Player tips - How to build an Awesome Character

We have all been there. Sitting at the gaming table waiting for our fellow players to finish buffing up their character to simply fire an arrow that does all manner of crazy, mental, and wildly over the top actions. Fellow players begin looking at their phones, handbooks and disengage from the action.

Dungeons & Dragons is fun at its core, but when playing with players that have clearly tried to build characters that benefit from taking the most amount of actions, spells, or other buffs, it really slows down the game and takes you and your other fellow players out of the experience.

When I first started playing D&D I really didn’t have a clue about multi-classing, buffs, and all of that power-playing stuff. In fact, I still don’t today. I find players that buff up and build their characters based on what will give them this or that or more of this to pay for that… disconnected from what D&D really is all about.

For me, the most amount of fun I get from the game is roleplaying a character that has a mix of backgrounds and interesting backstories.

For instance, my first ever character was a chaotic good human monk with a charlatan past. As a child, his family home had been destroyed by a black dragon. Orphaned as a result, Rolldark Thane traveled the world and fell into a life of crime before eventually getting taken in by monks. Though now very much a holy man, Rolldark is never far from his charlatan past, which too often returns to torment him.

Overthinking your skills and getting bogged down with your spells is not fun for anyone else at the gaming table. Rather aim as a player to create a character with a strong pas arc that has brought them to this moment. Past failures are always great places to start, as just in real life, a good epic failure means you grow back stronger.