Builder's Manual · Chapter 1

What You Cloned

This project is the D&D fifth edition 2024 SRD rebuilt as working data: 1,607 files across 24 types — every class, species, spell, monster, condition, and copper piece as a record the game can read, write, and reason about, stitched together by a character sheet that computes itself and builds new heroes through a guided flow.

The layers

Each layer answers a different question:

  • Rules/ answers what do the rules say? @Missing file first, then the Core Rules chapters, a 139-entry Glossary, and reference sections for equipment, magic items, monsters, and the GM's Gameplay Toolbox. Reference only — nothing operational hides here.
  • The file types answer what is stored, and what is derived? The character type carries 195 fields, 114 of them computed (chapter 2). Classes, species, backgrounds, weapons, and magic items are not descriptions — they are the inputs those computations read.
  • Game Master Instructions/ answer what does the GM actually do? Thirteen standing files plus twenty event triggers — the runtime, as opposed to the reference (chapter 4).
  • Content records are the nouns: 339 spells, 331 monsters, 632 items (including full racks of typed magic weapons, armor, and shields), 12 classes and subclasses, 9 species, 4 backgrounds — and one worked setting, Emberhollow, wired to a playable pregen.

A real rule change usually touches a pair: the rule text players read and the schema or instruction that makes it true in play. Change how Exhaustion taxes rolls and you edit @Missing file and the formulas reading exhaustionLevel — one without the other gives you a game that says one thing and does another.

The license, precisely

The rules text comes from the SRD 5.2, © 2025 Wizards of the Coast, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — share and adapt, including commercially, with the attribution statement this project carries in its settings. Not covered: the Dungeons & Dragons and D&D trademarks, artwork from published books, and everything outside the SRD — named settings, iconic monsters like the beholder, most subclasses beyond the SRD's one per class. Build and publish freely; don't trade on the marks or import unlicensed content.

This is the 2024 revision — on purpose

A sibling project carries the 2014 rules; this one deliberately does not. The load-bearing 2024 facts, enforced throughout schemas and instructions: ability scores come from backgrounds (with an Origin feat), species carry traits only, every weapon has a mastery property, Heroic Inspiration rerolls, Exhaustion is the −2/−5 ft cumulative track, surprise is initiative disadvantage, and every subclass arrives at level 3. @Missing file is the standing guard on that line. When you add content, add 2024 content — the chapters ahead show where everything goes.

Manual updated Jul 29, 2026.