Have you tried using the quick build option? Or the standard option with the beginner's help text option selected.
Everything you've seen in the books is streamlined into picking options one by one, so really it should seem more beginner friendly than the books at least! But I think that, perhaps, if it still feels overwhelming after an hour or so of making a character maybe it's not for you.
Or perhaps you need some more exposure to D&D, have you ever watched or listened anyone else place via Twitch/Youtube/Podcast?
DDB, really does have a very easy character builder to use. I do have 1 player who finds it complicated, but the others and myself find it useful because as long as you just fill in the fields it won’t let you make a mistake. You might be in a campaign with content sharing enabled, in which case you do have a lot more options than you remember, but it’s not so bad. If you are and that’s too much to deal with all at once then make your character outside of that campaign and you should only have the basic options to work with so it’s less to look at all at once. I’ll walk you through it 1 tab at a time. Start with “Standard” and tell it to guide you if you want prompts the first time to make it even easier.
1st Tab. For the Home tab, just skip it. Any choices it gives you there are not important to the concept of character creation, and you can always change it later if you want to no problemo.
2nd tab. Pick any race you have available to you, if you want something easy to get started just pick plain old regular Human and you can’t go wrong. Then just pick the language that it’s asking for and no more fuss with that. If you think you can handle a little more then maybe regular plain old Half-Elf, or Half-Orc. Still fairly easy to manage, but with a little bit more to them.
3rd tab.Pick a class you like to go with your race. If you find the builder complicated then don’t go for a spell caster the first time because it does make things more complicated. Barbarian, and Fighter, they are pretty easy for a first character because it’s just less to remember. Monk and Rogue Aren’t that much more complicated really, so if you’re feeling fairly confident then maybe one of those. Once you get the hang of things then adding spellcasting is not so bad. If you pick stuff up quickly, you might want to look at Paladin or Ranger, they have Spellcasting, but not right away. You do get spells at 2nd-level with those, but not as many all at once so it’s less to absorb initially. Whatever you pick from those 6 choices, the system will only make you do a little bit at 1st-Level so you won’t get confused.
4th tab. For your Ability Scores just choose “Standard Array” and plug in the 6 numbers it gives you to use where you want them. If you’re not sure where you want them it’s okay. Just go back to your class, read the Abilities that it tells you are important and put the high numbers there and the rest wherever you like. For a first character, nobody expects you to be fully optimized, this one is just to get used to it.
5th tab. Put in any name that sounds cool to you, and choose a picture to go with it. Pick a background, whatever sounds cool to you. Some of those might give you Proficiency in a Skill, Tool, or Language that you already have, so you might want to go back and look at the race and class again to see if you get to replace them with a new one. (For that reason, I always pick my background before choosing proficiencies to save the tiny extra step, but it’s not a big deal. You can always go back and fix it if you made a mistake.) Fill out your appearance info so you know what you look like. Then, you get to pick personality traits for your character. Pick two off the first list and one from each of the next. This won’t change the character at all, but they give you easy options for how role play them if you don’t want to have to work too hard to figure it out.
6th tab. Equipment is next. Select “Starting Equipment” and then just check the boxes for the stuff you want. After that, hit “Add” and you’re done. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
7th tab. Then for “What’s Next?” “View Character” You will have to go to “Equipment” so you can check off the boxes telling the sheet to “wear” or “wield” your gear, but that’s it. When you’re done, copy the URL from the character sheet and post it here to show off what you did. Touch everything, play around, figure stuff out. If you think you really messed something up, you didn’t. Nothing that can’t be fixed anyway. And if you have any questions just drop a thread in the appropriate forum and folks are generally super nice and helpful on this site, so someone will be able to help you.
You might also want to try to look at the link for the New Player Guide that is linked above on the Menu Bar. Ive looked through it and it seems to have some good guidelines on how to get started.
Also, just as a side note, things like Advancement Type and Hit Point type are really only important once you begin playing the game. But do note that the Free Ruleset for 5e explains all this when you're going through the rules. Take a few minutes and read through the Basic Rules and see if that answers your questions. More specifically theres a section for Beyond 1st Level that should touch on those 2 questions.
Edit: Theres also a section of these forums for Streaming and im sure several of the games have links to their Youtube pages or Twitch streams. Might check those out as an example of how other people play.
Thanks, I appreciate the help. I probably didn't need it broken down quite that much but I appreciate the effort.
