Hello people, some of you expressed interest in making their own brand new 5th edition D&D character…
And, as suggested, you could post them here to check how kosher they are…
If you want, you can download the character sheet here.
One of these forms can be filled directly in pdf and set online.
I recommend using the 27 point buy /standard array method…
I will edit this post as soon as I get home to include my character sheets for two characters I came up with.
The first one is a rather classical, simple Tiefling Warlock Noble (who is lawful evil but his background makes him playable in a group).
The other one probably won’t get played much I suppose, as it is form the Volos Guide to Monsters book (When I get around to join you in the Spielbar the next time I’ll definitely bring it along). It is a Tabaxi Barbarian Pirate.
Love Volo’s guide… Is pirate a variant of barbarian?
pirate is actually a background in the phb (special feat of sailor)!
So here are my two characters I have got so far:
Plain Thunderpaw, or “Plain” as he is usually called, set out to travel when he was but a cub. Soon he realized that it’s easier to steal things than come up with the money to pay for them, utilizing his reputation and mighty physique. Not long after he was commanding his own pirate ship and a small crew. Since then he has seen been around and, realising he is growing old, now seeks to avoid his eventual demise by finding the fountain of youth. Unlike most Tabaxi, Plain is of a plain-dwelling race of Tabaxi which is quite muscular and bears similarities with lions, including an impressive maine. Plain is a prime example of his race, possessing incredible strength and durability even for one of his race.
Plain.pdf (174.4 KB)
Thyron, offspring of a noble family. One of his ancestors was forced to forge a pact with a fiendish deity, granting the bloodline incredible powers but for a price…
Thyron seeks to confront the deity to undo the pact and free his family of it’s curse - and he will go to any measure to do so. His experiences so far were far from good, hence he is quite wary of everyone around him and will make use of his powers, both political and sorcerous (both of which he wields a lot of, despite is pale, weakly appearence) to put people into their place.
Thyron.pdf (174.6 KB)
let me know what you think!
thunder…thunder…thunder…THUNDER…THUNDERPAWS HOOOOOOOO! 
Plain Thunderpaw. I really like that, the +2 and +1 on your character sheet threw me at first though. Nice trait too 
As my character died in the last (dnd 5e) session, I also think about creating a new one.
I always liked the idea of the “Loremaster” prestige class in the older versions of the game and I thought about giving a try of it with a dwarven cleric (knowledge domain) to emulate it. (By my experience) the knowledge skills are rarely used, but such a character with vast amount of skills could provide a good opportunity for the DM to better describe a situation, give background information, cues (or push back the attempt with a "what do you find? You tell me! "). In combat, the character could rely on the knowledge of the enemy (for example a successful knowledge roll might justify, why the character uses flame against trolls), plus the cleric “base” still provides an useful support for any party.
The only changes I’d do (in comparison with the phb setting) to either get another skill for a positive Intelligence bonus or trade in another skill for “Investigation”: it would make sense for a lore seeker to be proficient in recreating settings to gather information about various events.
What do you think? Have any of you had experience with similar character?
While I have only played the introductory game with our group here, I spent a lot of time lately with character design. And it always boils down to this: Your character, at level 1, is a beginner.
So my opinion is if you want a certain stat increase and maybe a feat, get yourself a human. I wish everyone could choose one feat at character creation, this would make things SO much nicer (human variant could then choose 2).
So yeah…I think going that route (knowing stuff) from the very beginning fringes on metagaming as there is no real drawback.
So. Finally have the time to reply too.
First, let’s get into the character idea I had. A big part of his backstory is mainly based on the additional information on orc culture in “Volo’s Guide to Monsters”, especially the different deities and their followers. He is a half-orc barbarian, but I’m tempted into multiclassing him with the bard-class sooner or later… just for the sake of character-development and a neat little roleplaying-idea I am fiddling with. But first I’m going to see if I’ll play him at all.
Karthucc, or just “Kar” for friends or allies is a half-orc, whose mother fled their old tribe after the orc marauders of Gruumsh, Bahgtru and Ilneval were nearly completely eradicated during a series of raids and the followers of Shargaas took over, threatening to kill each and every creature that was not purely orc - despising even the half-orcs among their tribe. Whilst the whole tribe was amidst waves of revolution, Kars mother vanished into seclusion with her unborn half-human son.
