[I wrote this up a few years ago for an old friend. We played 1e together for many years, and he was trying to get his head around 5e.]
A few observations that may help orient:
The main resolution mechanic is an “Ability Check,” where the DM sets a target number (“DC”, Difficulty Class) and the player attempts to roll equal or more on 1d20 +/- modifiers.
Unlike the good old days, this same mechanic is used for just about everything, from attacks to skill checks (pick pocket, climb wall, open door) to saving throws, etc. So, for example, instead of THAC0 the target number is the opponent’s AC. High AC good, low AC bad.
Advantage/Disadvantage means roll two d20s and take the higher/lower roll, which translates to roughly +4/-4 bonus, but more exciting.
“Proficiency Bonus” is just a compact way to represent level vs ability tables. In the good old days, for example, fighter THAC0 decreased every three levels, cleric every four, magic-users every six. The single Proficiency Bonus table replaces all those charts, and incidentally means all classes progress at the same rate, +1/four levels.
Likewise “Ability Bonus” regularizes of all the special rules for high (or low) attributes like BB/LG, Morale, To Hit, Damage, and AC bonuses, etc. In fact, many people these days seem to ignore the actual ability score in favor of the Attribute Bonus, since the latter is used all the time in game.
Armor and weapons also have proficiency, so if you are not “proficient” with a weapon then you do not get your Proficiency Bonus.
So to “attack with advantage,” you roll 2d20, take the higher roll, add your Ability Bonus (STR or DEX), add your Proficiency Bonus (if you are proficient with the weapon), plus any situational modifiers (cover, etc.). If the total is >= monster AC, you hit.
And then we have skills. There is a small fixed list of skills based on abilities; you add your Ability Bonus when attempting them. There are also proficiency with skills. To be proficient in a skill means you also get to apply your Proficiency Bonus to the roll. Usually a character is only proficient in a few skills, selected at character creation and sometimes dictated by class, race, and background.
The combat actions are (much) more elaborate, sort of like a cross between Melee and Champions, but the basic roll initiative, roll to hit, roll damage is the same.
Spell effects work pretty much the same, but the whole spells slots / prepared spells thing is a mess. The Wizard class is closest to the magic-user we know and love. The warlock class is like a non-religious cleric, in that spells come from their “patron.” Sorcerers are somewhere between the two.
Class and racial features existed in 1e (e.g. cleric turn undead, infravision, thief’s abilities) but in the spirit of 2000’s inclusivity / everyone-is-a-winner, each class and race now has a metric buttload of ad-hoc snowflake abilities. As a DM, I hate them.
And then we have “feats.” I REALLY hate those. This is an even longer list of random abilities that characters can choose. There are a bajillion of them. When DMing I spend most of my time being surprised, as in “Oh, my character has the Defensive Duelist Feat!” So then I spend five minutes looking it up, only to find, “When you are wielding a finesse weapon with which you are proficient and another creature hits you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to add your proficiency bonus to your AC for that attack, potentially causing the attack to miss you.” Just f’ing shoot me now. Usually I try to ignore them, but some players really get into using them to help define their characters. So now we spend a few minutes up front walking through all the racial features, AND class features, AND feats. For new players, I insist on using only the Basic Rules because (a) they are free, and (b) they limit all the ad-hoc garbage.
Finally, the 5e power level is vastly higher than I recall with 1e. Everything does more damage, and everyone has more hit points. Plus, it is really easy to recover HP: short rest regains some, long rest regains ALL. It is really more like STUN these days.
There are MANY online resources, but I ended up creating an account on https://www.dndbeyond.com. You can access the Basic Rules for free, no account needed, and has a pretty good search feature. It is much easier to use than the books/PDFs when trying to look something up quickly.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules
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