What is Homebrew?

The question that some people might have is what is Homebrew? I know it in two contexts, the first is beer, the second is content for Dungeons and Dragons that isn’t official. So this is something that a person has created for their own character. It can be a whole new class, and you can find some of those on the DM’s Guild or Drive Thru RPG. Or it could be as simple as changing Fireball into Lightning Ball and doing lightning damage versus fire damage. So, it is simple as something that isn’t official from Wizards of the Coast or one of their partners.

For Dungeon Masters Should You Allow It?

Let’s start with this from the Dungeon Master side of things as that is in the title. And I am going to say, maybe. There are two reasons why players want to use homebrew. One is that they wan it to be thematic. Maybe they want to theme their whole character around lightning, but there aren’t enough lightning spells. The other is to power game. Maybe they know that lightning is less common for monsters to be resistant to.

The first I’d consider letting someone use homebrew content for. It is for a gaming and thematic reasons. Theoretically it won’t break everything and if something is flat out immune to lightning damage, I can always bring that in if need be. The second way, I am going to say no, or if I think that it might break the campaign even if it’s not intentional I’ll say no.

The same goes for bigger things like a custom class. I have a whole bunch of different rune magic classes that I got from Drive Thru RPG and DM’s Guild. I’d like to present them as an option for my players, but to do that, I need to spend time going through them myself. I need to know that they won’t be broken, either being too strong, or too weak. Because neither are fun for players.

For Players Should You Want It?

Honestly, I’m going to go with no. Unless you have a hyper specific build that makes 100% sense for the campaign, I don’t think you need it. Dungeons and Dragons gives the players a ton of options out there. And that is great and gives you plenty to play around with already. And there are more that are coming. I have five or so official books that give different class options. Now it might not give exactly what you want, and that is okay, you can tweak what you want slightly.

I think as a player, sometimes it can be tempting to create this precise vision of a character. But most of the times that won’t match up precisely with what you can do in Dungeons and Dragons. And really, that is fine. You can get close enough. I think like how a Dungeon Master needs to hold onto the story loosely and just guide it, the same is true with how you develop and build your character.

If there is a new class that someone has created that you really want, it probably is broken. If you need more lightning spells, maybe look for more support spells. There are ways to build your character still while being focused on a specific element. It just takes more work than changing how Dungeons and Dragons is set-up to work.

So Homebrew is Bad?

No, it isn’t. It can be a blast in some campaigns. Like I said, I have a whole stack of rune casters that I need to go through because the concept to me is really cool. I would love to play one some day. Why, because I think the concept of them is cool, not because I want to create an overpowered and broken combo. I want people to have fun around the table, and me creating a broken combo isn’t fun.

So there is a balance. It is something that, especially for new players and Dungeon Masters, I don’t recommend doing. I think that there is a lot of temptation to do that because you don’t know how to make Dungeons and Dragons work for you. The best advice I can give when you feel like you can’t do exactly what you want is to hold on loosely. It is a cooperative story telling game when it comes down to it, so don’t hold on too tightly to your perfect vision.

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People do those five things in different orders, but I tend to like them in the order listed above. Some people pick class before race, but for me, the race plays a more important part in who your character is. Everything I want to lay out should enhance both your roll playing and your role playing.

Race

So why is race the first thing? Why not class? I think that race will give you a better idea of your character for both roll and role play. And elf might not be as likely to be a barbarian but if they are, you now have a story surrounding that. But for first time players, race can be easier to pick than a class. Picking that you want to be an elf then leads you in certain directions for your class choices. Granted, picking human leaves everything open.

So from the roll play side, like I said, picking your race helps you nail down your class. And I think that the class for a lot of players is a little bit more flexible and most races can play most classes well. Going back to the elf example, you can pick to be an elf and be a fighter, a ranger, a rogue, a druid, or a wizard very easily. And I think that a number of the other classes work as well. Picking your race will give you a narrower target for classes, but a wider target than picking a class and then going back to race.

From the role play side, you now get to create a character with more of the flavor that you might want. When you look at the classes, you have a variety open to you still, both fighters and casters. The race give you a better picture for role playing than class does. How do you want them to interact, do you want a haughty or nature focused character, an elf, a gruff drinking and brawling character, why not a dwarf. The race helps set more of that personality than anything else would.

