Creating a Dungeons and Dragons character is an enjoyable experience, but it can be a bit difficult if you’re new to the game. We’ve put together a character creation guide and tips to help you make your first of many DnD characters.
Character creation guide:
When creating a new character you will need to choose a race, class, determine ability scores, choose equipment, and determine background and personality traits.
Choose a race
Races are the character species you can play as in the game. Race determines your character’s physical features as well as natural abilities and tendencies. Each race has its own racial traits, which determine your beginning skill bonuses. Race is a major identity that helps define your character.
Almost every race in DnD has a set of personality and cultural tendencies built into its lore. Drow, for example, tends to be evil and worship spiders, while half-elves tend to be more nomadic and love freedom. Some races also have helpful or harmful physical traits that can make choosing one beneficial in some situations but not others. To pick your first race, you can also read the descriptions of each race to get an idea of what they look like and how they act. It is helpful to look over each racial section’s traits and typical personalities to find the one that fits you the most, then get some basic info about all the subraces so you can choose one that fits even better.
Choose a class
Class is one of the defining characteristics of your DnD character. It serves as a person’s career path and defines their role in the world. A character’s class represents the character’s training. A class decision is one of the first things to make in character creation, as the features gained from your class will play a major role in how you interact with the world around you. Each class has some special class features and proficiencies, and each class has an explanation of what you can do as a member of that class. If you have a tendency toward spellcasting, choose the wizard. If you want to wear heavy armor and be in the thick of combat most of the time, choose a fighter. You can read through each class‘s section in the PHB to figure out which one you want your character to be.
DnD character classes you can choose from
- Artificer
- Barbarian
- Bard
- Cleric
- Druid
- Fighter
- Monk
- Paladin
- Ranger
- Rogue
- Sorcerer
- Warlock
- Wizard
Determine ability scores
Six abilities provide a quick description of every creature’s physical and mental characteristics:
Your strength measures your character’s physical power and is the basis for deciding your character’s carrying capacity. The dexterity ability measures agility, balance, and reflexes. Constitution represents health, stamina, and vital force. Intelligence affects the reasoning and memory capabilities of your character. Wisdom describes perception, self-discipline, empathy, insight, and intuition. Charisma measures a hero’s personality, personal magnetism, and ability to lead.
The game uses these six abilities to measure a character’s or monster’s natural aptitudes and capabilities.
Choose equipment
Classes and backgrounds determine starting equipment, along with the character’s level. This includes your character’s armor, used to determine your Armor Class, as well as the weapons that you wield that determine your attack roll values. Characters receive an adventurer’s pack free of charge at 1st level. This begins to represent all the equipment a character can be expected to own on first starting out into the world. Additional gear can also be included in starting equipment.
Determine the character’s background and personality traits
Your background is your character’s history. Where did they come from and what were they doing before the game you are playing? Backstories provide additional proficiencies, equipment, languages, and skills that reflect the training and experiences of your youth.
A personality trait is a specific descriptor for your character. Personality traits are the aspects of your character’s personality, beliefs, values, physical characteristics, and skills. They could be almost anything about your character, including how they feel about something. What you decide will depend on how you want your character to look and act in the game. To find the right traits for your character, think about what makes them unique and interesting to others. What do they like? What do they dislike? How did they grow up? Where did they grow up? What’s their relationship with their family like? What kind of skills do they have? If a potential player were to ask someone else what makes your character special, what would they say? That’s probably a good trait!
Create YOUR DnD character
When it comes to building a Dungeons & Dragons character, there are guidelines that explain the mechanics of your character’s abilities. But what really makes your character is your intentions with them, who they are, and where they came from. When creating your DnD character there are many ways to go about it. First, we need to consider the individual parts that make up the whole character. Race, Class, Stats, Ability Scores, and the Background. So where do you start?
While the official rules suggest selecting your race first it doesn’t have to be the only way of creating your character. When creating a new character you should consider a few things.
If you are starting with the race, you’ll first determine your character’s physical features. And if you have imagined your preferred fighting style or maybe having spellcasting abilities you’ll probably start with the class. And maybe you’ll choose your character’s background first. You may have imagined that you were born during the war and that you had to join the army at a very young age. That’s how you learned to wield a sword. No matter what approach to character creation you take it is not wrong. But I would suggest one thing. Talk to your party and your Dungeon Master about the lore you are playing in.
I don’t want to reinforce the idea that your character has to meet a specific or precise “build” in order to be successful but you must understand your role in the party. Building huge high-damage characters is fun but so is helping other characters do their thing best. Consider how your character’s mechanics can directly benefit the group.
Talk to your DM about the lore
I’ve been playing a homebrew campaign where all the magic in the lore is forbidden and punishable by death. And even though our Dungeon Master hasn’t forbidden the players to choose a spellcasting class this lore makes spellcasters hide and rarely use their magic. Such things are crucial to consider in character making so that you don’t end up not enjoying the game later.
The basic takeaway is to build your character by considering both the themes of the campaign and the themes you want to play. One way to do that is to have a rough overview of the campaign in advance and think about how your character’s flavor intersects with those themes. You don’t need an explicit list or a detailed plan, but having a sense of the major elements will make it much easier to play a character that fits into that world.
There are many ways to build your character, and finding the right balance between them can be done through research and practice. The most important part of a character for you, the player, is that you enjoy playing them.
