I will definitely jump in and it's just a fun, exciting adventure for me. So that's a little bit about me. Joe, tell us about you.

Well, there is just so much to tell. I started playing at the same time. I had tried getting some other friends into D&D previous years but they didn't really take an interest to it. So when I started this time around, Andrew was the first person I asked. After my initial conversations I started out as the DM. The DM we'll talk about that term in a minute, but that's the one who runs the game. So we had a lot of fun learning the game together. There was things that the players do, things that the DM does, and for about four years, like we said, pretty much strictly online, we've been playing Dungeons and Dragons. We've done some switch off, but I love playing the DM because I like to know every little bit and secret about the story. But playing a character is definitely something to be experienced as well.

Do you like spoilers when it comes to TV shows and movies and things like that? Do you have to know what's?

going on, i hate them.

You hate spoilers as far as TV shows and movies are concerned, but when it comes to D&D, you really want to know what….

Right, The few times that I've played as a player is I go into a room and I'm like, hey, let's investigate this. and when you make a dice check and you try to investigate it, I feel like I missed something in that room. There was something important back there, but we can't figure it out because our characters weren't paying enough attention. I like knowing where all the secret spots are, so that's what happens when you run the game.

Exactly A word of warning to new players if you go into a room or go into a dungeon, don't start touching everything. This is true. Joe is the one guilty of touching everything and something ends up being a trap or something explodes. Joe is the one that will inadvertently be the one touching that and causing those problems.

It's not inadvertently. I want to find everything, so I purposely go and touch everything. It's a little different. It's not like I'm accidentally doing it. I'm doing it on purpose.

Got it. Okay, just be careful. When something looks innocent, it's probably not. That's true Fair warning, joe, tell me this Again. You brought up the subject of playing Dungeons and Dragons four years ago. How would you describe Dungeons and Dragons to somebody that either knows nothing about it, knows very little about it? How would you succinctly kind of what's your elevator pitch to somebody to play D&D?

I think the best way to describe this is to compare this to video games known as RPG, role-playing games, similar to the Final Fantasy series or even a little bit of Legend of Zelda, from the original NES days all the way up to the current. The idea being is in those games you had storylines that you had to follow, but then there was always side quests that you could do. The difference here is you can literally do anything you want In the game. you always wanted to go do this one thing, but you couldn't destroy that box. or in Link, you could pick up the jars and throw them. Well, now you can do whatever you want to the jars. You can throw a grenade inside the jars, You can do whatever you want. It's taking that freedom of doing whatever you need to do in an RPG game and giving you the unlimited freedom to do anything you want. It's fun because you get to throw the DM off, which we'll get into a little bit later but there's a storyline to these games. You don't have to stick to the storyline 100% in order to finish the story.

For me, i always feel like D&D is a choose your own adventure. You have the dungeon master, you have the DM, who doesn't necessarily control the story, but guides the story and presents options to the players. What's nice is it's a great game because you typically have a party of multiple people, so it's not a solo game. It builds team building skills and things like that, which I think is really great. I think it forces you to think creatively on how to solve problems. I think there's a lot of benefits to it. I love how inclusive D&D is. Anybody can play because it's not about your own personal skills. You're only limited by your imagination and what you can come up with. Joe can attest to the fact that we come up with some pretty bizarre things as players. We come up with this crazy idea and you get this long pause from Joe because you can hear the wheels turning in his head like okay, now what do I do with this? It's problem solving skills on the part of the party. We create a problem for the dungeon master, the DM or GM, and then he's got to figure out how to solve that problem that we've created for him.

We'll get into specific examples in later episodes of how that kind of stuff has happened, but that's exactly what it is. I wanted to go back to something you said you were saying about how it's like a team building exercise, and I have seen people Seriously debated about putting Dungeons Dragons on their resume, saying that I take place in a weekly team building exercise where critical thinking and strategizing as a team comes into play, and I used to laugh at it. But it really does make sense from that past fact. I wouldn't put Dungeons Dragons on my resume, but I would bring up in conversation at an interview once you've been playing. Well, like, look, i have a regular meeting with some friends, we get together, we stream ideas, we go back and forth, and that's really what it is from the player's perspective is that you're presented with a situation and you have to create a solution. And one of the things about D&D is you are playing a character, so you're not necessarily playing who and what you are. You are playing a character, so you get to step outside your bounds. Maybe you're going to play a bad guy. Well, you know, normally when you come up to a situation, you don't have the money to buy the food. You turn around and walk away Without your character. He would steal that food or attempt to steal that food, and that's one of the freedom of actions that you can do here is that you can experiment out left, right up down, with things that you wouldn't normally do, and I think that's one of the best parts about this team building thing. The experience is here is that you guys work together and then you still got that one guy who goes off on his own. But it's whatever you want to do. You're not strictly tied to who you are.

