The Marketplace of a large city teems with buyers and sellers of many sorts: dwarf smiths and elf woodcarvers, halfling farmers and gnome jewelers, not to mention humans of every shape, size, and color drawn from a spectrum of nations and cultures. In the largest cities, almost anything imaginable is offered for sale, from exotic spices and luxurious clothing to wicker baskets and practical swords.

For an adventurer, the availability of armor, weapons, backpacks, rape, and similar goods is of paramount importance since proper equipment can mean the difference between life and death in a dungeon or the unclaimed wilds. This chapter details the mundane and exotic merchandise that adventurers commonly find useful in the face of the threats that the world of Dungeons and Dragons present.

Starting Equipment

When you create your character, you receive equipment based on a combination of your class and background. In this campaign your character will always start with the given set of equipment that your background and class might give you.

You decide how your character came by this starting equipment. It might have been an inheritance, or goods that the character purchased during his or her upbringing. You might have been equipped with a weapon, armor, and a backpack as part of military service. You might even have stolen your gear. A weapon could be a family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation until your character finally look up the mantle and followed in an ancestor’s adventurous footsteps.

In the Campaign we will be using the Equipment option instead of gold.  If there is something additional you believe that your character would have then bring that to the DM.  Swapping some of the packs or kits is also an option if it makes sense for your character.

Selling Treasure

Opportunities abound to find treasure, equipment, weapons, armor, and more in the dungeons you explore. Normally, you can sell your treasures and trinkets when you return to a town or other settlement if you can find buyers and merchants interested in your loot.

Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment. As a rule, undamaged weapons, armor, and other equipment fetch half their cost when sold in a market. Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell.

Magic Items. Selling magic items is problematic. Finding someone to buy a potion or a scroll isn’t too hard, but other items are out of the realm of most but the wealthiest nobles. Likewise, aside from a few common magic items, you won’t normally come across magic items or spells to purchase. The value of magic is far beyond simple gold and should always be treated as such.

Gems, jewelry, and Art Objects. These items retain their full value in the marketplace, and you can trade them in for coin or use them as currency for other transactions. For exceptionally valuable treasures, the DM might require you to find a buyer in a large town or larger community first.

Trade Goods. On the borderlands, many people conduct transactions through barter. Like gems and art objects, trade goods – bars of iron, bags of salt, livestock, and so on – retain their full value in the market and can be used as currency.

Monster Part Harvesting. Harvesting is the act of salvaging useful parts of a dead creature for personal use and profit.  It can be time consuming, dirty, messy, and weigh a lot depending on the creature.  But it can also be as lucrative as pillaging a small ruin.  See the section under Adventuring for more details.

Armor and Shields

In most campaigns, you can use or wear any equipment that you find on your adventures, within the bounds of common sense.

Using this variant, when adventurers find armor, clothing. and similar items that are made to be worn, they might need to visit an armor smith, tailor, leatherworker, or similar expert to make the item wearable. The cost for such work varies from 10 to 40 percent of the market price of the item. The DM can either roll d4 x 10 or determine the increase in cost based on the extent of the alterations required.

Common Material Components Costs

Casting some spells requires objects, specified in parentheses in the component entry. A character can use a component pouch or a spellcasting focus (found in “Equipment” in the Player’s Handbook) in place of the components specified for a spell. But if a cost is indicated for a component, a character must have that specific component before he or she can cast the spell.

If a spell states that a material component is consumed by the spell, the caster must provide this component for each casting of the spell. A spellcaster must have a hand free to access a spell’s material components — or to hold a spellcasting focus — but it can be the same hand that he or she uses to perform somatic components.

The Campaign rule is that the component pouch or arcane focus will only replace components up to a 10gp value.  Any exotic material will have to always be purchased or manually collected.

An example of an exotic material would be Dragon Scales, or Umber Hulk blood.

When the spell gives the specific cost, then that is the cost that will be used, otherwise the characters will need to collect the proper components.

Component Cost Table

Homebrew Equipment

While the Player’s Handbook is complete in what it makes available, there is always the need for a few other things that would be good to have.

Enchanted Vial

Some creature parts have powerful, yet fleeting, magical energies within them. The motes from elementals for example hold traces of their former essences in them but disperse rapidly upon the destruction of their original form.

An enchanted vial is inlaid with several runes designed to keep any magical resource within from dissipating while the lid is closed and is often the only way of transporting certain parts back to a workshop for crafting.

