Dungeons and Dragons Teens 099: Character Creation Workshop

In this teens only class, one of the best parts about D&D is being able to design your own character. This process encourages creativity, critical thinking, basic understanding of statistics, and when working with a group of friends, cooperation leading to problem solving. Many players even use their characters as inspiration for short stories or pieces of creative fiction. This class assumes that students understand what the different races and classes are in the game world, and know what types of roles they fill in the game. My 101 course will prep them with this knowledge. This class is not a good “first D&D” experience” class as it gets very technical. 

Note to parents: this class is for students who want to learn how to create their own characters and is not required for those who want to play in subsequent adventure sessions. Also, there is A LOT of information there that many students find really interesting, and may overwhelm others. Please be prepared to assist your student if they tend to get overwhelmed easily. 

Character creation is a process, and in this class we'll use the character builder from www.dndbeyond.com. This tool will help us go step by step and create a custom character that is a dynamic persona ready for your next adventure. You need to make a free account on www.dndbeyond.com.  Creation of this account before class begins is required. This will allow you to save many different characters, and you can print out the sheets using a printer. Please see information regarding this third party website at the end of this description for full details. 

This lesson will involve reading information on a computer. Students will need to be able to read independently or have an adult off screen to assist with if some of the vocabulary is difficult. 

D&D Beyond has a large amount of free content, however some races and classes are unavailable. I cannot assure that student "first choices" can be accessed for free. This class is designed to instruct the character creation process, which will allow students to create characters from scratch so long as they have the necessary resources. Students must be 13 years old to create these accounts on their own via a gmail or apple account. Parents should use their discretion when students sign up for any third party accounts. 

A basic understanding of the D&D 5th Edition rules is strongly preferred, specifically of race and class in the game. You will get the most out of this class with some knowledge of the classes, races, skills, and magic which classes can use magic, and general mechanics of the game, however. The Teen 101 course covers these topics.

We will guide you through class and race selection, generating and assigning attributes, choosing skills, equipment and class specific abilities and spells and a simple set of personality traits to help you play your character. This class focuses on learning a process, and while all my classes are highly interactive, time will not permit intensive one-on-one interaction for detailed character questions. 

We dig into the different trade offs statistically and from a role playing perspective when creating a character.


Note regarding third-party website: 
You may choose to allow your child to have access to the D&D Beyond website (dndbeyond.com) to assist in their creation of characters or other content for use in this class.  Use of and access to the D&D Beyond website is not required for future classes, and we provide this service to assist those who are interested in using D&D Beyond. It is solely within your discretion as the parent whether to allow your child to access the D&D Beyond website.  Please note that the D&D Beyond website is a third-party service over which we have no control or responsibility, and any data or information shared on it or any other third-party website is subject to their terms of service and privacy policies.

Those that do not have accounts ready at the beginning of class will need to troubleshoot independently, or may be asked to leave the session and rejoin once an account has been created. The tutorial begins roughly five minutes after class starts and will proceed on schedule for those who are prepared.

Refunds will not be given for those that were not prepared for the class with a user account.