Just as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is very different from a ham and cheese sandwich, a halfling rogue is very different from a dwarf fighter. Your race and class are the two largest decision points in your build, which is why people typically state those things first when describing a character. If everyone in the party is optimizing, discuss it with the group and agree on roughly how powerful your party wants characters to be. Players who have a little experience with character optimization can usually do this “by feel” once you get an idea of what everyone else in the party wants to play. It’s important that your character is not optimized so well that you feel like a clear outlier in the party, but you also shouldn’t optimize so poorly that your character is a liability for the party. I try to reiterate this point every time I discuss character optimization: not every character needs to be flawlessly optimized. Ask if there are any options you should avoid (races which don’t exist in their setting, banned character options, etc.) if they’re using any variants, house rules, or optional rules and if they want you to build your character in any specific way. It’s generally considered to polite to talk to your group (or at least your DM) about the game before you build your character. Building an optimized character you don’t intend to play is fun on its own, but if you’re actually going to play the character, be sure that you’re picking options that are actually fun for you. No matter how well you have built your character, if you build something that you don’t enjoy playing you’re not going have fun. Bards are perhaps the best generalist in the game, but they’re rarely a perfect replacement for a party of diverse specialists. Very few characters can successfully be generalists. Every member of the party is expected to cover a handful of capabilities, and together the party can overcome the challenges you ca expect in a game of DnD. DnD is a game that usually rewards specialization and punishes generalization. No one character can be good at everything. There’s some nuance beyond that, but if you’re new to character optimization it’s helpful to figure out which of those four roles you’re going to fill. The classic dnd party is cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard. In an actual game, the most effective character is one that meets the needs of the party. Optimize to The Partyĭungeons and Dragons is a game about a party of adventurers with diverse backgrounds and capabilities coming together to overcome challenges. If you’re not sure, plan until level 5 and see how you feel about it. I recommend planning to the point that your character has all of the options which you consider essential to your build. Most characters don’t last that long, either because a campaign ends or because the character dies. Some people plan their characters all the way to 20th level, but thats typically overkill. If you don’t at least have a general plan, you may find that gaining a level means a scramble to decide which options your want to take, and you may eventually find that your character isn’t as strong as you want them to be. If you know where you want to go, it’s much easier to plan a route to get there. Table of Contentsįorethought goes a very long way in character optimization.
DND CHARACTER 5E CHARACTER BUILDER HOW TO
If you need help, check out our How to Play section on Character Creation or listen to our RPGBOT.Podcats episode on building characters in DnD 5e.
This article will assume that you understand the basics of how to create a character. Whether this your first character or your 1000th, I hope that this article will serve as a useful roadmap through the process of building and optimizing your characters.
This article is a brief guide to optimizing a character for dungeons and dragons. It’s a process that I love and enjoy, and I love sharing that joy with wonderful players like you.
I’m RPGBOT, and among other cool TTRPG stuff, I talk and write a lot about character optimization. There are lots of little fiddly bits in building and advancing your character where the decisions can feel confusing, and the benefits of one option over another may be hard to discern. If you’re new to DnD, or if you just haven’t had the time and patience to really dig into the game’s mechanics, the idea of optimizing a character can feel intimidating. This page will go into some basic guidance on how to optimize characters, but for specific guidance I encourage you to visit the Character Optimization section of this site. I enjoy it quite a bit, and I love sharing what I know. Character optimization is, at its absolute simplest, is the simple act of choosing the better of two or more options when you’re building a character.Ĭharacter optimization is a lot of what I do on this site.