Items that require an enchanted vial to be harvested are fragile by nature and must be stored inside an enchanted vial quickly to prevent degradation. Any attempt to harvest a material that has an enchanted vial as a requirement must be initiated within one minute of the death of its creature.

This tool can be used a maximum of five times afterwards it disintegrates into powder.  At each attempted use, roll a d20 and if a 1 is rolled, the vial is immediately destroyed.

Harvesting Kit

This kit contains everything the average harvester needs to prepare and harvest a carcass for usable parts including a skinning knife, a bone saw, two glass vials, punches of salt, and tweezers.  Proficiency with this kit allows you to add your proficiency bonus to nay check made to harvest a creature.

Healing Pill

You regain 1d4 hit points when you swallow this pill.  If more than one is swallowed, then all after the first do 1d4 damage instead.

Spirit Paper

Spirit paper is a versatile tool that resembles a square of bleached papyrus. The secrets of its production were only recently discovered, and reverse engineered from secrets brought back from distant necromantic cults. By performing a small ritual with the spirit paper shortly after slaying certain creatures, a copy of that creature’s soul is bound to the spirit paper for later use. These copies are not a true soul and are more akin to an echo. These echoes do retain all the memories from its original body, and a few crafting techniques utilize these echoes to grant an item a low level of sentience or to mimic the abilities of their incorporeal reflections.

Using spirit paper is often the only way to harvest anything useful from creatures with incorporeal forms. Any harvesting attempt made for a creature part that has spirit paper as a requirement is done

using a Wisdom (Religion) check rather than the usual check and is rolled separately for each item. Once a sheet of spirit paper has been used successfully to harvest an item, it cannot be reused, even if the item it contained is released.

Unlike most harvestable materials, materials that require spirit paper to be harvested dissipate very quickly after the death of its creature. Any attempt to harvest a material that has spirit paper as a requirement must be initiated within 1 minute of the death of the creature and takes 10 minutes to successfully complete.

Each Spirit paper can only be used once.

Special Tools Price Table

When all this started, I had created a PDF for the players to walk them through a couple of basic rules that needed to be clarified, and what, if any limitations this campaign might have on the very large amount of D&D material that is out there and available. Races, Classes, Homebrew, and anything else I thought was important. After a bunch of modification as the campaign progressed, I decided it might just be batter to put it all here. After all, we are already putting all the session content here. Here you go, rule updates, and any other material I thought was important for the players:

• Introduction
• Campaign Details
• Creating a Character
• Races
• Classes
• Personality and Backgrounds
• Equipment
• Customization Options
• Using Ability Scores
• Adventuring
• Combat
• Spells
• Magic Items
• Bestiary
• Gods of the Universe
• Locations
• Factions

Characters are defined by much more than their race and class. They’re individuals with their own stories, interests, connections, and capabilities beyond those that class and race define. This chapter expounds on the details that distinguish characters from one another, including the basics of name and physical description, the rules of backgrounds and languages, and the finer points of personality and alignment.

Character Details

What is contained within the Player’s Handbook related to names, gender, height, and weight are sufficient to cover most situations for newly developed characters.  There is not any reason to expand upon those.

Alignment

This detail for each character can be viewed as more of a guideline of expected behavior but will not be strictly enforced unless there is some class requirement for a specific expected behavior.

Languages

There are not any changes to the base language sets.  It is expected that all the characters will minimally speak common unless there is a specific background or story about not being able to speak common.  It is also assumed that all characters are literate, again unless there is a story reason to change that.

Personality Characteristics

The Player’s Handbook offers many different suggestions on a character should consider for different traits, both good and bad.  There are also the more specific ones offered under each of the Backgrounds.  Again, these are all considered guidelines and only to be used if the player feels they need that assistance to understand their character and their background better.

Inspiration

Inspiration is a rule the Dungeon Master can use to reward you for playing your character in a way that’s true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw. By using inspiration, you can draw on your personality trait of compassion for the downtrodden to give you an edge in negotiating with the Beggar Prince. Or inspiration can let you call on your bond to the defense of your home village to push past the effect of a spell that has been laid on you.

Gaining Inspiration

Your DM can choose to give you inspiration for a variety of reasons. Typicality, DMs award it when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way. Your DM will tell you how you can earn inspiration in the game.

It is also frequently rewarded for some brave action, superb role-playing, or the completion of a difficult objective.

