Dungeons and Dragons

Original Dungeons and Dragons (ODnD) is a Pen and Paper Roleplaying game and is considered to be one of the first, if not 'the' first, Roleplaying game ever published. The orginal 'Rogue' is considered to be essentially a dungeon crawl game of the style that was (and still is) commonplace in RPGs.

Statistics Overview

Characters in D&D possess six primary attributes:

Strength (STR): How strong the character is; how much they can carry, and a bonus to attack and damage.
Dexterity (DEX): How agile the character is; how good they are at dodging attacks, bonuses to attack with ranged weapons.
Constution (CON): How healthy the character is, bonuses to hitpoints.
Wisdom (WIS): How wise the character is, affects perception.
Intelligence (INT): How intelligent the character is, how much they can understand, and how much they know already.
Charisma (CHA): Obstensibly the character's apperance, but also thier leadership abilities and force of personality, and creativitiy, and strength of spirit, etc, etc. It has been said that the players aren't the only ones using CHA as a dump stat...

Characters generally begin with stats between 3 and 18; as rolling three six-sided dice was the recommended method of determining attributes in earlier editions, later editions prefer point-buy.

Additional statistics are:

Armor Class (AC)
Hitpoints (HP)
Attack Bonus (AB)

Classes overview

All charaters in DnD are required to take levels in classes, each class defines numerous intrinsics of a characters, such as attacks, Hitpoint gain, spellcasting ability (or lack of), et cetera.

DnD Itself sorts Classes into two groups: 'Base' Classes and 'Prestige' Classes (PrC).
The following catorgories are intended more for the sake of study then having anything to do with how DnD choses to refer to them.

The Core Four

All of DnDs base classes can be considered to represent one of these four in some sense. The classes in this catagory are also the basis of the DnD 'Standard party', four members, representing each of the four archetypes.

Fighter: Soldiers, fighters, and back-alley brawlers. They do one thing and do it well.
Rogue: Specifically intended to represent thieves, and more generally survivalists, and jack-of-all-trades.
Cleric: Divine spellcaster.; Clerics have the ability to cast a respectable selection of spells, with notably more Defencive effects. They can Turn Undead and are one of the few classes to have access to healing magic possessing 'Spontaneous Healing', the abilty to turn any prepared spell into a healing spell of the same level.; (Some argue that since the Cleric has one of the best hitdie, quite respectible weapon proficiencies and the abilty to use heavy armor, that they don't really count as a pure spellcaster, and thus, DnD doesn't really have a pure divine caster.)
Mage: Arcane Spellcaster.; Mages are the archtypical spellcasters we have all come to know and love. They are intelligent and knowlegable, sometimes wisened scholars, sometimes crazed lunatics, always powerful.; In addition to the obvious ability to cast spells, Mages also have one of the widest selections of skills (mostly knowledge skills), and are commonly multilingual. The also gain a 'Familiar', an animal-like creature that agrees to help and protect the mage.

Variant Classes

Classes that can be considered to be variations of the above four types.

Druid: Variant Cleric; Essentailly a Cleric, The druid loses 'Spontaneous Healing' (Though healing spells remain part of their spellbook) and the ability to Turn Undead, but gain Animal Empathy (The ability to speak with, and befreind animals), an animal companion, as well as a number of nature-oriented bonuses. Some of the more Divine themed spells are replaced with more nature and elemental spells.
Sorceror: Variant Mage; Sorcerors have the ability to spontaneously cast spells (they are freed of the requirement of preparing spells, though they still 'use' slots to cast spells) and have more spell slots than than a mage, but pay for this in a vastly reduced spell book; they have both a shorter list of spells they could possibly learn, and are resticted to knowing only a few spells of each level.
Monk: Variant Fighter; Based on the notion of martial artists and Asian 'warrior monks', the Monk is a skilled fighter with spiritual overtones, generally fighing unarmed and unarmored.
Babarian: Variant Fighter; Fighter, as if plucked from some wandering tribe. The Barbarian is the only class with a better hitdie than fighters (d12 vs. d10), but they are restricted to medium armor or less. They also gain the ability to 'Rage', which temporarily increases their combat ability.

Hybrid Classes

Ranger: Fighter/Druid, with a dash of Rogue; Rangers are not as skilled in combat as straight Fighters, nor as good at spellcasting as Druids, but they two have respectable synergies, and no fighter can say 'no' to the ability to cast healing and nature spells. Rangers are no slouches at Stealth either.
Paladin: Fighter/Cleric; Paladins combine the fighters hitpoints and attack with the ability to Turn Undead and innate healing ability, but only limited cleric-like spellcasting. They also have fewer combat feats than straight fighters.
Bard: Rogue/Sorceror; While the bard loses many of the skills that make the rogue great, and combines it with a watered down form of sorcery, they also gain access some healing magic, and can 'Sing' to boost not only their own abilties, but the abilities of all allies in the immediate area. With skill the bard can also demoralize the enemy (which reduces their abilties).

Magic in DnD

Whereas most games systems opt to use simpler mana-based spellcasting systems where one selects spells as-needed, paying for the spellcasting with points of 'mana', DnD instead uses a slot-based system.

Essentially, the character is granted a number of 'slots', each slot can be used to cast a spell of only a specific level. As a character gains experience they are granted additional slots but also access to higher level slots (and thus, high level spells). In addition, most classes must prepare spells into these slots before they can be cast, ostensibly just after waking up.

Thus a begining spellcaster might have a single, 1st level slot, where as a slightly more experienced mage might have 3 1st level slots, 2 2nd level slots, and one 3rd level slot.

Arcane and Divine magic

Magic in DnD is devided into two groups: Arcane, and Divine. Arcane magic is what one generally thinks of when thinking of wizards, magic that is the result of the caster's skill and knowledge. Arcanists enjoy the freedom to use their magic as they see fit, but can only cast spells they have scribed into their spellbook. They also tend to be hampered by armor, since it restricts their movement.

Divine magic is essentailly DnD prayer system, and generally covers magic channeled from another force (Generally, but not always, deities). Divine 'spells' are considered to be divinely inspired during meditation or prayer (as appropriate). Divinists enjoy the ability to prepare any spell in thier god's sphere, and the abilty to use armor without impediment, But must abide by the tenets of thier belief or be stripped of some or all of thier power.

Links

Dungeons and Dragons entry on Wikipedia

'The Hypertext d20 v3.5 System Reference Document'

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