Class

Class helps focus the character. This really covers both roll and role play again as you can use the class to focus more of the story. But you also get a lot of mechanics out of this. You are going to get your first skills, if you pick a spell casting class your first spells, and you really get to see where you are going to be rolling the dice. Take this time to when looking at the class to find those skills that are going to be your characters standard. What attack is your signature, so when it comes time to combat you are ready to go.

But there is also role play elements to think about. When you pick your class you start to add in other questions. If you are a wizard, what wizarding school did you go to. What connections do you still maintain there? If you are a fighter, where did you learn to fight? Who is your mentor or trainer, and are they still a friend or a foe? Were you in the military or town guard or why did you pick up the skills?

Stats

Now we move into an area that seems more like it is roll playing and role playing. But in reality, it is both. The roll playing part is obvious. You roll your dice and you use the stats to modify them. So with your race and class, you now know what stats you need to be good at. If you are a wizard, intelligence, a fighter, strength, that sort of thing.

But putting down your stats also gives you a ton of opportunity to create more role playing as well. It is tempting to try and be at least okay at everything. Using a standard array for numbers, it is going to give you one thing you are below average at. And that is where you get your role playing. What does it look like to be worse than average at intelligence or to be missing subtly because of lacking common sense from wisdom? What is it like to be a character who isn’t strong? There is a lot of story that starts to develop from your weaknesses, as well as your strengths.

Background

This is the last part of what you need to be thinking about from the book. The background helps flesh out your characters backstory and who you were at some point in time in your life before you decided to go adventuring. This one is much more focused on the role playing side of things, versus the roll playing. In fact, you are unlikely to get any dice improvements out of this beside getting some more skills and maybe some tools to help improve your modifiers.

This is about picking a background and getting four areas in this. You get personality traits, bonds, ideals, and flaws. Check out them more in details in my Building a D&D Character 201 article. But these add in story elements naturally to a character by giving them connections and little ticks and more. These are not hard and fast things your character will always adhere to, but they help create touch points when you aren’t sure how you character would react. It also gives them some skills to fall back on.

Backstory

We are finally to backstory. This one is the easiest to talk about. This one is only role playing focused. This is what helps your dungeon master know how to bring your character into the story. It is also the only part not in the book. However, I put it last because if you don’t know what backstory you want, the other things will help. In fact, they can do most of the writing for you.

If you are an elf, you will see things more one way. If you are an elf fighter, it focused more. An elf fighter who is great with a bow because you have high dexterity but bad charisma, more focused. An elf fighter with low charisma and a military background, you now have a lot of your backstory written for you. You just need to flesh out the details.

Now You Have Your Character!

If you go through those steps, you’ll have a character that is ready to be played. Work with your Dungeon Master through this whole process, because you want your character to fit the story being told. As a dungeon master, I recommend a session 0, a chance to sit around, talk about your story idea and setting and then build characters together. That will create a group more cohesive characters for the players and the world being played in.

What type of character do you want to play next?

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Silver Dagger

If the name sounds familiar, that’s because I have Silver Amulet, Coin, and Bullet as well. This is a game that uses a bit of memory and a bit of push your luck and bluffing as you try and build up your lowest scoring village possible. To do this can be a bit tricky though, because you have five cards in front of you and they are all face down. At the start of the game you can look at two of them, so you know a little bit, but not that much. Each card has a number and an ability. The number is how many points they’ll be worth in your village. The abilities can be one time use when you draw it, or it can be an ability that works if the villager is face up in your village. So already having three of them, why would I need another game that does the same thing? Simply for the variety. You can mix the cards from Silver Amulet, Coin, Bullet, and Dagger together, you just need one group of cards from 0 to 13. Needless to say, I’ll have more combinations than I’ll ever be able to play, but it’ll be fun as I can make it more “take that” if I want, or more focused on your own cards.

Roll Player

I could have just done a whole order of Roll Player with the Fiends and Familiars expansion and the Monsters and Minions expansions, and eventually I’m sure that I’ll get them. But I thought, let’s just start with the base game. Here’s a little secret, I’ve played this game only once with a physical copy of the game. Now I’ve played it more than that this year because of Tabletop Simulator. But only once with a physical copy. I like this dice drafting game a lot, I think that there are cool things about it and I love that you’re rolling up a D&D character, basically, and seeing how good you can make them. The game play is pretty straight forward and I love the variety of strategy that you can have based off of your background, class, and race, that’ll make you want to target different cards. Plus the traits that you can get can massively change how you’re going to score at the end of the game as well. This game has a good amount of replayability, and while I do want to get Monsters and Minions, because the game does seem like it ends before it could, and I think that getting to use your character will get me to get the expansions, and eventually Roll Player Adventure and being able to take my character through a whole campaign. But even without that, the game is a lot of fun, and hence why it’s in my Top 100 so it is one that I have felt like I’ve wanted to own for a while, and now was the time.