That's right, and we'll talk at some point about rule number one, which is never split the party. So we'll get into more detail on that at some point.

Four years, i've never seen the party split. I'm waiting for it. I'm waiting for it.

We had the one time when the party kind of split. We got to the castle and one character tried to jump over the moat.

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

So we didn't necessarily split the party too far, but we were all doing our own things And it was a juggling act for Joe trying to keep track of who was doing Who's hilarity. Yes, let's do this. Let's dive into. So one of the first things we're going to talk about for people coming into Dungeons and Dragons is you'll hear a lot of new terminology and you've already heard us talk about the DM or the Dungeon Master. So we'll talk about a bunch of these terms, kind of what they mean, what their implications are as far as the game of Dungeons and Dragons is concerned and how they kind of fit into all that. So we're going to. First, joe is going to talk about the definition of what is a done, because he's got the experience with this. I've done a little bit of this, but he's been more the DM than I have. So, joe, let's talk about what the definition is of a Dungeon Master and how does that fit into the world of D&D.

So Dungeon Master, also known as a GM or Game Master, which is kind of a modern day term that is coming into very popular use.

Well, because there's a lot more tabletop role playing games than just D&D now. So GM is kind of an overarching term for a lot of those types of games.

That's exactly correct. So the Dungeon Master is basically the narrator. Anytime you may have listened to a book on tape or when you read a book, and the person who's actually telling the story, that's the narrator. That's what the Dungeon Master does. The players are the characters in the story and the narrator says this circumstance happens. That circumstance happens, the players make actions to try to do things to deal with it And the Dungeon Master decides on whether or not it's successful or fails. Consequences of either one. And that decision is often assisted by a dice roll, and we'll talk about that in a little bit too. But a lot of things, a lot of concepts behind this game are decided based upon a dice roll. A subsequent thing, a secondary deciding factor, is role play. A lot of times if you role play something, you roll poorly, you get a roll, poor dice roll for it. But if you role play it well, the Dungeon Master will be like okay, you did a really good job on that. I'll give you some of what you needed, or a little bit of what if it An example being is if you went and asked somebody a question and you desperately needed the answer, and you asked that person and the player makes an extremely well role played like look, i really need this. You know it's very important And they have to roll for it and they turn out to get a low roll. It's like you know what you really did well. So I'm not going to give you everything, but I'm going to give you a little bit, because you did a great job trying to explain it.

It kind of reminds me of a parental role. It's like, can I do this? And you're like, hmm, what's what's things? Should I let the player do that or not?

So it's really. it's really. can I do this? I don't know, can you Exactly?

I think I'll talk a little bit about. So you talk about how, how dungeon masters do some of the role play, and I'll talk about because because Part of what a DM does is there's two terms. I'm gonna talk about the next one a player character, pc, but the but the DM also plays what are called NPCs. So talk a little bit about what an NPC is as far as the game is concerned right.

So an NPC is a non-player character which would be the in owner, or perhaps the king or the Whoever is giving you the mission or the job or whatever it may be in the story last the quest. Thank you, that's a term I was looking for. So so the non-player characters are basically the you know, the be list characters in your book, in your story that you're reading or listening to. They're the ones that come in and out and they don't stay around them on the constant level. So if you really get into it, depending on how well you can do voices and if you're interested in that kind of thing, you Play all these other characters and you get to add your own little sinister aspects. So your your genuine comfort, nice, friendly aspects or whatever you want. There are usually some type of guidelines and suggestions in the adventures that you buy, but for the most part you can do whatever you want with them. So you can have a little fun, you know, and and you can put things in your player's minds and they think well, he said that really suspiciously. And then you know They'll spend the entire game thinking that there's an ulterior motive, when all you really did was just talking in a weird accent and they Just assumed there was something going on the whole time And it's not that's right.

