It's time to start rolling up characters using the new and revised rules found in the 2024 Player's Handbook! Character creation rules have been streamlined and rearranged in the new Player's Handbook, making it easier to create your next favorite adventurer using the many player options found in the core rulebook.

In this article, we’ll explore how the character creation process has changed—and show you how to put it all into practice using the D&D Beyond Character Builder, fully updated for the 2024 rules!

• What Goes into Creating a Character?
• Step 1: Choose Your Class
• Step 2: Determine Origin
• Step 3: Determine Your Ability Scores
• Step 4: Choose an Alignment
• Step 5: Fill in Details

The 2024 Player’s Handbook is Now Available!

Buy the 2024 Player's Handbook today and dive into revised rules, enhanced character options, and exciting gameplay innovations.

Get your copy on the D&D Beyond marketplace and seamlessly integrate your new content with D&D Beyond's library of digital tools built to make D&D easier, so you can focus on the fun!

What Goes into Creating a Character?

Artist: John Grello

Throughout your character's adventuring career, they'll be faced with many choices. Will they save the village from the dragon, even if it means risking their own life? Will they wield a Greatsword or Greataxe? Will they adopt one of the Goblin brigands who attempted to waylay them on the road?

However, before they can embark on their career, you have a few choices of your own to make. During character creation, these four aspects will impact how your character operates on a mechanical level:

• Character class: Your character's class is your most mechanically significant aspect. It provides features that, as you level up, dictate how you will approach situations. Rogues may stealth into a situation, Wizards might use their magic to outsmart their opponents, and Barbarians might kick down the door and start swinging. We cover each of the revised classes and their accompanying subclasses in our 2024 Player's Handbook class reviews.
• Background: While your species represents who you descended from, your background represents your most formative experiences. Mechanically, this gives your character skill and tool proficiencies and starting equipment. In the 2024 Player's Handbook, your background also includes ability score adjustments, which used to be tied to your species. In addition, it now provides an Origin feat, a boon dictated by the skills you developed before your adventuring career began.
• Species: Your species represents your character's heritage. Were you born to a human family living in Baldur's Gate? Or a dwarven clan dwelling beneath the Crystalmist Mountains? Mechanically, this provides abilities that were passed down by your ancestors. The Elf's Fey Ancestry is an example of such an innate ability, representing their capability to overcome beguiling magic because of the time their ancestors spent in the Feywild. 
• Ability scores: Every character is different. Even Human Barbarians from the same clan excel in different areas. Ability scores define your character's strengths (and weaknesses) in a matrix represented by Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

Besides these mechanical aspects, your character will also have more personal and intangible qualities. They will have developed a backstory, personality, and alignment. They may have a cherished pet or a food they despise. While these might not affect what type of dice you roll to attack, they're just as important for deciding how your character will react to the various situations they'll encounter on their travels.

Let's Create a Character from the 2024 Player's Handbook

Artist: Dmitry Burmak

For our example character, we're going to build a level 1 Dwarf Fighter named Angriff. We'll walk through each of the steps presented in the 2024 Player's Handbook in order, and provide the rationale for how we made the choices when we were presented with options.

Step 1: Choose Your Class

Time to fire up the Character Builder!

Previously, character creation started with choosing your species. Now, we start by choosing our character class. This is because your class is the culmination of your character's origin; it shows where they wound up at the start of their adventuring career. It's also important to establish your class first because it impacts certain choices you make when choosing your species and background—like what ability scores you're looking to improve with your background.

This decision will impact how your character plays for their entire adventuring career. Luckily, the Class Overview table in Chapter 2 provides a breakdown of what each class specializes in, what ability score they usually focus on, and how hard they are to navigate as a player.

