Creating a Character

The Player’s Handbook describes a step-by-step process of character creation. When you create a character for a Ravnica campaign, you’ll go through the same steps, with the added step of choosing a guild.
Creating a character begins with imagining the person you want to play. The ten guilds of Ravnica provide a way to jump-start your imagination and steer you toward certain character archetypes that can guide the rest of the decisions you make for your character.

Choosing a Guild

Chapter 2 describes the ten guilds of Ravnica in detail. How do you decide what guild you want your character to belong to? You can choose one of these approaches:
Look at the questionnaire, “What’s Important to Me?”, in this chapter. Let its questions and your choice of answers direct you to a guild that appeals to you or that sounds like a fun character to play. Read the guild descriptions in chapter 2 and choose one that appeals to you. Read the descriptions of races and classes in this chapter. Guild membership recommendations are provided for each race and class, should one catch your eye. If you have access to Magic: the Gathering cards from a Ravnica set, find a card that appeals to you and build that character. If you’re a Magic player and you already have a favorite guild, create a character from that guild. To reflect your character’s membership in a guild, you can choose the background included in the guild’s description instead of a background from the Player’s Handbook or some other source. Also make a note of your contacts.

Guildless Characters

You can play a character who isn’t a member of a guild. Choose one of the character backgrounds in the Player’s Handbook or another source instead of one of the guild backgrounds in chapter 2. Your guildless character can be of any class, race, and alignment. At the DM’s option, you might have contacts within guilds, or the DM can invent contacts for you that aren’t associated with the guilds of Ravnica in any way.
If you want your character to join a guild at a later time, the same guidelines apply as if the person were changing guilds, as described in chapter 2.

Race and Class

Each guild description in chapter 2 provides suggested races and classes for characters belonging to that guild. Some races have strong traditions that direct them toward certain guilds, but exceptions exist. If you choose a class or a race that’s not typical for your guild, you might have trouble finding a role in the guild — or, more accurately, your superiors might have trouble figuring out what to do with you — but that challenge can be an interesting facet of your character’s development. An atypical choice can also motivate your character to adventure independently from the guild.
This chapter describes new races you can choose from: centaurs, goblins, loxodons, minotaurs, Simic hybrids, and vedalken. It also presents two new subclass options: the cleric’s Order Domain and the druid’s Circle of Spores. Every subclass in the Player’s Handbook also receives a mention in this chapter, indicating the guilds where characters of those subclasses might find a home.
Once you’ve chosen your race and class and recorded the benefits you get from them, you can proceed with the remaining steps of character creation as described in the Player’s Handbook.

Building a Party

It’s possible to put together a diverse party of D&D characters drawn from a single guild. The guild descriptions in chapter 2 offer suggestions for what such a party might look like. Conversely, your party can include members of different guilds united by alliances or common principles. Or they could be childhood friends who ended up in different guilds, or just a haphazard collection of individuals thrown together by unforeseen circumstances. The Party Makeup table in this section offers suggestions for how you might compose your party.
The tables of contacts in chapter 2 can also help you create connections among the characters in your party. Those tables describe family relationships, current and former romantic connections, random acquaintances, past rivals, and many other ties that form among people in different guilds. Let these tables inspire you as you think about the circumstances that bring your party together.
Although conflicts among the guilds drive much of the action in a Ravnica campaign, it’s important not to let that tension cause too much friction in a party of adventurers. The D&D game relies on cooperation among the players, so it’s helpful for the player characters to find common ground that unites them despite their differences in guild affiliation, ideals, and agendas. Even though some guild leaders (especially the villainous ones) might talk about exterminating or dominating other guilds, many guild members have family, lovers, friends, and acquaintances among other guilds. Those positive associations can bind an adventuring party together.
The DM can also use the Common Cause table in this section to find a way to bring together characters who don’t know or trust each other.

Party Makeup

d8	Party Makeup
1	One-Guild Party. Choose a guild and refer to its description in chapter 2 for suggestions on building the party around it.
2	Classic Party. Boros or Selesnya cleric (Life Domain), Azorius or Boros fighter (Champion archetype), Dimir or Golgari rogue (Thief archetype), Boros or Izzet wizard (School of Evocation)
3	Law and Order Party. Boros cleric, Azorius fighter, Azorius wizard, Boros ranger
4	Mad Science Party. Simic druid, Izzet fighter, Izzet wizard, Simic monk
5	Skulkers Party. Golgari druid, Golgari fighter or ranger, Dimir rogue or monk, Dimir wizard
6	Chaos Party. Gruul druid, Gruul barbarian, Rakdos warlock, Rakdos rogue
7	Nature Party. Selesnya druid, Gruul barbarian, Simic wizard or Selesnya bard, Golgari rogue
8	Benevolent Party. Selesnya cleric, Boros paladin, Azorius wizard, Selesnya bard

Common Cause

d8	Reasons for Cooperating
1	Cellmates. The characters are prisoners in an Azorius prison, a Gruul camp, or a Rakdos cage.
2	Greater Threat. The characters are fighting each other when a rampaging wurm attacks.
3	Sudden Danger. The characters are trapped together by a sinkhole opening, a building collapsing, or a laboratory exploding.
4	Dream Team. A strange dream leads each character to the same destination.
5	Lost Together. The characters are hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar part of the city.
6	Detente. By order of their guilds’ leaders, the characters must cooperate to complete a secret mission.
7	Common Foe. A villain is a common enemy to all the characters.
8	Do or Die. The characters are all trying to avert the catastrophe of an all-out war among the guilds.