I haven’t looked at the Basic Rules since version 1.0 when it was first released, until a few days ago when I started working on a series of articles about the best way to play D&D without spending any money. Since I was recommending the Basic Rules as one of the cheapest ways to get into the game for new DMs and players I figured I’d refresh myself on how the Basic Rules presented the rules.
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A fan-made cover for the D&D Basic Rules PDF
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On opening the PDF the first thing I noticed was that it was now professionally laid out and it had art! The first version may have had color accents and light formatting, but compared to this, it was pretty damn boring. The drawback of the original design was that it looked like a free product and by that I mean a product without value. But in reality, what you couldn’t see, was that right there in those dozens of pages, was an amazing modern RPG. And now, the new design makes it easier to read and just as importantly, makes it more fun. Here's one other interesting thing to note; all the art is pencil art with no ink or color, just well-done pencils. Until you get to the last page. Nice touch there, Wizards.
The Basic Rules has the same opening content explaining the core concepts of D&D as the Player’s Handbook and it seems to be almost word for word. From there you go straight into making characters, which gives you the steps for character creation, and then the options for each step. Basic Rules gives you the classics fantasy race tropes that most western audiences should be familiar with, elves, dwarves, half its and humans. Most the races seem to have two sub race options, which is interesting, because having read the Player’s Handbook, I know the Basic Rules takes a different approach when it comes to classes. The choice to give two sub-race choices is an interesting one, but I assume they did this because the benefits of race are more limited than the benefits of class. Race is more of a static choice, you make it and then you move on.
The class section presents the classic archetypes of Clerics, Fighters, Rogues and Wizards. The Basic Rules gives the same progression table as the hardback, but when there are decision trees, such as Cleric’s divine domain, the Fighter’s martial and Rogue’s roguish archetype, and Wizard’s arcane tradition, the Basic Rules only gives one option for each class. It clearly hints that the there are more options if you buy the Core Rules, but this is really where you get your first sense that you might be missing something. But if I were trying to put together my first game of D&D, this is probably enough. Each class has clear and distinct personalities and play styles. With these four classes, I think you have enough to stretch out the game and see what it can do. I think the inclusion of one more class would have been nice for larger groups to cut down on duplicate classes, but then again, for groups new to D&D, it might not be a bad idea to incentivize a four-player group vs. larger groups to make sure the game moves along at a decent pace. This also has another effect of highlighting race and backgrounds as distinguishing factors and puts a bigger spotlight on those choices for players who share a character class.
The next chapter, Personality and Background, explains all the other characteristics of a D&D character. This chapter covers character details, such as height and weight, alignment, and languages. It shares details on what 5e calls Personal Characteristics, which are Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. And then it gives 6 options for backgrounds, which provide random tables to help select your Personal Characteristics. The Backgrounds presented are fully featured and there seems to be enough to help differentiate characters and create a more diverse set of narratives.
So with these three character creation decision points, you can have any combination of 4 races (Dwarf, Elf, Halfling or Human) with two subclasses each (except humans), 4 classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard) and six backgrounds. I’m not great at math, but that seems to be 168 unique combinations for character creation. The Basic Rules provides 168 combinations of race/sub-races, classes, and backgrounds. This seems like it should be more than enough, in terms of having different abilities at a table, but those familiar with the game will tell you that class, by far, has the largest mechanical impact on a game. And since there are only 4 classes, each with very little personalization choices after 1st level, if options are your thing, these sections on character creation might seem a bit unfulfilling.
The section on equipment seems fully featured and not truncated at all. It lists all the armor, weapons and goods you can imagine wanting and using in a fantasy setting. It even gives you a random list of 100 trinkets to help add flavor to things, so each loot drop isn’t always about what magic items or useful gear monsters leave to you after they are vanquished.
The Customization Options section is just an ad for the Core Rules. It tells you these options exist but doesn’t even give you an example of what they look like. I think new players would be better off ignoring this section or just think of it as an advertisement for the expansion pack for this game.
The next few chapters are the rules of the game and these sections seem full featured. After reading it twice, I can’t seem to find anything that is described in the Player’s Handbook that isn’t in the Basic Rules. How to use ability scores, timekeeping, movement, character speed, traveling, falling, suffocating, vision and light, food and water, social interactions, resting, downtime, combat, and even mounted combat and underwater combat are explained. The spell casting section could probably use some visual examples for spell area of effects, but other than that, it seems fully featured.
The section describing actual spells is where the Basic Rules again differentiates itself from the Core Rules. There are 4-9 spells for each level for each of the two spellcasting classes in the Basic Rules, Clerics and Wizards. But all the classic spells are here: Fireball, Magic Missile, Cure Wounds, Hold Person, Haste, and Teleport. For new players, you won’t notice a deficit of choices. Even though you may have a sense that there is a huge number of possibilities out there in terms of spells, this section won’t feel like it’s scratching the surface. The Basic Rules gives you all the classic stuff that is famously D&D.
