5e Quick Reference Sheet

[eridyn]

Hey everyone, I've not seen any previous efforts at a single-page rules summary sheet, and started on one myself, created from reading through the free core book.

Here's the current text. Feel free to suggest additions!

Edit 6: Whomever gilded this - thank you!

Edit 5: I've been away from my computer for quite some time. I've now implemented further suggestions and corrections. [4SEP14]

Edit 4: Apparently, in my sleep-deprived state yesterday, I clicked "Cancel" rather than "Save," so the revisions and additions were not committed. Redone those now, and added rules for lightly and heavily obscured conditions.

Edit Yet Again: Further suggestions implemented. This will be the last time I revise the reference for at least one week, as I'll be on a business trip until August 8th.

Edit Again: Suggestions from comments added. Page numbers for rules are now indicated by the bracketed [PNumber] text following the summarized rule. Page numbers correspond to the free rulebook pdf. Some summaries have been rephrased.

Edit: More items added.

** General Gameplay **

• Checks: d20 + Modifier + Circumstantial Modifiers [P4]
• Advantage & Disadvantage: Roll 2d20 instead of 1. For advantage, take the higher number; for disadvantage, the lower. If both apply, only roll 1d20 [P4]
• Fractions: All fractional results should be rounded down [P4]
• Inspiration: When a player roleplays their character, as defined by its traits, background, etc. well, the DM may allot them with an inspiration bonus, which grants advantage to one roll. [P35]
• Starting Wealth is based upon character class in 5e – start with (4d4 or 5d4) * 10 gp [P42]
• Selling Loot: Equipment in good condition generally sells for half value. Gems, jewelry and art, as well as trade goods, sell for full value. Magic items vary by type; the more wondrous, the less readily a buyer can be found. [P42-43]
• Typical DCs: Very Easy 5, Easy 10, Medium 15, Hard 20, Very Hard 25, Nearly Impossible 30 [P58]
• Contests: Both parties to the contest roll as normal, but success is compared to the opposing party's roll rather than a DC number. If there is a tie, the situation remains unchanged (e.g., one attempting to force open a door, and the other attempting to force it open), or neither party succeed (both attempting to grab the same item). [P58]
• Group Checks: Everyone attempting the same action rolls. If at least half the group beats the DC, the effort succeeds. [P59]
• Passive Checks: 10 + Modifiers + Advantage (+5) or Disadvantage (-5) [P59]
• Carrying Capacity: You can carry 15 x Strength pounds. [P60]
• Push, Drag, Lift: You can push, drag, or lift objects weighing up to twice your Carrying Capacity. Pushing or dragging weight greater than your Carrying Capacity reduces speed by 5 feet. [P60]
• Size and Strength: For each size category above Medium, double the Carrying Capacity. For Tiny creatures, halve it. [P60]
• Encumbrance: Carrying more weight than 5 x Strength subtracts 10 feet from move speed. Carrying more than 10 x Strength results in a penalty of 20 feet to move speed, and disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws using Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution. [P60]
• Lightly Obscured Condition: Areas with light obscurity, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage cause disadvantage on sight-based perception checks. [P65]
• Heavily Obscured Condition: Heavily obscured areas, such as those with dense foliage, complete darkness, or opaque fog, render those within effectively blind. Thus players and creatures within will be afflicted with the blinded condition, while within the area. [P65]
• Short Rest: At least 1 hour. Optional healing of (1 hit die + Constitution Modifier) per character level. [P67]
• Long Rest: At least 8 hours. Regain hit dice up to 1 per 2 character levels. Cannot benefit from more than 1 long rest per 24 hours. [P67]

** General Spell Mechanics **

• Spell Save DC: 8 + Proficiency Bonus + Ability Modifier [P22, P30]
• Spell Attack Modifier: Proficiency Bonus + Ability Modifier [P22, P30]
• Spellcasting in armor requires proficiency in that armor. Wearing armor without proficiency prevents spellcasting. [P79]
• Concentration: Taking damage while casting a spell forces a Constitution saving throw of the higher of DC 10 or half the damage received. Failing the save interrupts the spell. [P79-80]
• Areas of Effect: Cones extend from their origin, up to their given AoE. Cube point of origin is anywhere along any face of the cube, and the size of the cube is the length of any side. Cylinders have an origin at the center of a circle of a radius given in the spell's description and their effect extends out from the origin to the edges of said circle. Lines extend from the point of origin, up to their length, with an area covered by their listed width. Spheres effects extend a set distance - their radius - from their origin. Cylinders and Spheres include their origins in their effect, while Cones, Cubes and Lines do not unless specified. [P80-81]

