Character Creation

Intro

It is a dawning of a new day in the multiverse. As powers that have been long separated now collide new legends are growing. Will you join their ranks? Will your story remember you as a hero or as a villain?

The endgame of this campaign has fights with literal gods and players will have the option to undergo demi-god transformations. There are other avenues to power that players should consider if they do not want to rely on the gods.

Basic Info

The campaign begins with a group of level one characters on the plane of Ravnica.

Player Characters may belong to any guild (no renown) or be guild-less. All Player Characters are fresh recruits to the newly formed Ravnica Expedition Corp (no renown).

While this story is set on Ravnica players are not allowed to play as a planeswalker. The reason for this is simple planeswalkers are really hard to balance D&D around. If you want to play a planeswalker may I introduce you to a sister game of D&D called Magic the Gathering where the tagline for over a decade has been "You are a Planeswalker!" If you are dead set on playing as one talk to the DM to home-brew a transformation.

Player Characters may be of any race and class in the Approved Material if you wish to play something outside of that seek DM approval. This is one of the most high fantasy campaigns imaginable. Your race will probably be approved, classes from other sources including home-brew are probably fine but the DM reserves the right to re-balance with the player as needed.

This campaign uses a modified set of rules for Character creation:

  • Origin feats may be replaced with any feat that the character meets the requirements for IF AND ONLY IF the character is created above level one.

  • Everyone is allowed a Signature Magical Item. Starting magical items are restricted to uncommon items that DO NOT have +1, +2, or +3 in their descriptions. If you want to select the endgame version of the magic item you want the DM will work with you to home-brew a starting version.

  • If you would like to have an innate boon instead of a Signature Magical Item look over Supernatural Gifts. Just like your Signature Magical Item these Gifts can evolve with you over time. Work with the dungeon master to create what you want.

  • You may use Point Buy, Standard Array, a variant on 4d6dl1 for generating Ability Scores. The DM will help you with Standard Array or 4d6dl1 but Point Buy is tedious so if you want to use it do it on your own. The variant rule for 4d6dl1 is easy for each die you roll you may use the dice as rolled or 3 players choice. This caps the lower bound of each stat to 9. Unless you specifically want to role play with lower stats.

MOAR Characters

Players are allowed, and encouraged, to have and play multiple characters. This used to be the norm. 5e players strayed from this when a group not going to name any names cough Critical Role cough gained a lot of popularity. By the way I love Critical Role I own two of their books and think Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan are some of the best DMs of all time ... I still think Vox Machina, Acquisitions Incorporated, and the Mighty Nein are a large component in this shift in thinking especially amongst new players.

If running multiple characters becomes problematic (disrupts the flow of play) the DM reserves the right to temporarily demote a secondary character to a SideKick for the sake of streamlining play. If you would like to make one of your extra characters a sidekick by default that's fine. Some of the most fun I ever had was playing a Dark Elf Cleric with an int of 6 with a conman Aarakocra Expert Sidekick with a cha of 20 manipulating him. Should the main character die and you wish to rework a "permanent sidekick" into a main class that will be allowed.

What if I die?

Players can expect to have access to true resurrection magic (for a price). So death is not necessarily the end of a character story. However the juice might not be worth the squeeze (I'm just putting this in writing so that no one thinks I'm changing the rules when I make access to this really hard).

Making a Character Walk through

Not strictly required but RTFM

  1. Envision who you want to play. A mighty warrior, a powerful mage, a seductive bard, or something more concrete Miss Fortune, Drizzt Do'Urden, The Dovahkiin, Mickey Mouse it doesn't matter who or what you pick this is make believe so we can make it happen.
  2. Make them your own. This isn't the DM's story ... and it isn't your's alone. D&D is a collaborative story telling game. Think about how your character fits into the world.
  3. Choose a Class. If you want to keep your life simple pick from this list if you're not afraid of the truth this list. For total creative freedom ... work with the DM to get your degenerate broken home-brew approved.
  4. Choose a Race (or for the new books Species). Don't get overwhelmed just pick one and move on. You can use this list for basics. You can use this list if you are as depraved as the DM. Again for total creative freedom ... work with the DM to get your overpowered furry OC home-brew approved.
  5. Roll some mother fucking dice! Also known as Get your Ability Scores. Generate your abilities scores with any method mentioned above. Rolls must be made in front of the DM. There is a secret 4th option from older editions no one talks about any more. It's roll 1d20 per score. I'll let you choose this one if you want. But no grace rolls and taking averages. You are stuck with what you get.
  6. Pick an Alignment. This is a stupid and outdated set of mechanics. Our first two steps replace this.
  7. Work with the DM to get your backstory approved. This is the most important part of making your Character come to life in the world. You know who you want to play from the first two steps. Now you work with the DM to integrate them into the larger story. After this step you should no longer be your characters biggest fan. The game is more fun when you make the DM the biggest fan of your character. When the DM roots for the party to win you get away with more dope shit at the table.
  8. Select your Signature Magic Item with DM approval.
  9. Copy a bunch of shit down from the books onto your character sheet. This is the part that sucks the most but without it your character doesn't exist. It's not that bad at level one and when you level up normally you get lots of downtime to repeat this step copying down your new abilities. Get used to it now if you struggle the DM will help you but as the campaign goes on you should want to be able to do this yourself.
  10. Have a snack! Grab a drink! Get one of each for you DM! Enjoy watching your fellow party members come to life in a similar way.