Growing up, Karthucc became their link to “normal” society, trading for goods they could not create on their own and learning that not humans, dwarves or elves wronged them - but orcs.
He came to have a distinct dislike to the monstrous part of himself, while still trying to be the best he could be and prove the prejudice about him and every half-human race wrong. Although the rage and orcish bloodlust are still as much embued within him as the belief that Gruumsh watches his every step, he tries to fight exactly that, ridding the world of one evil at a time…
Karthucc.pdf (172.6 KB)
Duh, I’m so bad at summaries.
Well, as to your characters @Andy089: I really like them both! I don’t know much about the mechanical site of character creation, but I think roleplaywise there’s a lot to play with in both and I would really like to see Thyron get to work his way up to confronting a deity…
@S_journ I think that would be an interesting path to take. But still, from my side, there’s not much help to get mechanic-wise, although it does make sense (at least for me…) for a lore seeker to search (and probably find…) more than the average guy, concerning knowledge or a special kind of information that could be helpful or even just entertaining in some way.
So… that’s my two cents here - better late than never I guess 
First of all, thanks for the feedback @Andy089 and @Parsley!
Here you can find a character sheet of a young dwarven “infromation distribution” activist named Thaludorn Copperkeg, an ex-librarian, whose workplace had collapsed (human workmanship…bah!) and numerous scrolls and rune tables were destroyed. While his colleagues working on restoring the library, he wanders around the world to find replacement for the destroyed books and texts. The destruction of the library also made him to realize a major weakness of the current standards of information storage - most pieces of information are stored only at one place at all and if something happens, it might be lost forever. Therefore, he try to recover those things (especially the unique and endangered ones - like scrolls hidden in old tombs or beneath dungeons) and multiply the information and distribute to ensure its availability. His quest, however, brings him often to dangerous situations. He went to investigate some old caves near to Neverwinter in the hope of uncovering a missing manuscript of Volo, but instead of it he faced with the greatest adventure of his life…
The character is 100% player’s handbook friendly, although I wasn’t able to fill out the second page (the spell sheet) so that shall be done at the game.
Thaludorn Copperkeg.pdf (513.4 KB)
@Andy089: Both of your characters are great and looking for joining to either of them. However, you should consider that you might face with some difficulties to really play along with your background in caves/mines.
@Parsley: You made an interesting character and I’ll be specially interested, how would you like to turn it to a bard in a long run (but of course that depends on your game experience). Maybe you might consider the “entertainer” background (thus you could access proficiency in a musical instrument) and could fit into your background, finding a way into the society - however, if that don’t work out you might simply drop that part without issues of a second class.
If you want to start with higher stats or feats, why not just begin at a higher level? It’s your game; if you don’t want to play a beginner, just skip the early levels. I believe one of the Wizards guys even suggested starting at 3rd as a default.
On the other hand, you might want to give the early levels a chance. Fifth ed. has already eliminated low-level play when compared with classic D&D (high-level play, too), and while the mid-levels are great - and form the sweet spot for a lot of people - low levels are really fun, too.
Besides, in a typical 5th ed. game, those early levels fly by anyway.
Honestly, I think starting at level 4 would be absolutely brilliant.
You get your subclass, a feat (or stat increase) and some more spells/abilities or even get to multiclass from the very beginning.
I think even (or perhaps ESPECIALLY) from an RP point of view, having characters start at level 4 is a great idea.
Personally, I prefer starting at level 1.
I feel like you’d be skipping on the story a bit by jumping the earlier levels. After all, you start following Luke Skywalker as he is only a moisture farmer…
I agree with Simon there. Especially for new players it’s better this way, because they learn about their options and skills bit by bit and are not overwhelmed by everything on the first session.
Nothing prevents you from speeding up the leveling process though. Even if they just defeat some goblins in the first session, you can go by milestone and give them 2nd level right away 
You’re the DM, adapt it to the pace you and you’re players like the most.
Oh for new players I absolutely agree! If you’re just starting to grasp the principles and rules, having too much to think about becomes counter-productive and for my first game and character I would definitely want to start at level 1.
