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Submit Your Questions for the January Q&A Livestream! (Patreon)

Published:
2021-01-25 16:07:51
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Our January 2020 Livestream will be a Character Building Workshop! Join us stream on Friday, January 29th from 6 PM to 8 PM ET.

Please submit any questions you may have about creating characters for D&D 5e by replaying to this thread. Possible sub-topics might include:

Making the most of the new options (origins, subclasses, feats, ect) in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything!

Character concepts and roleplaying ideas

Choosing a class and subclass to fit your character concept

Building a character backstory and personality traits

Working with your DM to create interesting goals and bonds for your character

Choosing the right ability scores, ancestries, spells, feats, and other build options for your character

Please leave your questions in the comments below by Friday at 11:59 PM. We ask that you submit no more than one question for consideration.

We hope we can answer most submissions, but we may need to narrow our selections occasionally depending on the quantity. We’ll curate the questions to avoid duplicates, and we encourage you to LIKE questions submitted by other patrons which are of interest to you so we can prioritize if necessary. We’ll read out your questions out during the stream, and hopefully take a few extra questions from the live chat as well.

If you miss the live stream, don’t worry — the full recording will be available on YouTube a few days later.

Cheers

Kelly & Monty

Comments

Em Radi

How can you best balance avoiding cliches while still trying to make an optimal character build?

Daniel Gray Webb

As a DM how can you work to equalize "spotlight " and balance character class strength/abilities (S tier vs D/C tier) during character creation?

Walt Flood

Wahoo! I was working on getting characters set up for a new campaign this weekend! Question 1: I'm building a Lost Mines campaign to be followed by Storm Kings Thunder for some new players - I want to try to tie some of the characters towards potential areas in Storm Kings, but any advice on how to do this for larger multi-phase campaigns like this one? Question 2: There are so many backgrounds out there - any suggestions on how to present these to new players? Or better to build a backstory and then I suggest a similar background or two?

Jon Seidenwurm

What are your thoughts on making paladins such that they can be the righteous warriors they are AND fit in with a party of misfits.

ttyybb

How do you think of unique and complex backstories /what questions should I ask myself about my character when determing character traits?

Todd Seymour

With the Rune Knight fighter subclass in Tasha's, it seems like my halfling character can finally achieve the gargantuan size if enlarge is cast on the character after using the Runic Juggernaut ability. How would you deal with a gargantuan sized player character in general? Also, it seems like combining the lucky feat and divination wizard's portent ability with the Rune Knight would give character so much control over dice rolls in combat.

Honorable Emu

Which Tasha's subclasses stand out to you? Specifically, how do you think the Rune Knight stacks up against the Battlemaster?

Robb Van Eck

How do you see the new character backgrounds and subclasses fitting into Session Zero conversations? Does this open the door for character creation with the DM being a second "zero" session for campaigns?

Varthredalgo

Hey Dudes! What do you feel is a good way to go about playing characters with significant secrets kept from the rest of their party? Hidden identities, past mistakes or crimes, etc.

Schnuffelhasi - Art by Tamara Wittig

Have you ever create a charakter, that looks great on the paper, but was really bad or lame to play? Or the opposite, create a charakter thats looks total clicheé or boring on the paper but was really awesome and fun to play?

Ragan curvin

With the new floating asi's for character creation, what race would you like to play a wizard or scorcer with the most? I see potential in a tortle to make up for the lack of armor and could make it into a tank mage. Pair that with shield and you have a combo that will shrug off a lot of hits.

Eichhörnchen Druid

Hey im new this month and i will take this chance to say thank you guys. I really enjoyed your work im a new dm make my first adventure and your work is such a great support. Im a big fan thanks from Germany

Robert Gregory

How well does the Order of Scribes Wizard work mechanically, in your opinion? I'm always a huge fanboy for our robed INT based casters and this one, on paper, just sounds SO good and I can't wait until I'm not the DM of my group to play it.

Seth V

What's the weirdest class race combo that you've always wanted to play but never been able to yet

Gregory Lopez

In your experience, are there any background or character choices that indicate that someone will be a problem player, and if so, what are they?