You either have inspiration or you don’t-you can’t stockpile multi pie “inspirations” for later use.

Awarding Inspiration

Think of inspiration as a spice that can be used to enhance the campaign.

Roleplaying. Using inspiration to reward roleplaying is a good place to start for most groups. Rewarding a player with inspiration when that player causes his or her character to do something that is consistent with the character’s personality trait, flaw, or bond. The character’s action should be notable in some way. It might drive the story forward, push the adventurers into danger, or make everyone at the table laugh. In essence, you reward the player for roleplaying in a way that makes the game more enjoyable for everyone else.

Consider each player’s roleplaying style and try not to favor one style over another.

Heroism. inspiration can be used encourage player characters to take risks. A fighter might not normally hurl himself over a balcony to land during a pack of hungry ghouls, but they could be rewarded for the character’s daring maneuver with inspiration.

Genre Emulation. Inspiration is a handy tool for reinforcing the conventions of a particular genre. Under this approach, think of the motifs of a genre as personality traits, flaws, and bonds that can apply to any of the adventurers.

Similarly, characters in a horror story typically can’t help but spend a night in a haunted house to learn its secrets. They probably also go off alone when they shouldn’t. If the party splits up, consider giving each character inspiration.

A sensible person would avoid the noble’s intrigues and the haunted house, but in film noir or horror, we’re not dealing with sensible people; we’re dealing with protagonists in a particular type of story. For this approach to work, create a list of your genre’s main conventions and share it with your players. Before the campaign begins, talk about the list to make sure your group is on board for embracing those conventions.

Using Inspiration

If you have inspiration, you can expend it when you make an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check. Spending your inspiration gives you advantage on that roll.

Additionality, if you have inspiration, you can reward another player for good roleplaying, clever thinking, or simply doing something exciting in the game. When another player character does something that really contributes to the story in a fun and interesting way, you can give up your inspiration character inspiration.

Reset of Inspiration

All inspiration that is gained during a session, if not used, expires at the end of that session such that all the characters will start with no inspiration at the next session and must earn it again.

Homebrew Proficiencies

When new tools or kits are added to the game this also will need to be reflected in the affected proficiencies as well as where that proficiency might be acquired.

Harvesting Kit

This guide adds in the new tool: the harvesting kit. Players may have proficiency in this like any other tool, and it is highly advised for them to have it as it provides a valuable bonus when making the checks outlined in this book. To accommodate this additional tool, the following classes and backgrounds have been slightly altered to give them the option to gain proficiency in the Harvesting Kit.

• Rangers may have proficiency with the harvesting kit upon character creation (this skill is not gained in multiclassing)
• Druids may have the option to choose between proficiency in the herbalism kit or the harvesting kit upon character creation (this skill is not gained in multiclassing)
• The Hermit background may choose between the herbalism kit and the harvesting kit as its starting tool proficiency and gains the appropriate kit as part of its starting equipment.
• The Outlander background may choose between a musical instrument or the harvesting kit as its initial tool proficiency. They may also choose between a hunting trap, and the harvesting kit in its initial starting equipment.

Backgrounds

Every story has a beginning. Your character’s background reveals where you came from, how you became an adventurer, and your place in the world. Your tighter might have been a courageous knight or a grizzled soldier. Your wizard could have been a sage or an artisan. Your rogue might have gotten by as a guild thief or commanded audiences as a jester.

Choosing a background provides you with important story cues about your character’s identity. The most important question to ask about your background is what changed? Why did you stop doing whatever your background describes and start adventuring? Where did you get the money to purchase your starting gear, or, if you come from a wealthy background, why don’t you have more money? How did you learn the skills of your class? What sets you apart from ordinary people who share your background?

Expectations

Background serves not only to help give your character life, but it also provides the DM hooks to apply to the Campaign to give your character more than just a two-dimensional feel to it.  You can include a happy childhood, horror, or anything in between that feels that it helps create the personality and history for you character.

Obviously, you cannot create an unbalanced background such that it would not fit into the Campaign.  All backgrounds must be approved and most likely will be modified buy the DM to help it fit into the story everyone is about to participate in.

All backgrounds will need to be able to answers several fundamental questions:

• Why are you adventuring?  What is motivating you to live this dangerous lifestyle?
• Do you have any other motivations?
• Where did you come from?  Where did you live?  What was your life there?
• Do you have any family alive?  Where are they?
• Do you have any important friends or contacts that would be useful to your new life?
• Why would you be joining a group of strangers to do anything?  Why would you trust them?  Would you trust them?  At some point you will need to integrate with the group and if you create an onerous personality and background that will prevent that, it will be difficult for your character to participate with the group.