Shadowrun: Crossfire (Prime Runner Edition)

Another one in my top 100 that I want to play more. It’s a deck building game, but I like the setting that it is in so much. Shadowrun is a cyber punk world, mainly known for an RPG, where you are going on runs, hacking into big corporations, trying to keep from being found out. This makes it into a card game where you are taking on missions, defeating bad guys, and it’s interesting, because you are playing cards to deal with your own bad guys but also others. You also, slowly, level up your character as you play through what is basically a campaign. The setting is what drew me in and I have Shadowrun: Sprawl Ops to play as well in the same world, but I’m excited a lot for this one, because I’ve played it before. It’s one that I think has been a hit or miss for some people, or because of the original having a fairly poor rule book might have just flown under the radar. I think this one might take more time to get to the table, but I know I’ll be glad to have it.

Those are the new games that I’ve ordered. I’m definitely excited for all of them, and I really think that there are some interesting games in there. One thing I forgot to mention with Silver Dagger, since each game is a standalone, I’ll be able to play it with a larger group, have a few groups playing the game at once, maybe do a mini tournament, something like that.

Which of these games seems most interesting to you?

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But first, let’s meet the characters, we have Barrai a Tiefling, Thrain a Hill Dwarf, and Bokken a War Forged. You’ll notice that there are no classes tied to them, that’s because I decided, we’re starting at level 0. They are all just average characters to slightly above average with 10’s across the board for their stats, plus racial bonuses, that’s because of the Tower of the Gods.

So, what is a Tower of The Gods? It was a magical tower that appeared about 200 years ago. Bigger than a city block and going up into the clouds, no one knows how tall it is. Monsters spilled out of it devastating the lands around it. The nations put up a quick defense after the initial shock and devastation. But the number of monsters seemed unlimited, eventually, as morale was getting low, a group of soldiers at one of the Towers took the fight to the Tower itself and found an entrance. When they came out, they had stemmed some of the flow of the monsters but also came out stronger with new abilities (aka D&D Classes). Once the news spread of this more people went into all the Towers and while most perished, those who came out came out stronger and had slowed the flow of the monsters.

Now, the monsters still show up, but there are guards at every tower to deal with the small monster incursions. But, of course, a tower that is powerful enough to give people new skills, that’s something that every nation wants and they want several of them if they can. So the nations fought over the tower until a shaky truce was made. Now, there are schools that not only train you to be ready for the Towers but instruct you in the new skills you have when you leave. It’s a honor to be sent into the Towers and not an honor that every can afford or could survive.

Thrain, Bokken, and Barrai are three of a new group of trainees going into the Towers who have come to them through different paths.

This is where the game basically kicked off, with those three waiting their turn to go into the tower to see if they’d survive and come out the other side with new found skills. When they went in, they were given a riddle and a chance to equip themselves, grabbing a few weapons, they ventured further into the magical tower which took them to many different areas.

There was a jungle room where the floor was poisonous and they had to swing from branch to branch on vines towards one of the exits, but if they fell, it might mean their death.

There was a room with a moat, all they had to do was get across it and they’d be able to go through one of two doors. But there was a sea serpent swimming in the moat, and it wasn’t something they could jump across. Using some quick thinking, they grabbed vines from the other room and were able, using their fourth test taker, a jacked halfling named Steve (the players named him not me), and the War Forged tossed Steve up to the ceiling where he was able to grab onto a hook and tie a vine to it. They had some troubles swinging across, but eventually did, but Steve notices there was a trapdoor, a third door, at the bottom of the moat.

That led them to a room with a bunch of floating tiles. They quickly discerned that they could move them around and use them to get to another door way. Unfortunately, having a jacked halfling and a dwarf trying to get past each other on a 3×3 foot tile didn’t work and Steve fell to his death.

This led them into a room that was basically pitch black. When they stepped into the room, shadow creatures started attacking them. They made a break for it but both Bokken and Barrai were knocked down by the creatures. Thrain had to drag them into the next room where they were revived.

