Index of Glossarys by Name Letters - D

Name Type Text
Damage Combat

When your attack succeeds, you deal damage. The type of weapon used determines the amount of damage you deal. Effects that modify weapon damage apply to unarmed strikes and the natural physical attack forms of creatures.

Damage reduces a target's current hit points.

Minimum Damage

If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of damage.

Strength Bonus

When you hit with a melee or thrown weapon, including a sling, add your Strength modifier to the damage result. A Strength penalty, but not a bonus, applies on attacks made with a bow that is not a composite bow.

Off-Hand Weapon

When you deal damage with a weapon in your off hand, you add only ½ your Strength bonus.

Wielding a Weapon Two-Handed

When you deal damage with a weapon that you are wielding two-handed, you add 1½ times your Strength bonus. However, you don't get this higher Strength bonus when using a light weapon with two hands.

Multiplying Damage

Sometimes you multiply damage by some factor, such as on a critical hit. Roll the damage (with all modifiers) multiple times and total the results. Note: When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage.

Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon's normal damage are never multiplied.

Ability Damage

Certain creatures and magical effects can cause temporary ability damage (a reduction to an ability score).

Damage Reduction Ability A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective). The creature takes normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. A certain kind of weapon can sometimes damage the creature normally, as noted below. The entry indicates the amount of damage ignored (usually 5 to 15 points) and the type of weapon that negates the ability. Some monsters are vulnerable to piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing damage. Some monsters are vulnerable to certain materials, such as alchemical silver, adamantine, or cold-forged iron. Attacks from weapons that are not made of the correct material have their damage reduced, even if the weapon has an enhancement bonus. Some monsters are vulnerable to magic weapons. Any weapon with at least a +1 magical enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls overcomes the damage reduction of these monsters. Such creatures' natural weapons (but not their attacks with weapons) are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. A few very powerful monsters are vulnerable only to epic weapons; that is, magic weapons with at least a +6 enhancement bonus. Such creatures' natural weapons are also treated as epic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Some monsters are vulnerable to chaotic-, evil-, good-, or lawful-aligned weapons. When a cleric casts align weapon, affected weapons might gain one or more of these properties, and certain magic weapons have these properties as well. A creature with an alignment subtype (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful) can overcome this type of damage reduction with its natural weapons and weapons it wields as if the weapons or natural weapons had an alignment (or alignments) that match the subtype(s) of the creature. When a damage reduction entry has a dash (-) after the slash, no weapon negates the damage reduction. A few creatures are harmed by more than one kind of weapon. A weapon of either type overcomes this damage reduction. A few other creatures require combinations of different types of attacks to overcome their damage reduction. A weapon must be both types to overcome this damage reduction. A weapon that is only one type is still subject to damage reduction. Ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an enhancement bonus of +1 or higher is treated as a magic weapon for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Similarly, ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an alignment gains the alignment of that projectile weapon (in addition to any alignment it may already have). Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk's stunning, and injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact. Attacks that deal no damage because of the target's damage reduction do not disrupt spells. If a creature has damage reduction from more than one source, the two forms of damage reduction do not stack. Instead, the creature gets the benefit of the best damage reduction in a given situation.
Damage Rolls Action If the attack roll result equals or exceeds the target's AC, the attack hits and you deal damage. Roll the appropriate damage for your weapon. Damage is deducted from the target's current hit points.
Darkvision Ability Darkvision is the extraordinary ability to see with no light source at all, out to a range specified for the creature. Darkvision is black and white only (colors cannot be discerned). It does not allow characters to see anything that they could not see otherwise—invisible objects are still invisible, and illusions are still visible as what they seem to be. Likewise, darkvision subjects a creature to gaze attacks normally. The presence of light does not spoil darkvision.
Darkwood Materials This rare magic wood is as hard as normal wood but very light. Any wooden or mostly wooden item (such as a bow, an arrow, or a spear) made from darkwood is considered a masterwork item and weighs only half as much as a normal wooden item of that type. Items not normally made of wood or only partially of wood (such as a battleaxe or a mace) either cannot be made from darkwood or do not gain any special benefit from being made of darkwood. The armor check penalty of a darkwood shield is lessened by 2 compared to an ordinary shield of its type. To determine the price of a darkwood item, use the original weight but add 10 gp per pound to the price of a masterwork version of that item. Darkwood has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 5.
Database Help DB Help

All the help I could hope to provide to my helpers.

