How to create a character

Introduction

Your character can be anything you can come up with - no matter if you want to be a daring pirate with a secret noble heritage, a fearless fighter that swore to protect the innocent after he couldn't protect his little sibling, or Randy - an accountant for the local noble who got caught up in an adventure far too big for him. Anything you can come up with is possible to create, and any concept is welcome, as long as it is the character that you want to play.
Dungeons and Dragons offers a wide variety of classes , subclasses and races - all with premade or custom backgrounds to give you the tools to create the character that you came up with.
For example the aforementioned pirate might be a ranger or a rouge, if he's a rouge his subclass could be the swashbuckler, who's charisma imposes his enemy's - to incorporate your characters backstory into the games' mechanics, DnD offers premade backgrounds like pirate or noble - but nothing that would incorporate both. In this case you can create your own background to create something that fits your vision.

Creating your Character

The way you approach character creation is ultimately up to you. You can come up with the concept for a character and then fit your class, race, and background to express your vision, or you already know that you want to play a certain class and you come up with a character fitting that particular class afterwards.

Rules for character creation

Ability Scores

Now that we covered some pointers to help you come up with a character, it's time to talk about the rules surrounding character creation. DnD Characters all fundamentally are built the same way. Your characters abilities, strength and weaknesses are reflected as numbers on your character sheet. The most important abilities are the 6 main stats - Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The higher your characters number in any given stat, the better your character is in doing anything related to this category. While playing, this is reflected by so called Ability Score Modifiers, which mean when your character tries to do something extraordinary and you have to roll a D20 to determine the sucess or failure of your attempt, your Ability Score in the related category gives you either a bonus or a malus to your roll.

Example: You're playing an old gnome wizard named Gwendulin with a a Strength Score of 8. A member of your party got caught in a landslide and their leg is stuck under a heavy rock. You attempt to lift the boulder off your friend - The gamemaster determines that your character doesn't automatically succeed in lifting the heavy object and has you make a Strength check and asks you to beat a 15. You roll a D20 and add (or subtract) your Ability Score Modifier from the roll. You roll a 15, but your Strength Score of 8 gives you a malus of - 1 to Strength, so the fail the check and the rock is still trapping your friend.

There are multiple ways to determine the ability scores of your new character, but most notably you can either roll them or use a set of numbers. You can roll four 6-sided dice and record the total of the highest three dice. Do this a total of 6 times and then use these numbers to determine your ability scores, or if you don't like the idea of randomly determining ability scores, you can use the following scores instead: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. And don't forget that your race gives you some additional ability score improvements!

Proficiencies

Each Ability Score has further subcategories that your character can exceed in, which can be seen on the bottom right of this article. This is expressed in game by proficiencies. Additionally your character can have proficiencies in weapons, tools, spells, and saving throws. You gain proficiencies through your class and your background.

Mechanically proficiencies give you an additional bonus if you're asked to roll for something that your character is proficient in. The higher your level the bigger your proficiency bonus.
Level 1 - 4 = +2 ; Level 5 - 8 = +3 ; Level 9 - 12 = +4 ; Level 13 - 16 = +5 ; Level 17+ = +6
You mark all your characters proficiencies on your character sheet.

Example: The adventuring party has to get into a locked room to find the proof they need to pin a corrupt member of the city council to a crime. Because this isn't the parties frist run in with the noble, they know he likes to lure his enemies into traps. The groups rogue doesn't trust the door, so before he tries to open it with his thieves tools he investigates the door and lock for any sign of a trap. The gamemaster asks the level 5 rogue to do an intelligence investigation check and secretly determines the DC (difficulty class) to be 20 - the rouges intelligence is 14 but he also has proficiency in investigation. He rolls a 15 and adds his intelligence modifier (+2) and his proficiency modifier (+3) ; with that he beats the DC of 20. The gamemaster tells the player, that everything seems normal but when he takes a second look at the lock he sees a small, well hidden, leaver inside of the lock that he would have set off, if he just tried to pick the lock.

Ability Score Summary

Strength
Natural athleticism, bodily power
Important for: Barbarians, Fighters and Paladins
Dexterity
Physical agility, reflexes, balance, poise
Important for: Monks, Rangers and Rouges
Constitution
Health, Stamina, vital force
Important for: Everyone
Intelligence
Mental acuity, information recalling, analytical skill
Important for: Wizards and Artificers
Wisdom
Awareness, intuition, insight
Important for: Clerics and Druids
Charisma
Confidence, eloquence, leadership
Important for: Bards, Sorcerers and Warlocks

Ability Scores and Modifiers

Score	Modifier
1	- 5
2 - 3	- 4
4 - 5	- 3
6 - 7	- 2
8 - 9	- 1
10 - 11	0
12 - 13	+ 1
14 - 15	+ 2
16 - 17	+ 3
18 - 19	+ 4
20 - 21	+ 5
22 - 23	+ 6
24 - 25	+ 7
26 - 27	+ 8
28 - 29	+ 9
30	+ 10

Ability Score Determination Variant: Pointbuy

You have 27 points to spend. The cost of each score is shown on the table below. For example, a score of 14 costs 7 points. Using this method, 15 is the highest ability score you can end up with, before applying racial increases. You can't have a score lower that 8. This method of determining ability scores enables you to reate a set of three high numbers and three kow ones (15, 15, 15, 8, 8, 8), a set of numbers that are above average and nearly equal (13, 13, 13, 12, 12, 12), or any set of numbers between those extremes.

Score	Cost
8	0
9	1
10	2
11	3
12	4
13	5
14	7
15	9

Skills

Strength
Athletics
Dexterity
Acrobatics, Sleight of Hand, Stealth
Intelligence
Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, Religion
Wisdom
Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Perception, Survival
Charisma
Deception, Performance, Persuasion