In this room, it was something pretty different. There was just an old lady drinking tea and she offered them some tea. Bokken, rolling low, sniffed the tea, thought it smelled good, so he drank some of it as did the other two. This opened their eyes and they saw that the old lady was a monster in disguise, but the monster didn’t make a move to attack them. Finding out that the next room was the last room, they bid the lady/monster farewell and continued on their way.

In the final room they were given 6 different goblets that they could drink from. Once the drank from them it allowed them to see an exit from the tower. However, the old lady had told them that which one they drank from could make a difference on how they walked out of the tower. They each picked and drank and walked out of the doors that appeared to them as:

Thrain the Hill Dwarf Warlock
Barrai the Tiefling Bard
Bokken the War Forged Fighter

And that’s where the first session ended. We’ll probably be adding a fourth player at some point in time, so we’ll have to see who is added to the party.

What do you think of the game thus far?

Just some DM notes on this. I set it up so that the doors were different colors, I didn’t delve into it too deeply if it was tied to the elements or what, but that’s what the players took away from it.

All the rooms were generally planned, but how many they had to go through and what order they went through them in was kind of up to how the game went. I just picked two rooms, one for each door and then repeated the process for each room after that. They were moving through them pretty fast, so we ended going through more than I’d thought so we could go for a little, plus I needed a way to kill of Steve.

So, that lends itself to another question, why Steve? Again, I didn’t name him, but I always wanted someone with them in the tower for at least a little bit of it. That would allow me to show them bits of the tower if they missed it. But it would also give me someone who I could kill, show off some of the deadliness of the tower, and also that if you die in the tower, you’ll be forgotten in the real world.

What will come next for them? Probably getting them recruited into a school and let them play around with their powers.

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Since Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy setting, you have magic in the same, I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone. How much magic you have to vary a lot. Some worlds in D&D have a ton of magic with lots of people being able to use small spells and little things, like curing a small wound are going to be magically done or lighting a fire, magic might be faster. There are going to be other fantasy worlds where magic is extremely rare. If you have magic, you have way more value to the nations because of what you can do. In either of them, the PC’s (Player characters) who have magic are going to end up being more powerful than most other casters, because, otherwise, those characters would be saving the world, and you’d still be a farmer.

But within magic, there are a number of different ways that you can get magic or use magic. Which, mechanically speaking, are represented by the different classes you can be. A Cleric and Paladin get their magic from their gods whereas a Druid gets it through nature, a Sorcerer just has it, and a Wizard needs to learn it. That doesn’t even touch on the bard who signs theirs (but just kind of have it) and the Warlock who has made a deal for it. If you know you want to be a magic user, picking your class can help determine what sort of background you have because of how you got the magic.

Bard – This magical mischief maker generally gets their spells from their ability to weave word or song in such a way to alter the world around them either for attack or entertainment. A bard is generally going to be someone who has been trained, but not to improve their magic, but their performance ability. I think that the bard is a class that can be generally used for most backstories.

Cleric – The first of our magical classes that gets their magic from the divine. The god that they are worshiping is giving them the powers and has chosen them as special. In particular, they are giving them powers to help people, and while combat might not be their strong point, but healing and aiding other characters is what that character is going to be the best at. With a cleric, your backstory can be anything but you might want to focus more on a religious background and have it something you’ve been a part of for a while, not something that you just picked up.

Druid – The hippy of the magical classes, the druid is all about nature and their attunement to nature. In some ways, I would say that a Druid is a bit like the Cleric in that they get their magic from the divine, but for the Druid their divine is their connection to nature. The Druid is going to be the caster who has the most connections to nature and natural changes in the world. The outlander or hermit backgrounds actually make a lot of sense for a background for the Druid, because you need that strong connection with nature that makes most sense to be gotten on your own. The trick can be connecting back into the group.

Paladin – Our second divine caster, the Paladin is what is know as a half-caster. What that means is that they have a more limited spell selection and a smaller number of spell slots with which to cast spells. What the Paladin does get is some of the healing abilities of the Cleric but much better punching power with their ability to handle weapons. They also get the ability to channel their divine magic into even more damage, at the cost of casting spells, but I still feel like it’s a spell like affect and is part of their magic. For a Paladin, your background can be much more open, because while they do have that divine magic from a god, their devotion to their religion is less strictly guided like a Cleric’s feels, though, they do need to maintain that collection.

