A Short Post on the Benefits of Manual Character Creation
By EricMesa
- 3 minutes read - 603 wordsThe first time I played D&D my brother, the Dungeon Master, did the math for me. Later, when I was ready to start serving as the dungeon master for my kids we had dndbeyond. The character creator on dndbeyond does a great job of bringing together information from across the Players Handbook into one easy to use location. Since the web app is doing the math for the player, it’s easy to select various different options and see how the changes ripple through the system and result in different bonuses to the characters. It wasn’t until late last year when I was getting ready for Tales of the Valiant that I had to do character creation manually. (Kobold press does not maintain an automated character creation app) It took a LOT longer (as does leveling up), but I think it’s worth doing it at least once. (If not making it your default)
First off, let me say that I don’t recommend manual character creation for newbies. There are certain personality types that will do well with it. You will know if you are that type of person and/or if your players are that type. But there’s already a big learning curve for new players in the hobby. I wouldn’t want someone to bounce off of TTRPGs because the process seemed too hard or seemed to take too long. There are even some valid schools of thought that a complete newbie should probably go with a pre-generated character if they’re only doing a one-shot and won’t be living with that character for a long time.
With that caveat out of the way, these are the benefits I see from manual character creation: First of all, the numbers cease to be mysteries. I had no idea how any of the numbers came to be and why this or that property had a +2 or a +1. This makes it hard to play (off your character sheet rather than in dndbeyond) if you have spells or other things your players can do where sometimes you would use a different modifier to calculate the roll. For example, a spell may let you use your dexterity modifier on your weapon instead of your strength modifier. If you don’t know which number that effects, it can make it harder to fully play the game. Second, I found myself not wanting to use any subclasses, weapons, items, etc that weren’t incorporated into dndbeyond. For example, there’s a book published by Hit Point Press called The Griffon’s Saddlebag. I would never have used any of those magic items before they finally published the book on dndbeyond because I would have had to “homebrew” the item into dndbeyond in order to understand how to use it with my character. The same goes for a book like Hexbound that adds a witch subclass. I wouldn’t have known how to apply the attacks, modifiers, etc. So I never bought it. But now that I know how to do this on my own and no longer need to depend on the character builder, I’m free to experiment more with non-official content.
This also applies a little more strongly to me because we mostly play in person as opposed to virtually. Whether I’m using dndbeyond, FoundryVTT, or Alchemy - if I’m playing online I still need to find a way to get the subclass, items, etc into the system. But if you mostly play in person, I encourage you to try at least once to create your character manually and get a little more in touch with where the numbers come from on your character sheet.