Most of my biggest questions are right there on the first Character Preferences page. Things like Advancement Type and Hit Point type must be pretty new, I've never heard of those things before.
I am having issues on the "Class" page (I chose Fighter) since there's no explanations what the Proficiencies or Fighting Style actually mean.
Happy to help, I have more if you need it. You said “overwhelmed” and I wasn’t sure how much you did need so I figured better too much than not enough. A couple of things for you:
If you choose a fighting style, it will give you a “show more” option to let you read it. You can just keep checking them all until you find what you like. Or you can read over everything you need for the Fighter Class right here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/fighter
Advancement Type refers to how you level up. Some DMs give out XP, other prefer something called Milestone Advancement where instead of giving out XP the DM just tells you when you level up. That’s all that is.
Hit Point Type refers to how you calculate your HP whenever you do level up. Some groups/players/DMs like to roll their HP whenever they level. Others just want to take the flat average and not have to worry about rolling and calculating and entering. Which the automatic function you hit level up and the character sheet does all that for you. That’s all that is.
As a new DM, the thing that helped me most was watching others do it. I watched D&D games on YouTube, mostly, and also paid attention to the choices my husband and friend made when they GMed our home games. The more I saw how characters and classes could interact, the more comfortable I felt in trying my hand at running a game. I'm still not sure enough of my chops to run a campaign, but I've done a few one-shots that have gone over well with my players. I'm also comforted by the fact that I'm a newbie DM and I'm allowed to suck at it, sometimes. Find yourself some good friends/players, and you'll be fine even when you mess up.
As for setting, you're the boss. D&D is obviously built on fantasy tropes, but it doesn't mean you can't translate that into something steampunk, or sci fi, or present-day urban.
Finally, it might be worthwhile to try your hand at other TTRPGs with fewer rules to keep track of than D&D at first. Blades in the Dark and Masks come to mind. You still get some roleplay and dice action without all the overwhelming details and the sword-and-dragon aesthetic. Then, when you feel more comfortable GMing, give D&D another shot! :-)
There's pretty much a tabletop RPG for everything, from fantasy to sci-fi to modern horror to gothic horror to anime to Star Wars, Firefly, Star Trek and superheroes.
Thanks, I appreciate the help. I probably didn't need it broken down quite that much but I appreciate the effort.
Most of my biggest questions are right there on the first Character Preferences page. Things like Advancement Type and Hit Point type must be pretty new, I've never heard of those things before.
I am having issues on the "Class" page (I chose Fighter) since there's no explanations what the Proficiencies or Fighting Style actually mean.
Happy to help, I have more if you need it. You said “overwhelmed” and I wasn’t sure how much you did need so I figured better too much than not enough. A couple of things for you:
If you choose a fighting style, it will give you a “show more” option to let you read it. You can just keep checking them all until you find what you like. Or you can read over everything you need for the Fighter Class right here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/fighter
Advancement Type refers to how you level up. Some DMs give out XP, other prefer something called Milestone Advancement where instead of giving out XP the DM just tells you when you level up. That’s all that is.
Hit Point Type refers to how you calculate your HP whenever you do level up. Some groups/players/DMs like to roll their HP whenever they level. Others just want to take the flat average and not have to worry about rolling and calculating and entering. Which the automatic function you hit level up and the character sheet does all that for you. That’s all that is.
Thanks. My potential issues with "Fighting Style" came down to wondering if it limited you to what weapons you can use like with 3e's weapons proficiency feats.
As a new DM, the thing that helped me most was watching others do it. I watched D&D games on YouTube, mostly, and also paid attention to the choices my husband and friend made when they GMed our home games. The more I saw how characters and classes could interact, the more comfortable I felt in trying my hand at running a game. I'm still not sure enough of my chops to run a campaign, but I've done a few one-shots that have gone over well with my players. I'm also comforted by the fact that I'm a newbie DM and I'm allowed to suck at it, sometimes. Find yourself some good friends/players, and you'll be fine even when you mess up.
As for setting, you're the boss. D&D is obviously built on fantasy tropes, but it doesn't mean you can't translate that into something steampunk, or sci fi, or present-day urban.