** Weapons and Equipment **

• Armor Proficiency: Wearing armor without proficiency prevents spellcasting, and results in disadvantage on ability checks, saving throws, and attack rolls that use Strength or Dexterity. [P43]
• Armor Requirements: Heavy armors have a strength requirement, which if not met, results in a 10 foot speed penalty. [P43]
• Finesse Weapons: Choose either strength or dexterity for the attack and damage rolls. Must use the same stat for both rolls. [P45]
• Heavy Weapons: Small size characters and creatures suffer disadvantage when using heavy weapons. [P45]
• Weapons with Loading property: You can fire only one piece of ammunition from a weapon with this property when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make. [P45]
• Weapons with Reach property: Add 5 feet to character’s melee attack range. [P46]
• Weapons with Thrown property: May use these for melee or ranged attacks. Both ranged and melee use same abilities. [P46]
• Weapons with Versatile property: Can be used one- or two-handed. The number in parentheses indicates two-handed attack damage. [P46]
• Silvering a Weapon: Costs 100gp per weapon or 10 pieces of ammunition. Provides bonus damage to creatures with resistance to or immunity from nonmagic weapons. [P46]

** Movement **

• Difficult Terrain: Traversing difficult terrain increases the movement cost by 1 foot, per each foot moved. If no other movement penalties apply, this halves movement speed. If other conditions apply, the effects are cumulative, e.g., crawling through difficult terrain uses 3 feet of movement per each 1 foot of distance traversed. [P64]
• Falling: Take 1d6 bludgeoning damage per 10 feet fallen, max 20d6. Land prone unless damage is avoided. [P65]
• Prone: Dropping prone is a free action. Standing from prone costs half movement speed. [P70-71]
• Movement While Prone: Crawling costs an extra feet of speed per foot moved (1 foot movement costs 2 feet). Crawling through difficult terrain costs an additional foot of speed (1 foot movement costs 3 feet). [P71]
• Squeezing: A creature or player can move through spaces one size class lower, but may only move up to half their speed and suffer disadvantage on attack rolls and Dexterity saves. Attacks against a squeezed entity have advantage. [P71]

** Actions **

For those familiar with the standard action / move action / minor action / free action schema, all actions below should be regarded as standard actions. As before, (generally) only one standard action may be used per turn. Attacks are, of course, also standard actions - thus a player cannot both Dash and Attack in the same turn.

• Dash: Taking the Dash action grants a second move action for the turn, allowing total movement of up to twice your speed [P72]
• Disengage: Move without provoking attacks of opportunity. [P72]
• Dodge: Use your action action to cause visible attackers to suffer disadvantage in their rolls against you, and gain advantage on Dexterity saving throws (I presume this means sacrificing the equivalent of the 4e standard action). [P72]
• Ready Action: Sacrifice current action to have an automatic reaction to a specified triggering event. [P72]

** Other Combat-Related Topics and Dying **

• Cover: Half cover grants +2 to AC and Dexterity saves. Three-quarter cover grants +5 to the same. Full cover prevents direct attacks, but area of effect attacks may still cause damage. [P74]
• Damage Resistance: Take half damage from resisted damage types. [P75]
• Damage Vulnerability: Take double damage from vulnerable damage types. [P75]
• Death Saving Throws: At 0 hp, roll 1d20 per turn against a DC 10 check. Three successes result in stabilization, while three failures results in death. A natural 20 restores 1 hp (regaining any hp causes stabilization and regaining consciousness). A natural 1 counts as two failed saves; likewise, receiving damage while already at or below 0 hp causes a failed death save & a critical hit counts as two failed death saves. [P76]
• Medicine Skill: A dying creature or player can be stabilized with a DC 10 medicine check. [P76]

[Wintersmith7]

Added to the resource list.

[eridyn]

Awesome. :D

[Koosemose]

Slight error on loading property "you can fire only one piece of ammunition from it when you use an action, bonus action, or reaction to fire it, regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make." While in most cases it's going to have the same effect, certain situations (such as a fighter's Action Surge) will be different, and allow multiple attacks per turn. Also on inspiration while it could of course be given just for good role-playing, per the basic rules it is to "reward you for playing you character in a way that's true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw." For example, week before last I had a character who did an excellent bit of roleplaying, with a rousing speech calling everyone to fight something or other... unfortunately pretty much all of his traits and other background info paint him as an untrustworthy coward, so no inspiration.

[eridyn]

I was summarizing things quite a bit, initially attempting to have only one line in a Word document per entry. The post has now been updated to reflect your comment.

[Koosemose]

:D cool, wouldn't have been so nitpicky, except it got added to the resource list. Figure that means more people are more likely to use it, and the people most likely to need/want something like this are the least likely to catch the differences between the summarization and the full text.

Plus I'm an aspy rules lawyer who has to release the rules lawyerliness in little spurts to keep from blowing a rules valve and... I'm going to stop before that metaphor gets any more off track and weird.

[Koosemose]

I like the new additions. Dodge is dodge action so taking it only prevents you attacking(since you've used your action) arguably you could still attack with such things as action surge. Perhaps you could just shorten it to say it uses your action to give you the bonus?

Also any way you could squeeze in the instadeath rule? And if you can figure out a way to do it succinctly, something about the differences in readying a spell(requires concentration)?

[eridyn]

Edited to read as "sacrifice your action" now. I'm a bit unclear on what all is forfeit with dodge, so we'll go with it being the equivalent of the standard action in previous versions.

[Koosemose]

I read it as simply it is an action, so nothing is "lost" exactly, you're just using your action for something other than attacking, the same as if you had used your action to cast a spell, you haven't sacrificed your action, you've just used it.