Remember, you can e-mail me or IM me at any time if you need help!

Adding more help

If you're reading this because you can edit the database, you can also edit this help. So, if you figure anything out that you don't want to forget, or think would be helpful to others, click that handy "edit this" link above and add it!

Names versus Sort Names

Names are how you would normally read them, while sort names try to group escalating powers within a name.

Here's a quick example:
Name: Greater Status.

Sort Name: Status, Greater

Please try to follow this guideline as it will make human and machine searching and linking work properly.

Duplicates

The only place where duplicates are allowed is in Items. Everywhere else, using the same name twice is BAD. If two different spells use the same name, rename the newer one and create a spell group named "Duplicate [original spell name]" and place both spells into it. The new name you give the spell should be as similar as possible to the original name. An example is float and Float of Livre d'Aquatha, Both of these spells were named Float, but the second one came from a dragon magazine. I used the name of the spell book it is described as my differentiator.

Deleting

At this time, the database does not support deleting any main entries. You can delete book references, groupings, etc, but not a spell or the like. Your only means of resolution is to replace the thing that needs deleted with another entry. Basically, edit the old one out of existance.

The Back Button

Watch your use of the back button, sometimes you may create something multiple times if you back button back to the original blank page.

This may be the desired result for some special cases, but normally this is not good.

New [something] By Splat.

These links at the top of the edit pages are there to save you time. "Splats" are how the text for what the screen discusses naturally occur. A spell splat looks like the main spell description in the PHB. A feat splat looks like any feat description in the PHB. An item splat, which is not yet implemented (8/31/05), will look like the primary item description.

The splat pages describe their own use fairly well. No splat page automatically creates a new item until after you have reviewed the edit page and click the "Update" button. All splat pages will bring up an existing entry with the same name if one already exists. Use your back button to change the name of your new thing and try again. If the splat and the found thing are the same, then update appropriately.

If you're using image PDF files, I don't want to know about it. If you are typing things in yourself and you have a scanner, check your scanner's software and see if you have an OCR program that came with it. If it did, use it! It will save you time to copy and paste the OCR text over typing it yourself. (Unless you are a very skilled typist. But your fingers may prefer the lighter abuse of the OCR software.)

I also recommend a C-Pen. I have a C-Pen 10, although the C-Pen 20 appears better. I use mine often to read the short spell descriptions and to capture other random text when appropriate.

Should you notice any common OCR errors that your OCR software generates (such as id8 instead of 1d8), let me know and I can update the splat processor to automatically clean those out. My C-Pen likes to add an = sign before capital Ys, so I have it clean that for me.

Description boxes and HTML tags

If there are NO <p> tags in the text, the site will automatically replace all new-lines with them. This is ok for most things and saves time when you can get the text in with just new lines at each paragraph. However, if you going to use ordered lists, unordered lists, tables, or other block level tags that conflict with the paragraph tag then you will need to explicitly place them, otherwise you will have random paragraph tags in your other elements and not validate.

Additionally, I prefer tables to have a '1' border, I have yet to find the right mix of CSS rules to get what the browers generate for border='1', so please make sure to create your tables with borde='1'. I also prefer all attributes to be in single quotes. Should you find any tables that violate this, please fix them.

Spells

I frequently play in campaigns that feature Recharge Magic from Unearthed Arcana. If you don't know what to set the recharge time to, please set it to Prohibited, so I know to examine it and set one.

If a spell appears in more than one source and the "Level:" lines do not match, please do not delete any unlisted classes or domains. Frequently the missing classes or domains are simply not mentioned in the book. If a level changes, update that. I generally do not even remove unlisted SRD classes.

