The adventurer’s handbook
Durable and ferocious melee attacker
The Barbarian has considered the dungeon’s objections and intends to proceed with the axe. A formidable constitution and a carefully cultivated temper carry this warrior into the thick of battle. Rage is not a failure to understand danger. It is understanding danger perfectly well and deciding that danger should be worried too.
Enter melee with enough health to survive the reply. Reckless Attack improves your chances and the enemy’s, so choose the moment carefully. Rage’s temporary HP protects you from new harm; it does not mend old wounds.
Keep the abilities of earlier levels as you gain new ones. XP is experience; the figures below are cumulative thresholds from the beginning of an adventurer’s career.
0 XP
Rage once per encounter: three own turns, +2 melee damage, and temporary HP.
2,000 XP
Reckless Attack.
4,000 XP
Furious Charge, once per encounter.
8,000 XP
Thick Hide.
16,000 XP
Cleave, once per encounter.
32,000 XP
Greater Rage: four own turns and +3 melee damage.
Once per encounter, activate Rage while declaring your action, without spending that action. It lasts through three of your turns, including activation. Each Strength-based melee hit deals +2 damage. Gain temporary HP equal to your level plus your positive Constitution modifier. Rage ends early if you fall unconscious or combat ends; its remaining temporary HP then expires. You retain control of targets, movement, and retreat. Rage itself changes neither accuracy nor AC.
Temporary HP absorbs damage before ordinary HP. It cannot heal wounds, and separate grants never add together: keep the higher remaining amount.
Choose before attacking to gain +2 on Strength-based melee attacks until the start of your next turn. Attacks against you also gain +2 over the same interval. You can use it with or without Rage.
Once per encounter, spend an action to move one area toward an enemy and make one melee attack. You need a legal path and destination. Charge cannot bypass enemy lines or immobilization.
Reduce the physical damage of each weapon or natural-weapon hit by 1, to a minimum of 1 if the hit would cause positive physical damage. A hit already reduced to zero stays at zero. Separate poison, elemental, and other effects are unchanged. This works outside Rage, but not against spells or breath attacks.
Once per encounter, after a melee kill, immediately make one melee attack against a different enemy in the same area. This attack cannot trigger another Cleave.
Rage lasts through four of your own turns and adds +3 damage to each Strength-based melee hit. Its temporary HP and other rules are unchanged.
An action is your main choice on a turn. A reaction answers a particular event. An encounter is one battle; a crawl includes all its rooms. Encounter resources return for a new battle, not by reloading a page or returning to the same fight.
AC measures armor defense; lower is better. THAC0 is the attack score needed to hit AC 0 before modifiers; lower is better. Saving throws resist hazards. The table shows the required unmodified saving-throw scores; lower is better. Class abilities and equipment can improve them.
| Level | THAC0 | Death / poison | Wands | Paralysis / stone | Breath | Spells |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 19 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 2 | 19 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 3 | 19 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 4 | 17 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 5 | 17 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 6 | 17 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |