Dungeons & Dragons 5e Tutorial "How To Create a Bard Character Level 1"

howdy you everybody David here and this is another Dungeons and Dragons character creation tutorial and this particular tutorial is going to be how to create a Bard at level one now The Bard is a very versatile class in dndd 5e depending on what college of lore that you would like to take at level three you can add more flavor onto the already very strong uh core Baseline mechanics of The Bard now if you want a more melee type of Bard you could play that or if you want a more spellcasting type of Bard you can have that as well so The Bard very versatile and we're going to start at level one and in later videos down the line we're going to take the same Bard and we're going to level him up to level 20 using College of lore and also level 20 College of Valor so there's going to be a lot of character creation videos coming out in the future so let's go ahead and get started shall I'm looking forward to it this is The Bard obviously so we're going to say level one Bard all right our name is going to be let's let's name him Talis it's a great name t l oos uh race now the race you can do many different things that's the great thing about D and D 5 it gives you the freedom of choosing any race you want you could play a half for Dragon Born Bard if you want but for this we're going to go ahead with the more logical choice and we're going to go something with more Charisma and some other Freedom with stats we're going to go with the half elf now the great thing about you know like I said about 5 is it it you don't have to choose this race that I'm that I'm actually you know creating this Ward with you can do whatever you want if you want a dwarf go for it it's sure it's sure barred so just because I'm doing a half Health doesn't mean that you have to do a half but for me the most logical choice for stats and everything uh definitely uh The Bard all right so we're going to go with a neutral alignment with him I love neutral all the way around my name is David you guys know that by now have no experience points and now we're going to go ahead and do our stats now there's a couple things that you want to do you kind of want to try to do everything systematically so you don't forget anything so the first thing I always do after I choose my class choose my race I always do my stats and you can do one of two things you can do a 4 D6 keep the three highest and you can roll six times or even if you want to take seven times keep the the highest six rolls do whatever you want whatever you and your dungeon master come up with me myself I like to take the 27 point bu that D andd 5 has in the mechanics I like that because it gives me the freedom to cust customize the stats of the way I want to and what we're going to do here is we are going to do a 155 15 10 10 10 and what that does is when you buy a stat at 15 it takes nine points of your 27 so if you make three 15s bam you're out of points so your other stats they don't cost anything for being a 10 so we won't get any kind of negative modifiers there so we will go ahead and do a uh 10 strength we're going to do a 15 dexterity a 15 Constitution A10 intelligence A10 wisdom and the B's most important stat is charisma so you want to prioritize Charisma number one and then dexterity and Constitution secondary and dexterity is really strong for The Bard because it's going to make your armor class go up and you can also use the Finesse weapon uh the Rapier so I mean that's a that's a great Marshal weapon there's no Feats needed in dndd 5 to use Marshall weapons so have at it all right so now that we've got our stats the modifiers are basically going to be zero and then the the dexterity for well I'm sorry we're going to have to take our uh plus one and plus tws for our race now so we're not going to affect strength intelligence or wisdom so with our racials for The Bard for the halfelf we get to take plus two Charisma so we'll now Jack this up to a 17 uh giving us a plus three modifier and we'll also take we get two points in Charisma and then we'll take our plus one + one we'll go ahead and put both of those into dexterity Constitution uh taking those also to plus three as well so as you can see starting right off the bat the half elf is a very strong choice for a bar so I mean that's that's just really really really nice okay now let's go ahead and do the first thing let's do some other quick things down here let's take a look at the halfelf racial features now as you can see we've already done our score points our ability score points you're going to get a speed of 30 feet so let's go back up here add our movement in at 30 feet we're also going to get dark vision so remember you're not going to have any kind of problems with visibility in in Dark Places so you won't have to worry about the light can trip as other like a human would have to to worry about uh F Fay ancestry really nice this gives you Advantage uh on saving throws that deal with charm and also Fay ancestry means that you cannot be put to sleep either so if someone if a if an NPC or if a creature monster tries to cast sleep you cannot be affected because you are a half elf now as a as a half elf you're going to get skill versatility which is going to mean you gain Proficiency in two skills of your choice so we need to take a mental note of that you get two proficiencies of your choice and last but not least you get a common Elvish and one additional language of your choice and I went ahead and wrote down common Elish and we'll just say orc okay so now let's go ahead and the next thing that I always like to do is I like to choose my background because the background gives you more flavor for you know your character and for this we are going to go with the Entertainer and there are a multitude of different uh backgrounds that you could choose from charlatan to Soldier to you know Guild Artisan there's