So yeah, so that's that's what I what an NPC? so you'll hear that term a lot. NPCs are Are the kind of secondary characters to to what are known as the PCs, the player characters, and the player characters, the character that you actually create and Control, and we'll we'll talk in further episodes a lot about character creation, all the abilities, the backstory will dive into all those things, but really, really a player character is Who the party is. So you can, you can be, as Joe said before, you can. You can be a bad guy. You can. You can be a criminal, you can. You can be a Hero, you can be The Bard who I I always enjoy a Bard character. If you've, if you've seen the Dungeons and Dragons movie, the Chris Chris Pine character, I Kind of outlandish. Fantastic, fantastic, bard. But there there's all sorts of different things that you can do to create this character. It could be, it could be Kind of who you, who you see yourself being. It could be it could be a personality of yours. You know, the one character that I created was a blind monk, feline character Yep, and I Fashioned him after the character daredevil, because I have a blind cat named daredevil deadee and I wanted to create a character that was, that was a martial artist, that was blind and Was also a cat. So it was created after, after our cat deadee. So there's.

Which, as a DM, gave me a little bit of an extra, because a lot of times they'll be like, well, this is what you see, but he couldn't see. So I kept forgetting that. Yeah, we both kept changing that, forgetting about that aspect, but like it would be like okay, what do I see? No, well, you don't see. So you know, as is typical with people in real life, when somebody is blind, their other senses tend to heighten up because they're so more tuned to them. Obviously, a feline character would actually have a heightened hearing as well, but I made it so that his hearing was so much more powerful that it was almost like an echo location like sometimes is represented for Daredevil that he can kind of hear how everything is. So it made it a little bit more challenging for me, but once I got used to it as the DM, it was very easy to to fall into.

Exactly so. Like I said, we will get, we'll get, we'll get way more in-depth on On player characters and had ability character and go through all those in in multiple episodes. We'll talk about all, the all the details as far as that, but one, one of the key factors, joe to, as we say, the core, the core attributes are, are what are called the ability scores of a player.

So talk about the ability scores For for a player so ability scores are basically how well your character does any Basic items. The ability score categories are your strength, your dexterity, your constitution, your intelligence, your wisdom and your charisma. So there's a there's a silly, silly little comparison that's done for these things and it's it's all surrounds a tomato. Your strength is how far, how strong, afar, you can throw the tomato. Your dexterity is how accurately you can throw the tomato. Your constitution is how well you can serve, how well you deal with a Poison or rotten tomato if you were to eat it. Your intelligence is you knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Your charisma is your ability to tell somebody else that it's actually a vegetable. You're your. Your wisdom is treating that fruit as a vegetable because, even though it's technically a fruit, it comes across like a vegetable fascinating. So the idea is, when you create a character and, like Andrew said, we'll get into this in deeper episodes You end up developing stats. These are usually done by rolling dice, but there's other ways we'll get into it. When you roll the dice or you get the stats, you get numbers assigned to them, they provide bonuses how well you can do certain items, certain objects. And this is how your abilities come into a play When somebody, when the DM, says to you well, you want to try to break down that door, give me a strength check. There's gonna roll the dice and there's gonna be a number. That's gonna be done for strength. You want to try to duck out of the way? Okay, that's a dexterity saving throw again. We'll get into most of these terms later or in future episodes, but these are who define the character that you're playing, depending on how you develop these scores. It is usually random And it's the one thing about your character that you can't control, but it allows you to, you know, feel around and end up with a character that is not exactly what you wanted one way or the other, but it kind of adds a little more I'm going to say character to your character, adds a little more depth to your character than just.

I was just like depth.

Yeah, that's a good word, so it's like. It's like okay, I have to change this. For example, i'm sure many of you already know of critical role And in critical role, this character, grog. He plays a barbarian. He's got a below average intelligence score, so he walks around acting like he's incredibly unintelligent And you know he has a very low intelligence score on his character sheet, so his simplicity and intelligence is something he plays into as a character. When you're talking about the player characters, that's something you can do in your role playing. So, going back to what I was talking about, when you're going to ask somebody a question, yeah, so what we really need to know is look, if I can ask you this, we need to know how to get, when you play, that aspect into that you role play your character more. The DM is more likely to give into your request, even if you get a bad role for it, because you're embracing the character and that creates a better narrative, a better story play for everybody. It's not required, but it's usually what makes it best.

