I have made the first character I want to play, but I am unsure if they are good enough. How can I make them better? I don't have any of the books yet, so I could only make a basic character, but this is what I made.
I am always calm, no matter what the situation. I never raise my voice or let my emotions control me.
Ideals
I’m loyal to my friends, not to any ideals, and everyone else can take a trip down the Styx for all I care.
Bonds
I’m guilty of a terrible crime. I hope I can redeem myself for it.
Flaws
An innocent person is in prison for a crime that I committed. I’m okay with that.
This is the backstory I wrote:
Faelar and his twin sister Nyx grew up as the property of an abusive and deviant mistress who gave them to a local crime lord to pay her debt. Their new master put them to work in one of his brothels, where they worked until they had earned enough money to buy their freedom. After buying their freedom, they both joined the mercenary guild, selling the skills they had learned in their former lives as sex workers to the highest bidder - becoming spies and information gathers and assassins. Eventually, Faelar was hired by a group of adventures for his ability to gather information, disappear into a crowd and remain unseen.
Joining his clients on their travels would forever change his life - for better or worse, remains to be seen.
I don't think I've made a very good character , but I'm not sure how to improve them.
How can I make this PC better?
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I am a complete nerd who loves role-playing all his favourite characters inspired by various forms of nerdy media, including but not limited to science fiction, science fantasy, anime and manga. I love elves, high fantasy stories and magical cat boys. I also like broken worlds and cyberpunk.
Sounds like a pretty standard Rogue with the Assassin subclass. Take the Spy background which grants proficiency with Deception, Stealth, thieves' tools, and a gaming set of choice (basically your character is good at playing cards, dice, or some other common variety of gambling). If you're starting off at at least 3rd level, which is when Rogues choose their subclass, you'll also get proficiency with disguise kits and poisoners' kits. For your other four proficiencies as a base Rogue, I would recommend Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and either Investigation and Insight; combined with the other proficiencies from the background and the ones you get at third level from the Assassin subclass this should provide a skillset for someone who is a professional covert agent. Deception is central to maintaining your cover identity and hiding your true motives, Persusaion helps ingratiate you with clients/marks when you aren't outright lying about something, Insight helps you read those people to sense their motives, whether they're telling the truth about something, etc, Stealth, Investigation, Sleight of Hand, and thieves' tools are for sneaking about, finding the good stuff, and acquiring it for yourself. Sleight of Hand is also what you'll use to lift something covertly from a client you're cozying up to without them noticing.
For ability scores your to highest scores should be in Dexterity and Charisma, which are used for most of your proficiencies and general modus operandi of doing sneaky stuff and interacting with other people. Wisdom applies to Insight (reading people) as well as general situational awareness and noticing things (Perception) so you're probably going to want a good score there and Intelligence applies to investigation (finding a secret safe or other stash in a room, sifting through a desk for documents containing information you're looking for, etc) so same there. That leaves Strength and Constitution. A lot of rogues will dump Strength as they fight with Dexterity based weapons though you should bear in mind that if you're climbing out a window and scaling a wall to make a quick escape or such it will likely be an Athletics (Str) check and your there's a good chance your DM won't let you substitute Dex for that because it doesn't matter how balanced you are if you can't physically hold on to the windowsill, trellis, or whatever else you're climbing. Constitution mainly applies to hit points; rogues are generally more focused on avoiding damage whenever possible rather than soaking it up, but more HP is never a bad thing (especially if your campaign is combat heavy) so keep this in mind when deciding how low you want to go on that. The general reality of the way the game works is that you aren't going to be great at everything and you will be ill suited to some tasks, so prioritize your ability scores based on what you want more.
At first level Rogues get Expertise (you double your proficiency bonus for two skills of your choice), you definitely want Deception as one of those since concealing your true motivations is your bread and butter. The second could be Investigation or Insight to mitigate your Int and Wis being lower base scores, or you could double down on Stealth, Sleight of Hand, or thieves' tools. You will also get this Expertise bonus to two more skills (or thieves' tools) at level six.
