Let's Make a Character Together! │ D&December

[Music] welcome to another installment of D and December one of the things I actually get asked for requested a lot is how exactly do you make a character like what are the actual steps how you go through and do it so why don't we do it together right here right now we are going to make a brand new dungeon dragons character and if you want to follow along with me all you really need is a your character sheet if you happen to have the players handbook that can be useful as well otherwise you can be characters sheet along with the basic rules off of the official dungeon dragons website from Wizards easily download and print it off and you can follow it along so let's do that let's start off with a character name I mean normally it's better off to think of a name after you have a picked a nice race for your character but we'll do things a little bit of Auto order since this is going to be your character will name him uh YouTube common so this is youtube comment should we start with a race or ability scores well again you can go either way let's start off with picking or race like we're not very mystical we don't have class yet but let's think of a race let's make make a dwarf character so under a race will write down dwarf now we all will be starting off that level one so I'll make it as clean as possible we'll start off at level one rather than picking a class right away why don't we figure out the ability scores of our dwarf and then we can pick a class from that now you don't have to do this but like if you know you want to make them a door bin by barian you can but we'll go from there now we're going to determine the ability scores the ability score is being strength dexterity Constitution intelligence wisdom and charisma there are many ways to do this for example you can roll dice there's also the point by system where you start off with so many points you just attribute them to the different ability scores until you run out of points there are many different ways of doing this but the sake of the most variety we're going to be doing the rolling a dice way so what I have here is four six-sided die or for d6 and we're going to roll these six times and each way taking away the lowest die so we're going to roll that six times until we got six totals and after that we'll give those to our different ability scores so let's roll those nuts not a bad start just take away the lowest numbers write that down till I've got six different results all right not bad so before I want to put these in I want to think of a decent class that way I have an idea of where I can put these ability scores that will help the class the best well also making for an interesting character let's do something a little of unorthodox for this dwarf where you think adorbs were they usually fighters barbarians you know kind of up front meteor fighters lipsticks or something weird let's say our door if you took common is a is a druid so he'll be a dwarf for the forest at level one not very common and maybe felt I think of little story as to why our dwarf loves a forest instead of the mountains or the hills or the underground instead but let's worry about our scores first so I've got all these different ability scores and I just need to put them in well it's the most important ability score for druids well according to our players hand look it's going to be wisdom so let's put our highest-scoring two wisdoms we got that sixteen we'll write that into there after the words what else would help them um there's gonna be a very very learned person he's gonna know a lot about the forest but you know he also is a it's made make up very kind druid like yeah he loves the forest but he is able to talk with animals very well but can also talk with people let's give them let's go to 15 charisma that way it's easier for him to converse with a different folk not imagine as a bizarre would dwarf that uh he'll probably end up using a lot of ranged weapons you may not be much of an upfront fighter since he loves the forest maybe he hunts more than anything else so since you'd be using a lot of ranged weapon let's actually give them a high higher dexterity in or so we've got that 14 we can place that into dexterity and that leaves us just a few more scores left you can put that 11 into say Constitution so put 11 there and that gives us 2 more 12 and 9 now this is actually really interesting to us because the 9 gives us a negative 1 modifier that's not a great score now if we can make this part of our dwarven character actually make it part of his character as I've said before last year when it comes to making cool characters you don't necessarily need to make the best possible character you just need to make interesting ones so for our dwarf how about the fact that because he lives in the woods and it has been up above ground for so long that he he doesn't have like the kind of the muscle that other dwarves have it's not working the minds he's not doing a bunch of stone cutting and because of that his arms and body has weakened over the time so let's actually give him a strength of 9 that way his intelligence is then 12 that kind of justifies his ability scores and puts it into his character because as you know for you if I made a month mormon druid that had 17 strengths you may you can find a way to justify that but I think this makes for a more interesting character now our ability scores aren't completely done yet yes we've put these all in here but our character is a dwarf and because of that his dormant heritage affects his ability scores who actually look into the players handbook it says that the