Character Building

Hello Everyone!

Whether you have never created a character before, have created 1 or 2 for other campaigns, or have created more characters than you have friends, I hope that this outline of character building can help you figure out the important facets of your character before or during session zero.
A minor preface: The players handbook (linked below) has a section about creating a character that starts with race and class and builds out backstory afterwards. I have made many characters that way, and they can be very fun. However I prefer to build out the backstory first, and then figure out my race and class. It makes for more cohesive and interesting character In my opinion. Feel free to make the character which ever way you prefer, and just run it by me. As long as you are Actively Trying to break my game, I'm gonna be chill with it. Now, on with the show.

Step 0: Preparing

Not technically necessary, but its going to make the process smoother. First, grab all of your materials. If you are doing this on paper, please grab

• Your character sheet (Themed (WIP), Generic, Website Link
• Grab two pages of 8.5 - 11 in paper, lined or unlined
• Grab a pencil, because you will need to write an erase things.
• Grab your dice: 1d4, 1-5d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, and 1d20 , or use an Online Dice Roller
1. Grab your Players Handbook (PHB)or use an online version (2014 or 2024 addition)

I know this was a tad annoying, but you now have everything you need in front of you to make a character.

Step 1: Choosing a playstyle

This may be the most important step and so we are going to start thinking about it here, but this can change at any time in your character building adventure. In fact, I am going to join you, making my own NPC character that will be in this world!
Consider who you want your character to be: Brash and Stubborn? Cunning and Mischievous? Noble and Brave? Cowardly but good hearted? Who do you want to play for the story ahead? I sure feel overwhelmed by that question every time I make a character, so lets work through it together.

First, what is your characters primary virtue and vice? These key motives will help you understand what leads them to make the choices they do. My characters key virtue is going to be compassion, so they will primarily be motivated to understand and help others. their key vice is going to be cowardice, so they will want to shy away from conflict, confrontation and danger wherever they can.
Yay! We now have a 1 dimension set of character traits. Sarcasm aside, this is the framework we are going to build up the character off of. Consider why they have their virtue and vice? I've decided that my character is compassionate because their parents ran a soup kitchen for the poor, and so they have experienced the good that kindness and openness can do for someone who needs a little help. However, their cowardice also stems from this, because desperate people would sometimes try to steal or threaten them and their parents, and so they learned to be wary of the people around them and the places they spent time in.


Now I can take this and run. What else did their parents do? Are they old enough to leave their parents and live on their own? What did they do when that happened. Did they ever get in a tragic accident? Did they get incredibly lucky? Did someone try to take advantage of their kindness? Do they have a partner? Children? What happened to their parents? You shouldn't try to answer all of these questions, but answer the ones that help pull apart what drives them.
The point of this is to figure out what motivates your character before anything else. This will help you choose your race, class, background, and it will help define who this character is, what they believe and what they look like in your mind. After about 10 mins of thinking and considering things, I think I'm going to make this character a woman, who still works at the soup kitchen her parents owned because she wants to help people, and I think that she has a partner, a taller woman who helps make her feel more physically safe. I also think that in her free time, she likes to read, and to go hiking out in the woods around wherever she lives.

Step 2: Background

Flip through your Players Handbook and go to Page 126/176 (2014/2024) and take a look through your potential backgrounds. If you have other books, you can find the Backgrounds section in those as well. These backgrounds can help cement some of the looser details that we discussed in the previous step, and can give you some guiderails that you can move along if you feel uncertain. But what if none of these seem right? Certainly, none of them seem right for my character. Well, we can create a background for your character that does fit! A few notes about my world and my rules now: I don't like the addition of ability score increases to backgrounds, especially as big a boost as they are. I much prefer the equipment, and proficiencies system because it added actual flavor to your backstory and gave me a reason to have you use these tools and proficiencies. Bigger number better is kinda lame. So, for now, just write down your backstory and we will talk about the meaning of it in session 0 or online. Take this background and use it to see how it affects your character? How did it affect your character? Did they gain any new character traits? Do they have any friends from the background? Did they have to do anything that challenged their view of themselves? For my character, I am going to choose to make a custom backstory, but I think the bonuses from Acolyte make great sense for her. We will say that years devoted to helping others has led her to devote herself to a god (which you can find in The Coraluna Pantheon LATER), and she met her girlfriend at this church.

Step 3: Race/Class

Let's take a tiny step back for a second and look at what we have. Hopefully, you have a character who has interests, passions, flaws, and connections to others. Now, we need to choose a race and a class. These are on pages 18/184, 46/48 (2014/2024), and read up on the classes and races/species. You could also go online and watch YouTube videos (JoCat has a great series about all of them) This defines the meat and potatoes of what kinds of things you will be doing in the campaign. Now, listen to me, very carefully. No class or race is wrong for your backstory. Some are suboptimal (ie your abilities dont stack super well), but none of them are wrong. In fact, suboptimal characters can be amazing. You can flavor any class or race for any backstory. Looking at my character I could make her a human cleric, and play into all of her backstory. But I also could make her a Tabaxi rogue, and have her be more skitish. She could be an Air Genasi druid who worships a god of the harvest and of food. I could even have her be a Wild Magic Barbarian gnome, who instead of raging, becomes possessed by an angel of her god when she goes into combat. You can do anything, as long as the flavor is fun. I will work with you to make your character fit your interests.
For my character I think I am going to have her be a half-elven warlock, who believes she is worshiping one god, but is actually being adopted into a cult. Her partner also is a member of this cult, and is a paladin.

Step 4: Miscellaneous things

First, I am going to choose the name of my character. If you already had one in mind, skip past this. You can use the naming sections in the PHB, which will be associated with the race, or you can just make it up because it sounds right. I am going to name my half elven warlock Lucellus Inva, because why not, its a fun name. |
Second, lets roll our stats. Before rolling, lets talk about the stats themselves. These direct the rolls you make in the game. If you prioritize strength, but decided to have a lower wisdom score, you will be great and lifting things but you might not be able to understand the subtext of the duke's code words at the grand ball. I recommend you prioritize the stats mentioned in the Class section of the PHB (you read that right?) but it can also be fun to dump one of those as the lower stat. Traditionally, there are three standard methods of rolling stats, and we are going to use the 4d6, drop the lowest method. That means you will, for each of the big 6 stats, roll 4d6, and then drop the lowest one. If you roll a 1, I allow you to reroll it Once if you roll a 1 twice, the dice gods have spoken, and you have to deal with it.
Finally, go back through to your background and class and choose your proficiencies. Choose ones that you think your character would reasonably have in their arsenal.


Lucellus, I rolled my stats, and prioritized charisma and intelligence, and put strength and dexterity as my lower stats. Let's hope she doesn't get into close quarters combat! Finally, I chose my tool, skill, and language proficiencies from my background, race and class.

Step 5: Equipment and Spells

First, lets start with equipment. Under your class it will tell you a standard set of goods you have access to or it will give you an amount of gold to purchase things from the equipment section of the PHB. Go work through what you want to have on you, whether it's a spear and javelin, or a set of knives and an orb to cast spells.
Finally, if you are a martial class, you did it! Yippie!If you are a spell casting class, please reach out to me. Choosing spells requires a lot of time and energy to decide. 6r9f7jhb

Already know what you are doing?

If you want to skip the walkthrough and get right to the lore, please go to your Campaign Settings in this page!