Homebrew Backgrounds

While the multitude of reference, modules, and other books include many different backgrounds that are available to the players, sometimes there is the need for something more than just the standard ones.  Here are the available homebrew backgrounds for this Campaign.

The following Homebrew backgrounds are available to the characters if their background would warrant the use of one of them.

• Built in a Lab
• Far East Traveler
• Farmhand
• Harvester

Built in a Lab

Some master of both magic and machinery assembled you with a mixture of arcane prowess and tinkering proficiency. Your creator may be a mad mage who meant to use you for nefarious ends, a wise sage creating a steadfast soldier, or a lonely soul seeking friendship or family through unusual avenues. Perhaps you don’t even know for sure, having awakened decades or centuries after you were initially built. Gradually, you are discovering your innate abilities, your arcane code compiling and iterating. Perhaps you are discovering arcane gifts that your master shared with you or learning newer and better ways to pulverize your enemies with your unbreakable fists. The world is strange and new, and you will absorb as much of it as is mechanically possible.

• Skill Proficiencies: Choose two from the following: Arcana, Investigation, Medicine, Perception, Performance, Stealth.
• Languages: Choose two
• Equipment:  A broken sword, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10gp.

Feature: Quick Study

You were designed to adapt and grow, iterating on your experiences and developing a wider skill set as a result. Your arcane code rewards you for seeking out new encounters, particularly if you can challenge yourself to reproduce them. If you spend an extended period observing an expert at their craft, you gain advantage on your next attempt to mimic that skill.

Suggested Characteristics

Your praerogativa arcana determines how you prioritize your actions, interactions, and reactions to the world around you. Your attitudes may be determined by your master, or you may be developing new models of behavior as a rebellion against your creator.

Personality Trait Table

Ideal Table

Bond Table

Flaw Table

Far East Traveler

Almost all the common people and other folk that one might encounter along the Sword Coast or in the North have one thing in common: they live out their lives without ever traveling more than a few miles from where they were born.

You aren’t one of those folks.

You are from a distant place, one so remote that few of the common folk in the North realize that it exists, and chances are good that even if some people you meet have heard of your homeland, they know merely the name and perhaps a few outrageous stories. You have come to this part of Faerûn for your own reasons, which you might or might not choose to share.

Although you will undoubtedly find some of this land’s ways to be strange and discomfiting, you can also be sure that some things its people take for granted will be to you the new wonders that you’ve never laid eyes on before. By the same token, you’re a person of interest, for good or ill, to those around you almost anywhere you go.

• Skill Proficiencies: Intimidation, Stealth, and Athletics or History
• Tool Proficiencies: Gain tool proficiency in Alchemist and Herbalist
• Languages: Each Far Eastern Traveler gains a non-standard foreign language that will have to be added manually.
• Equipment: One set of traveler’s clothes, Herbalism Kit and an Alchemist’s Supplies, poorly wrought maps from your homeland that depict where you are in Faerûn, a small piece of jewelry worth 10gp in the style of your homeland’s craftsmanship, and a pouch containing 5gp

Why Are You Here?

A far traveler might have set out on a journey for one of several reasons, and the departure from his or her homeland could have been voluntary or involuntary. To determine why you are so far from home, roll on the table below or choose from the options provided. The following section, discussing possible homelands, includes some suggested reasons that are appropriate for each location.

Why Are You Here Table

Feature: All Eyes on You

Your accent, mannerisms, figures of speech, and perhaps even your appearance all mark you as foreign. Curious glances are directed your way wherever you go, which can be a nuisance, but you also gain the friendly interest of scholars and others intrigued by far-off lands, to say nothing of everyday folk who are eager to hear stories of your homeland.

You can parley this attention into access to people and places you might not otherwise have, for you and your traveling companions. Noble lords, scholars, and merchant princes, to name a few, might be interested in hearing about your distant homeland and people.

Suggested Characteristics

These are the suggested characteristics for Far Traveler.

Personality Trait Table

Ideal Table

Bond Table

Flaw Table

Farmhand

Prior to becoming an adventurer, you were a farmer, gardener, or orchard-keeper of some kind. You made your pay by tending to fruits and vegetables to produce food for your family and to sell at local markets. While most farmers grow common, edible crops, such as wheat and corn, others can grow rare fruits and magical flowers, depending on the climate and their expertise.