lots but for The Bard we're going to go with Entertainer and whenever you do choose Entertainer uh there are different types of entertainers and we will go ahead and roll a d10 and we'll find out what type of Entertainer we are so to do that I've hooked up the the dice Cam and we'll turn this on really quick he hey there's a dice cam very cool huh so we want to find out what type of Entertainer routine that we're proficient in so we're going to roll a 10-sided and the 10-sided I rolled A3 good place for the map Matt it goes right off so o our Entertainer routine we are a fire eater proficient so thank you Dice cam for uh helping out that we'll probably see you later on talking to the ice cam H this guy is crazy huh all right so there you go we are a fire eater so for Entertainer we're going with fire eater I think that's uh the first time I've ever had myself or any anyone else roll fire eater which is pretty cool all right so now uh for the background we're going to get some other bonuses too so you know you're going to get acrobatic and performance right off the bat so here's your skill checks skill checks in 5e work just like they do in fourth edition and Pathfinder and 3.5 and three same thing so we're going to go ahead and get proficiency and acrobatics and performance and what proficiency means in D andd 5 is this it's a universal system that gives you a plus two starting at level one so we're going to go ahead and Rite in our plus two at level five it'll increase to level three up to I believe level 16 or 17 gives you a plus six maximum and what proficiency gives you bonus in are any kind of skill checks that you're proficient in like we have acrobatics and performance so uh our Charisma modifier is a three and then when we add in proficiency will be five for performance so I mean piece of cake no problem at all acrobatics the same thing will be plus five now uh depending on what else we take Proficiency in we're going to get a total of five more two more for our racial and we're going to get to choose three of our choices of Bard so The Bard right off the bat is going to start with the background seven proficient skills that's crazy most other classes only get four so depending on what race you take really I mean if you choose half elf you're automatically going to get two bonus anyway so that's what really makes the half elf a strong race in in 5e not only with that but I mean they get two in the Charisma and then two into any other stat two ones in any other stat that's crazy all right so now proficiency also takes into consideration your saving throw proficiencies and The Bard they're going to be proficient uh for I believe it's Charisma and dexterity saving throw so anytime you do a dexterity saving throw Charisma saving throw you will add in your proficiency bonus so we will go ahead and and do those as well right now so you're going to have a plus five on those saving throws and that saving throw and you know you're not going to get any bonus for strength you won't get anything for intelligence wisdom and you will get a plus three for any kind of cons uh saving throws so that's it saving throws are already done the next thing you're going to worry about with proficiency is your plus to hit and we'll worry about that when we get our weapons we'll be taking the Rapier and the dagger and one other thing that The Bard will have to worry about is your spell casting save DC and your spell attack and we'll worry about that in just a few minutes too so to get along with the uh proficiencies we've already chosen with our background the Entertainer we are a fire eater nonetheless uh we are also going to get Proficiency in uh the disguise kit I mean that would pretty much go hand inand with an Entertainer wouldn't it and one of type of musical instrument so let's uh let's say that we are proficient in the loot all right so that's where we're going to put all of our skill proficiencies now equipment equipment works like this in D and D 5e you can either roll for your money and buy everything or you can take what the background and your class gives you so I would prefer taking what the class gives you and the background gives you because you're also going to get a little bit of coin but if you do you decide to roll you can roll I believe the B is a 5 D4 * 10 so you could roll a 5 D4 multiply it by 10 and then you have to buy everything you won't get anything for free but we're going to go the free route uh here so for equipment we're going to get a musical instrument of my choice so we will go ahead and take the loot seeing that we're proficient in it we'll go ahead and we'll take the loot and we'll take a we're going to get a letter we're going to have an old letter from a lover that could be interesting for some kind of background story or maybe your DM having fun with you you're going to get a costume hey you're an Entertainer you're going to have your costume and you're going to have a belt pouch and you will start with 15 gold so you're not going to get the full 5D four time 10 but when you do go the free route you do get a little bit of extra gold little bit of extra coin so that's okay that's pretty much just about everything for the Entertainer now you are also going to get two personality traits you need to roll you're going to get ideals bonds and flaws so we will go ahead and roll those also on the dice cam we're just going to go ahead and do some Randomness now the personality traits we're going to get two of them you roll a d8 so I'm not going to type these out on the character sheet we're just going to go ahead and read them out and we'll basically just write down the number so the first one we will get one and this is pretty much a know a story relevant to almost every situation so that would make for good R uh some good R play some good role play our second personality trait that we're going to take is number two so whenever I come to a new place