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saving throw is similiar, except in this case used to resist harmful effects from spells and other sources. As an example, if you pass the saving throw against the "hold person" spell, it will have no effect on you and the spell is wasted.
ability check uses one of your non-combat abilities such as medicine or persuasion, usually in dialogue. again just have to roll a D20 higher than the difficulty to pass.
Ability checks are mostly out of combat things you have to roll a dice for, e.g. wheter your character manages to intimidate someone, spot a trap or your thief manages to lockpick a chest, etc.
When an enemy attacks you with a spell or some other ability that causes condidtion (e.g. shove), you roll a dice to determine whether you resist that condition, thus the name saving throw. Here you have to beat the difficulty class (DC) of the spell or ability. Sometimes saving throws are also used outside of combat, for example when something bad would happen to you and you can try to resist.
To all theese dice rolls you add the corresponding boni stemming from your attributes, class and gear to make you more successful in theese things.
Saving throw- the role you make to resist thing. For instance a con save is a roll to resist constitution based things like poison. A Dex save would be for things like being on ice
Ability checks are rolls when you try things not combat based. For instance persuasion is a Charisma based ability, if you are trained in it you get a bonus to that role.
Those checks all have a bonus based on your ability score bonus plus any skills or proficiency you have.
If you open your character sheet you will see those bonuses
When you try to resist a spell or effect, the roll you make is a saving throw.
An ability check is anything else. Perception to see things, persuasion in dialogue, sleight of hand for lockpicking, etc.
Most of these bonuses (or penalties) come from your core attribues, eg strength and wisdom and such, but often come from other sources.
-some baddie has an armor class of 12, you roll to see if your roll + applicable modifiers adds up to at least 12. It doesn't, you fail to hit. If it's at least 12 then another roll happens to determine damage. The game essentially shows you both of these things with % to hit and weapon damage ranges, but those are the dice mechanics those are calculated with.
-baddie throws something at you that forces a Dexterity saving throw. You roll dice to see if you roll high enough with that + you Dexterity attribute bonus. You succeed, nothing bad happens. You don't, the bad thing happens. Very common one you will run into is clerics having to succeed Constitution saving throws to avoid breaking their concentration and keep a buff going.
-you're walking around and you see perception checks pop up, successful or not. This is the same mechanic as when choosing a persuasion option in dialogue but without literally showing you the dice roll. The game is having you roll for a certain ability to see if you pass or fail some number requirement.
In general, if you want a better visibility of this stuff you can have the log at the bottom right be more explicit. Might help to feel more confident that you understand what's going on. Some stuff isn't obvious. For instance Intimidation options in conversation are Charisma rolls. It doesn't matter how buff your barbarian is, pretty likely your dainty bard would do a better job passing that ability check.
You'll grasp the ideas really quickly. A lot of the stuff like religion checks, arcana etc. are more based on background traits and are really a role playing thing. It's the game's way of aknowledging a certain character would probably, or probably not, understand something about the world or a trinket or what have you. It's mostly flavor, you can understand it later. Just focus on combat mechanics and how Charisma works with dialogues. If you grasp those you'll avoid unwanted results and frustration, for the most part.
Pummel strike falls under weapon attacks so you do an attack roll vs enemy armor to see if it hits. If it does you do a damage roll. Enemy also has to roll to see if he saves against the daze effect. If he succeeds he eats the damage, but not the effect.
thats those things like History, Nature, Animal Handling, Arcana etc?
Ability Checks are when you roll against your main stats, like STR, CON, etc.
A Saving Throw is when something is trying to affect you, and you have to resist it somehow, like using your will or dodging out of the way of a fireball. These are usually tied to your main stats in some way.
A Skill Check is when you are rolling to see if you accomplish something that you have a skill for. Like persuasion or intimidation.
An attack roll is just what it sounds like. When you roll to attack. You're trying to get a target number (which is based on your opponent's stats, armor, and other factors).
Anything that rolls for an ability. Persuasion etc in dialogue as well. The way it works, say for animal handling, is that a dice is rolled against a certain difficulty check and then bonuses are added to the roll. So say for Animal Handling, if you see on your character sheet that they have a +2 in that every check will result in X dice result + 2. This means that your average D20 roll for that will be 12.5 instead of 10.5 if you had no ability bonus.