Dwarven traits increases your Constitution score by 2 so that 11 that I put in for Constitution is instead a 13 so now we actually got a pretty decent looking Dorf all right not bad now that we know our dwarf will know that he you won't be much of a front range fighter by any means but he's pretty decent everywhere else so let's continue onto the rest of our character sheet in the upper left area you see proficiency bonus and these are just this is a bonus that applies to your roles of thing to your character is proficient in and your character can be proficient in different skills different spell casting saving throws weapon attacks etc so this is sort of Universal bonus that can be added to a lot of different things and that level one our proficiency bonus is plus two years so we can write that in there as well let's go down to our saving thrills saving throws are your ways to resist any kind of danger for example of a boulder trying to crush you could be a strength saving throw or something trying to take over your mind be a wisdom saving throw and your saving throw modifiers are based off of your ability scores the ones we just did strength dexterity Constitution etc so we can use those to figure out what our saving throws are druids are proficient in intelligence and wisdom saving throws so we can mark those little dots so that we know that's the ones that he's proficient in which means not only does he add your ability score modifier to your saving throw but you also get to add in that proficiency bonus so with that we can write down all of our savings row totals so aside from strength fear we're pretty resistant to everything not too bad for a gorban druid our next table that we want to fill out is the skills table which is also over on the left hand side these are different skills that your character is capable of now you can do any one of these skills but you get to select a couple them to be proficient in which adds in your proficiency bonus so we get to choose two skills from our options are Arcana animal handling insight medicine nature perception religion and survival and we can do any two of those well some of them seem more obvious than not for example since our dwarf is a druid but some I think survival would be a stellar choice since he's out of his element he's had to learn how to survive in the woods so let's actually make him proficient in survival now naturally you think druids you would think nature but let's let's make them a little more interesting how about the fact that because he's a dwarf that he's from that mobs in the Hills he's actually not great and knowing a whole lot about nature yet like he thought somebody wants it so he wants to get to but he's not there yes so let's not pick nature instead pick something else how about say animal handling maybe that's what drove them to the forest in the first place is the fact that just loves animals you may not know much about plants and trees but he knows animals so let's do animal handling now with those two choosing we can then figure out all of our different skills and they actually have the ability to score bonus written right next to them in case you're wondering so for example acrobatics is based off a dexterity so we have a plus two to our acrobatics checks animal handling is based off a wisdom which would be three but because we chose to be proficient in it we could add in our proficiency bonus giving us a plus five - animal handling skills and then you can go forward and do that for each and every one of the skills afterwards until you've got the whole table filled out and with those filled out let's learn a little bit more about YouTube common our dwarf we can look at the background and the alignment for our dwarf now alignment is your your your character's natural your gentle alignment is your character's general attitude towards the world good evil chaotic waffle or anywhere in between and our dwarf is generally going to be a good person so let's become the good alignment but because he's made himself a person of the forest he's not really in a society at all I see no reason for him to be lawful if I don't really see him to be all that selfish either so let's make them neutral good and with that you would yet then get to choose a background now backgrounds are a way to customize your character and there's a bunch of pre-built backgrounds within the players handbook there there's lots of you can choose from feel free to choose any one of those I personally prefer just making my own background and working with my dungeon master and just create my own background rather than using a pre-set one but for the sake of this video we'll be using one of these ah perfect I actually know exactly what background we want to do there is one called the hermit you lived in seclusion either in a sheltered community or such as a monastery or entirely alone for a formative part of your life and that's basically what's happened to our dorm Andrew it you made yourself a hermit of the force so thanks to being a hermit we do get a couple of different bonuses from that for example being a hermit gives us skill proficiencies in medicine and religion so we can go back to our skill table and become proficient in medicine and religion giving us another plus two to both of those roles so we can update that it also gives us proficiency in herbalism kit so that we can actually work with different flours and things to make concoctions or potions or natural healing although we may not be great at it since you know our nature skill bring are proficient in that but we can still add that to our other proficiencies table down in the lower left of the