A guide to the DnDBeyond character builder and building your first D&D5e character

 I haven’t done anything particularly noteworthy lately, just swatching for lace and trying to plan out a rpg campaign so it ends by the middle of August when we lose a dedicated player, so today you get a guide to the DnDBeyond character builder that’s mostly here because I’m tired of copy-pasting it into a really long email for new players in one of my games a couple times a month. This guide is tailored for people playing in the campaign I’m running through our local library (read: it details making a 5th level character for d&d5e) and uses the example of a 5th level fighter, because I don’t recommend playing a magic user of some kind as your first character (but the advice is applicable to anyone, I think). 

Most of this is copied directly from an email thread with a completely new player trying to make her first character, an “elf who uses a bow” (actual description). This is going to be a really long post, so it may be best to read and follow along at the same time.

The thing about the DnDBeyond character builder is that it’s free to make an account and use, but you don’t have many options unless you pay. I believe that it’s plenty good enough with only the free options, as long as you’re okay with sacrificing “the perfect subclass” for “close enough”. 

Before the character builder

New players, when I try to help them create characters, often only have a vague concept in mind — “elf with a bow” or “teenage thief” or “like Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, can I be all witty and angry like that” are all ones I have seen (two of those are for the campaign I’m talking about, one is for a different campaign). This usually maps to a couple choices for a core class, and only rarely dives into a place where it needs a specific subclass to be a viable option. Now, in my campaign, there isn’t much combat because there’s a lot of players and it gets hard to manage. This means that I focus less on giving players a combat-viable choice, and instead help them make a character that fits their concept. 

5th edition is a little hard to understand, but it’s okay to be confused. Another time I’ll talk about my trouble with d&d5e, but for now just know that it gets clearer after you start playing. 

The first thing, before you open up the character builder, is to try to map a concept to a core class and maybe a race. There are 12 core classes that DnDBeyond has available for free: barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard. 

Usually, it’s easiest to map the character to one choice out of each of the following choices and use that to pick a class: magic user versus not magic user, good fighters versus not good fighters (regardless of the way they fight), and okay at lots of things versus great at a few things. If you have a specific concept to work with that falls into a specific class (bards for music/oratory/convincing other people, rogues for sneakiness/skilled at everything, paladin or cleric for healing, etc), you don’t need to do this as much. 

The classes that do at least some magic are bard, cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard. The classes that are good fighters are barbarian, cleric, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, and rogue; of these, only the monk tends to fight without weapons. The classes that do lots of things decently well (not as well as a specialist, but better than your average person) are bards and rogues, and sometimes warlocks. You want to pick a class based on the lists it falls into; the class that is on all the lists that you chose is probably the best class for your concept. 

If you want to choose a race now based on your character concept (like the bow-wielding elf), you can think about that too. 

I’m going to go into a brief tangent, and talk about ability scores before we get to the character builder. Ability scores represent your relative, semi-innate, general abilities (and, as always, there are problems with them that I will talk about later). The six scores are Strength (how physically strong you are, and your skill with melee weapons), Dexterity (your agility, and also your skill with ranged weapons for some reason), Constitution (sort of your physical hardiness or stamina), Intelligence (ability to retain and apply intellectual knowledge), Wisdom (your instincts and intuition), and Charisma (your ability to influence others, mostly by talking to them). A higher score means you’re better at that ability, and a lower score means you’re worse at that ability; a score of 10 is the score of an average person. These scores translate to modifiers, which apply to all dice rolls using that ability. You usually want to put your best score into an ability that correlates with what you want to be good at in play. 

The character builder

Dndbeyond is pretty good at working you through making a character, but I’m going to walk you through the options cause it really isn’t great for a first character. To use the character builder, you need a free account. Don’t get suckered into thinking you need to buy any sourcebooks— you can make a character anyways. You want to click the “Standard” method, and you likely want to enable help text (the checkbox under it) if you want to read the descriptions I’m talking about (most of the ones I’m saying “read if you want but you don’t have to” — I’m assuming you’ve got that enabled).