Many farmers live comfortably or in poor conditions, making you used to conditions that would make a nobleman turn up his nose. Caring for animals and digging in dirt is a messy and often thankless job, but it does have to be done by someone.

Farming tends to be a tradition within families, carried on for generations without much thought. Perhaps you were bored of a life of farming, or a disaster of some sort spurred you on to a life of adventure.

• Skill Proficiencies: Choose two from among Animal Handling, Athletics, Medicine, or Nature.
• Tool Proficiencies: Choose one from among Brewers’
• Supplies, Cook’s Utensils, Leatherworker’s Tools, Weaver’s Tools, or Woodcarver’s Tools. You also have proficiency with Vehicles (Land).
• Equipment: A set of common clothes, a walking stick, and a belt pouch containing 10gp.

Feature: Rustic Hospitality

Since you come from the ranks of the common folk, you fit in among them with ease. You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other commoners, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them.

Suggested Characteristics

These are the suggested characteristics for Far Traveler.

Personality Trait Table

Ideal Table

Bond Table

Flaw Table

Harvester

Like a miner in their cave or a farmer in their field, you too make your living through reaping the riches of the natural world. Your resources, however, are the monsters and creatures that populate the multiverse. Although there are some who would scoff and call you a mere butcher, you understand the subtle complexities in the fantastical anatomies you find in your adventures, and only you are qualified enough to harvest them.

• Skill Proficiencies: Nature, Survival
• Tool Proficiencies: Harvesting Kit, Languages: One of your choice.
• Equipment: A set of traveler’s clothes, a hunting trap, harvesting kit, a cloak made from a creature you harvested, and a belt pouch containing 5gp.

Feature: Connected

You have been harvesting creatures for a long time and as part of that, you have become deeply acquainted with the large industry of crafters and merchants that rely on the wares you bring. Whenever you enter a place of civilization, you have no trouble finding merchants willing to buy your materials or crafters that can work with your wares. You are also savvy in the bargaining techniques used when haggling over prices and are not easily tricked during negotiations. You often find yourself able to secure a good price, or even a discount on services relating to harvested materials.

Suggested Characteristics

Harvesters are an odd bunch, half outdoorsman, half entrepreneur. As someone who spends most of their time in the hunting and being elbow deep in dead bodies, you probably have a different worldview compared to most.

Personality Trait Table

Ideal Table

Bond Table

Flaw Table

Adventurers are extraordinary people, driven by a thirst for excitement into a life that others would never dare lead, they are heroes, compelled to explore the dark places of the world and take on the challenges that lesser women and men can’t stand against.

Class is the primary definition of what your character can do, it’s more than a profession; it’s your character’s calling. Class shapes the way you think about the world and interact with it and your relationship with other people and powers in the multiverse. A fighter, for example, might view the world in pragmatic terms of strategy and maneuvering, and see herself as just a pawn in a much larger game. A cleric, by contrast, might see himself as a willing servant in a god’s unfolding plan or a conflict brewing among various deities. While the fighter has contacts in a mercenary company or army, the cleric might know several priests, paladins, and devotees who share his faith.

Your class gives you a variety of special features, such as a fighter’s mastery of weapons and armor, and a wizard’s spells. At low levels, your class gives you only two or three features, but as you advance in level you gain more, and your existing features often improve. Each class entry in the Player’s Handbook and many different expansions includes a detailed explanation of each one.

Adventurers sometimes advance in more than one class. A rogue might switch direction in life and swear the oath of a paladin, A barbarian might discover latent magical ability and dabble in the sorcerer class while continuing to advance as a barbarian. Elves are known to combine martial mastery with magical training and advance as fighters and wizards simultaneously. Optional rules for combining classes in this way, called multiclassing, appear in chapter 6 of the Player’s Handbook.

Sub-Classes

At different levels for each class, you will need to select a sub-class for your primary class.  This is usually some sort of enhancement of your progress path.  This secondary class will give you different benefits throughout your leveling career.

Sub-Class Availability Table

Homebrew Sub-Classes

While there is not the possibility of a unique Homebrew class, there are many possibilities for Homebrew sub-classes that almost all classes become eligible for at different points in their profession.