All spells have a range, a target/effect/area, School, casting time, duration, short description, long description, and a source. If you forget the source, the spell will not appear in any listings because the site will not know the copyright state. If a spell has a range of Personal, the target is invariably the word "You". The reverse is also true. Personal spells almost never have any Spell resistance nor Saving Throw lines. Do not populate them unless the spell description adaquetely explains why something should be there.

The Short Description is for the description found in the book. If you wish to expand on it, use the Medium description field. In many queries, this will be used as a substitute for the short description. You may revise the short description if it does not agree with the long description.

If a spell has a damage type, please use the phrase "_____ damage" (fill in the blank) in the short description. That is, if you know a spell does cold damage, don't just say "A blast of cold does 2d6 damage" say "A blast of cold does 2d6 cold damage." Other damage types include force damage, acid damage, fire damage, sonic damage, holy damage, etc. This makes it easier to search for spells by specific damage type. (ATB note: Actually, the damage types will likely end up having an energy type tag put around them, I just haven't gotten energy types as their own thing yet. Elements will be around soon too.)

"Saving Throw: Yes" is meaningless! E-mail WOTC customer support and ask them what it should have been. Use your best judgement and fill in something meaningful until you get a response.

Try to use an existing options in the picklists rather than adding new ones if possible. I don't mean completely change the spell, but if the picklist offers "Concentration (maximum 10 rounds)" and the spell calls for "Concentration for up to 10 rounds", use the existing option.

Spells all use "min." for minutes, please don't add lines that say "minutes".

Spells are written in the PHB in the second person. Please modify spells that are written in the third person to be in the second person to make the site present spells in a consistent voice. The Book of Vile Darkness contains a number of spells in the third person. I did not fix all of them. If you come across any spells with the wrong voice and you have time, feel free to fix them.

Feats

There isn't much to say about feats. Don't worry about the "Full_Text" blocks, those are from the feeding database I used. I don't need these filled in as I can regenerate them from the other blocks that I do want.

The "Prelude" section refers to the text in a feat description that appears between the name of the feat and the prerequisites. This field is limited to around 255 characters. Which generally fills the box up exactly. If you need more space than that, copy the remainder into the benefit section. Edit it so it appears nicely.

Items

This is an area that I haven't done as much with as I'd like, please provide feedback on how these pages could be made easier or better.

Please fill in the "Slot" picklist with Held for things you use with your hands, like weapons, lanterns, etc.

Please fill in the hardness and HP if you have the time to look up what these numbers probably are.

Deities

Deities have so many choices of domains based off of what sources you find them in. Once I find a domain attributed to a deity, unless I find another source that explicitly revokes it, it remains.

Sources

When creating a new source, make sure the "Short name" is unique, or the site will be mean to you. Also, try to stick with something short (like 5 characters or less.)

Please look at other similar existing sources to get a sense of what I'm looking for when you create a new one. Or just e-mail me and ask for the new source to be added.

The "Order on Copyright listing should be some random number in the 10000 range or higher. It is used on the Copyright page to sort the OGL sources.

The release date should be as accurate as possible, although if no specific date is known, but the month and year is, use the first day of that month. This is my planned replacement for sorting should the need arise. It is also a useful metric.

The Open Gaming License source checkbox should be checked only for sources that are entirely OGL. If any part of what will be entered into this database is not OGL, then do not check this off. It is also bad form not to ask the OGL source company permission first, or at least let them know you are doing it.

The Explicit copyright given checkbox indicates that the source has granted permission to show the full contents on this site. The source does not have to be OGL to give this, it just means I have gotten written permission to reproduce their content free of charge.

The GrayHawk Category picklist is a dangerous thing to change. It resets all the spells in that source to whatever category you choose. It doesn't stick on the source editing page, but what you do is instantaneously done to all spells. Try not to fuss with it.