character sheet along with our languages everyone knows Commons so they'll know that language and of course being a dwarf will no dorvan and then we can pick one more language after that how about something weird like hey just speaks fake ace you find any sprites or Pixies of the forest you can talk with them other information that you can include is all things in the upper right hand corner of the character sheet personality traits ideals bonds and flaws again there are tables within the players handbook allow you to randomly choose them or pick one off your wish I'll leave that up to you maybe you can come up with your own flaws for youtube commenter or maybe he's got some own bonds or ideals that that to discover and that's that'll be up to you I'll leave that to you so before we move on we have a few other things that we do need to take care of let's look over at the top center of our character sheet where we can see things like hit points initiative and speed now for our current hit points at level 1 you automatically get the maximum possible and for druids that's it every level they would gain 1d8 hit points or one eight sided done but because we're level 100 matically get eight then we also add our constitution modifier on top of that our Constitution is 13 which means our modifier is +1 so we would start off with 9 maximum hip points down below that it says hit dice this is important for resting and trying to heal our hit die is a d8 because you roll nade sided die every time you level up for more hitpoints and we're only at level one so we got one of those so for hit dice we have a total of one d8 your initiative is what you roll to help determine what turn you go in combat and your initiative bonuses determine entirely on your dexterity and thankfully YouTube comments a little more dexterous Nimbo so his initiative bonus is +2 the +2 coming from his dexterity modifier speed is how far you can move on your turn in combat now unfortunately we're a dwarf so our legs aren't as long as others so we don't have as much speed dwarves have a base speed of 25 feet so we can write that in there you know you could think that sucks at our speed is lower than others but with such a low strength we don't plan on being an upfront fighter so maybe it's not so bad we're almost done but we still need to purchase equipment for our dwarven hermit even though he lives in the forest he still has a few belongings maybe these are things he bought before he left his dorm in town so for the starting money for Druids we get to roll to four sided die or to t4 add those together and then multiply it by ten four and of three is seven times ten so we will have seventy gold pieces and we'll write that down to use to purchase equipment which is quite a bit so we need to think of things such as armor weapons maybe we need like food or a backpack or maybe maybe a sleeping bag so it's gonna be out in the forest these are all things important to consider and you can find out all of these things within the equipment shamon get add equipment chapter of The Player's Handbook so for armor let's go with something something the light since you either drew what he's limited to kind of armor he wears let's just give him some studded leather armor and that already costs forty five gold pieces that's most of his money right there now you can also see on the armor table that studded leather armor gives us an armor class of twelve plus our dexterity modifier so if we go back to the top center of our character sheet real quick right next to hit points and initiative it says what our armor class is which would be 12 plus our dexterity modifier which is a plus two for a total of an armor class 14 which means anytime someone attacks us they need to roll a 14 or a better to hit now we need to pick some weapons for YouTube common now with the problem is as a druid his weapon pool is going to be very very limited druids don't like using a whole lot of metal or steel weapons but we do a few options since our strength is lower let's let's try to avoid giving him a melee weapon instead think of things that we can use for rage his options include things such as a slings or javelins which I actually like the idea of that however we said this is druid a forest hermit that's dwarf they will just throws javelins at people so let's give it let's go a bunch of talents to throw how about will purchase eat javelins Milt cost 5 silver pieces each for a total of four gold pieces so you can mark off that gold and we can mark off in our equipment that we have eight javelins and if for some reason someone does give up get up on his face you can give them a melee weapon since he's using javelins Spears are pretty close to the same so let's have them have a backup spear as well so let's marked out a spear and mark out that one GP at a cost now since we have these weapons we should mark down our different attacks with them so we can quickly look up what exactly our bonuses are when we attack with them in the center of the character sheet is the attacks and spell casting area and this is where we can actually write down our different attacks and bonuses for this beer and the javelin so in the first box will write down javelin which can be thrown and its attack bonus while the attack bonus would be our dexterity because this is a ranged weapon yet a dexterity bonus to it and Jalen's are something that we're proficient in so we add those together our dexterity modifier is +2 our proficiency bonus is +2 therefore we have a +4 to hit with javelins and for its damage it says within the players handbook that it deals 1 d6 piercing damage but since it's a thrown ranged weapon