I collect local rumors and spread gossip there we go true barred trador fashion all right so now we're going to get one ideal ideal is a D6 and the backgrounds are uh this is Page 131 of the players hand handbook and this is the ideals are roll a six so it will be honesty and what this particular ideal is Art should reflect the soul it should come from within and reveal who we really are so that's why he plays his loot bonds is also a D6 and let's let's see what we get another two someone stole my precious instrument and someday I will get it back so there you go you can put that in your background story and your dungeon master can all of a sudden make this person appear in a game that would actually be really fun now you also get a flaw and the flaws of D6 come on Lucky six wow what's up with the twos I'm a sucker for a pretty face isn't every guy I mean seriously all right so there are two personality traits our ideals our bond and our flaw pretty cool take those put those into your backstory and you don't even have to roll you can literally just uh go ahead and choose them if you want to just get with your DM and say hey can I choose these to make it fit my background story a little bit more me I like the randomness so I'll cater my background story to my roles all right so that's pretty much it for the Entertainer or fire eater so now let's go back to the Bard Now The Bard we're going to go ahead and set up some things we're going to set up our initial itive our initiative is going to be plus three because it's basically just based off of your your Dex modifier uh inspiration here is if you have good roleplay going on your dungeon master can give you an inspiration role and what inspiration will do is you can tell the DM ahead of time that you're going to use your inspiration role and you can roll with Advantage so or if you want to even get with your DM and come up maybe come up with other ways to use your inspiration go for it I I mean nothing's etched in stone in the book so a lot of people think that but it's not go ahead and do whatever you want with your inspiration r as long as your DM you know is cool with it go for it get creative with the inspiration that's that's what you know that's what D and D wants anyway okay so let's go ahead we're going to have your your hit dice heals The Bard they start with a A d8 so you're going to get at level one you get one out of combat heal you have to have a short rest which is an hour and it will be d8 and as you go up in levels every level you will be able to cast this again so if you're level five you will get to use your outof combat heals five times they're called Hit dice heals basically and you know at level five you'll have five at level 10 you'll have 10 so the higher level you are the more of these heals that you can do but you have to have a short rest which in D and D is unfortunately 1 hour or you can even house roll it to five minutes if you want it's whatever you want to do all right let's go ahead and do our our hit points like I said The Bard is going to start with a d8 at level one you start at maximum so eight plus your con we're going to start with 11 maximum hit points okay now also every level after that you can do one of two things if your DM allows you to take the set number you can take the five or you can roll 1d8 and add your con but don't forget to add your con modifier in there all right so we've got that about done we'll worry about our Armor class in just a few seconds with our gear uh actually I think that's about what we're going to need to do now except for let's go and figure out our skills here they're kind of sitting so anything you know we have five skills to choose now so we want to be proficient in five more skills because we're going to get to choose two for our race and we're going to get to choose three for being a barard pardon me my thread is getting dry so we want to choose five let's keep it with the theme of being an Entertainer and maybe he'll be like a uh maybe he'll be a Prowler at night after entertaining so let's go with deception let's go with Insight Insight would be great for you can't a bullshitter an entertainer right let's go ahead and go with uh persuasion got to have persuasion maybe slide of hand maybe you like to as you're you know play playing your loot and you know going around the audience maybe you're slight of handing maybe you're pickpocketing other items off of the table and whatnot so that could actually lead for some fun RP or some suspense if you get caught and then we'll do stealth so everything here is basically going to be a zero uh that's wisdom intelligence or strength so we'll fill those in really quick now everything that we're proficient in remember we're going to add plus two so Ducks we're plus three so we'll have a total of plus five we'll have a plus five slide of hand which is basically pickpocketing or putting items in someone's uh possession uh persuasion will be at plus five wisdom our perception we will have no bonus in that no nature bonus no wisdom bonus no investigation it's just because of our modifiers now our intimidation Charisma will be uh three our insights will be two because we are not we have a zero so we're just adding two for the proficiency uh our history is going to have a zero deception is charisma base that will be five strength is zero uh Arcana is zero animal handling zero so don't don't try to tame Choppers outside before an act because that could actually be the entertainment itself for the night passive uh wisdom perception you're going to stay with a 10 because passive perception is 10 plus your base modifier all right so next let's go ahead and uh worry about our uh we're getting pretty close we'll go ahead and and put a Talis down here and our age we'll say that he's 25 years old got typical green Elvish eyes he's 5' 6 5' 7 uh pale skin with uh maybe he's 145 lbs and he has blonde hair he's your you