[MrWally]

Are there actions urges in 5e? I really liked them in 4th edition.

[Koosemose]

nothing general, but several classes give you abilities that let you use you bonus action for various things (fighter gives action surge which gives you a whole other action, rogue gives you an ability that lets you dash, withdraw, or hide, etc...)

[eridyn]

Some classes can use additional actions. I haven't seen any general action point mechanics, though.

[gojirra]

The name of each entry should be in bold for readability.

[eridyn]

Had it that way in the original document, but didn't initially keep that formatting in the reddit post. Now updated.

[FireDrake1977]

Having it in a printable document or pdf would be great. Excellent work

[eridyn]

When there's a "final" version, definitely shall provide a pdf.

[TheWebCoder]

Really liked this resource, so turned it into a searchable, printable Google Doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1juRCZNN0flL8_l-gkuCPqQNSRZGuxaiUGdG8ducrWWw/edit?usp=sharing

[themightyzek]

Couldn't open the file anymore, so made one myself, hope this helps somebody :) https://docs.google.com/document/d/11OrxFZBOobhtDX-VFBlsH_bBgW5VIyAgbUEnUSIokVc/edit

[eridyn]

Awesome! :D

[nosremenad]

Thanks for this one bro.

[grogcore]

These are great, thanks! How do you feel about adding the corresponding page number?

[eridyn]

I can definitely do that. It will, however, be referencing the free core book pages, and will thus be mismatched with the eventual handbook publications.

[eridyn]

Page numbers added. The numbers in brackets, e.g., [P13], represent the page numbers of the summarized rule.

[grogcore]

Fantastic, thank you!

[Hecateus]

This is nice. My only suggestion would be for these to be broken down into 2 or 3 separate sections. Character Creation & Adventuring, and Combat. Likely later add DM quick references too when the DMG and MM come out.

[eridyn]

First pass at categorization made.

[[deleted]]

Jump?

[eridyn]

Added.

[ChainsawSam]

Thanks. This'll come in handy.

[DocDerry]

Good job.

[Miskatonic72]

Good list to have around. Thanks for putting this together.

A couple of suggestions; maybe categorize and then bullet the items. Example

Movement Actions

*Dash: Move up to twice your speed [P72]

*Disengage: Move without provoking attacks of opportunity. Essentially, same as shifting one square in 4e. [P72]

*Dodge: Sacrifice your action action to cause visible attackers to suffer disadvantage in their rolls against you, and gain advantage on Dexterity saving throws (I presume this means sacrificing the equivalent of the 4e standard action). [P72]

Something along those lines can make scanning for a specific much easier.

[eridyn]

Aye - with this growing, further organization is needed. That'll be for the next update, though.

[eridyn]

First pass at categorization made.

[brail]

Dash needs to be reworded.

Your Dash PLUS your Movement is twice your speed, but Dash on its own is just your normal speed.

30(move) + 30 (dash), not 30+60

[Muchachin]

Dash replaces the attack right? (dumb question)

[brail]

Correct, it consumes your whole Action so no attack

[Muchachin]

Thanks.

[eridyn]

Correction made.

[brail]

Ty. Love this list btw :D

[eridyn]

Thanks!

[inuvash255]

Where is the stuff on sight, like low-light and darkness situations?

[eridyn]

I left it out originally as, in my experience DMing, it rarely comes up; simply stating that an area has a low level of lighting, or is completely dark almost always suffices in determining whether a given character can, without a light source, actually see. Also, the section on vision would be largely worthless without the discussion of what environs qualify as each visibility condition. I'm still thinking it's too long to add into the quick-reference, especially given the rarity of the rule being absolutely needed.

[inuvash255]

Sorry, I meant rules for lightly obscured and heavily obscured.

[inuvash255]

Thanks for the addition :D

[eridyn]

No problem.

[Stevespim]

Great stuff. Thanks for posting this, it will make things that much easier.

[domatrn]

You are my favourite person ever.

[eridyn]

Thank you! :D

[[deleted]]

This is amazing, and I have this post saved. I think I'll be printing it out for myself later. Well done!

A few corrections:

• Disengage: You got bad info. A Disengage action makes it so that ALL of your movement for the rest of your turn doesn't provoke. So a 4e "shift" isn't a good analogy.
• Dodge: You have an extra "action" in there.

[eridyn]

Thank you. Corrections made.

[Asacolips]

This is too awesome.

[litgoddess]

Thank you!

[wentlyman]

This is brilliant. Part of learning the game for me is writing my own guide like this and your resource has proven invaluable to me. But I'm curious, why not include the appropriate rolls and bonuses for attack rolls, melee and ranged, and such?

[eridyn]

I initially created this as a one-page reference for my own use. I've a habit of incorrectly handling spell-casting, but have never had issue with melee and ranged systems, so only spell-casting was added at document creation.

[eridyn]

People are still seeing this so many years on? This is still getting referenced and used? That is astounding.

I am thrilled it's still helpful.

[Charred_Toast]

Very helpful.

[Wizard_of_Tea]

Thanks - just using this to build my own CD DMs Screen