I’m using the example of a bow-wielding elf, who’s a 5th level fighter; the options you have differ for different classes, as do your choices, but the point here is to describe the process and some of the interface.

The landing page is a decent intro to what you’re doing; read it if you want but you don’t have to. The second page is a bunch of stuff that you don’t need to bother with — the only thing you might want to change is the name (but you can change it later) and if you want to keep others from viewing, it you can change the privacy setting to private. 

The third page is labeled as “1: Race” in the top navigation bar, and it gives a description of the things your race gives. It doesn’t really matter if you read it or not, again. The next page is where you actually choose a race. You can search “elf” or whatever race you want to be, although only some options are free (it does tell you when something is paid content). Elves and some other races have sub races, which give you extra features, and if you want to be a bow-user, I’d go with Wood Elf (they get an increase to their dexterity score). You click on a race, and then you click on the button that says “add race” and it says that it’s been applied. 

The next page is in step 2, “2: Class” in the nav bar, and it’s a description page. You don’t need to read it, again. Next you get a list of the classes; fighter is probably your best bet if you want to use a bow but you can read through them and pick something else if you want. Again, click the class and then click “add class”. That’s going to lead you to a big page with boxes, some highlighted in blue with an exclamation point on the corner — those blue highlights mean you have to make a choice, and it won’t let you go on until you do. 

There’s a drop down that says “level” at the top, and you want to change the level to the level your GM tells you that you’ll start at. I’m presuming you’re making a 5th level fighter. You can then pick skills from the drop downs presented (fighters get 2, and they’re pretty straightforward), a fighting style (you want “archery” to help you with your bow), a martial archetype (other classes have different names for the subclasses, you only get one option for free unless you pay), and then ability score improvement (click “Ability score improvement”, not “feat”; then pick two scores to increase by 1 point each, probably dexterity for both as long as you’re planning to use a bow). Then you can click to the next page. 

The next page is about ability scores, and this one is, again, not particularly worth reading. You want to use standard array for your first character, so on the next page when it says pick a generation method, pick standard array. Your highest score, for your fighter, should probably be Dexterity; select 15 for that, then for the other scores you can assign any of the other numbers. The higher your ability score, the better your character is at that general area of doing things. It calculates your scores and modifiers for you, including the ability score improvement you picked in the last step, and so once you’ve assigned all scores you can just move on. 

Next page is another description page you can skip, but after that is actually picking some stuff. This page lets you change your name if you want, then lets you pick a background. The background is what you did before adventuring; it rarely has mechanical effects, so pick one that fits your idea of a story or personality and then make sure you pick all the options you need to select something for. You can also fill in other things that you aren’t required to put in to move on, if you want to write backstory or personality or something down. 

You can ignore the next page if you want, it’s another description. On the following page, pick starting equipment rather than gold (click on the word “Equipment” where it says ‘Choose: Equipment or Gold’), and then pick your options. You likely want the leather armor, longbow, and 20 arrows option for the first checkbox, but other than that it’s up to you. You do want to make sure one of the boxes for each option is checked, though, because otherwise you miss out on equipment, and make sure you read the descriptions of the ‘packs’ you can choose from. Then, click “Add starting equipment”. After that, it’ll pop up the same screen; click “inventory” (which will be followed by a number in parentheses), and you want to click on the “use”, “wield” or “wear” options for anything it allows you to click on. Don’t bother with anything else in this section; it’s mostly for adding extra stuff when you find treasure, but you just need to make sure it can calculate your weapons and armor as in use. 

Finally, just click “view character sheet” and you get the web version of the character sheet, ready to play! 

For people who are already experienced with dndbeyond, are there other tips you would add? Am I missing anything? New players, did this help? Do you have suggestions for further improvement? Please let me know!