How to roll 5e Character
Part 1 - How to make a Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Character (Rolling Stats, Race & Class)
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creating a D&D character can be one of
the most fun parts of the hobby you get
to let your imagination run wild and
create this persona that you're going to
be playing and slaying dragons with and
rescuing knights and all sorts of good
stuff but it can also be pretty
confusing there's a lot of rules there's
a lot of terms that you might not
understand especially if you're a new
player or a new Dungeon Master I mean
what your ability score modifiers how do
you work them out what a proficiency is
how the backgrounds play into it what
you know what's a class feature all of
these kind of things can lead people to
worry about making that first character
and one of the most requested things
I've had both on social media and here
in the channel comments as well is can
you do a video on how to create a
character so though that's exactly what
we're going to do today I'm going to
give you a step-by-step guide on how to
create your first Dungeons and Dragons
fifth edition character
now before we begin talking about the
actual hard mechanics of creating a
character you should probably have a
read through the players hand but just
to see what kind of options are
available to you particularly when it
comes to race and class also speak with
your dungeon master they might have
custom rules for their homebrew world
maybe ex race doesn't exist maybe
they've made their own classes or their
own races which might plank your
interest once you've kind of got a vague
idea you need to start thinking about
just a rough layout of who this
character is you don't need to get
specific at this point you don't need to
know if they're a wood elf or if they're
a hill dwarf you just need to know
roughly who they are and what their
story is maybe you want to be a Thieves
Guild master who's been betrayed and is
now looking for revenge maybe you want
to be somebody who's lost their faith in
the gods and is on a pilgrimage to
rediscover that faith maybe you want to
play a princess who's lost her kingdom
to some evil force and is now looking
for allies to help her reclaim it these
are all vague ideas but they'll help you
later on when you come to put those
mechanics into play on the character
sheet okay so let's get started you're
going to need a couple of things to
start with ah
first of all I would highly recommend
you get the players Handbook this is the
kind of core player book it covers all
the rules on how to play but it also has
all of the races and classes as options
for people to make characters from you
can use the basic rules which are for
free on the Wizards website but they
come with a very limited selection of
races and classes and I would personally
highly recommend you grab yourself a
players handbook it also has all rules
for character creation right at the
start the first chapter so if there's
anything you're a bit confused about
from this video you can refer to here in
the phb you're also going to need
character sheets now I downloaded mine
from the Wizards website you get a zip
folder it's completely free I downloaded
this one this is the three-page complete
and it's the one that I personally
recommend there is also form fillable
versions of the PDFs as well if you're
playing online if you want to have it on
your iPad or your phone or something
like that you're also going to need a
pencil if you're using a printed out
character she of course a rubber or a
razor depending on where you're from
just in case you make any mistakes
you're also
going to potentially need four six-sided
dice or d6 and then somewhere to roll it
I'm being fancy and using my wormwood
gaming dice tray here once you've got
all that stuff you're pretty much good
to go and the first thing we're going to
do is generate our ability scores what
our ability scores and why are they
important I'm glad you our ability
scores are kind of one of the core
mechanics of the game they really govern
everything that you can do and what you
can do well and what you can the six of
them strength dexterity Constitution
intelligence wisdom and charisma these
things determine your physical mental
and social skills where you're good at
while you're not etcetera etc and they
really do form everything I'll run
through them very quickly strengths an
obvious one determines how good you are
running jumping climbing trees and
punching stuff in the face dexterity is
all about agility and grace how well how
well you balance on stuff how well you
pick a pocket how will you sneak through
a corridor Constitution is more about
your health your threshold to pain how
strong a stomach you have how will you
resist poisons and it also determines
hit points intelligence is all about
recalling information if you're very
learned and educated and have a lot of
law you would have a high intelligence
so somebody who knows a lot of book
stuff is very smart book smarts is
intelligence based wisdom on the other
hand is more about perception being
aware of your surroundings spotting
things reading body language but it's
also a little bit of common sense being
able to follow a track through the woods
is more about wisdom than it is about
intelligence
likewise knowing what mushrooms you can
eat in a in a forest that aren't
poisonous could be a wisdom thing as
well as an intelligence thing finally
charisma this is one few people get
wrong a lot of people think it's about
physical appearance and attractiveness
which isn't the case it's actually more
about self-confidence and how well you
portray yourself and also just your
force of personality a big hulking brute
covered in scars who is very sure of
himself can be just as charismatic as a
bard they just push right in a different
way that's somebody who can intimidate
with just a look
what they can you know put it on and
show that they're a nice person as well
someone who gets up on stage and speaks
in front of a large crowd that's good
charisma somebody who's Shire who
doesn't like the limelight who finds it
difficult to speak to people that's a
low charisma character now each of these
abilities is going to be given a score
or number that's why they call the
ability scores that number will
determine if your character is good
something or bad at something the
easiest way to think about this is think
of the score of ten is your average it's
neither good nor bad your average Joe
citizen has a number ten in each of
these six things any numbers above ten
means you are much better at that
specific thing than your average Joe and
any numbers below 10 mean that you are