When you KNOW you have completed adding all items, feats, or spells from a source, double check what you've done with the DnD Index. If you have gotten them all, go edit the source and check off that that class of thing is done for that source. This will remove that source from the picklist of sources on the edit thing page. It will also mark it as complete on the sources index for that thing. This check box was added so I could monitor my progress and to clean up those picklists, as they were getting too long and unweildy.

The Source Description is used just to describe the source book. It can be anything including the back cover text or just a quick description.

The OGL Copyright Notice Section Line is used for all sources' copyright notice. For all sources, this line looks like "<i>Ghostwalk</i> Copyright 2003, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Monte Cook and Sean K Reynolds". This section is VITALLY important. You can push the boundries of copyright excerpts farther if you credit your source. It is also displayed on the Copyright Notice link for the site. This allows for compliance with the OGL. Not doing this would cause serious trouble as well. Again, the format is "italics book title, copyright year, Publishing company; any authors if specially noted."

Domain / Level Groups

Level groups is just a fancy way of saying caster class. Domains are domains. If you need a new class spell list or a new domain, this is where you go to add it. When you create a class or domain, you need to give it a unqiue name and tell it how many levels it goes up to. It is very difficult to delete or correct this should you get it wrong, so double check twice. If it is a domain, mark the domain box, if not, check the Normal box.

Domains will gain a box for the power description, please fill this in. You can also type the spells that are in the domain into a set of boxes, one for each spell. Type the name in exactly as it is found in the database and it will add that spell to that level in the domain.

For classes, you get a different way to add spells, you pick the level and type spells comma separated (if a spell has a comma in it, you'll need to go to that spell.) Keep picking levels until you have all the spell lists in. If any spells failed, either work on your spelling or check to see if it really exists yet.

For both naming boxes, use "Greater Invisibility" rather than "Invisibility, Greater" styles of the names.

Dazzled Condition The creature is unable to see well because of overstimulation of the eyes. A dazzled creature takes a -1 penalty on attack rolls, Search checks, and Spot checks.
Dead Condition The character's hit points are reduced to -10, his Constitution drops to 0, or he is killed outright by a spell or effect. The character's soul leaves his body. Dead characters cannot benefit from normal or magical healing, but they can be restored to life via magic. A dead body decays normally unless magically preserved, but magic that restores a dead character to life also restores the body either to full health or to its condition at the time of death (depending on the spell or device). Either way, resurrected characters need not worry about rigor mortis, decomposition, and other conditions that affect dead bodies.
Deafened Condition A deafened character cannot hear. She takes a -4 penalty on initiative checks, automatically fails Listen checks, and has a 20% chance of spell failure when casting spells with verbal components. Characters who remain deafened for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them.
Death Attacks Ability

In most cases, a death attack allows the victim a Fortitude save to avoid the affect, but if the save fails, the character dies instantly.

  • Raise dead doesn't work on someone killed by a death attack.
  • Death attacks slay instantly. A victim cannot be made stable and thereby kept alive.
  • In case it matters, a dead character, no matter how she died, has -10 hit points.
  • The spell death ward protects a character against these attacks.
Delay Action By choosing to delay, you take no action and then act normally on whatever initiative count you decide to act. When you delay, you voluntarily reduce your own initiative result for the rest of the combat. When your new, lower initiative count comes up later in the same round, you can act normally. You can specify this new initiative result or just wait until some time later in the round and act then, thus fixing your new initiative count at that point. You never get back the time you spend waiting to see what's going to happen. You can't, however, interrupt anyone else's action (as you can with a readied action). Initiative Consequences of Delaying Your initiative result becomes the count on which you took the delayed action. If you come to your next action and have not yet performed an action, you don't get to take a delayed action (though you can delay again). If you take a delayed action in the next round, before your regular turn comes up, your initiative count rises to that new point in the order of battle, and you do not get your regular action that round.
Determining Awareness Combat Sometimes all the combatants on a side are aware of their opponents, sometimes none are, and sometimes only some of them are. Sometimes a few combatants on each side are aware and the other combatants on each side are unaware. Determining awareness may call for Listen checks, Spot checks, or other checks.
Dexterity (Dex) Abilities

Dexterity measures hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, and balance. This ability is the most important one for rogues, but it's also high on the list for characters who typically wear light or medium armor (rangers and barbarians) or no armor at all (monks, wizards, and sorcerers), and for anyone who wants to be a skilled archer.