Ranger – Another and last half caster, the Ranger pulls a little bit like the Paladin does from the Cleric, but for the Ranger it’s from the Druid. They get some of the connections to nature that the Druid has, but also then gets more focus in their magic for hunting down their enemies. Unlike the Paladin who has extra abilities they can do with their magic, the Ranger is more focused on just using their spells as spells. Their background is generally going to be fairly open, being a scout in the military or being a hermit all make sense, and even some of the more scholarly ones can make sense.

Sorcerer – The natural of the magic world, the bard might just use music, but the Sorcerer just gets magic. And they get amazing control over their magic. The Sorcerer is an interesting class in that they get things called meta-magics and meta-magic points that they can use to improve their spells. This might mean that they can cast them farther or do so silently so it can’t be countered. This allows a player to specialize their character so that their Sorcerer feels different from others. The Sorcerer definitely can come from any sort of background since their magic can be something that just newly manifested. It’s the magic class that you do if you don’t want to be beholden to anyone or anything.

Warlock – If the Sorcerer isn’t beholden to anyone or anything, the Warlock 100% is. They’ve made a pact with some powerful being, fey, elder god, or demon that is giving them their powers. And the Warlocks magic works differently than everyone else’s. They aren’t a half caster, but they aren’t really a full caster. They get invocations that can really make their cantrips much better so they don’t need as many high level spells, which is good, because they don’t get many spell slots. But when they cast a spell it’s always at the highest spot possible. I don’t know that they are that much harder to play than other casters, but how they work makes less sense. They, because they can have just gotten their magic, do have it in common with the Sorcerer that most any background works.

Wizard – Final one and definitely the most iconic. The Wizard has learned magic. You could say that Bard might be considered a bit of that if you consider them learning their craft of storytelling and performance, but for a Wizard, there are Wizard schools and you study and you need a spellbook to be able to prepare spells for the day. But, as a Wizard, you have access to more spells than any other class. Their specializations also makes it easier for them to learn more spells in certain areas, and while other classes can be capped on how spells they know, a Wizard can always add in more spells if they have the time and money to transcribe them into their spell book. A wizard, the Sage background makes the most sense because they’ve spent at least some of their life in school, but that might not be the defining feature for them.

That’s a lot just looking at the classes and how they use magic, I’m going to spend some time coming up here going into more topics on magic such as spell slots and spells known or high or low magic worlds that I touched on that the top of the article. Some of them will be more player focused and others more dungeon master focused. Is there a certain type of caster that you gravitate to?

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Back with some D&D streaming, this is because I have a D&D game coming up this weekend, so I’m getting ready to generate some characters.

This time, I’m looking at the rest of the character sheet, the spell and background pages, but also the traits, alignment, weapons, and everything else that comes along with being a character with a class in Dungeons and Dragons.

Today, at 7:30 (November 21st, 2019), I’m going to be streaming that character creation to show how different race as class combos can create an interesting character. You can find that on http://twitch.com/maltsandmeeples. The time is central time for those wondering. If you want to get alerted to when I’m streaming, you can follow me on twitch, or to watch as your own leisure, subscribe to Malts and Meeples over on Youtube.

My drink last night was just one of my favorites, Fresh Squeezed by Deschutes. It’s a good crisp and nice IPA, even though it’s getting cold outside, I don’t mind drinking a good IPA.

Bottoms up!

I’m back with some more Drinking in D&D. Tonight I brought up two Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA, but I only drank one of them. It’s one of my favorite beers, a good IPA.

The topic for Drinking in D&D was looking at the Character Sheet and what sections on the character sheet are. There’s a lot to keep track of it and it’s the basis for how you roll your dice and what your character can do, particularly in combat.

There are a number different areas that I looked at on the board, hit points, speed, initiative, proficiency, armor class (AC), ability scores, and skills. I’m going to go back and do the second half of the main sheet and hopefully the other two sheets in my next stream, which might be happening on Friday, tbd.

Thanks for checking out the video. If you are enjoying the content, it does go out live on Twitch at http://twitch.com/maltsandmeeples. The videos are also uploaded to youtube, and a subscription or a like will help people find the videos there.

Bottoms up!

