Character Creation Help

This page is a guide to how to create a character for a campaign run by me.

The Importance of Backstory
Backstories are part of a character's experiences. There's no reason in the rules to make a backstory, but it's encouraged. Although a person might not be the sum of their experiences, it's important to know who a character is. A character can be much more than a sheet of paper you show up with at each session. Remember that in most games, you're an adventurer. Why is your character not part of the common rabble and instead is travelling from place to place adventuring.

In some systems, this is simply part of the character creation, such as Deathwatch, or guided a bit such as in 5th Edition DnD, but it's important to realize that characters don't materialize randomly and start a campaign.

For backstory details for personal reference, have as much as you like, but I recommend keeping it under three pages for the GM, or at least giving a summery before you give your novel to the GM.

DnD 5e
Of all the resources available, I use the following The lists of backgrounds, races, and classes are linked in below.
 * Player's Handbook
 * Volo's Guide to Monsters
 * Swordcoast Adventurer's Guide
 * DM's Guide

The order of things you should do, in my opinion, for character creation are as follows. The reason I go background-race-class instead of the recommended race-class-background in the player's handbook is because of proficiency and backstory. The Handbook advise fleshing out your character last. This seems preposterous to me.
 * 1) Research your options
 * 2) Come up with a basic idea for the character
 * 3) How they act, personality
 * 4) What they did before the campaign, background/backstory
 * 5) Pick a background
 * 6) Pick a race
 * 7) Pick the class

A character's background can overlap with the proficencies that a player chose with their class or race. Race can be chose before background, but it's not that much of a difference. Race before background makes sense for those building their character from birth to adventure, but I prefer story first. In the end, the choice is yours.

Rolling up ability scores can be done in many different times during character creation, but I recommend different times for different methods. For a point buy, whenever is fine. When rolling for ability scores, things get more complicated. Rolling ability scores in order, as in putting down each score as you roll them, starting with strength and going down the sheet, it would be the best to roll these as soon as possible. Perhaps after picking a background would be helpful. If you're rolling ability scores in order of their place on the sheet, they need to be rolled before you choose a class. People play to their strengths, so roll out the character's strengths. In the case of rolling the ability scores and then assigning them to the different abilities, any time probably would be fine for this method, but you should probably pick a race first at least. Rolling and the assigning ability scores means the player can pick whichever they want their highest ability score to be, but this might let you carry to much baggage or power game your character. Again, the choice is yours.