The next few sections are specifically for Dungeon Masters, but interestingly, the Basic Rules doesn’t delineate itself clearly. The previous section ends with a stat black for the Web spell and then there’s a divider page that says Dungeon Master's Tools, but unlike other starter sets I’ve seen, it doesn’t explicitly tell players to stop reading. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, but I thought it worth noticing.
The monsters section gives you a decent selection until you get to 7th level monsters, where the pickings get pretty thin. There’s enough here for your first 8-10 sessions for D&D, but once your players reach 6th level, there’s probably enough variation to keep them challenged without throwing the same monsters at them again and again. And over ½ of the monsters are stats for real-world animals or humanoid NPC archetypes like Bandit and Knight. I understand the reason Wizards of the Coast took this approach, but I think making it harder to DMs to easily run games is misguided, but more on that in the conclusion.
The next chapter in the DM section is for magic items of which the Basic Rules gives you 12. There are only two “very rare” items listed, which both happen to be consumable, meaning you use them once. The only legendary items are items which have multiple rarities, depending on their mechanical bonus, so +1, +2, or +3 magic weapon, with the +3 magic weapon being the of the Legendary type. Magic items can add a lot of color to your games, and from a DM’s perspective, this has about the same limitations as the Monsters section of the Basic Rules. It’s probably enough to get you through 8 - 10 sessions, but once the characters get to about level 7 or 8, its going to be hard to reward them with interesting things, using only the Basic Rules.
In summary, the Basic Rules does exactly what it sets out to do. I think it presents a well written, fun, and clear picture for how the developers intend for people to play D&D. I think the rules are complete and well presented. I think the player’s options are just about right for an entry product and are good and plentiful enough if your not a player who’s experienced with all the copious options of the core game.
I understand the reason to limit options in a free product, especially a product that is meant to be a gateway drug for their more expensive offerings. But I think the model of getting to DMs to pay for benefit of getting to do the job they do, limits the growth of the hobby. My theory is that the more DMs there are, the more players there will be. The more DMs there are, the easier it would be for players to find games. My main criticism is that as the rules source, and free entry point for rules for DMs, the Basic Rules falls short. It requires too much investment and too much effort for DMs to be good DMs over the course of a campaign. Luckily there’s the SRD, but the SRD isn’t even mentioned in the Basic Rules. If you are totally new to D&D, you may not even know what the SRD is. But if we need the SRD to make the game really sing, then the product is clearly lacking. But as a source for players, it enough to build some great experiences. To be clear, if you are thinking about DMing and you want to run a full campaign, you're going to need some help, beyond the Basic Rules. But as a product to act as an introduction and starting point for brand new players and a brand new DM, it’s a great product.
| Example of Art in the D&D Basic Rules |
The Basic Rules has the same opening content explaining the core concepts of D&D as the Player’s Handbook and it seems to be almost word for word. From there you go straight into making characters, which gives you the steps for character creation, and then the options for each step. Basic Rules gives you the classics fantasy race tropes that most western audiences should be familiar with, elves, dwarves, half its and humans. Most the races seem to have two sub race options, which is interesting, because having read the Player’s Handbook, I know the Basic Rules takes a different approach when it comes to classes. The choice to give two sub-race choices is an interesting one, but I assume they did this because the benefits of race are more limited than the benefits of class. Race is more of a static choice, you make it and then you move on.
The class section presents the classic archetypes of Clerics, Fighters, Rogues and Wizards. The Basic Rules gives the same progression table as the hardback, but when there are decision trees, such as Cleric’s divine domain, the Fighter’s martial and Rogue’s roguish archetype, and Wizard’s arcane tradition, the Basic Rules only gives one option for each class. It clearly hints that the there are more options if you buy the Core Rules, but this is really where you get your first sense that you might be missing something. But if I were trying to put together my first game of D&D, this is probably enough. Each class has clear and distinct personalities and play styles. With these four classes, I think you have enough to stretch out the game and see what it can do. I think the inclusion of one more class would have been nice for larger groups to cut down on duplicate classes, but then again, for groups new to D&D, it might not be a bad idea to incentivize a four-player group vs. larger groups to make sure the game moves along at a decent pace. This also has another effect of highlighting race and backgrounds as distinguishing factors and puts a bigger spotlight on those choices for players who share a character class.
The next chapter, Personality and Background, explains all the other characteristics of a D&D character. This chapter covers character details, such as height and weight, alignment, and languages. It shares details on what 5e calls Personal Characteristics, which are Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. And then it gives 6 options for backgrounds, which provide random tables to help select your Personal Characteristics. The Backgrounds presented are fully featured and there seems to be enough to help differentiate characters and create a more diverse set of narratives.
