Warmup: Justin

I want you to pick the bond, flaw, personality trait, and ideal for a Tiefling artificer named Troaxiaus.

Intro:

Main Topic: Character Creation Explained Simply + Useful Tools

In explaining the character creation we aren’t just reiterating the process as defined in the player’s handbook, though we are doing that to some degree. In doing this, we are attempting to help you think of simple ways to explain the process to novice players. You see this episode is about you dear listener-adventurer. Oh no… it’s about your players. We will work through this process to help you work through it with the noobiest of noobs to D&D. So let’s begin. We will first describe the different processes simply and then maybe give some tips or tools for helping players. As you’ll notice, the order we describe these is the same order described in DNDBeyond though we might recommend different ways of doing things.

Let me stress something as well. Making the character creation easy and fun is important because if your players never get past this part they will never play.

Race - Tanner

• Race can be a complicated or simple factor in your campaign, and you should plan out your stance (and your NPCs stances) before you recommend anything to your players. 
• Will you have racist NPCs, or will stereotypes be accepted from the get go (Tolkien-esque /typical fantasy)?
• If you are making your own world and campaign, are you reframing the races, and should that affect your player’s decision? Like, if orcs in your world are typically nerds, should you discourage your player who wants to be a warrior from playing them?
• In terms of stats, let them do whatever they find interesting. But, then encourage their racial choice to actually affect aspects of their role playing
• But, once again, people are not just walking stereotypes—don’t make your player be a copy and paste version. Also, encourage them during character creation to branch out (if they aren’t), or to consider their race’s environment.

Class - Justin

Aside from choosing your race, your class may have the most impact on your character. It will help you define how your character interacts in combat and in non-combat situations as well as how others will interact with you. That said, choosing a class can be very confusing. As a DM, I like to ask my players questions like:

• How do you like to fight enemies?
• What do you want your character to be good at in and out of combat?
• Do you want to use magic?
• If so, how complex do you want your magic to be?
• Are you ok with only getting one opportunity to attack during a combat round?
• What video games do you like to play if any?
• How does your character regard deity?

I have found that certain questions actually are a waste of time. These questions make it harder such as:

• What do you want your character to be able to do?
• What contributions do you see your character making?
• What weapon do you want to use?

In general, the more specific the question, the better. I would even go so far as to ask binary questions to force one answer or another.

Obviously, this is somewhat superfluous for a player who’s had the opportunity to play D&D for a second.

Abilities - Justin

The abilities portion is determining your natural abilities as well as how your race and class choices affect those. This is part of assessing your genetics and upbringing and how they affect your character. Simply put, if everything you do were split into 6 categories how good would your character be in those 6 categories. Consequently, that’s exactly how it works in D&D. 

So there are 6 categories: Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Constitution. You’re going to help your players determine the scores for those categories. There are 3 methods: point-buy system, manual roll, or standard array. Each has its pros and cons depending on the type of game you want to play. Most people end up picking the roll method so that’s what I’ll detail here.

You get 4d6 and then roll them. Take the highest 3 numbers and add them together, write that down. Then repeat that 6 times. Lastly, you can assign those scores to the individual categories. Then you’ll adjust those scores based on advantages given to the character from their background, class, or race. You then take your score and calculate your modifier which is just a number that actually gets added to your rolls. 

Now personally, I prefer to do this before choosing a class or race. I like it because I want to be able to strategize my choices with my race and my class. It really only matters if your race allows you to choose specific bonuses to abilities. Otherwise, do it the normal way.

I find that having a lot of paper nearby is really handy for this portion. You will be writing a lot if you aren’t using DNDBeyond.

Break

I want you to describe a situation in which the ideal of the character created in the very beginning is challenged by their flaw, bond, or personality trait.

Description - Justin

More than any other step in the character creation process of D&D, choosing your description informs your narrative storytelling more than anything else. I would highly encourage your players to really flesh out this section as much as possible.

Here again, the need for specific questions arises. Don’t just ask what your face looks like.

Ask questions like:

• What color are your eyes?
• How much do you smile?
• How big is your nose?
• How thick are your eyebrows?
• Do you have wrinkles in your face or smooth skin?
• Do you have any piercings of scars?
• Any facial hair?
• How severe are your cheekbones?
• Describe the shape of your jaw.

You could honestly go on and on. It can get fairly tedious, so pick the most prominent features. Imagine you are describing your character to a suspect sketch artist from the police. You need to be able to identify them from a crowd.

Apart from the simple physical description, you want to describe their nature and their history.

You’re going to help your player describe their character's ideals, bonds, flaws, and personality traits. This is how I would describe each to a player:

Personality Trait: If you were to hang out with your character for a week, what one thing would you say would stick out to you while just hanging out and chilling in your house with them?

Flaw: If you were your character’s roommate, what would annoy you the very most about them?

Ideal: If you had to summarize this character, what basic life guiding principle would you ascribe to them?

Bond: If this character were wanting to settle down anywhere, what force would pull them or stop them from doing that?

Those questions aren’t perfect but they help you narrow down to get in the right ballpark. Having those are incredibly important. More than anything, I would say the bond and ideal are the most important to have down in a concrete way. Why? Because I am definitely going to have their bond come knocking on the door and their ideal will definitely be challenged in a very specific way. Honestly, their bond might be the thing challenging their ideal, or it might be their flaw or their personality trait.

Here you can also help your player pick any allies they want to have. I don’t usually do that because I want that part to be in the story we write together but to each their own.

Equipment - Tanner

• don’t let them be overpowered. Nuff said. They will want to, but then everything afterward will come off lame.
• Now, if it is a one-shot, then you can give them more freedom.
• You will probably need to help your players choose their equipment based on their specialties.
• Question:

Conclusion:

Mentioned in this episode:

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