The signature ability of the Assassin subclass, which you get at level three when you first choose the subclass, is unsurprisingly called Assassinate. Basically it means you get advantage on attack rolls against a target that has not had a turn in combat yet (which means hits deal your extra Sneak Attack damage) and any hits against surprised creatures are automatic critical hits (you double the damage dice, but static modifiers like your Dex bonus do not get doubled). The important mechanics to understand here is that Assassinate only grants advantage to attack if you go first in combat and as such only applies to the first round of a fight; your target doesn't need to be surprised for this to apply, but the best way to guarantee going first is to ambush your target so that they are surprised. Important note: in D&D 5e "surprised" is a condition applied to a creature ("creature" is a general term for any living thing [and some non-living ones like undead and constructs] and includes people) and means that it cannot move or take an action in the first round of combat and cannot make a reaction until it's turn in the second round. Generally a creature is surprised because they simply don't know the attackers are there when they get ambushed, but most DMs will also be willing to apply it to somebody that knows you're there but doesn't perceive you as a threat (such as an "customer" who thinks you're a harmless prostitute or such). So if you're rolling well on your Deception and Sleight of Hand checks you can potentially walk right up to somebody and stab them in the back with a poisoned dagger that they didn't realize you had on you for devastating and potentially instantly lethal effect.
Glancing at the character sheet you linked the only thing I would personally recommend changing would be maybe swapping proficiency with Acrobatics for the reasons detailed above, but that's personal choice so do what you feel fits best with what you want to do. Otherwise it looks pretty well put together for your concept, though I'm wondering why a wood elf speaks halfling instead of elven (I'm guessing that might have been a misclick or something). I also like that your background concept provides general motivations and an explanation of how you learned your skills without being too in depth and full of dramatic exploits for a character that has mechanically zero experience (first level). Anything else depends on making the character fit for your game in particular, which should be done by having a chat with your DM to establish how you get introduced to the other Player Characters (PCs) to start the actual game.
Flushmaster has given some great advice already. The only thing to add is that characters sometimes also need to fit in with the adventure or campaign that you are/will be playing. So it's always worth discussing it with the group and/or DM as well for your campaign. For example, if this character were to join a sort of happy or very innocent campaign, you might find that parts of the backstory would be supressed, whereas in grittier/darker campaigns it might find in very well.
Some/many DMs love to work aspects of character backstories into a campaign, so leaving some things from the backstory open is good, while providing names and connections can be really useful. From the traits of staying calm and the terrible crime, it sounds like Faelar might have tried to protect Nyx, but perhaps at the cost of someone else they knew. That can be RP gold for Faelar having flashes of guilt, or gritty determination to do anything to protect those closest.
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Hi,
I have made the first character I want to play, but I am unsure if they are good enough. How can I make them better? I don't have any of the books yet, so I could only make a basic character, but this is what I made.
https://ddb.ac/characters/69627241/SlDp4Q
I gave them these flaws and stuff:
This is the backstory I wrote:
Also, I want them to look like this. https://imgur.com/a/xcE2miq
I don't think I've made a very good character , but I'm not sure how to improve them.
How can I make this PC better?
I am a complete nerd who loves role-playing all his favourite characters inspired by various forms of nerdy media, including but not limited to science fiction, science fantasy, anime and manga. I love elves, high fantasy stories and magical cat boys. I also like broken worlds and cyberpunk.
Sounds like a pretty standard Rogue with the Assassin subclass. Take the Spy background which grants proficiency with Deception, Stealth, thieves' tools, and a gaming set of choice (basically your character is good at playing cards, dice, or some other common variety of gambling). If you're starting off at at least 3rd level, which is when Rogues choose their subclass, you'll also get proficiency with disguise kits and poisoners' kits. For your other four proficiencies as a base Rogue, I would recommend Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and either Investigation and Insight; combined with the other proficiencies from the background and the ones you get at third level from the Assassin subclass this should provide a skillset for someone who is a professional covert agent. Deception is central to maintaining your cover identity and hiding your true motives, Persusaion helps ingratiate you with clients/marks when you aren't outright lying about something, Insight helps you read those people to sense their motives, whether they're telling the truth about something, etc, Stealth, Investigation, Sleight of Hand, and thieves' tools are for sneaking about, finding the good stuff, and acquiring it for yourself. Sleight of Hand is also what you'll use to lift something covertly from a client you're cozying up to without them noticing.
