I need more help than you think

[UphillWillie]

Hello, I'm looking for help. I recently started playing d&d 3.5 with some folks and I have never played before, ever. The closest thing I have played to d&d is skyrim (I know not even close really). I've asked my one friend that I know who plays and she said she only knows how to play 2 characters and knows nothing else about the game. I asked the DM to explain a few things and he acts as if I should know everything already, which I tried to read the players handbook and, it helped a little but I personally learn better from watching or doing and some of the things I have no idea about, example: I asked the DM what Hit Dice meant. I thought it would have to do with attacking, you know you Hit with Dice, he looked at me and said its in the book look it up, well, I did. It took way longer for me to do that at the table then for him to just tell me, its how you figure out your health, and i don't even know if that's the full extent of Hit Dice because that's all I could understand from the book. I know I ask a lot of questions and its not because I'm not trying to remember, its the fact that I'm new to this and only playing 3 hours a week while working 2 jobs doesn't allow me to truly get into the game as much as I would like. I was wondering if there was someone I could message all my questions to or if I could leave them here in this thread for people to answer. You can go ahead and call me a noob or a lazy person but I don't care, I do enjoy the game and I want to enjoy it more so unless I have someone say I can flood their inbox with stupid questions that "the average player knows this" crap I'm just going to go ahead and ask all the questions here. Also if you say "its in the book" and I go look and it doesn't nake sense, I'm gonna keep asking until some nice person takes the time to help me understand it better so I can truly understand the game instead of walking face first into a rock elemental (that happened my first session, yes I was the one that smashed my face into "what appears to be a boulder").

[UphillWillie]

What does Flat foot and touch A/C mean?

Are 'Hit Dice' only for finding you HP or is there more to them?

How often do you change your Ability Scores?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Welcome to the boards! First things first, you'd probably be better-served posting your questions in the D&D 3.5 subforum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?59-D-amp-D-3e-3-5e-d20); this forum is more geared at videogaming and boardgaming, whereas that one is specifically designed for D&D discussion. You'll get a lot better answers there, and you'll probably get quicker answers.

It's unfortunate to hear about your DM's response to your questions, because D&D, and specifically 3.5, is a really daunting game. There's some people that enjoy that aspect, but that doesn't make it any less fiddly or rough to work with. Ultimately, in an ideal situation, your group would be your ally in this regard, and they'd be willing to coach you through the game. That said, a lot of the crowd that 3.5 attracts is not great at explaining, and would prefer to tinker with complex builds until kingdom come. So don't hang your hopes on it.

If what you want is general knowledge, starting a thread asking for answers to specific questions is a great way to go. I'm annoyed at your group for not being more forthcoming with help for the newbie. We were all newbies at one point.

There's also a simple 3.5 Edition Q&A thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?527767-Simple-RAW-Thread-for-3-5-33-Doesn-t-everything-popular-die-when-33), which is very good for asking basic questions

EDIT: looks like you posted some questions, I'll get to those now.


What does Flat foot and touch A/C mean?

Are 'Hit Dice' only for finding you HP or is there more to them?

How often do you change your Ability Scores?
"Flat-footed AC" is your AC without any bonuses from Dexterity. You use it when your character is caught off-guard. The DM should be asking specifically for your flat-footed AC; otherwise, use your normal AC. "Touch AC" is calculated by ignoring any bonuses to AC from your armor/shields/etc., and it's used to defend against "touch attacks", which are specific (usually very obnoxious) attacks that often deliver negative conditions to your character.

Hit dice are, as far as I can remember, only used for finding your HP. I think there might be one or two cases in which a character's hit dice are used as a way of measuring their HP, but nothing comes to mind. (Turn Undead worked like that in older editions, I forget if that carried into 3.5.)

You get +1 to an ability score of your choice every fourth level. So, level 4, level 8, level 12, etc.

[UphillWillie]

CarpeGuitarrem

Thank you for the knowledge, I shall repost this there and hope for the best. Also thank you for describing how the flat foot and touch work. The sad part is that I'm 1 of 2 new people in the group and we get treated as if we were the biggest wastes of space. So I in turn just do the dumbest stuff with my bard now to piss off the DM ( I secretly want him to kill me). Thanks again CarpeGuitarrem!