Finally, it might be worthwhile to try your hand at other TTRPGs with fewer rules to keep track of than D&D at first. Blades in the Dark and Masks come to mind. You still get some roleplay and dice action without all the overwhelming details and the sword-and-dragon aesthetic. Then, when you feel more comfortable GMing, give D&D another shot! :-)
I don't recall D&D games on YouTube being a thing the last time I tried playing (2017) but I wasn't paying close attention at the time. It almost certainly wasn't during the first couple of times I tried in 2008 or so when YouTube still had time constraints on videos.
I think you're given more leeway at it when you have a solid group and you're not the only DM. Every time I've done it, I felt like I was roped into being the DM and obligated to because I was the one bringing the group together. I definitely got very frustrated due to the fact that I'm pretty shy and have trouble continuously speaking and am not really a performer at all. The metaphor I'd use is, it's like a DM is expected to write the movie, direct it, and play every supporting role in a movie. I can handle the first two but when it comes to the third I break down. A couple of sessions I was drinking to try and break down the shyness a bit, and ended up so hammered by the end of the session that I pretty much passed out at the table.
I have tried one other system, the now defunct West End D6 (Ghostbusters) system that I had the most fun with as a GM. It helped that the rulebook basically gave me scripts I could read from and I didn't have to improvise much.
However, I'm only trying D&D as a player. I don't have any desire to play be a GM in the forseeable future.
There's pretty much a tabletop RPG for everything, from fantasy to sci-fi to modern horror to gothic horror to anime to Star Wars, Firefly, Star Trek and superheroes.
I'd probably be more into a pulp or superhero setting (I'm basically basing my Human Fighter off of Nightwing, it's not original but it gives me something to work with). I had a Call of Cthulhu book at one point, and liked the pulpy aspects more than the horror stuff. Now that's a game with too many variables to keep track of...
It's pretty easy to get hold of the old Guardians or Order Tri-Stat or d20 Silver Age Sentinels game line.
I think I picked up the hardcover and all the expanded source books for the d20 version for around $20. It uses the 3rd Ed SRD rules, but you can duplicate any type of hero from any line of comics pretty easily. There's also Heroes Unlimited, Aberrant, Marvel Superheroes just to name a few. And a new version of Call of Cthulhu just game out as well.
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Have you tried using the quick build option? Or the standard option with the beginner's help text option selected.
Everything you've seen in the books is streamlined into picking options one by one, so really it should seem more beginner friendly than the books at least! But I think that, perhaps, if it still feels overwhelming after an hour or so of making a character maybe it's not for you.
Or perhaps you need some more exposure to D&D, have you ever watched or listened anyone else place via Twitch/Youtube/Podcast?
DDB, really does have a very easy character builder to use. I do have 1 player who finds it complicated, but the others and myself find it useful because as long as you just fill in the fields it won’t let you make a mistake. You might be in a campaign with content sharing enabled, in which case you do have a lot more options than you remember, but it’s not so bad. If you are and that’s too much to deal with all at once then make your character outside of that campaign and you should only have the basic options to work with so it’s less to look at all at once. I’ll walk you through it 1 tab at a time. Start with “Standard” and tell it to guide you if you want prompts the first time to make it even easier.
1st Tab. For the Home tab, just skip it. Any choices it gives you there are not important to the concept of character creation, and you can always change it later if you want to no problemo.
2nd tab. Pick any race you have available to you, if you want something easy to get started just pick plain old regular Human and you can’t go wrong. Then just pick the language that it’s asking for and no more fuss with that. If you think you can handle a little more then maybe regular plain old Half-Elf, or Half-Orc. Still fairly easy to manage, but with a little bit more to them.
3rd tab.Pick a class you like to go with your race. If you find the builder complicated then don’t go for a spell caster the first time because it does make things more complicated. Barbarian, and Fighter, they are pretty easy for a first character because it’s just less to remember. Monk and Rogue Aren’t that much more complicated really, so if you’re feeling fairly confident then maybe one of those. Once you get the hang of things then adding spellcasting is not so bad. If you pick stuff up quickly, you might want to look at Paladin or Ranger, they have Spellcasting, but not right away. You do get spells at 2nd-level with those, but not as many all at once so it’s less to absorb initially. Whatever you pick from those 6 choices, the system will only make you do a little bit at 1st-Level so you won’t get confused.
4th tab. For your Ability Scores just choose “Standard Array” and plug in the 6 numbers it gives you to use where you want them. If you’re not sure where you want them it’s okay. Just go back to your class, read the Abilities that it tells you are important and put the high numbers there and the rest wherever you like. For a first character, nobody expects you to be fully optimized, this one is just to get used to it.