So with these three character creation decision points, you can have any combination of 4 races (Dwarf, Elf, Halfling or Human) with two subclasses each (except humans), 4 classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard) and six backgrounds. I’m not great at math, but that seems to be 168 unique combinations for character creation. The Basic Rules provides 168 combinations of race/sub-races, classes, and backgrounds. This seems like it should be more than enough, in terms of having different abilities at a table, but those familiar with the game will tell you that class, by far, has the largest mechanical impact on a game. And since there are only 4 classes, each with very little personalization choices after 1st level, if options are your thing, these sections on character creation might seem a bit unfulfilling.
The section on equipment seems fully featured and not truncated at all. It lists all the armor, weapons and goods you can imagine wanting and using in a fantasy setting. It even gives you a random list of 100 trinkets to help add flavor to things, so each loot drop isn’t always about what magic items or useful gear monsters leave to you after they are vanquished.
The Customization Options section is just an ad for the Core Rules. It tells you these options exist but doesn’t even give you an example of what they look like. I think new players would be better off ignoring this section or just think of it as an advertisement for the expansion pack for this game.
The next few chapters are the rules of the game and these sections seem full featured. After reading it twice, I can’t seem to find anything that is described in the Player’s Handbook that isn’t in the Basic Rules. How to use ability scores, timekeeping, movement, character speed, traveling, falling, suffocating, vision and light, food and water, social interactions, resting, downtime, combat, and even mounted combat and underwater combat are explained. The spell casting section could probably use some visual examples for spell area of effects, but other than that, it seems fully featured.
| D&D Basic Rules Spells List |
The section describing actual spells is where the Basic Rules again differentiates itself from the Core Rules. There are 4-9 spells for each level for each of the two spellcasting classes in the Basic Rules, Clerics and Wizards. But all the classic spells are here: Fireball, Magic Missile, Cure Wounds, Hold Person, Haste, and Teleport. For new players, you won’t notice a deficit of choices. Even though you may have a sense that there is a huge number of possibilities out there in terms of spells, this section won’t feel like it’s scratching the surface. The Basic Rules gives you all the classic stuff that is famously D&D.
The next few sections are specifically for Dungeon Masters, but interestingly, the Basic Rules doesn’t delineate itself clearly. The previous section ends with a stat black for the Web spell and then there’s a divider page that says Dungeon Master's Tools, but unlike other starter sets I’ve seen, it doesn’t explicitly tell players to stop reading. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, but I thought it worth noticing.
The monsters section gives you a decent selection until you get to 7th level monsters, where the pickings get pretty thin. There’s enough here for your first 8-10 sessions for D&D, but once your players reach 6th level, there’s probably enough variation to keep them challenged without throwing the same monsters at them again and again. And over ½ of the monsters are stats for real-world animals or humanoid NPC archetypes like Bandit and Knight. I understand the reason Wizards of the Coast took this approach, but I think making it harder to DMs to easily run games is misguided, but more on that in the conclusion.
The next chapter in the DM section is for magic items of which the Basic Rules gives you 12. There are only two “very rare” items listed, which both happen to be consumable, meaning you use them once. The only legendary items are items which have multiple rarities, depending on their mechanical bonus, so +1, +2, or +3 magic weapon, with the +3 magic weapon being the of the Legendary type. Magic items can add a lot of color to your games, and from a DM’s perspective, this has about the same limitations as the Monsters section of the Basic Rules. It’s probably enough to get you through 8 - 10 sessions, but once the characters get to about level 7 or 8, its going to be hard to reward them with interesting things, using only the Basic Rules.
In summary, the Basic Rules does exactly what it sets out to do. I think it presents a well written, fun, and clear picture for how the developers intend for people to play D&D. I think the rules are complete and well presented. I think the player’s options are just about right for an entry product and are good and plentiful enough if your not a player who’s experienced with all the copious options of the core game.
I understand the reason to limit options in a free product, especially a product that is meant to be a gateway drug for their more expensive offerings. But I think the model of getting to DMs to pay for benefit of getting to do the job they do, limits the growth of the hobby. My theory is that the more DMs there are, the more players there will be. The more DMs there are, the easier it would be for players to find games. My main criticism is that as the rules source, and free entry point for rules for DMs, the Basic Rules falls short. It requires too much investment and too much effort for DMs to be good DMs over the course of a campaign. Luckily there’s the SRD, but the SRD isn’t even mentioned in the Basic Rules. If you are totally new to D&D, you may not even know what the SRD is. But if we need the SRD to make the game really sing, then the product is clearly lacking. But as a source for players, it enough to build some great experiences. To be clear, if you are thinking about DMing and you want to run a full campaign, you're going to need some help, beyond the Basic Rules. But as a product to act as an introduction and starting point for brand new players and a brand new DM, it’s a great product.