You apply your character's Dexterity modifier to:

  • Ranged attack rolls, including those for attacks made with bows, crossbows, throwing axes, and other ranged weapons.
  • Armor Class (AC), provided that the character can react to the attack.
  • Reflex saving throws, for avoiding fireballs and other attacks that you can escape by moving quickly.
  • Balance, Escape Artist, Hide, Move Silently, Open Lock, Ride, Sleight of Hand, Tumble, and Use Rope checks. These are the skills that have Dexterity as their key ability.
Diminutive Size This creature size has the following attributes: +4 size bonus to AC and Attacks. -12 size penalty to Grapple checks. They may share a square of a Medium creature or larger with no penalty.
Direct Or Redirect a Spell Action Some spells allow you to redirect the effect to new targets or areas after you cast the spell. Redirecting a spell requires a move action and does not provoke attacks of opportunity or require concentration.
Disabled Condition A character with 0 hit points, or one who has negative hit points but has become stable and conscious, is disabled. A disabled character may take a single move action or standard action each round (but not both, nor can she take full-round actions). She moves at half speed. Taking move actions doesn't risk further injury, but performing any standard action (or any other action the game master deems strenuous, including some free actions such as casting a quickened spell) deals 1 point of damage after the completion of the act. Unless the action increased the disabled character's hit points, she is now in negative hit points and dying. A disabled character with negative hit points recovers hit points naturally if she is being helped. Otherwise, each day she has a 10% chance to start recovering hit points naturally (starting with that day); otherwise, she loses 1 hit point. Once an unaided character starts recovering hit points naturally, she is no longer in danger of losing hit points (even if her current hit points are negative).
Disarm Action As a melee attack, you may attempt to disarm your opponent. If you do so with a weapon, you knock the opponent's weapon out of his hands and to the ground. If you attempt the disarm while unarmed, you end up with the weapon in your hand. If you're attempting to disarm a melee weapon, follow the steps outlined here. If the item you are attempting to disarm isn't a melee weapon the defender may still oppose you with an attack roll, but takes a penalty and can't attempt to disarm you in return if your attempt fails. Step 1 Attack of Opportunity. You provoke an attack of opportunity from the target you are trying to disarm. (If you have the Improved Disarm feat, you don't incur an attack of opportunity for making a disarm attempt.) If the defender's attack of opportunity deals any damage, your disarm attempt fails. Step 2 Opposed Rolls. You and the defender make opposed attack rolls with your respective weapons. The wielder of a two-handed weapon on a disarm attempt gets a +4 bonus on this roll, and the wielder of a light weapon takes a -4 penalty. (An unarmed strike is considered a light weapon, so you always take a penalty when trying to disarm an opponent by using an unarmed strike.) If the combatants are of different sizes, the larger combatant gets a bonus on the attack roll of +4 per difference in size category. If the targeted item isn't a melee weapon, the defender takes a -4 penalty on the roll. Step 3 Consequences. If you beat the defender, the defender is disarmed. If you attempted the disarm action unarmed, you now have the weapon. If you were armed, the defender's weapon is on the ground in the defender's square. If you fail on the disarm attempt, the defender may immediately react and attempt to disarm you with the same sort of opposed melee attack roll. His attempt does not provoke an attack of opportunity from you. If he fails his disarm attempt, you do not subsequently get a free disarm attempt against him. Note: A defender wearing spiked gauntlets can't be disarmed. A defender using a weapon attached to a locked gauntlet gets a +10 bonus to resist being disarmed.
Disease Ability When a character is injured by a contaminated attack touches an item smeared with diseased matter, or consumes disease-tainted food or drink, he must make an immediate Fortitude saving throw. If he succeeds, the disease has no effect—his immune system fought off the infection. If he fails, he takes damage after an incubation period. Once per day afterward, he must make a successful Fortitude saving throw to avoid repeated damage. Two successful saving throws in a row indicate that he has fought off the disease and recovers, taking no more damage. These Fortitude saving throws can be rolled secretly so that the player doesn't know whether the disease has taken hold.
Divination Magic Divination spells enable you to learn secrets long forgotten, to predict the future, to find hidden things, and to foil deceptive spells. Many divination spells have cone-shaped areas. These move with you and extend in the direction you look. The cone defines the area that you can sweep each round. If you study the same area for multiple rounds, you can often gain additional information, as noted in the descriptive text for the spell.
Divine Focus (DF) Magic A divine focus component is an item of spiritual significance. The divine focus for a cleric or a paladin is a holy symbol appropriate to the character's faith. If the Components line includes F/DF or M/DF, the arcane version of the spell has a focus component or a material component (the abbreviation before the slash) and the divine version has a divine focus component (the abbreviation after the slash).
Double Weapons Weapon Category Dire flails, dwarven urgroshes, gnome hooked hammers, orc double axes, quarterstaffs, and two-bladed swords are double weapons. A character can fight with both ends of a double weapon as if fighting with two weapons, but he or she incurs all the normal attack penalties associated with two-weapon combat, just as though the character were wielding a one-handed weapon and a light weapon. The character can also choose to use a double weapon two handed, attacking with only one end of it. A creature wielding a double weapon in one hand can't use it as a double weapon—only one end of the weapon can be used in any given round.
Dragon Type Type