For ability scores your to highest scores should be in Dexterity and Charisma, which are used for most of your proficiencies and general modus operandi of doing sneaky stuff and interacting with other people. Wisdom applies to Insight (reading people) as well as general situational awareness and noticing things (Perception) so you're probably going to want a good score there and Intelligence applies to investigation (finding a secret safe or other stash in a room, sifting through a desk for documents containing information you're looking for, etc) so same there. That leaves Strength and Constitution. A lot of rogues will dump Strength as they fight with Dexterity based weapons though you should bear in mind that if you're climbing out a window and scaling a wall to make a quick escape or such it will likely be an Athletics (Str) check and your there's a good chance your DM won't let you substitute Dex for that because it doesn't matter how balanced you are if you can't physically hold on to the windowsill, trellis, or whatever else you're climbing. Constitution mainly applies to hit points; rogues are generally more focused on avoiding damage whenever possible rather than soaking it up, but more HP is never a bad thing (especially if your campaign is combat heavy) so keep this in mind when deciding how low you want to go on that. The general reality of the way the game works is that you aren't going to be great at everything and you will be ill suited to some tasks, so prioritize your ability scores based on what you want more.
At first level Rogues get Expertise (you double your proficiency bonus for two skills of your choice), you definitely want Deception as one of those since concealing your true motivations is your bread and butter. The second could be Investigation or Insight to mitigate your Int and Wis being lower base scores, or you could double down on Stealth, Sleight of Hand, or thieves' tools. You will also get this Expertise bonus to two more skills (or thieves' tools) at level six.
The signature ability of the Assassin subclass, which you get at level three when you first choose the subclass, is unsurprisingly called Assassinate. Basically it means you get advantage on attack rolls against a target that has not had a turn in combat yet (which means hits deal your extra Sneak Attack damage) and any hits against surprised creatures are automatic critical hits (you double the damage dice, but static modifiers like your Dex bonus do not get doubled). The important mechanics to understand here is that Assassinate only grants advantage to attack if you go first in combat and as such only applies to the first round of a fight; your target doesn't need to be surprised for this to apply, but the best way to guarantee going first is to ambush your target so that they are surprised. Important note: in D&D 5e "surprised" is a condition applied to a creature ("creature" is a general term for any living thing [and some non-living ones like undead and constructs] and includes people) and means that it cannot move or take an action in the first round of combat and cannot make a reaction until it's turn in the second round. Generally a creature is surprised because they simply don't know the attackers are there when they get ambushed, but most DMs will also be willing to apply it to somebody that knows you're there but doesn't perceive you as a threat (such as an "customer" who thinks you're a harmless prostitute or such). So if you're rolling well on your Deception and Sleight of Hand checks you can potentially walk right up to somebody and stab them in the back with a poisoned dagger that they didn't realize you had on you for devastating and potentially instantly lethal effect.
Glancing at the character sheet you linked the only thing I would personally recommend changing would be maybe swapping proficiency with Acrobatics for the reasons detailed above, but that's personal choice so do what you feel fits best with what you want to do. Otherwise it looks pretty well put together for your concept, though I'm wondering why a wood elf speaks halfling instead of elven (I'm guessing that might have been a misclick or something). I also like that your background concept provides general motivations and an explanation of how you learned your skills without being too in depth and full of dramatic exploits for a character that has mechanically zero experience (first level). Anything else depends on making the character fit for your game in particular, which should be done by having a chat with your DM to establish how you get introduced to the other Player Characters (PCs) to start the actual game.
Good luck!
Flushmaster has given some great advice already. The only thing to add is that characters sometimes also need to fit in with the adventure or campaign that you are/will be playing. So it's always worth discussing it with the group and/or DM as well for your campaign. For example, if this character were to join a sort of happy or very innocent campaign, you might find that parts of the backstory would be supressed, whereas in grittier/darker campaigns it might find in very well.
Some/many DMs love to work aspects of character backstories into a campaign, so leaving some things from the backstory open is good, while providing names and connections can be really useful. From the traits of staying calm and the terrible crime, it sounds like Faelar might have tried to protect Nyx, but perhaps at the cost of someone else they knew. That can be RP gold for Faelar having flashes of guilt, or gritty determination to do anything to protect those closest.