So, when we choose the Fighter class, we'll note what they receive at level 1 on our character sheet:

Core Traits

Each class now has a handy table of the core traits you receive when you choose them at level 1. Here are the choices we've made for Angriff:

• Primary ability: Strength — This first trait just serves as a reminder of what your class wants to focus on. Between Dexterity and Strength, our Fighter will be opting for Strength.
• Hit Point Die: D10 — This represents what we roll when we increase our number of Hit Points and regain them during a Short Rest. Once we figure out our ability scores in Step 3, we'll apply this to our starting Hit Point maximum.
• Saving Throw Proficiencies: Strength and Constitution — As a Fighter, we get to add our Proficiency Bonus to these saving throws.
• Skill Proficiencies: Persuasion, Perception — These are the skills we want our Fighter to have a boost in. When we make ability checks using these skills, we get to add our Proficiency Bonus.
• Weapon Proficiencies: Simple and Martial weapons — Fighters don't have any restrictions over which weapons they can wield effectively. Any weapon you pick up and swing at an enemy, you can add your Proficiency Bonus to the roll.
• Armor Training: Light, Medium, and Heavy armor and Shields — Likewise, Fighters can wear any type of armor they want without any downsides (as long as they meet the Strength requirements for Heavy armor).
• Starting Equipment: Chain Mail, Greatsword, Flail, 8 Javelins, Dungeoneer's Pack, and 4 GP — We're suiting up for a Heavy armor Strength-based Fighter, so this is the ideal kit to start with.

Fighting Style

We get to choose a Fighting Style feat at level 1. Previously, the Fighter's Fighting Styles were listed in their class features rather than being separated out into feats. In the 2024 Player's Handbook, these feats have a prerequisite of needing the Fighting Style class feature.

This doesn't change much, only that the different classes that have the Fighting Style are no longer limited in their choices. Some Fighting Styles used to be exclusive to certain classes and the globalized list has lifted those restrictions.

We're choosing the Great Weapon Fighting feat, which allows us to treat any 1 or 2 on a damage dice as a 3 as long as we're attacking with a Two-Handed or Versatile weapon.

Second Wind

If all that fighting leaves you out of breath (or on the brink of death), worry not. Fighters get the Second Wind feature! This allows you to regain Hit Points equal to 1d10 plus your Fighter level as a Bonus Action. You start with 2 uses and can regain one when you finish a Short Rest or all of your expended uses after a Long Rest.

These Second Wind uses can also be applied to other Fighter features as you level up, like Tactical Mind and Tactical Shift, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Weapon Mastery

Now for the Fighter's first all-new feature, Weapon Mastery! This allows your Fighter to learn three weapons' mastery properties and to use them when they wield those weapons in combat. Because our loadout came with a Greatsword, Flail, and Javelin, we'll take these as our chosen weapons.

This means we can access the Graze mastery property with our Greatsword, the Sap property with our Flail, and the Slow property with our Javelin.

Step 2: Determine Origin

So, our Fighter's got some skills, but where did he come from? Let's pick our background and species to help support the playstyle and narrative we're trying to achieve.

Background

First up, we'll choose our background. As we're trying to synergize with our Fighter class, we'll choose a background that has applicable Ability Score Increases as well as an Origin feat that suits our needs.

The Soldier is an easy choice here, as it allows us to increase our Strength and Constitution, gives us applicable skill proficiencies, and a useful Origin feat:

• Ability Scores: +2 Strength, +1 Constitution — We want our Fighter to hit hard as well as be able to take hard hits, so this is a perfect boost to his stats. When we decide our ability scores in Step 3, we'll add these to our results.
• Feat: Savage Attacker — This allows us to roll our weapon's damage dice twice and take the higher of the two, perfect for squeezing out extra damage.
• Skill Proficiencies: Athletics, Intimidation — When diplomacy fails, now you can scare your enemies into listening or just put them in a full nelson.
• Tool Proficiency: Dragonchess — Checkmate. Your move.
• Equipment: 50 GP — We collected all the equipment we needed to behead our enemies in our class equipment, so let's take the money and run.

Species

Here we're going to choose the Dwarf species. These stout, stubborn, subterranean dwellers may be 4 feet tall, but they're thick enough to make up for it!

• Darkvision — This allows us to see in the dark without a light source, albeit in shades of grey. Make sure you remind your Dungeon Master you have Darkvision the second you walk into an unlit chamber.
• Dwarven Resilience — Resistance to Poison damage and Advantage on saving throws against the Poisoned condition are both excellent abilities to keep your Fighter in ship shape.
• Dwarven Toughness — You get 1 additional Hit Point at each level, including at level 1. Perfect for our frontline Fighter! We'll make sure we include this in our calculation after we've decided on our ability scores.
• Stonecunning — Adding to your array of senses, Stonecunning in the 2024 Player's Handbook allows you to gain Tremorsense to a range of 60 feet for 10 minutes. You have to be on or touching a stone surface to activate this ability, so no one will judge you for carrying around a seeing-eye pet rock.
• Language — You start with Common and one language of your choice. We'll grab Dwarvish and say that Angriff took a semester abroad at an elven grove and picked up Elvish.