worse how do you get these numbers well
you're going to take your full six sided
dice roll them and then you take away
the lowest one if you've tied for the
lowest ones you simply choose one of
them to remove and you add up the
remaining three that gives you one of
the numbers you do that another five
times so you have a total of six and
then you'll later assign each of these
to one of these ability scores to
represent what your character is good at
and what they are not good at now if you
happen to roll very badly that is lots
of numbers under 10 don't worry it's not
all doom and gloom
um the other thing as well is if you
just want to get into the action you
don't want to roll stats you just want
to make a quick character you can use
something called the standard array the
standard array is just given set numbers
you can use in place of rolling and that
gives you a 15 a 14 a13 a12 a 10 and an
8 this means you can assign those
however you like you're probably
wondering well mark it tends the average
why would I ever want anything to go
below 10 that doesn't make sense
well you're right in a way yes it means
that you have a penalty in that
particular area but floors and not being
good at stuff is what makes D&D fun
playing a character who is a bit
nearsighted or just completely oblivious
and doesn't realize when somebody wants
them to go away or is being rude to them
that can be really fun to do so giving a
character
low wisdom score is a way to represent
that and to say well I'm sorry I've got
a low wisdom you know that's just the
way the cookie crumbles so it's all
about playing to those flaws and that's
why you having that core character
concept about their personality in their
history it's kind of important because
it means it will dictate where you put
your pie numbers where you put your low
numbers we'll talk a bit more about this
and the ability modifiers which is
actually what you use to work out your
skill bonuses and attacks and things
like that later on but I want you to
have an idea of what each of these
abilities mean and how they work so you
can think about them for your character
so now you've got your ability scores
it's time to get started the first thing
to do is choose your race now I'm only
going to be talking about the races from
the players handbook in this video there
are other races available to you they
come in supplemental books such as Volos
guide to monsters the player elemental
evil players companion etc but I'm not
going to talk about those if none of the
races in the players handbook interest
you talk to your dungeon master see if
you can check out some of these other
books or some things that are on
home-brewed websites etc but it is up to
your dungeon master they want to make
sure it's fair and balanced and that fit
into their world but we're just going to
talk about the players habit races for
now now there's number of choices you
have dwarves elves halflings humans
half-orcs half elves Dragonborn tiefling
and gnomes I'm not going to go into
detail on each one and what they all are
and what their special abilities etc are
you can read all about that in the
players handbook but just go through and
pick one that suits your core character
concept make a note of which one you
want to pick and then also check and see
if they have a sub race some races such
as elves and dwarves and halflings have
what's called a sub race and this is a
variant on that racial type so elfstrom
our example you have high elves wood
elves and drower dark elves you pick one
of those again choosing the one that
makes the most sense for your core
character concept or whichever one
interests you and then you're going to
make a note of all of the traits and
abilities that that race and sub race
gains some of these will be little
flavor things like
you know what ages that they can be or
what languages they speak but some of
them will be mechanical in gained
abilities some of them will have spells
that they can cast something some of
them gain certain skills as well just
make a note of these for now you don't
need to put them on your character sheet
you can probably put them on a spare
piece of paper just make a note of them
for now and we'll put them into the
character G a bit later on once you
picture race it's time to think about
your class now a class is really what
you've become as an adventurer you'll
call character concepts you should
really think about that characters
history who they were why they've
decided to take up a life of adventure
but your class determines that path that
they're going to take it's what you're
going to level up in you're going to
unlock more abilities as you gain
experience points you're going to get to
pick specializations that let you kind
of have specific roles and abilities and
things that you can do that different
you from other similar classes and it's
you know it kind of it's your career as
an adventurer so think about it as your
core character concept is what you were
your class is what you've become
in order to fulfill whatever goal or a
mission or objective that you've set as
part of that core character concept
classes come in a variety of options and
I have to read these other lists cuz I'm
never gonna remember off the top of my
head but you basically have barbarian
bard cleric druid fighter monk paladin
Ranger rogue warlock sorcerer and wizard
if you want to read more about what each
of those are and what they mean do check
it out in the place handbook I'm not
going to go through it through
individually once you had a read through
pick which one you want and then don't
make a note just yet we're actually
going to fill this in as we go when we
start filling in our character sheet
however it's important to have a read
through of the class have an
understanding of what specializations
you get to unlock make sure that those
are going to match up with you know the
character concept that you've got in
mind
think about things like you know have we
through the abilities just so you've got
a good understanding of them and then
we're going to start filling in the
actual abilities and the things that you
unlock as we go that's it for part one
guys do check out the next video where
we're gonna start filling in our
character she assigning ability scores
talking about ability score modifiers as
well as working out our
hitpoints I hope you've enjoyed the
series do make sure you subscribe so you
get updated when the next parts of the
video come out check out the playlist
for more videos and yeah I hope this has
been helpful thanks very much for
watching and I will see you momentarily
in part 2
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