know your typical Elvish type of half elf all right so let's go ahead and worry about our spell casting stuff now so for a Bard you're going to get two canant trips and we will go ahead and choose for our cant trips we'll choose vicious mockery and we'll also do message because we are trying to fit the theme now canant trips you can cast every single round they do not expend a spell slot uh you will at level one start with two spell slots total that you can cast you will start with a pool of four spells total known at level one for your Bard so The Bard is a jack of all trades they get to take from every different you know primary casting class like they'll get wizard spells Druid spells and cleric spells so we're going to go ahead and say that um our Bard here uh even though he is a Entertainer a fire eater and he has sort of like a shady kind of s side life we're going to say that he is with a party of adventurers as well and he is the only uh person that has the ability to cast magic so we're going to take a little bit of both uh we're going to take some cleric stuff and we're going to take some some wizard stuff so there is a uh very nice spell list uh for the Bard and you'll be able to cast a plethora of spells from spell level one to spell level one sorry spell level one to spell level 9 so we will go ahead and take uh the four spells known that we are going to take we will take healing word we'll have some healing uh we will go ahead and take uh cure wounds we'll go ahead and take sleep and then we'll go ahead and we'll take charm person so this will be a little bit of magic a little bit of healing uh and a little bit of support with sleep so out of those four spells you will be able to cast two of those a day so cant trips they can always be cast every single level so all right now we need to figure out our spellcasting class of course is The Bard our spell casting ability is charisma our spell save DC the formula for your spell save DC starts at a base of eight and then you add in your proficiency bonus and your primary spell casting AB ability modifier which in The Bard's case is the Charisma ability score so we're going to start with at eight plus two proficiency is 10 plus three for your ability modifier for Charisma we're going to start with a 13 spell save DC spell attack bonus you just take the eight off and spell casting attack bonus is your proficiency and your ability score modifier for your class B Charisma five so the spell attack is basically when you're casting spells you attack all right versus AC now your spell save DC is if you cast something that makes we'll just say that you cast Fireball that Target is going to need to make a dexterity saving throw that person would make the dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC so that's how that works so now we've basically got our our spells already done level one spells done the only thing we have left to do is talk about Bic inspiration now this is going to be a feature that you get and we're going to go ahead and put Bic inspiration here all right now Bic inspiration is is really nice at first you can only cast it on other players and what Bic inspiration does is you will start uh your your Bic inspiration is a D6 right now however it will go up uh in time it will progress get better to a d8 a d10 and then a D12 and what Bic inspiration does is you have a certain amount of times that you can use this a day which is uh based off of your charisma modifier so right now we can use Bic inspiration three times a day all right and then to get our Bic inspiration back we need a long rest to get the Bic inspiration back I believe it's a long rest so let me just double check it is it is a large it is a long rest so whenever you cast Bic inspiration on another creature you will give that creature an additional D6 to an ability check roll to a saving throw roll or to an attack roll and if that person wants to use your baric inspiration it can do so after it rolls but it needs to declare Bic inspiration before the dungeon master says the result is either successful or not successful so if you cast barck inspiration on Little Tommy and Little Tommy rolls a 13 versus the orc Overlord little Tommy's going to say hm I think I want to use my bic inspiration before because the dungeon master hasn't told him hasn't told Little Tommy that you know huh Little Tommy that it's a hit or miss so little Tommy uses his Bic inspiration which is a D6 and we'll say that he rolls a six so he can roll add that six and then possibly it would probably be successful so that's how Bic inspiration works and once you use Bic inspiration it's gone off of you so you can only have it on one person at a time as well so Bic inspiration is a really cool mechanic uh and a really cool feature for The Bard and later on you'll be able to put it on yourself and do things with it too all right so that's pretty much all of our features now we want to worry about our gear now the last thing that we're going to oh also about spell casting I want to talk about two other things really quick not only you get the cantrips and your spell slots per day but you're also going to have ritual casting now if a spell is listed as a ritual it will say so in the spell description that means that you'll be able to cast that spell as a ritual and not take a spell slot so you have to know the Spells part of your spells known but it you won't take a spell slot so you'll cast it it'll take 10 minutes you do your fancy Dancy ritual voila your rituals performed takes 10 minutes plus the action of the spell you're also going to get spellcasting Focus which is you know your instruments for being a Bard now spellcasting Focus does not give you any other bonus modifier for your spell attack or your spell save DC it doesn't do that what what it does is it fulfills any kind of material components minor material components like witch's hair or Goblin eyeball