we also get to add our dexterity to the damage as well so it's going to be 1 d6 + to the +2 coming from our dexterity modifier you don't add your proficiency bonus to damage just the to hit roll and then we can also make a little note here that it has a range of 30 feet or 120 feet for a long Ridge attack then we can add in our spear and since that's going to be a melee weapon we're going to be using our strength instead of dexterity which is a negative one but we are proficient in Spears so we can add that to it instead so our spear attack will be a plus one two hit total now spears are kind of a special weapon because normally they do 1d6 piercing but they're also known as versatile weapons which means you can use them with two hands and if someone comes up with in their face of our dwarf I think it's going to be our best bet to use it with two hands so normally it's a 1d6 piercing weapon but with the versatility of using two hands that brings it up to 1d8 now we're still using our strengths because we are trying to stab someone with it our strikes not the best so at the end our total damage is going to be one D eight minus one now there's a bunch of other equipment and things that you can buy like I mentioned earlier food backpacks bevor about torches lanterns etc but I'll leave that up to you the only thing we really need to do on our druid which this doesn't apply to all characters but does for a druid is we do need to determine its spells as a druid you automatically know two can trips at level one and these are a completely minor spells that you can just cast at will and then for your level one spells we actually do the good stuff you get a spells equal to one your level plus your wisdom modifier of spells so at level one we know for different druid spells that we can cast a total to level one spells per day so we can just go to our players handbook and just pick fixham spells so far our kin trips how about we know a poison spray and thorn rip and for level one will no have two slots which we have been cast to at level one spells per day and we'll know the spells again thinking of our character we decided that he's really into animals and that's why I became a hermit at the forest we'll keep that in mind and choosing his spells so he'll have and will friendship speak with animals fog cloud and jump so now that we have our four spells selected what this means that you can cast any one of these four spells twice per day but that could be two jumps or one jump in a speak with animals or whatever combination and this ability will increase as we level up now before we move on from here we are going to go to the top of this spell casting sheet where it says your spell casting ability and your spell save DC your spell casting ability is all dependent on your class for Druids it's wisdom so you can write down with them in the spell casting ability spell save DC and spell attack bonus is what you would use to determine if your spells actually affects the target whether they resist it or if you actually hit with a spell in the first place so spell save DC the way we determined that is it's always going to be eight plus your proficiency bonus plus your spell casting ability so at level one it's going to be eight plus the two of our current proficiency bonus plus our spell casting ability modifier of wisdom which is plus three so eight plus two plus three so our current spell saved DC is 13 so if we say cast charms fell on someone or a poison or whatever they need to resist with this role of 13 or better spell attack bonus is what you'd use to actually hit kind of like our weapons where you have like a two hit bonus with your weapons this is kind of the same thing but for spells and for this it's your proficiency bonus plus your spell casting modifier abilities ability score spell attack bonus would be proficiency bonus of two plus our wisdom ability score modifier of plus three so we have a total of plus five to hit with our range spells now there's a lot more things to clean up on the character sheet but again I'll leave that up to you you can choose additional languages additional equipment there's a lot of features and traits of your different class and race that still need to be put in there for example because we're a druid we know the druid language because we're a dwarf we have special dwarven resistances and special training etc so make sure your go back through the character book and look through that and really see the other bonuses and proficiencies that your career cool game and keep that in mind as you create your own so with that we more or less have our very own Dungeons & Dragons character a dwarven druid who lives in the forest because he loves animals but it's also made a week overtime and his name is YouTube's common there you go I hope this was insightful and helped you learn a little bit more about how to make a D&D cares and you can see how fun it can be with coming up with different ideas and different character types with that big guys so very much for watching and stay tuned for more D and December [Music]

Channel: ProJared

Views: 1,131,791

Rating: 4.8998632 out of 5

Keywords: projared, dungeons, dragons, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, character, creation, making a character, character creation, DND, dnd, D&December, dndecember

Id: 5zy0SpU6lX8

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Nephrastar]

Fair warning though, he posts DnD stuff only through the month of December on his main channel. He mostly focuses on video games and related TV shows.

That said his other videos are fantastic.

[u/Nick_Kerttula]

He's only a nerd around christmas.