Right. So it's interesting because, depending on the type of character you create, if you have a spellcaster, you want higher ability scores in certain things. A bard would want to have higher charisma. So when you do role or set up these ability scores, you want to be aware of. You kind of want to know what character you're going to be at that point, because, depending on what type of class of character you are, you may want to have more strength or more intelligence, just depending on what that is. So that will all come into play, correct. Now, one of the other things that we're going to talk about are the fantastic thing called hit points or HP. So if you played any video game, you're kind of familiar with this concept. You've got so many points that you have available to you. So when you enter combat or if you're in a dungeon and you fall into a trap, anything that can take away your health will affect your hit points. So it's how much damage you can withstand. So as you create a level one character, your hit points are going to be very low. But as you progress through the levels and gain experience, etc. You will get more and more hit points as time goes on. So that's something you want to be aware of. Hit points aren't the be-all and end-all really of a character. Because you have to think about, let's say, a wizard or a sorcerer who will probably typically have much, far fewer hit points than a barbarian or a fighter, because a lot of the things they do they cast spells from a distance, so they're not necessarily in the heat of battle fighting with somebody, they're standing back and casting spells against the enemies, so they don't necessarily need as many hit points as a barbarian who's going to get in there and fight hand-to-hand combat or with a sword or an axe or something like that. So don't necessarily be concerned about how many hit points you have. Depending on your character, it'll help dictate how you interact in combat.

Right. And then when you're in combat Andrew was saying one of the ways you take damage is when somebody hits you. The way you determine how somebody hits you is your armor class. So we're going to talk about the attack rolls later on, but somebody's going to make an attack roll and they're going to compare that to what's called your armor class. Your armor class is basically a measure of how well you are able to avoid being hit, plus or in combination with how well whatever type of armor you're wearing protects you. So it'll be a number usually ranging from 12 to 20. And that armor class is what will adjust depending on if you get new armor. certain classes their armor classes based upon their stats And we'll get into the stats more, the ability scores more and the ability score goes up. their armor class will go up depending on which class you have. So the armor class is really that magic number that tells you if you've been hit. that's when you know you're going to be taking down those hit points, got it?

So and again, our armor class is very similar concept to hit points as far as what type of character you have. So again, a wizard is not, is not going to have a very high armor class or AC. They're not going to have a very high AC because they're not wearing armor, you know, they don't have a shield or anything like that. They're a spellcaster. So, again, because they cast spells typically at a distance, they don't need to have a lot of armor. So so they're going to be as as as Joe likes to say. Another people say is squishy And that's exactly right.

It's because the the the typical idea of magic users in most fantasy settings is armor would be contraindicated for a person who uses magic because it may dull it or whatever. But your physical, your wizard, is going to have less physical prowess than your barbarian or your fighter. So therefore they're not going to be able to actually wear certain pieces of armor without getting, you know, a penalty to them. So they're going to be stuck with the cloth or the leather armor or no armor at all, because they want to avoid that penalty. And we'll get into that. when we get into character creation, we'll talk about how, well you know, do you want to make a trade? Do you want to avoid this? We'll get into that too. Now for one of my favorite terms is why don't you, why don't you take this one?

I'm going to. So the the, the three words. You you might start dreading the most when you play D&D. Might might start dreading the most or enjoying the most. Go ahead, joe. Roll for initiative. When you hear the DM say roll for initiative, be prepared. So what initiative is? it's a roll with the 20-sided die, or what's called the D20. It's what determines the order in which characters engage in combat. So, between the party and whatever bad guys you're facing at the moment, everybody rolls the D20, and those numbers determine in what order combat takes place. So when you hear the DM say roll for initiative, that means you're about to engage in combat. Everybody rolls the D20 to see in what order you fight. So that's the fun term. I think it's for the DM, probably one of their favorite things to say. And, like I said, it could be. It depends on your character. Maybe you've been going through the dungeon for some time and you've got very few HP left and the DM says roll for initiative and you're like, oh my god, i'm going to die. So it could be a dreadful thing or it could be a really fun thing. If there's another term that we're not going to mention here, it's not in our list of terms. You'll hear the term murder, hobo.

That's more of a slang term. That's an official one. We'll deal with that in the future.

That's not an official term. Murder hobo is someone that really just enjoys combat and killing things, so it can be a big stress relief too, because we don't normally in life engage in hand-to-hand combat. So D&D gives you that ability to engage in combat in a safe manner and nobody really dies, so that's always a good thing.

