Character Building Basics - The Barbarian

Left: Barbarian image from the DND Player's Handbook. Right: Character art made with Bing Dall-E3

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For new players, building a character for the first time can seem intimidating. I have experienced this myself, and found myself wishing there were more straightforward resources aiding new players in this. I think the Player's Handbook does a weak job explaining things for new players. Below, I am going to show you a step-by-step process for building a character, using the Barbarian as a template. For all information references, I am using the Player's Handbook 5e.tools.

The Barbarian. This class is loved by many as the most simplistic, damage-inducing class in the fifth edition (5e). Though straightforward and geared toward combat, the Barbarian has some great customizability. This is one of, if not the first class I suggest for new players, especially those who don't want to worry too much about mechanics.

The Barbarian is proficient in light and medium armor, and with shields as well as simple and martial weapons. They get a proficiency bonus to strength and constitution saving throws, and bonuses to 2 skills from Animal Handling, Athletics, Intimidation, Nature, Perception, and Survival. They also get some starting equipment, which we will go through. Your class also helps you determine your Hit Points, which was confusing for me as a first-timer. We will go through this step-by-step below.

Choosing a Race

The list of races in dnd is incredibly long and can be overwhelming. The importance of your character's race comes down to bonuses to ability scores, and extra abilities. For instance, some races like the Aarakocra can fly for certain distances.

The point is to choose a race that gives you bonuses where you want them. For our Barbarian, we want bonuses to things like Strength and Constitution. These will make sure we do damage in battle and have a lot of hit points to back it up. We will be choosing the Half-Orc, as it gets a +2 to Strength and +1 to Constitution. The Half-Orc also gets Darkvision within 60 feet, which is helpful in many situations. Along with this, we gain proficiency in the Indimidation skill and a couple other skills that are helpful in combat - Relentless Endurance and Savage Attacks. These will be explained later.

Other good races to consider would be a Mountain Dwarf, who gets a +2 to both Strength and Constitution; Human, Yuan-Ti, Leonin, or, for a Dexterity-based Barbarian, a Stout Halfling. You can always choose race regardless of your class, and that can make for fun role-playing. But for your first play, I suggest going with a classic.

Choosing a Background

Your background gains you proficiencies in things like skills and tools, and gives you some background to help build a narrative around your character. For barbarians, skills like athletics or survival can be helpful, as you will get to add your proficiency bonus to your rolls for those things.

The classic background for a Barbarian is the Outlander. This gets you proficiencies in Athletics and Survival, the ability to use one type of musical instrument, and some other random things. The Soldier is another good choice, as you swap a proficiency in Survival for Intimidation. It just depends how you want to play your character.

Fleshing out Your Character

Let's add some personality to this Barbarian! For many like myself, the most fun part of all the nonsense is bringing life to characters and the world. It's supposed to be a good time and just as you want it, so don't limit yourself.

I'm going to name my Half-Orc Glarch. Why? It's a name I've used before in campaigns with friends, it's actually the name of the cat barbarian pictured above. I suggest pulling up a random name generator, or checking out the PHB for some classic names.

As you'll see on your character sheet, you have to pick an alignment, personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws.

There are 9 choices for alignments, based on the 3x3 grid to the left. This will determine a lot of your role-playing, and it's fun to get into character and stick with what they would do, not what you would do. I find neutral alignments fun, as they allow for gray area. I'm going to go with chaotic neutral for Glarch, which is truly fun.

On pages 127 and 128 of the Player's Handbook, they have charts where you can roll a d8 or d6 that will help you pick things like your personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. Or, you can make these up for yourself! Sometimes, I'll roll for it and then use that as inspiration for my own. I've filled out Glarch's information to the left.

Rolling for Ability Scores

The Player's Handbook explains how to roll for your ability scores. You have 6 abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. So, you will need to come up with 6 numbers. Here's where the dice come in.

To figure out these ability score numbers, you will roll four 6-sided dice (d6's). You will roll 6 times. For each score, you roll the 4 dice, subtract the lowest die, and that number is your score.

Here, I've rolled an 18. However, I subtract the lowest die, so I subtract the 1 for a 17. I will do this 5 more times without going into the details of each, so my scores will be:

17, 16, 12, 8, 12, 15.

Now that I have rolled my scores, it is time to assign them to my 6 abilities according to my character preferences. While I do this, I must remember the bonuses and proficiencies I get from my race, class, and background. These ability scores determine your bonuses to rolls. In the game, we want this to align with our character. Someone like a Barbarian would be good at fighting, smashing things, and intimidating people. They would not be good at sneaking, singing, or casting spells.

As a barbarian, set your highest ability score as Strength, and your next as Constitution. These will help you in battle. The rest are up to you, depending on what you want to try to do outside of battle. However, I suggest you leave Intelligence as your lowest ability score. It is unnecessary, and it's fun to have a dumb Barbarian.

My scores will be set as:

Strength	17
Dexterity	15
Constitution	16
Intelligence	8
Wisdom	12
Charisma	12

This is before adding any bonuses. As a Half-Orc, I get a +2 to Strength and +1 to Constitution. With the Outlander background, I get to add my proficiency bonus to Athletics and Survival skill checks. Lastly, as a Barbarian, I get to add my proficiency bonus (which we'll talk about shortly) to my Strength and Constitution saving throws, as well as Perception and Intimidation skill checks. (I chose these from the skills mentioned earlier for a Barbarian). When you get to choose these, it's important to make sure they light up with things you might want to do. Adding the bonuses, my scores are now:

Strength	19
Dexterity	15
Constitution	17
Intelligence	8
Wisdom	12
Charisma	12

We use this table (PHB p.13) to determine the modifiers these scores give us. So for my strength at 19, the modifier to rolls will be a +4.

