Welcome to The Finished Book! This site contains posts analyzing the mechanics of D&D 5th edition. My interest is in understanding the math behind how the game functions, and in communicating that understanding in a way others, hopefully, find useful.
The majority of these posts were written with the 2014 5th edition rules in mind, but many remain applicable to the 2024 rules as well. And, for those that aren’t, I will undoubtedly be updating them to be compatible in the future as time permits.
Recent Posts
Initiative Probabilities
How likely are you to roll higher than your opponent in initiative? How often will you go first or second? This post looks at the math behind initiative orde...
Variability: Encounter Difficulty
What’s the probability of winning for each encounter difficulty?
Variability: Combat
How much does chance affect combat?
Variability: Saves
How do we account for variability of saving throws in D&D?
Magic Items and Encounter Balancing: part 2
How much do magic items change encounter balancing?
Variability: Attacks
How do we account for variability of attack rolls in D&D?
Variability: Damage and Healing Rolls
How do we account for variability of dice rolls for damage and healing in D&D?
Baseline Player Character Stats
An analysis of how player character stats scale as they level up.
Monster Dataset
A list of the book that make up the monster datasets used for these analysis.
Baseline Monster Stats
What are the baseline monster stats Wizards of the Coast uses for making monsters?