5th tab. Put in any name that sounds cool to you, and choose a picture to go with it. Pick a background, whatever sounds cool to you. Some of those might give you Proficiency in a Skill, Tool, or Language that you already have, so you might want to go back and look at the race and class again to see if you get to replace them with a new one. (For that reason, I always pick my background before choosing proficiencies to save the tiny extra step, but it’s not a big deal. You can always go back and fix it if you made a mistake.) Fill out your appearance info so you know what you look like. Then, you get to pick personality traits for your character. Pick two off the first list and one from each of the next. This won’t change the character at all, but they give you easy options for how role play them if you don’t want to have to work too hard to figure it out.
6th tab. Equipment is next. Select “Starting Equipment” and then just check the boxes for the stuff you want. After that, hit “Add” and you’re done. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
7th tab. Then for “What’s Next?” “View Character” You will have to go to “Equipment” so you can check off the boxes telling the sheet to “wear” or “wield” your gear, but that’s it. When you’re done, copy the URL from the character sheet and post it here to show off what you did. Touch everything, play around, figure stuff out. If you think you really messed something up, you didn’t. Nothing that can’t be fixed anyway. And if you have any questions just drop a thread in the appropriate forum and folks are generally super nice and helpful on this site, so someone will be able to help you.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
You might also want to try to look at the link for the New Player Guide that is linked above on the Menu Bar. Ive looked through it and it seems to have some good guidelines on how to get started.
Also, just as a side note, things like Advancement Type and Hit Point type are really only important once you begin playing the game. But do note that the Free Ruleset for 5e explains all this when you're going through the rules. Take a few minutes and read through the Basic Rules and see if that answers your questions. More specifically theres a section for Beyond 1st Level that should touch on those 2 questions.
Edit: Theres also a section of these forums for Streaming and im sure several of the games have links to their Youtube pages or Twitch streams. Might check those out as an example of how other people play.
Happy to help, I have more if you need it. You said “overwhelmed” and I wasn’t sure how much you did need so I figured better too much than not enough. A couple of things for you:
If you choose a fighting style, it will give you a “show more” option to let you read it. You can just keep checking them all until you find what you like. Or you can read over everything you need for the Fighter Class right here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/fighter
You can find all the information on Skill Proficiency here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/using-ability-scores#Skills
Advancement Type refers to how you level up. Some DMs give out XP, other prefer something called Milestone Advancement where instead of giving out XP the DM just tells you when you level up. That’s all that is.
Hit Point Type refers to how you calculate your HP whenever you do level up. Some groups/players/DMs like to roll their HP whenever they level. Others just want to take the flat average and not have to worry about rolling and calculating and entering. Which the automatic function you hit level up and the character sheet does all that for you. That’s all that is.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
As a new DM, the thing that helped me most was watching others do it. I watched D&D games on YouTube, mostly, and also paid attention to the choices my husband and friend made when they GMed our home games. The more I saw how characters and classes could interact, the more comfortable I felt in trying my hand at running a game. I'm still not sure enough of my chops to run a campaign, but I've done a few one-shots that have gone over well with my players. I'm also comforted by the fact that I'm a newbie DM and I'm allowed to suck at it, sometimes. Find yourself some good friends/players, and you'll be fine even when you mess up.
As for setting, you're the boss. D&D is obviously built on fantasy tropes, but it doesn't mean you can't translate that into something steampunk, or sci fi, or present-day urban.
Finally, it might be worthwhile to try your hand at other TTRPGs with fewer rules to keep track of than D&D at first. Blades in the Dark and Masks come to mind. You still get some roleplay and dice action without all the overwhelming details and the sword-and-dragon aesthetic. Then, when you feel more comfortable GMing, give D&D another shot! :-)
What are some other genres you're interested in?
There's pretty much a tabletop RPG for everything, from fantasy to sci-fi to modern horror to gothic horror to anime to Star Wars, Firefly, Star Trek and superheroes.
It's pretty easy to get hold of the old Guardians or Order Tri-Stat or d20 Silver Age Sentinels game line.
I think I picked up the hardcover and all the expanded source books for the d20 version for around $20. It uses the 3rd Ed SRD rules, but you can duplicate any type of hero from any line of comics pretty easily. There's also Heroes Unlimited, Aberrant, Marvel Superheroes just to name a few.
And a new version of Call of Cthulhu just game out as well.