Character Creation

You'll need to a character to play in the Echo D&D shared campaign.

Using a Premade Character

Wizards has created premade character sheets up to level 10. If you're new to the game, you can download and print out one of these to use until you're ready to create your own custom character. You can find those character sheets here.

Building a Character in D&D Beyond

D&D Beyond is a great online tool for managing your character and reading rules. D&D Beyond has a feature called content sharing, which allows players to share their purchased sourcebook content with other players in their campaign. This feature requires a subscription.
We now have an official Echo D&D account with the content sharing subscription. This account has 3 campaigns with content sharing enabled. Each campaign has 12 active character slots. Chris has created a placeholder character in each campaign so his purchased content is shared with each one. This means we can accommodate 33 players in these campaigns alone. Please only create one active character at a time. If you need to create a new character for some reason, ask Chris to deactivate your existing character.

Joining the Campaign

Talk to one of the other players about getting a link to one of our D&D Beyond Campaigns. I don't want to link to them here and risk unauthorized access.

Actually Building the Thing

When creating your character, choose the following options:

• Character Creation Method. Choose "Standard". You can check the "Show Help Text" checkbox if you'd like some additional help text.
• Character Preferences.
  • Homebrew Content. Disable.
  • Critical Role Content. Enable only if you want to play as a Blood Hunter, otherwise disable.
  • Playtest Content. enable only if you want to play as an Artificer, otherwise disable.
  • Magic: The Gathering Content. enable only if you want to play as a Order Domain Cleric or a Circle of Spores Druid, otherwise disable.
  • Eberron Content. Disable.
  • Advancement Type. Choose "Milestone". See Variant Character Advancement for more information.
  • Hit Point Type. Choose "Fixed". Your maximum hit points will be calculated automatically based on your Constitution and class hit die.
  • Use Prerequisites. Enable for both. Certain feats and multiclasses have prerequisites that your character needs to meet in order to select.
  • Encumberance Type. Choose "Use Encumbrance".
  • Ignore Coin Weight. Enable. It's assumed that the majority of your wealth is safely stored in your base of operations.
  • Character Privacy Choose "Public".
• Choose a Race. Use the "Filter Race Source(s)" dropdown to select a race from one of these sources:
  • Basic Rules
  • Elemental Evil Player's Companion
    • Not including aarakocra
  • Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
  • Player's Handbook
  • Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
    • Not including winged tieflings
  • The Tortle Package
  • Volo's Guide to Monsters
• Choose a Class. Your class broadly describes your character's vocation and what talents they possess. Any of the class options listed are fine. After choosing your first class, you'll be given options for that specific class. You'll also be able to change how many levels you have in that class (if you're joining the campaign at a level higher than 1st level). When making choices for your class features, keep the following things in mind:
  • You may choose feats for your character when appropriate, as long as they're not from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica or Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron.
  • Multiclassing is allowed. There's a button at the bottom of the class screen that says "Add Another Class". Remember that multiclassing options have prerequisites that you need to meet before you can select them, and that your character level is equal to the sum of all of your individual class levels.
• Ability Score Generation Method. Choose either "Standard Array" or "Point Buy". Standard Array gives you a predetermined set of six values to assign to each ability score, but Point Buy allows you to more finely tune your character's ability scores if you so choose.
• Background. Choose any of the options available, or make your own custom background using a background feature from an existing one. If you choose one of the background options from the Player's Handbook or one of the four new ones from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, you can see this page that includes special ways to tie your character to our campaign setting.
• Personal Characteristics. You can use any of the characteristics suggested by your background, or make up your own. Fleshing out your character’s personality will help you bring them to life as you play the game. Your background will provide suggestions for some of these, but feel free to make up your own.
  • Personality Traits. Personality traits are small, simple ways to help you set your character apart from every other character. Your personality traits should tell you something interesting and fun about your character.
  • Ideals. Your ideals are the things that you believe in most strongly, the fundamental moral and ethical principles that compel you to act as you do.
  • Bonds. Bonds represent a character’s connections to people, places, and events in the world. Whom do you care most about? To what place do you feel a special connection? What is your most treasured possession?
  • Flaws. Your character’s flaw represents some vice, compulsion, fear, or weakness — in particular, anything that someone else could exploit to bring you to ruin or cause you to act against your best interests. Flawed characters are interesting characters.
  • Goals. An unofficial "fifth thing" we're adding. Goals are things your character wants to accomplish in life. They can be short-term goals or long-term ones. I suggest you make a few of each. These goals can help inform your dungeon master of things they might want to incorporate into the campaign.
• Character Details.
  • Alignment. You can choose any non-evil alignment. This helps encourage cooperation within the group. Your alignment is much less important than your personal characteristics. Let those define your alignment, don't let your alignment define your personal characteristics.
  • Faith. our character can choose to worship any Forgotten Realms deity listed in the Player's Handbook. Clerics must worship a specific deity, but aren't limited to the domains recommended for thier deity.
  • Lifestyle. Your job within the The Adventurer's Association automatically provides you with a minimum lifestyle — poor at rank 1, modest at rank 2, comfortable at rank 3, and wealthy at rank 4. The normal costs associated with that lifestyle are taken care of by the association.
• Physical Characteristics. This is all on you.
• Starting Equipment. When asked to choose between "Equipment" or "Gold", choose "Equipment". Your starting equipment comes from your class and background. More Equipment. You can use any money you have to sell or by any equipment found in the Player's Handbook or other player resources (like this doc). This can be done between adventures. Items can be sold to merchants for half of the amount you can buy them for.
  • Trinket. In addition to the starting gear, you can choose or roll for a trinket on the Trinkets table.
  • Extra Starting Gold. If you're joining our campaign at a higher level, you can give your character additional starting gold if they're at a certain level. This represents gold your character has earned prior to joining the rest of the group.
    • 2nd Level - 100 gp
    • 3rd Level - 200 gp
    • 4th Level - 300 gp
    • 5th Level - 400 gp
    • 6th Level - 1,200 gp
    • 7th Level - 2,000 gp
    • 8th Level - 2,800 gp
    • 9th Level - 3,600 gp
    • 10th Level - 4,400 gp
    • 11th Level - 5,200 gp
    • 12th Level - 6,400 gp
    • 13th Level - 7,600 gp
    • 14th Level - 8,800 gp
    • 15th Level - 10,000 gp