A dragon is a reptile-like creature, usually winged, with magical or unusual abilities.

Features

A dragon has the following features.

  • 12-sided Hit Dice.
  • Base attack bonus equal to total Hit Dice (as fighter).
  • Good Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves.
  • Skill points equal to (6 + Int modifier, minimum 1) per Hit Die, with quadruple skill points for the first Hit Die.
Traits

A dragon possesses the following traits (unless otherwise noted in the description of a particular kind).

  • Darkvision out to 60 feet and low-light vision.
  • Immunity to magic sleep effects and paralysis effects.
  • Proficient with no armor.
  • Dragons eat, sleep, and breathe.
Dragonhide Materials Armorsmiths can work with the hides of dragons to produce armor or shields of masterwork quality. One dragon produces enough hide for a single suit of masterwork hide armor for a creature one size category smaller than the dragon. By selecting only choice scales and bits of hide, an armorsmith can produce one suit of masterwork banded mail for a creature two sizes smaller, one suit of masterwork half-plate for a creature three sizes smaller, or one masterwork breastplate or suit of full plate for a creature four sizes smaller. In each case, enough hide is available to produce a small or large masterwork shield in addition to the armor, provided that the dragon is Large or larger. Because dragonhide armor isn't made of metal, druids can wear it without penalty. Dragonhide armor costs double what masterwork armor of that type ordinarily costs, but it takes no longer to make than ordinary armor of that type. Dragonhide has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 10.
Draw Or Sheathe a Weapon Action Drawing a weapon so that you can use it in combat, or putting it away so that you have a free hand, requires a move action. This action also applies to weapon-like objects carried in easy reach, such as wands. If your weapon or weapon-like object is stored in a pack or otherwise out of easy reach, treat this action as retrieving a stored item. If you have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher, you may draw a weapon as a free action combined with a regular move. If you have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, you can draw two light or one-handed weapons in the time it would normally take you to draw one. Drawing ammunition for use with a ranged weapon (such as arrows, bolts, sling bullets, or shuriken) is a free action.
Drop an Item Action Dropping an item in your space or into an adjacent square is a free action.
Drop Prone Action Dropping to a prone position in your space is a free action.
Dying Condition A dying character is unconscious and near death. She has -1 to -9 current hit points. A dying character can take no actions and is unconscious. At the end of each round (starting with the round in which the character dropped below 0 hit points), the character rolls d% to see whether she becomes stable. She has a 10% chance to become stable. If she does not, she loses 1 hit point. If a dying character reaches -10 hit points, she is dead.