But once you’re comfortable with all of that, I think starting at level 1 is a bit too…limiting.
For me the RP- and background aspect of a character is actually MUCH more important to me than how effective he is. Having some extra details to fashion your character the way you want really improves the whole thing I think…
(when I go about designing a character, I usually have a fixed idea about him up to level 4 - 6, depending on how much he is multiclassing; being able to start with all those details rather than having to wait to get them seems quite convenient to me).
I totally get your point of view, @Andy089 and I think it can be quite nice to have all these additional quirks and talents to shape your character right at the get-go. Although I have a real sweet-spot for seeing characters achieve all these goodies step after step and maybe even fighting to get them. Especially 1st-3rd level will be so much change and increase in class-abilities, that I just think it would be nice to integrate that into the RP-part of the game, rather than skip it and have it engraved in his/her past.
@S_journ Your dwarf sounds so much fun to have around… I just imagine him saving books and scrolls out of old libraries set aflame by some creature, while everybody elses would rather save their own burning butt. I’m really looking forward to maybe seeing him in action at some point!
As to your question about the multiclassing: It’s not the “entertainer” part of the Bard that I seek to get out of a multiclassing (although I did think about taking the entertainer background for some while). The idea of multiclassing Karthucc into Barbarian/Bard sprang actually up when Andy talked about his character Thyron - a magic user. Kar himself has never had much contact with magic, so he would be fairly intrigued by that and even willing to maybe learn something from his magic-casting-companions.
Even so he will not really grasp this form of magic like a wizard would - for he wouldn’t study and learn with partience. His magical ability should be somewhat intuitive and mostly supporting - like “Healing Word”, “Cure Wounds” or “Feather Fall”, where the simple thought of “I have to save/heal him!!” or “I don’t want this company to die falling in a deep abyss!” could be able to channel this form of power. Therefore the Bard-Class seemed just most fitting - and getting the 1d6 of Bardic Inspiration as a bonus is a neat thing to have too.
But maybe I’m planning far too much for my little half-orc and he will become exactly the opposite of what I have in mind for him. I guess time has to tell…
Concerning “too much” and “multiclassing” - The last character I came up with is really only “done” when he is at level 10 (war cleric 2, UA gunsmith Artificer 1, hunter ranger 4 with sharpshooter feat, assassin rogue 3).
He is a Half-elf bounty hunter with a special gun who basically sacrifices the victims to his goddess…
At this stage I am stopping myself from coming up with new characters and get more into developing the existing (4) more…
Some of them, 3 actually, need UA rules though, so I am focusing on the remaining one now: Paw, the Tabaxi Pirate. Changed things around a bit, so now he is very strong, very dextrous and quite charming but amazingly stupid and un-wise ^^
That’s better put than I could have…
Millestones… Well, my current group go to level 2 after the first session. It took a bit more than one session to level 3 and a bit more than 2 to reach level 4…
So, it is not slow and millestones would not speed up the process much… Also, if we are running the LMoP “by the book” (which was the idea, to give you guys as much of the 3official flavour" as possible); then millestone levelling is actually how they go about the first couple levels…
Background story for this one is still a bit murky, but will be along the lines of:
Born on the Moonshae Isles to a Captain of a trade ship and her husband, Robert grew up traveling the seas. When he was old enough to learn a trade he apprenticed to a friend of his mother and joined his crew.
Robert always had a knack to get into trouble, but also to get out of it thanks to his wits. He played pranks on his crewmates, but ultimately had their back when needed. He learned to fight with the Rapier at his main weapon and whatever else was available in his offhand.
He often went unseen because he is just so average looking (at least among others from the Moonshae Isles).
A couple of weeks ago the ship he was serving on got attacked by pirates, as far as he knows he is the only survivor. Rescued by some fisherman he currently resides in Neverwinter trying to find opportunies to amass the coin necessary to hunt those pirates down, maybe even find friends on the way willing to help.
…
i’ve used the point buy (27 points) system and the Variant Human Traits optional rule for him
Robert Waters.pdf (241.6 KB)
i will post my Warlock at a later time, and maybe some of the other characters i’ve created (for other groups, or as npcs in the adventure i’m currently running for some friends)
Really cool!
Wow, that’s a cool backstory. I really like it already!