Well your character Speaking of dying one other thing about the dungeon master is you're only doing your job if you're trying to kill the player characters, and in certain battles you're just not going to do that, but in other battles you try to kill them. So the initiative is like oh cool, here's another chance for me to try to kill them. But as a player it's also a rush, because there are times when you're walking through a dungeon you're kind of like all right, this is nice, we solved that puzzle whatever. And the combat gives you that more active involvement for a short period of time. It can always be like a serotonin tricker. It's like, oh boom, oh, i got something fun to do now.

Exactly So. there's other terms we'll yield here, but that murder hobo is one that we've had some people in the party that are definite murder hobos. So, joe, so we talked about an initiative. So now that we have our order, in which people fight, now the first thing that everybody does when they have their turn is they take an action. So what is an action? What does that actually mean? What is the timing of an action? And we'll talk about actions, bonus actions in there. What is an action?

So when you begin your turn, you have several different types of actions that you can take. What you can do the first and most common is using the same term is an action. This is your typical attack when you make an attack roll which we'll define in a minute. We're going to get to that. You make an attack roll against your enemy and we determine if you hit the enemy or not. Same thing with a spell. You do a spell attack roll. There are some spells that work in a different way. We'll talk about that as well, but we're just kind of working our way through here. So your action is going to be the primary thing your character does during this turn. During this six seconds of combat, your character is going to do this action. And then there's also a bonus action that your player can take.

Yes, the bonus action. So an action is about six seconds worth of time in the real world, but it takes usually longer than that. You've got to figure out what weapon you're using, how you're going to use it, et cetera. So there is your primary action and then players typically have what is also called a bonus action, which is less powerful than the primary action. It could be an additional spell. Some spells can either be cast as an action, but some spells are cast as a bonus action instead. So it just depends on the spell itself and what it can do. You can do other things on bonus actions as well, but it's typically not your primary action. It's not you wielding your weapon, It's something else that you do, And you'll see that kind of described when what the actions are. Is it a primary action or is it a bonus action?

And I never really thought of it this way before, but I was just thinking about as you were describing it. It is often not always, but oftentimes a support concept. Taking the bonus action can often be like I wanna cast you were saying cast a spell. There are cure spells that you can use as a bonus action. Or you can do this as a bonus action. Or certain times, in certain characters, they have abilities to allow their teammates to act on a bonus action. They can encourage action. So sometimes it comes out as a support action, sometimes it's a completely independent to you. I'm gonna take a second, lesser action, but yeah, Excellent.

So we've got bonus. We've got main action, bonus action. So another thing that when it is your turn, there's a bunch of things that you can do. So one of the other things you can do on a turn is you can move. You can move from where you are to, you can run up to an enemy, You can run away, You can go in all sorts of directions. So what is a movement and how is that defined in as far as a character's concerned?

So movement is obviously as simple as the self-explanatory It's. Movement is how far you can move. Characters can typically move about 30 feet. Now, if you've ever seen a D&D board, they're usually for a battle map. They're usually broken up into squares And typically those squares are designated as five feet a piece, so you can typically move six squares, 30 feet every time you actually take a movement action. Those actions are not. You don't have to use all of them And you can interspers your actual action with your movement, so you can run, hit somebody and then run someplace else to finish your movement, which actually kind of brings up another action that we haven't really talked about. It's called a reaction. Which was when somebody is standing. It allows you to react to something else that happens to you or around you. A reaction would be when somebody standing next to you moves away. When they move away, it's like, hey, they turned their back on me. I got a free attack as a reaction. That's something every character can do. It's a basic melee attack as somebody runs away.

Exactly so. Speaking of attacks, now let's talk about the attack roll. So when you're ready to make your attack on your turn, in your turn in the initiative, you whether you're a spellcaster, depending some spells require an attack roll. Most melee actions require an attack roll. So you will roll the D20, the 20-sided die. You roll the D20 to see if your attack actually hits your opponent. So it's all based against the armor class of your opponent. So if your opponent has an armor class and AC of 15, you roll anything from a 15 or higher, then that means your attack connected and you actually hit your opponent. If your roll is below the armor class of your opponent, then you have missed.