And then you're done! Click "View Character Sheet" to view your character sheet.
Oh wait, you might not be quite done yet. If you picked a class with a "Spellcasting" feature, you still need to pick out your spells. Read your class's spellcasting feature description carefully (because all of them do spellcasting a little differently), and then pick out your spells known or prepared in the "Spells" section of your character sheet.

Building a Character Manually

Steps 1 & 2: Choose Race and Class

Race Options

You can use the race and subrace options in any of the following sourcebooks:

• Player's Handbook
• Elemental Evil Player's Companion
  • Not including Aarakocra
• Volo's Guide to Monsters
• The Tortle Package
• Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

Class Options

Your class broadly describes your character's vocation and what talents they possess. Classes also have subclasses, which are a way to differentiate your character from others with the same class. Some classes select thier subclass at 1st level, but other classes don't get to choose a subclass until 2nd or 3rd level.
You can use the class and subclass options in any of the following sourcebooks:

• Player's Handbook
• Xanathar's Guide to Everything
• Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica
• Unearthed Arcana: The Artificer

Step 3: Determine Ability Scores

Your character's ability scores are generated using either of the following methods:

• Standard Array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8)
• Variant: Customizing Ability Scores (PHB)

Step 4: Describe your Character

Describe your character and choose a background.
Background. You can choose or create a background using the rules in the Player's Handbook. Your background describes where you came from. What you did before becoming an adventurer. Your background provides you with some additional proficiencies and features that can come in handy as an adventurer.

• Personal Characteristics. Fleshing out your character’s personality will help you bring them to life as you play the game. Your background will provide suggestions for some of these, but feel free to make up your own.
• Personality Traits. Personality traits are small, simple ways to help you set your character apart from every other character. Your personality traits should tell you something interesting and fun about your character.
• Ideals. Your ideals are the things that you believe in most strongly, the fundamental moral and ethical principles that compel you to act as you do.
• Bonds. Bonds represent a character’s connections to people, places, and events in the world. Whom do you care most about? To what place do you feel a special connection? What is your most treasured possession?
• Flaws. Your character’s flaw represents some vice, compulsion, fear, or weakness — in particular, anything that someone else could exploit to bring you to ruin or cause you to act against your best interests. Flawed characters are interesting characters.
• Goals. An unofficial "fifth thing" we're adding. Goals are things your character wants to accomplish in life. They can be short-term goals or long-term ones. I suggest you make a few of each. These goals can help inform your dungeon master of things they might want to incorporate into the campaign.

Alignment. Player Characters in our campaign can be any non-evil alignment. This helps encourage cooperation within the group. Your alignment is much less important than your personal characteristics. Let those define your alignment, don't let your alignment define your personal characteristics.
Deities. Your character can choose to worship any Forgotten Realms deity listed in the Player's Handbook. Clerics must worship a specific deity, but aren't limited to the domains recommended for thier deity.

Step 5: Choose Equipment

You start the campaign with the starting equipment provided by your class and background.
Trinkets. You start with one trinket of your choice from the trinket table in Chapter 5 of the Player's Handbook, or you can roll randomly to determine your trinket.
Equipment. You can use any money you have to sell or by any equipment found in the Player's Handbook or other player resources (like this doc). This can be done between adventures. Items can be sold to merchants for half of the amount you can buy them for.
Extra Starting Gold. If you're joining our campaign at a higher level, you can give your character additional starting gold if they're at a certain level. This represents gold your character has earned prior to joining the rest of the group.

• 2nd Level - 100 gp
• 3rd Level - 200 gp
• 4th Level - 300 gp
• 5th Level - 400 gp
• 6th Level - 1,200 gp
• 7th Level - 2,000 gp
• 8th Level - 2,800 gp
• 9th Level - 3,600 gp
• 10th Level - 4,400 gp
• 11th Level - 5,200 gp
• 12th Level - 6,400 gp
• 13th Level - 7,600 gp
• 14th Level - 8,800 gp
• 15th Level - 10,000 gp