A character has many statistics which describe their overall power:
Character statistics
Effective character levels: Level adjustment and character levels rolled into one.
- Character levels: The total number of the class levels a character has.
- Types:
- Player character (PC): A character that is always controlled by a real person.
- Non-player character (NPC): A character that is controlled by the computer.
Race
- Race: A character belongs to 1 race.
- Subrace: A character may belong to 1 subrace of their race.
- Level adjustment (LA): Some characters have LA to balance out the additional powers they get for being a particular subrace.
- Size: How big the character is.
- Land speed: How fast a character can move.
- Subrace: A character may belong to 1 subrace of their race.
Alignment
- Alignment: This is how a character reacts to things, and how things react to the character.
Abilities
- Abilities: A character has 6 abilities.
- Ability score: How good a character is at each ability.
- Ability modifier: Abilities affect other things like skills, combat and spellcasting.
- Types:
- Strength (str): How strong
- Dexterity (dex): How agile
- Constitution (con): How healthy
- Intelligence (int): How good at learning
- Wisdom (wis): How understanding
- Charisma (cha): How sociable
Experience
- Experience points (XP): A character gains these by solving problems so they can gain character levels.
Classes
- Classes: A character has between 1 and 4 classes. A character can take a new class when they gain a new character level.
- Class levels: The amount of levels of that class. A character gain a new class level when they gain a new character level.
- Multiclass penalty: If a character's classes have wildly different class levels the character might suffer a penalty to XP gain.
- Types:
- Base classes: A character starts with 1 base class and may add upto 2 more later.
- Prestige classes (PrC): A character starts with no prestige classes, but may gain upto 3 later.
Health
- Hit points: How much of a beating a character can take.
Senses
- Senses: Some characters get new ways of sensing things in addition to normal ways.
- Vision:
Attacking
- Attack bonus (AB): This is how easy it is for the character to hit other people.
- Attacks per round: This is dependant on the character's base attack bonus.
- Base attack bonus (BAB): This is dependant on which class a character has.
Armor class
- Armor class (AC): This is how easy it is for the character to avoid being injured by other people.
- Touch armor class: Some attacks only need to touch a character to be effective, but they can still be avoided.
Saving throws
- Saving throws: This is how easy it is to avoid the worst of some special attacks.
Skills
- Skills: A character has lots of different skills.
- Skill points: A character spends these when they gain levels.
- Skill ranks: This is how good a character is with a certain skill.
- Types:
- Class skills: These are skills which a class is good at.
- Cross-class skills: These are skill which a class is bad at.
Feats
- Feats: These are special tricks a character knows.
- Bonus feats: Some classes get to pick a few more feats, with limited selection, than others.
Spellcasting
- Spellcasting: Only some classes can use spells, but spells can do alot of different things.
- Caster level: How good a character is at casting spells for each class.
- Spells known: Characters have to learn about a spell before they can cast it.
- Spells per day: Characters can only cast a limited amount of spells each day before running out.
- Spell failure: Some things can cause spellcasting to fail.
- Types:
Inventory
- Inventory: This is were a character puts his items when moving around with it.
- Items: A character can use lots of different tools and things.
- Equipment: Some items need to be worn or held to be useful.
- Weapon: A character can kill stuff when holding a good weapon.
- Melee weapon: A character has to get close to someone to hit them with a melee weapon.
- Ranged weapon: Ranged weapons can hurt people at a distance.
- Armor: Wearing armor helps protect a character from injury.
- Maximum dexterity bonus: The more heavy the armor the more it hampers a character's agility.
- Arcane spell failure: More protective armors can cause a character to fail when casting arcane spells.
- Armor check penalty: Some skills are harder when weighted down by armor.
- Weapon: A character can kill stuff when holding a good weapon.
- Equipment: Some items need to be worn or held to be useful.
- Items: A character can use lots of different tools and things.
Protection
- Spell resistance: Characters with spell resistance can occasionally ignore some harmful spells.
- Damage reduction: Damage reduction is the ability of a character to "shrug off" or instantly regenerate most types of damage done to it.
- Immunity: Stops even the possibility of some bad things from happening to a character.