Loader image
Loader image
Back to Top

Blog

Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > 5E D&D How to Pick your Character Class
D&D Character

5E D&D How to Pick your Character Class

Dungeon in a Box Unboxing -- August 2018
D&D Villains: The Enemy With the Inhuman Face

Dungeons and Dragons Character Creation can be an agonizing decision for any nerdy ass gamer like myself. Whether it’s your first D&D Character or your 1,000,000th D&D Character these can be tough decisions. So how is gamer to decide?

Let’s start off by asking ourselves some questions before jumping into Dungeons and Dragons character creation process?

  • Do we want to base our D&D character on Story Elements or Mechanical Elements?
  • What role do want to fill Warrior, Spell Caster, or Skilled character?

We can further break things down mechanically by narrowing down your choices. There is also modeling the mechanics to the story elements you are interested in.

Dungeons and Dragons Character Creation

Narrowing down your Dungeons and Dragons Character Creation choices.

D&D Character Class breakdown by category for warriors :

  • Do you want to play a melee based warrior?
    • Go barbarian if you want to be Fierce and fueled by raged.
    • Go fighter if you are looking to be more of a soldier type.
    • Go monk if you want to be a disciplined martial arts bad ass.
    • Go paladin if you want to be a holy warrior fueled divine power.
    • Go ranger if want to be a wilderness warrior and explorer.
    • Go rogue if you want be a sneaky skilled warrior that excels at attacking from the shadows.
  • Do you want to play a ranged based warrior?
    • Go fighter if you want to unleash the most attacks and have variety of combat options.
    • Go ranger if you want a hunter vibe that can lace their arrows with magic.
    • Go rogue if you want to be precise with one shot kill from the shadows.

D&D Character Class breakdown by category for spellcasters :

  • Do you want cast spells fueled by arcane study, dark bargains, or magic in your bloodline?
    • Go bard if you want to infuse your music and words with magic.
    • Go sorcerer if you want to carry magic in your very blood.
    • Go warlock if you are willing to brook deals with dark beings for magic.
    • Go wizard if you wish to be academic and scholarly.
  • Do you want to draw magic from your faith or a higher power?
    • Go cleric if you want to command the power of a Deity.
    • Go druid to command the might of nature through spell and shape-shifting into animals.

D&D Character Class breakdown by skill based characters classes :

  • Skill based characters get the most skill proficiencies in the game, but often have other talents as well.
    • Go bard if you want to be skilled expert that wields magic, talent, and social charm.
    • Go ranger if you wanted to be a master of the wilderness, explorer, and wielder of nature magic.
    • Go rogue if you want to master and posses the most skills in the game.

There are choices even within these choices to switch things up and make even more diverse characters. Of course we are painting in broad strokes here. The point of this article is to start narrowing down those choices. 5E D&D allows for the mixing and matching of different character abilities like no edition of the game before it.

5E D&D How to Pick your Character Class

Like this?

Did you enjoy this post? Nerdarchy’s awesome volunteer staff of writers and editors do their best to create engaging, useful and fun content to share. If you like what you find here on our site, consider patronizing us in a good way through Patreon.

On top of reaching our goal of paying our writers, pledging gets you exclusive monthly content for your D&D game, opportunities to game with Nerdarchy, access to patron-only channels on our Discord and more.

With your generous support we’ll continue to create quality content between our YouTube channel and blog, invest in equipment to increase recording quality, and keep creating original publications and products to enhance your tabletop roleplaying and gaming experience.

Thank you for your consideration and as always, until next time stay nerdy!

Share
david friant

My name is Dave Friant I've been gaming off and on for over 27 years. But here is the thing it's always been a part of my life I've kept secret and hidden away. I've always been ashamed of the stigma that gaming and my other nerdy and geeky pursuits summon forth. Recently I decided screw it! This is who I am the world be damned. From now on I'm gonna be a geek, nerd, or however folks want to judge me and just enjoy life. Currently one of my greatest joys is introducing my 13 yr old son to table top RPG's.

No Comments

Leave a Reply