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How to Choose a Character in Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game that was first published in 1974. The game involves players who create a character based on mythological races, who are thrown together in a fantasy world. The players generally must complete a quest together, which is created and controlled by a non-character player, the Dungeon Master. Dungeons and Dragons does not necessarily require a board, or any materials other than the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and various dice, as the game play is fairly open-ended and occurs primarily in the imaginations of the players.

Instructions

- 1
  Roll four six-diced die to determine your characters abilities. Discuss this process with your Dungeon Master, as he may want you to roll for each ability individually, or he may choose which die rolls are assigned to each ability. If you have to roll for the abilities individually, choose your character based on the points rolled for strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, charisma and wisdom.
- 2
  Choose the race of your character. The basic races offered by the Player's Handbook are Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Gnome and Halfling. Refer to the Player's Handbook while picking a character, as each have particular strengths.
- 3
  Choose your character's class. This is what your character specializes in; the main character classes are Warrior, Wizard, Priest and Rogue. Warrior should have high strength abilities and can be further classified as Fighters, Paladins and Rangers. The Wizard class can be either a Mage or a Specialist Wizard. A Priest can choose to be a Cleric, a Druid or a Priest to a specific mythology. A Rogue can choose to be either a thief or a Bard.
- 4
  Choose the characters alignment. Alignment is chosen by deciding if a character is lawful, neutral or chaotic and whether the character is good, neutral or evil. Therefore, a character may be lawful-good, neutral-good, chaotic-good, lawful-neutral, neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful-evil, neutral-evil or chaotic-evil. This alignment will determine what actions the player is allowed to make during the game and what skills or magic they are allowed to learn. If you choose an alignment that is questionable given your character's race and class, you may have to defend this choice with your Dungeon Master.
- 5
  Apply your die rolls to the ability scores on the character sheet, add the modifiers to those scores based on your character's race, class and alignment.
- 6
  Choose feats for your character. This can be found under the chapters describing each character class in the rule book. They are special abilities that will make your character unique.

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