D&D: Five Quick Ways to Create Your Character From Scratch
Time to roll up a new character? Here are five quick ways to create a character from scratch, no backstory required.
Life comes at you fast. One day you’re fine, making your way downtown, walking fast, faces pass—and then boom, you’ve rolled two natural ones in a row on your death saves in the middle of your first fight of the evening. Now you’ve got to make a character in a hurry if you’re going to get any game time in before everyone has to go home.
But what can you do? How do you breathe the same amount of life into the formless ash to create a completely new person from scratch? The answer is you cheat. Here’s how.
Playing the Opposite
Here’s a quick and dirty method for creating a character from scratch. Play the opposite of whatever your last character was. Even if you haven’t died and are starting a new campaign or one-shot unexpectedly, this still works. You don’t need continuity, just a loose idea of what the last thing you played was, and your own judgment of what the opposite of that is.
Were you a seductive Bard? Perhaps it’s time to play an uncharismatic Fighter instead of a lover. Were you an inquisitive Wizard? Bust out the burly, beefy Barbarian. Change your class, and your personality type, it’s very easy to roleplay as well because you already know what one character would do… now just do the opposite of that whenever you’re at a loss for your new character.
Use a Pregen
You can find libraries of pre-generated characters scattered throughout official and unofficial sources. You often need to look no further than the nearest starter set or a handy website link like this one.
Just pick one and go. You’ve got the work done for you, all you have to do is roll with it. Or pre-generate your own characters—after all, making a character is one of the most fun parts of the game. Keep a couple of spares around, waiting to be called up off the bench.
Randomize It Baybee
Sick of playing the same old thing? Online character tools often come with a randomizer button. You might find one in an official online toolset, but there are plenty of places that can generate a character for you from a wide variety of books. No guarantees that you will be optimized, necessarily, but it can be a fun challenge to take on a random character.
Add a “the Second”
You could also go with the old “write a Roman numeral II after the character name” trick from the dawn of D&D when the rules sort of expected that characters would die with some frequency, even if that’s not how people actually played. It lets you stick with the class you’ve been learning, and gives you a built-in revenge questline.
Pick an Archetype
Trying to come up with something a bit original but still in a hurry? Pick an archetype. Whether it’s a personality one, like “spoiled noble” or “sneak” or something with a class combination built in, like “skilled swordsman” or “stealth assassin” or like “himbo Bard” or “himbo Cleric” or “himbo Paladin” and you’re basically good to go.
What’s your favorite way of generating a character in a hurry?