Le Tired

If you're starting from level one, in game, how do you make the transition from the players not having a subclass to now having a subclass while still making sense and not seeming clunky?

Keeblare

I'm running a Hunter Ranger (started before your great video and Tasha's) and I want to multiclass- when is the best level to make a switch and what are your favored secondary classes? Party composed of Hexblade Warlock and a Barbarian who grows a tail- so beast path of some kind, I think. Thanks!

Goblin

You literally stole my question. In addition I'd like to know the best way to reveal that information as I would like learning my characters dark past to be a product of the party earning her trust.

Goblin

I don't know we're allowed to answer but I bake it into my backstory. My grave cleric was an acolyte at a temple to a god of the dead was being grooming to prepare the dead before adventuring. My current charecter is a whispers bard and she survived as a street orphan by being, in GoT terms, a little bird. Then for multiclassing I build skills and develop behavior that would suggest that direction and encourage the same from my players. The Monk who is always singing while traveling picks up levels in bard for instance.

Goblin

When choosing spells is it better in your opinion to choose spells your character would learn/ prep or spells that would benefit the party? Is it an asshole move, for instance, to not learn attack spells (i intend for my bard to be a support caster/ ranged fighter) or as a cleric not prep revivafy because to your characters knowledge you will have no need to bring back the fallen today. Tl;Dr thoughts on choosing spells that your character would choose?

Le Tired

I have tried getting my players to do that, but my players are all new. The most difficult one will be my fighter who wants his archetype to be the rune knight, but hasn't done much to lead towards that, especially since he created his character before Tasha's came out.

Matt

Hello, dudes, my question is, in this age of customization, what do you think about using the backgrounds in the books as a pointers and making a custom background for every player in the game based on their backstory, or asking a dm to include one for your own character?

Joey Johnson

Do you use the standard AL character-sheet, or is there another sheet you find you prefer? Any tools/web-tools that help streamline the building process?

Jake Miller

What things SHOULD you involve with your DM and what things should you just develop ON YOUR OWN? I don't want to bog down my DM with my questions and storylines, but I also want to give him some material to work with when he needs it.

Michael Epp

In your experience, is it more fun to max out a character's abilities or to build a character with some flaws, to miss out on some opportunities for power? I have run into this issue when choosing between a variant human and just plain old human character. For instance, I just built a Gloomstalker Ranger who would have been more powerful as a variant, but I didn't go that way because I would have been picking variant just to have more powerful rolls, not to be more interesting. Thanks as always for the good work DDudes!

Samuel Cavender

What is your recommendation on playing/making a "morally questionable" character (i.e. the tragic Necromancer, a cryptic GOO warlock) while still maintaining party cohesion?

Adam W.

Hiya. My question is when you hit the levels for ability score increases or selecting new feats, which do you tend to pick for your characters and what's your thought process behind it? At least up to level 8 or so.

Adam W.

This is a great question. I apologize if this is bad etiquette but I had a short answer from experience. My player character was a criminal who hit rock bottom and sough redemption. He was also wacky and non serious to the point where the party didn't really believe him when he said he did this thing or that thing. When his old partner in crime came into play, the party realized that my character wasn't joking about that stuff.

Varthredalgo

I appreciate you sharing your experience, thanks! I personally think having NPCs show up who have known the PC and their sordid pasts is a very cool way to reveal that stuff, or at least beg the question. Feels more natural that way and can lead to cool interaction and potential allies or even enemies.

Troy Middleton

Considering starting a new campaign where we essentially play as ourselves in a fantasy world. Have you worked with an idea like this before and what do you think would be a cool way of still building out interesting backstories?

Stephen Jedynak

From a DM perspective what extra options do you think are important to allow for players? Example: allowing all Sorcs to get their extra spells as spells known as opposed to just the new Sorcs. Or Int giving extra languages.

Dan Bono

I have 4 11th level characters that are either neutral or chaotic evil. One is a Warlock/Fighter who is tracked to become a death knight. Any advice on how this might work or something else with the same flavor that might work better?