A visit to one of the great cities in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons – Waterdeep, the Free City of Greyhawk, or even uncanny Sigil, the City of Doors – overwhelms the senses. Voices chatter in countless different languages. The smells of cooking in dozens of different cuisines mingle with the odors of crowded streets and poor sanitation. Buildings in myriad architectural styles display the diverse origins of their inhabitants.

And the people themselves – people of varying size, shape, and color dressed in a dazzling spectrum of styles and hues – represent many different races, from diminutive halflings and stout dwarves to majestically beautiful elves, mingling among a variety of human ethnicities.

Scattered among the members of these more common races are the true exotics: a hulking dragonborn here, pushing his way through the crowd, and a sly tiefling there, lurking in the shadows with mischief in her eyes. A group of gnomes laughs as one of them activates a clever wooden toy that moves of its own accord. Half- elves and half-orcs live and work alongside humans, without fully belonging to the races of either of their parents. And there, well out of the sunlight, is a lone drow – a fugitive from the subterranean expanse of the Underdark, trying to make his way in a world that fears his kind.

Choose a Race

Humans are the most common people in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragon, but they live and work alongside dwarves, elves, halflings, and countless other fantastic species. Your character belongs to one of these peoples.

Not every intelligent race of the multiverse is appropriate for a player-controlled adventurer. Dwarves, elves, halflings, and humans are the most common races to produce the sort of adventurers who make up typical parties. Dragonborn, gnomes, half-elves, half- orcs, and tieflings are less common as adventurers. Drow, a subrace of elves, are also uncommon.

Your choice of race affects many different aspects of your character. It establishes fundamental qualities that exist throughout your character’s adventuring career. When making this decision, keep in mind the kind of character you want to play.

For example:

A halfling could be a good choice for a sneaky rogue, a dwarf makes a lough warrior, and an elf can be a master of arcane magic.

Your character race not only affects your ability scores and traits but also provides the cues for building your character’s story. Each race’s description in the chapter in the Player’s Handbook includes information to help you roleplay a character of that race, including personality, physical appearance, features of society, and racial alignment tendencies. These details are suggestions to help you think about your character; adventurers can deviate widely from the norm for their race. It’s worthwhile to consider why your character is different, as a helpful way to think about your character’s background and personally.

Race Availability

Each campaign will have different limitations and requirements for what races might be made available.  The reasoning might be for ambiance or just mechanical reasons.  No matter what the reasoning might be, these limitations must be followed.

Allowed Races

The following races are explicitly allowed:

• Dragonborn
• Dwarf
• Elf
• Firbolg
• Gnome
• Goblin
• Goliath
• Half-Elf
• Half-Orc
• Halfling
• Human
• Kalashtar
• Kenku
• Tabaxi
• Tiefling

Disallowed Races

The following races are explicitly not allowed:

• Aarakroca
• Bugbear
• Centaur
• Changling
• Custom Lineage
• Eladrin
• Fairy
• Gith
• Githyanki
• Githzerai
• Grung
• Hobgoblin
• Kender
• Kobold
• Lineages
• Lizardfolk
• Locathah
• Loxodon
• Minotaur
• Orc
• Owlin
• Satyr
• Shadar-Kai
• Simic Hybrid
• Triton
• Vedalken
• Verdan
• Yuan-ti

Open to Negotiation Races

The following races might be allowed if a sufficiently good reasoning was offered to the DM:

• Aasimar
• Gnome (Deep)
• Deurgar
• Elf (Drow)
• Elf (Sea)
• Genasi
• Harengon
• Leonin
• Shifter
• Tortle
• Warforged

Homebrew Races

At this time there are not any Homebrew races, but that does not mean that it will be that way forever.

There are not any significant changes from the Player’s Handbook on the process of creating a character.  We will be using D&D Beyond to maintain and manage all the player characters.  Any Homebrew content that is required will be created within that application.

Determining Ability Scores

Much of what your character does in the game depends on his or her six abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Each ability has a score, which is a number you record on your character sheet.

The six abilities and their use in the game are described in chapter 7 in the Player’s Handbook. The Ability Score Summary table provides a quick reference for what qualities are measured by each ability, what races increases which abilities, and what classes consider each ability particularly important.

You generate your character’s six ability scores randomly. Roll four 6-sided dice and record the total of the highest three dice on a piece of scratch paper. This is repeated seven times, so that you have seven numbers in total. Choosing the best of the six rolls will make up your base attribute pool for you to select where to place them into your attributes.