I just want to point out that Andrew said it correctly and it's just a very good point. The armor class is what is required to hit. So if you roll the 15 and the armor class is a 15, that is a hit. Anything below that is a miss. But it comes up as a very common question for beginners is that if I roll the exact number and we're gonna talk about saving throws later on if I roll the exact number I need note, that is still a hit. That is still a success if you hit the number that's being listed as the armor class.

Exactly, thank you. So there are two other things that we'll talk about. When you roll the attack roll. So, first of all, if your attack connects, you will then roll the dice associated with the damage to determine how much damage your opponent takes And we'll talk about that definition in a second And then we'll talk about if you roll. There are multiple terms for this. If you roll on the D20, if you roll a 20, it's what's referred to as a critical hit or a crit, or a nat 20. There's all sorts of terms for for rolling that. But if you hit a 20, there there are special things that happen. Then the the other thing that can happen is you roll a one, which is a critical fail, which we're not going to really get into. But that means you not only did you miss, but but sometimes you get other bad things can happen, like you might, you might hit one of your other party members, you might injure yourself because missing spectacularly. Yes, it is, it is. It is not the thing you want to do. So, um, let's talk about, let's talk about what happens when you, you do hit, your attack, roll you, you do connect and and you roll the damage. So, joe, what is what is all involved in in rolling.

The damage dice so what you've noticed so far is that everything we've talked about has been a roll of a d20, a 20 sided dice, the very. There are very, very few exceptions to a time when you're rolling something that you don't use the d20 and one of those, which is a common aspect, is damage dice. The damage dice will be depending upon the type of weapon you're using or the type of spell that you're casting. Certain weapons do more damage. A dagger, for example, has a d4, a four sided dice. So because a dagger doesn't typically do a whole lot of damage when you're saving somebody, compared to a great axe which is a d12, now you can still roll a one on your dagger and you can roll a one on your d12 for the great axe. It doesn't necessarily guarantee more damage, because there are such things as glancing blows. You can hit the person, but you didn't hit him right on, you kind of drifted off to the side and you just scratch their cheek or you roll that 12 on that great axe and you buried that axe right into their ribs, absolutely and there's when I'm thinking more about for for spellcasters.

So there are different. When we talk about casting spells, there are different levels of spells. So so sometimes if you have a first level spell, but you and there what are called spell slots, which we'll talk about, so you can the, the amount of damage you do with a particular spell might increase if you use a higher, higher spell slot. So there are there are ways to increase damage as well, and and one of the ways to increase damage is if you roll a critical hit, and that is that's what's kind, i guess, commonly referred to as a nat 20 or or again, a critical hit or a crit. So if you roll a 20 on the attack roll, what happens is that all of your damage dice, when you do your damage roll, they are doubled. So a critical hit is it's definitely not the glancing blow, it is, it is, it is even more than it's kind of like you really bury that great axe, like in you, you probably like lopped off a limb at this point with with a critical hit. Yeah, um thing thing, monty Python and the Holy Grail and and and the Black Knight, the Black Knight that. That that's what a critical hit is. So if you roll a 20, you get to do, you get the potential to do even more damage, double the damage of what you would typically do with just a standard hit. So you, you always want to. If somebody says they rolled a nat 20, everybody gets excited because you, you really get to inflict some, some serious damage with that.

Here's the funny thing about it, though statistically, rolling the 20 sided dice, you have a 5% chance of hitting any particular number, so it's not like you even have a smaller percent chance of hitting a 20 as of hitting any other number. It's just that you're likely to hit any other number besides the 20, but you still have an equal chance of hitting the 20, so it it can crop up quite frequently in a night. I've seen people roll crit 20s four or five times in a row. We had this one of our first games we were playing the guy. He rolled like six of them in a row because it kept him from dying. It was unbelievable. And then he showed us he was like look, look, it's still 20. It was. It was unbelievable that was.

That was. That was extremely impressive. So, yeah, there is. It's not a rarity, it's an equal, equal chance of it happening, but when it does, it's a it's a great thing thank you for joining us in this first part of ABCs of Dungeons and Dragons.

We're going to come back next week with the rest of the ABCs and a little bit of lore about Faerun. What is Faerun, joe? tune in next week and you'll find out. Oh, if you have any questions or need further guidance, we're here to help. Feel free to reach podcast@legendslootandlore. com . We love hearing from our listeners and we'll do our best to assist you on your D&D adventures you.