Sample file A GUIDED TOUR OF THE 5E CHARACTER SHEET A step-by-step manual and walkthrough on creating your first Fifth Edition character By David Foxfire For Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition By Wizards of the Coast. Trigger Warning: While David Foxfire has taken steps to make sure that this document is not intentionally offensive, he cannot account for every reader, especially when he’s the type that just plain doesn’t give a fsk. It is safe to assume that Mr. Foxfire is an effective tool in offending the easily offended, so if you’re one of them, do us all a favor and shut down your computer, go outside, and reconsider your life decisions. Thank you and God Bless. Also, even though he has proofread it several times, there has bound to be an error or two. If you find one and let him know about it, it would be greatly appreciated. You can find contact information near the end of the document. Visit Foxfire Studios of Saint Louis at foxfirestudios.net This document is © 2021 David “David Foxfire” Gonterman and is released under the Open Game License by Wizards of the Coast, as listed at https://tinyurl.com/sttwp43. This document is published Free of Charge. The Pay What You Want feature on DriveThruRPG is used as a tip jar. David Foxfire thanks and appreciates all who put some coin in that. Anyone who has found any errors or has any comments or feedback are invited to contact David through various means at the back of this document. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, Forgotten Realms, the dragon ampersand, Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, Dungeon Master’s Guide, D&D Adventurers League, all other Wizards of the Coast product names, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast in the USA and other countries. All characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast. This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast. SampleDungeons & Dragons © Wizards of the Coast LLC, PO Box 707, Renton, WA 98057-0707, USA. Manufactured by Hasbro SA, Rue Emilefile-Boéchat 31, 2800 Delémont, CH. Represented by Hasbro Europe, 4 The Square, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB11 1ET, UK INTRODUCTION Creating your first character in any Role-Playing Game, including Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, can be daunting, especially when you get the traditional ‘trial by fire’ introduction in creating a character: That’s when someone who has more plastic minatures than dates just plops the Player’s Handbook and a just-printed-out copy of the character sheet in front of you and goes “Here you go.” Yeah, we’ve all been there. Let’s get you something more than just that hefty tome someone who seen more campaigns than dates just plopped into your lap. There are plenty of ways one can be walked through creating a character in D&D. Allow me to tell you mine. I’ll show you a step-by-step process on how I create my characters, in what I hope would be a very intuitive and friendly way. Along the way, I’ll also give you a tour of the character sheet itself, showing you which section is for what and what you’re supposed to write in there. Before we start with the tour though, we need to get a couple things first. First off, do you have that character sheet printed on Card Stock? If not, I’d strongly suggest you do so. Any big box store or office supply store sells Card Stock that can be run through any printer. You will thank me later. You’re going to be erasing and writing over stuff on this sheet a lot, and you’re going to need your sheet on paper with a little heft to handle all that. Oh, and before you ask, use pencil. Again, you will thank me. And while you’re in that store, snatch a cheap spiral notebook, or a small stack of loose-leaf paper with something to keep everything together; a folder of some kind, those prong covers you have during your school years, a binder clip, a whole loose-leaf binder, whatever works. While you’re getting all that, let me start you off with Step One in creating a character: STEP ONE: THINK OF WHAT CHARACTER YOU WANT TO PLAY. Think long and hard about the character you want to play. I think different, and that is a good thing. Whatever you’re a heroic swordsman, a cunning rogue, a I fear that I might lose some of you in some parts bookworm wizard, a crack shot with a bow with his loyal animal because I touch topics that some find sensitive. No companion, a divine healer or crusader, or anything else in offense is intended. I just think in a way that is my between. If you know what the other players are going to be own and I’m an unapologetic nonconformist. That playing as, that’s good too, because then you can tailor your means I go outside of what some call the norm, especially those who consider Twitter as the real character to fill a role missing in your party. A good party consists world. While I do take steps not to offend, I cannot of a Tank, that provides defense, a Striker, for offense, a Healer for account for everybody. obvious reasons, a Caster for the big spells, and a Utility to deal Oh yeah, I cuss too. English can be like a brick wall with everything else, the traps, the locks, the skills, the at times, and sometimes I need a wrecking ball to schmoosing, I can go on. break through. An F-Strike works just fine. I’ll give yourself plenty of thought about all this while we’re taking It is my hope that you would find my thoughts to be the tour, so you can decide on the three basic parts of your at least tolerable to you, and I encourage you to have an open mind. Maybe you’ll realize something character that we’ll be looking up later: Your characters’ Race, that you might not have come around to earlier. A Class, and Background. Don’t worry about looking into any books little broadening of your perspectives will do you yet, just write it down on scratch paper. We’ll be digging into that some good, and make you act less of an @$$hole. Player’s Handbook in due time. But now, let’s turn to the Samplecharacter sheet. file PAGE 1 The first page has most of the number crunching and is the one you’ll be working on the most. Let’s break this page into different sections and discuss each piece in turn. We’ll start with the top bar: THE TOP BAR Put your character name in the big ribbon space (and on the cover to the notebook if you’ve got one,) your own name at the Player Name space. Those should be automatic. The rest of this bar has spaces for what I’ve just talked about, where you write down what character’s Race, Class, and Background is. I really don’t know why I should be saying this, but we live in the current year. If you’ve already paged through the Player’s Handbook, you’ll find that the concept of Race is different then what you know in real life. When we think of ‘Race’ in our world, we think of White, Black, Brown, Asian, Latino, and so on. To someone in a D&D world, that person sees ‘Race’ as Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, and so on. You can see that this is an apples to oranges comparison; We don’t have Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes and so on here in our world. We just have different kinds of humans here. In fact, if someone from a D&D realm find themselves, say, in Seattle, all our talk about race would just go over their head, because in their point of view, we’re all Humans. That leads up to something I want you to be aware of when playing this game. Any Dungeons & Dragons campaign is set in a fantastic world fill of magic and wonder, where dragons and elves and wizards exist. It is, by its very nature, vastly and radically different from our own. Different beyond comprehension. Different environment, different cultures, different people, and a different perspective on race, sex, gender, body types, and all the other topics that rear their collective ugly head on social media. This world will have a different social dynamic then what you’re used to, and what is ‘woke’ here will not be the same as what is ‘woke’ there. Keep this in mind when you’re creating your character, because this character will be living in their world, not yours. Keep this in mind and adjust your mindset accordingly, and you’ll find your experience to be much more enjoyable. There’s a phrase that I want to keep in your head at all times. It’ll probably be on my tombstone: The D&D World is Not Earth. Experience Points (known as XP) is like a running score for your character. As you reach certain milestones of Experience Points, your character will gain levels where your character grows stronger.