Now take your six numbers and write each number beside one of your character’s six abilities to assign scores to Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Afterward, make any changes to your ability scores because of your race choice.

After assigning your ability scores, determine your ability modifiers using the Ability Scores and Modifiers table. To determine an ability modifier without consulting the table, subtract 10 from the ability score and then divide the result by 2 (round down). Write the modifier next to each of your scores.

Describe Your Character

Once you know the basic game aspects of your character, it’s time to flesh him or her out as a person. Your character needs a name. Spend a few minutes thinking about what he or she looks like and how he or she behaves in general terms.

Using the information in chapter 4 from the Player’s Handbook, you can flesh out your character’s physical appearance and personality traits. Choose your character’s alignment (the moral compass that guides his or her decisions) and ideals. Chapter 4 in the Player’s Handbook also helps you identify the things your character holds most dear, called bonds, and the flaws that could one day undermine him or her.

Your character’s background describes where he or she carne from, his or her original occupation, and the character’s place in the D&D world. Your DM might offer additional backgrounds beyond the ones included in chapter 4 of the Player’s Handbook and might be willing to work with you to craft a background that’s a more precise fit for your character concept.

A background gives your character a background feature (a general benefit) and proficiency in two skills, and it might also give you additional languages or proficiency with certain kinds of tools. Record this information, along with the personality information you develop, on your character sheet.

Your Character’s Abilities

Take your character’s ability scores and race into account as you flesh out his or her appearance and personality. A very strong character with low Intelligence might think and behave very differently from a very smart character with low Strength.

Choose Equipment

Your class and background determine your character’s starting equipment, including weapons, armor, and other adventuring gear. Record this equipment on your character sheet. All such items are detailed in chapter 5 in the Player’s Handbook.

Your Strength score limits the amount of gear you can carry. Try not to purchase equipment with a total weight (in pounds) exceeding your Strength score times 15. The Player’s Handbook Chapter 7 has more information on carrying capacity.

Beyond 1^st Level

As your character goes on adventures and overcomes challenges, he or she gains experience, represented by experience points. A character who reaches a specified experience point total advances in capability. This advancement is called gaining a level.

When your character gains a level, his or her class often grants additional features, as derailed in the class description. Some of these features allow you to increase your ability scores, either increasing two scores by 1 each or increasing one score by 2. You can’t increase an ability score above 20. In addition, every character’s proficiency bonus increases at certain levels.

Each time you gain a level, you gain 1 additional Hit Die. Roll that Hit Die, add your Constitution modifier to the roll, and add the total to your hit point maximum.

When your Constitution modifier increases by 1, your hit point maximum increases by 1 for each level you have attained.

The Character Advancement table summarizes the XP you need to advance in levels from level 1 through level 20, and the proficiency bonus for a character of that level. Consult the information in your character’s class description to see what other improvements you gain at each level.

While there are two normal methods of advancement; Milestone and Experience Points, we will be using Experience Points for this Campaign.  I prefer the more gradual incremental increases of the advancement to show the growth and to give the players a more gradual feeling of accomplishments.

Tiers of Play

The shading in the Character Advancement Table shows the four tiers of play. The tiers don’t have any rules associated with them; they are a general description of how the play experience changes as characters gain levels.

In the first tier (levels 1-4), characters are effectively apprentice adventurers. They are learning the features that define them as members of classes, including the major choices that flavor their class features as they advance (such as a wizard’s Arcane Tradition or a fighter’s Martial Archetype). The threats they face are relatively minor, usually posing a danger lo local farmsteads or villages.

In the second tier (levels 5-10), characters come into their own. Many spellcasters gain access to 3rd-Ievel spells at the start of this tier, crossing a new threshold of magical power with spells such as fireball and lightning bolt. At this tier, many weapon-using classes gain the ability to make multiple attacks in one round. These characters have become important, facing dangers that threaten cities and kingdoms.

In the third tierer (levels 11-16), characters have reached a level of power that sets them high above the ordinary populace and makes them special even among adventurers. At 11^th level, many spellcasters gain access lo 6th-leveI spells, some of which create effects previously impossible for player characters to achieve. Other characters gain features that allow them to make more attacks or do more impressive things with those attacks. These mighty adventurers often confront threats to whole regions and continents.

At the fourth tier (levels 17-20), characters achieve the pinnacle of their class features, becoming heroic (or villainous) archetypes. The fate of the world or even the fundamental order of the multiverse might hang in the balance during their adventures.

Character Advancement Table