Using Backgrounds and Species from Older Sources

If you want to use an older character origin option, no problem! The 2024 Player's Handbook has rules for converting these options to be compatible with the new ruleset.

For your species, ignore any Ability Score Increases the older species you chose provides.

For your background, increase one score of your choice by 2 and another by 1, or increase three scores by 1. Also, if your background doesn't provide a feat, grab an Origin feat of your choice.

Step 3: Determine Your Ability Scores

Now that the foundation for our Dwarf Fighter has been laid, it's time to start fleshing out his abilities.

In the 2014 Player's Handbook, ability scores used to be decided before a character's background, but this was switched as backgrounds now provide a mechanically significant ability score boost.

There are still three methods for generating your ability scores: Standard Array, Random Generation, and Point Cost. For our character, we'll be using Standard Array, which gives us six scores that we assign to each of our six abilities.

For Angriff, our ability scores are as follows:

• Strength: 15 + 2 = 17 (+3) — We make attack rolls and deal damage with our Strength, so this is our highest priority. Here, we'll add the +2 from our Soldier background.
• Dexterity: 13 (+1) — Dexterity is important for sneaking, Initiative, and when a dragon's breathing fire at you—so we've filled in an above-average score here.
• Constitution: 14 + 1 = 15 (+2) —This helps dictate your Hit Points, and since we'll be on the front lines, we need those to stay up and swinging. We add our +1 from our Soldier background here.
• Intelligence: 10 (+0) — Intelligence isn't super important to our Fighter, but a bit can never hurt.
• Wisdom: 8 (-1) — Smart enough to know a tomato is a fruit but not wise enough to exclude it from a fruit salad. We've taken an 8 here because we have proficiency in Perception, our Fighter's most important Wisdom-based skill.
• Charisma: 12 (+1) — We have proficiencies in both Intimidation and Persuasion in our kit, so a +1 can help solidify these checks in social situations.

Now that we've decided on our ability scores, we can determine how they reflect our character's appearance and personality. For example, our Dwarf looks like a gruff, battle-hardened warrior but he's surprisingly charming and light on his feet.

Step 4: Choose an Alignment

With our ability scores, class, background, and species decided on, we're almost ready to fill in the remaining details of our character sheet. Just one pit stop before we do.

We need to decide on our character's alignment, which reflects their moral and ethical compass. Are they Lawful Good, always striving to uphold justice? Or Chaotic Neutral, following their whims regardless of what the City Watch—or the tyrannical king's henchmen—may have to say? We're choosing Neutral Good for our Dwarf Fighter.

On D&D Beyond's Character Builder, alignment can be chosen by going back to the Background step:

Step 5: Fill in Details

If you're playing with pen and paper, now it's time to bust out that calculator—or wish we took a high Intelligence score. Luckily D&D Beyond's Character Builder does all the work for you! No need to make sure your saving throws, skills, and attack bonuses are applying the proper modifiers, it's all done automatically.

Now, we're ready to strike out on our quest to save the world!

Adventure On, Adventurer!

The 2024 Player's Handbook is now available on the D&D Beyond marketplace, which means it's time to set out on new adventures with fresh or familiar characters!

So, while some steps have been switched around and some aspects have been shifted to different options, character creation is still a familiar process in the 2024 Player's Handbook. However, with this new process, you'll make choices in a more sensical progression. Seeing as you choose your character's class first, you can look at their origin with the perspective, "How did my character become a Fighter?" This also allows you to ensure that the species, background, and ability scores you choose are synergistic to the character you'll be rolling dice with.

We’re delighted to share with you the changes to fifth edition D&D that appear in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Make sure to keep an eye out on D&D Beyond for more useful guides on using the wealth of new options, rules, and mechanics found in the 2024 Player's Handbook!

Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his partner, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.