To the right is our filled-out ability scores section. The saving throws and skills we have proficiency in have had the proficiency bonus of +2 added. This bonus comes from the Player's handbook, and is the same for all characters of level 1. It goes up when your level goes up. Click to expand the image.

Armor Class, Initiative, Speed, and Hit Points.

These skills are all specific to race and class, and can be confusing to calculate for the first time. Let's start with Armor Class.

AC is specific to your class. A Barbarian gains a bonus to AC when not wearing armor, and AC will be 10+Dexterity modifier+Constitution modifier. So, it's 10+2+3, making our AC 15. That is pretty good for a level 1 character, and it goes up when we level our Dex or Const.

Initiative is the same as your Dexterity modifier, so we get a +2 to initiative rolls. This will help in battles, because initiative determines the order of battle, highest roll being first.

Your speed is specific to your race. As a Half-Orc, my speed is 30 feet. This is good to have in combat and random encounters where distance comes into play, and your DM will tell you how far distances are using a gridded map. Grid squares are usually 5 or 10 feet each.

Your Hit Points are calculated from your class. Classes have a way to calculate for the first level, and then each level after. For our Barbarian example, our HP at first level is 12+Constitution modifier. This means our 12+3, so our starting HP is 15. For each level after, we will add 1d12(or 7)+Constitution to our HP. We can choose the 7 or risk the dice roll of a

1d12, and add our modifier of +3 when we

go up to 2nd level, and on.

Attacks, Spellcasting, Features, Traits, Equipment.

Time to get into the nitty-gritty of your abilities. This is also your chance to figure out your starting equipment. Let's start with equipment, as this will help you figure out things like attack damage.

Your equipment comes from your class and background. Looking at the Barbarian, I start with a greataxe or any martial weapon, or two handaxes. I also get an explorer's pack and four javelins. This is the simple choice; there is another option to roll for an amount of Gold you get and buy equipment, but that is more in-depth, and this is a beginner's guide. As an Outlander, I get a staff, a hunting trap, a trophy from an animal I killed, a set of traveler's clothes, and a belt pouch of ten Gold. Some games for beginners will not include the mechanics of Gold and an economy, and the DM will have you get the gear you need. Here, I'm going to start with the classic Greataxe, which deals 1d12 slashing damage. It's considered "heavy" and is 2-handed, so I can only wield it 2-handed. My Javelins do 1d6 piercing damage when thrown. I'll add my strength modifier to both damages when calculating attacks.

Features and Traits come mostly from your class, and some from your race. You will get more and more of these from your class as your level. As a level 1 Barbarian, I get access to Rage. Rage you can enter at the start of your turn as a bonus action, and it gives you advantage on strength checks and saving throws, a +2 to melee damage, and resistance to types of damage. I get 2 rages per long rest at 1st level. I also get the benefit to my AC from Unarmored Defense, which was mentioned in the above. As a Half-Orc, I get Darkvision within 60 feet, which is helpful in many situations. Along with this, we gain proficiency in the Indimidation skill and a couple other skills that are helpful in combat - Relentless Endurance, which means that I am dropped to 1 hp instead of 0, and Savage Attacks, which allows me an extra damage die on critical hit attacks. I don't have any spellcasting as a Barbarian, at least... yet.

Let's put all this together onto our character sheet.

It's up for discussion as to how exactly you fill this out, but I stick to this general formula. Things that are most critical and frequent to battle stay in attacks & spellcasting, other powers go to features & traits with useful ones explained so I can remember what they do more quickly. Most DND character sheets look pretty similar, so you're likely working with something like this. I'll share a link to one from Wizards of the Coast at the end of this post.

Level 1 is kind of limited in its abilities, we'll handle that in the next section.

Leveling Up

When you level up, each class gets something helpful unique to them. We won't be covering multiclassing in this post, so follow along for that in another post. Depending on the level, this could be an increase in ability scores, or additional features and traits. We're going to explore leveling from 1 to 3, as it is very common to go right to level 3. Each class gains a subclass option and features at level 3, and this really opens up your options as a player.

Going from level 1 to level 2, our Barbarian adds Danger Sense to their traits, giving us advantage on Dexterity saving throws against effects we can see, like traps and spells. This means we can't be blinded, deafened, or incapacitated to use this. We also access Reckless Attack at level 2. When you make your first attack on your turn, you can attack recklessly and gain advantage on melee attacks, but attacks against you will also have advantage until your next turn.

Going from level 2 to 3 is where this gets interesting. At level 3, we get access to subclasses. Each class has many different subclasses, and it can be overwhelming for a new player. For the Barbarian, we currently have the choice of 9 different subclasses, called "Paths": Ancestral Guardian, Battlerager, Beast, Berserker, Totem Warrior, Wild Magic, Zealot. Each subclass unlocks different features as you level, from turning into a beast when you rage, to becoming a magical giant, or even gaining some magic casting abilities. Your subclass also has a lot to do with your character's personality, so choose wisely.

For Glarch, I'm choosing Path of the Beast. This allows us to get a natural weapon like bite, claws, or a tail when we rage. It will also allow for cool movement benefits as we level up. I also think it will fit well with being Chaotic Neutral in my alignment, and will fit with my overall desire for the character. With my level 3 character sheet done, I have the entire thing below.

Now that Glarch is done, here is our finished sheet.

The only basic things we did not discuss are things like height and appearance, and those are up to you! Obviously, I wouldn't make something like a halfling 9 feet tall, so keep those things in mind. Feel free to use Glarch in your next game.

Thank you for reading, and have fun adventuring!

~ Pete

Links: 5e.tools ; PHB Online ; Fillable Character Sheet