or something like that now if a spell has a material component that takes a monetary gold piece valued type of item like a 100 gold piece Diamond gem or a 10,000 gold piece Onyx or something for a resurrection then you will need to have that monetary uh item on you but if you just have something like bat Guana or something like then the spellcasting focus will satisfy that material component for you it basically does the same thing as a spellcasting component pouch so it's really nice so that's one other thing I wanted to touch with uh about spell casting now for uh we're going to go ahead and finish up with our armor and our our weapons and our gear so we're going to go ahead and first off we're going to go ahead and take uh leather armor so we'll put uh leather armor here leather armor has a base of uh 11 AC okay and you can add all Dex mod to this so we'll just kind of make a note all mod so 11 AC plus our dexterity is a three so we going to have a base we're going to have a start at level one of 14 not too shabby not going to be the same as like a a paladin using you know chain mail and a shield or a fighter but uh still pretty pretty nice for for level one we're going to get to choose with uh we're going to get to start with two weapons as a Bard you get a free weapon of your choice between Rapier long sword or another type of item we're going to go ahead and uh we will take the uh we'll go ahead and we'll take the the Rapier it's finesse finesse and D andd 5e doesn't require feet like I said earlier you can use strength or dexterity whatever is better so of course we're going to use dexterity so we're proficient in that so our attack bonus is going to take proficiency into consideration as well along with our Dex mod so we will start with a plus five to hit now the damage is going to be 1d8 piercing but the arm modifier is just going to be our dexterity modifier you do not and I repeat you do not add proficiency bonus in with your damage only your dexterity modifier because we are using this as finesse dagger we will be also be taking a dagger we will have the same uh bonus with that with proficiency and dexterity and the dagger is 1 D4 and it'll be three now down here we'll keep a couple notes that the Rapier is 1d8 piercing and uh it is also finesse so it's just a couple uh notes down here the dagger uh is also a finesse weapon it is 1 D4 it is piercing as well so we will put piercing and also the dagger can be thrown so it can be thrown I believe 20 ft or 60 fet the first 20 feet normal no kind of penalties but if you throw 21 fet or up to 60 feet you're going to be rolling with disadvantage so that's how that works all right so our weapons are done and our armor classes done so the only thing left that we have to do is choose between uh a diplomat's pack or an entertainers pack that's a no-brainer as The Bard we're going to go with the entertainers pack and that's going to have other things in it you know like rations and you know whatnot you know maybe some rope maybe a maybe a bag or something so that's everything with the Bard at level one everyone took about 30 minutes and we totally got completely done level one got everything explained now you know what your proficient proficiency bonus does you know how to you know get your personality traits your ideals bonds flaws uh you guys have everything now we have one last thing to do and we are going to do a D100 for the equipment section and in D and D 5e they've added a really nice thing uh with trinkets it is on page 160 161 and we will roll a percentile die on our dice cam here to see what we get for a special trinket now the special trinket can be all kinds of different things and you can put this into your background story how you got it and your dungeon master can actually put this into the game maybe somebody wants to take it back or however you got it so our trinket is going to be a 31 so in in the book 31 is a silver badge in the shape of a five-pointed star so that's that's interesting in we have trinket number 31 and that is a silver badge in the shape of a five-pointed star so maybe maybe that was something that as you were entertaining a crowd in a Tavern maybe that is a something that you stole previously and now the owner is looking for you to get it back that is pretty cool I do like the trinkets added in 5e and I actually use these in my other games that I play like 13th age and Pathfinder I I really really really like this and you can use this and incorporate this in any game that you play so there you go everybody that is it with creating the level one Bard and like I said look for videos down the line uh we will take this same Talis we'll take Talis and we'll level him up to level 20 both College of lore and College of Valor so thank you guys again please feel free to leave a comment down below also if you want to try a Bard I have 840 different D andd 5e character sheets on my website tablet topping. net they're all on these these same three-page PDF formats your spells already chose everything is already done for you just download it download it to your Tablet print it off do whatever you want go try out the class have fun with it so thank you guys again and I'll see you next time

Channel: The Digital Dungeon Master

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Keywords: Inner, Rpg, Pathfinder, of, Paizo, Setting, Gygax, Pen, and, Forgotten, Mike, ‬Virtual, Roleplaying, Dragons, Role, Dragonlance‭, Greyhawk, ‬Topping, Top, ‬20‭, Roll, the, Vale, Dungeons, Tutorial, Campaign, Hoard, Encounter, Sea, Society, And, Paper, Dungeon, Realms, Queen, Playing, Group, Tabletop, Gary, Game, Roll‭, Magazine, Eberron, Ronin, Mearls, ‬35e, Table, Orr, Roll20‭, ‬4e, Tiamat, Next, Tsr, ‬5e‭, Essentials, Play‭, Green, Age, Expeditions, Master, Wizards, Dragon, Nentir, Coast, Virtual, Vtt

Id: CAEpbSEJizw

Length: 33min 20sec (2000 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 04 2015