One of the nice things about a sorcerer is that their spell-casting is based off of charisma. That means that you don’t end up being a spell book caster, like a wizard can often be played; instead, you can play a character whose magic is sourced from something bigger than life. My mental picture is similar to Shiny Chariot from Little Witch Academia — someone who is a showperson who wants to make people have a great time, so they put on big shows. Now, that isn’t the only way you can play it, but since you’re going to have a lot of charisma, there will always a slight element of showmanship, or of people deferring to you, but that might just be because you are a man or woman of the people and are easy to approach. Or maybe you cast wild magic and you are just the crazy uncle whom everyone loves and wants to spend time with but who they don’t take too seriously.

Another big thing for the sorcerer is the idea of meta magics. These are ways that you can focus your magic, and are one of the biggest mechanical parts of playing a sorcerer. Maybe you are a careful caster who has area of effect spells, but you can mold your spells around your allies so that they don’t end up being hurt by your magic. Or maybe you are all about letting the world burn, or at least all of the evil zombie horde burn, and you are casting twinned spells and covering the whole battlefield in fireballs.

There are many other directions you can take it, as well — let’s look at a few examples:

Growing up in the wild, there wasn’t that much to entertain yourself with, which was okay, because mainly you just needed to help around the house. But when you got a chance to go exploring, you did, and found that there were caves nearby to explore. One day, you found a glowing stone in one of the caves. Being a young kid, you didn’t think much about it, so you immediately went and touched it. It transported you somewhere — you really aren’t sure where, and you weren’t sure for how long, but when you came back to the cave, ten years had passed, and you now had powers that you didn’t have before. It was scary, and there were things happening that you couldn’t control.  You had to leave your village behind, and seek out answers and how to control your magic.

Class Archetype: Wild Magic
Background: Sage/Folkhero

There were legends in your society that there was some great power in the storm. The storms would come down over the mountains with the fury of the gods, and they always brought destruction. When one of these massive storms came through, it destroyed your family’s house and killed your parents. You were taken in by the church, and that is where you learned more about the storms. The storms became more frequent and more powerful as time went on. One day, when you knew a storm was coming, you slipped out of where all the other acolytes had hunkered down and walked into the face of the storm. It seemed like the storm was angry with you, or with someone. You spoke to it, and it spoke back to you. You asked what was wrong, it told you, and you offered to help. When the storm passed, most of your village had been destroyed, but you were still standing, and had new powers. You now have a quest from the storm that you’re going to need help completing.

Class Archetype: Storm Sorcerer
Background: Acolyte

As a young child, you were sent to the church by your parents, like all seventh children — with so many siblings, there wasn’t any way for your parents to support you. You joined the standing army of the church and were supposed to be trained to be a paladin. But the gods never spoke to you, and you never got the powers. But the church didn’t give up on you; they never let someone they had trained go. But you became a simple infantryman while watching others gain powers and become paladins. There was a horrible battle that you were forced to fight in, and the rest of your unit were killed. You weren’t sure how you survived, and as you sat among their corpses, you cried out to the gods to strike you down as well. Then, you heard it — an answer. The answer was no. You were called to be a scion of the gods, and you felt a strange power well up in you. When you returned to the army and told them what had happened, you were kicked out of the army as a heretic. Now you need to complete a mission for the gods and prove yourself to the church.

Class Archtype: Divine Soul
Background: Acolyte/Soldier

Have you played a sorcerer before? What type of sorcerer have you tried? Do you find the meta magics too confusing? What was your sorcerer character’s origin story?

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I’m here to tell you that those are two awesome tropes (though don’t steal from your party), but there are a lot of other options for the rogue. The rogue is a skill monkey — you have more skills to start out with than other classes, and you get more expertise, which means you are really, really good at some things. So, while you can make it so you are really, really good at being a thief, you can also be a rogue who is better at many things. Leaning into a background, you can use your skills to be the face of the party, or to be a con man. You could be one of the smartest rogues out there who is sneaking into places to acquire more knowledge.

Mechanically, you’re going to end up being sneaky and focused on dexterity. This is because you have your sneak attack, which you get when you have advantage on your attacks or are attacking someone who is engaged in combat already. This allows you to dish out a lot of damage once per turn, even more so if you are an assassin-type rogue. Other than that, you really are the skill monkey who can become an expert at something. A word of caution with being a skill monkey — try to pick something that the rest of the party doesn’t have. Being good at stealth is great and probably can overlap with others’ skills, but if you have a monk in the party who is really good at sneaking as well or is good at deception, don’t step on their toes. Since you can pick most any skill, it’s better to just pick a different one. Rogue is generally the class that people go with when they want to be Batman, because you can kind of be Batman if you want to.

So what are some backstories you can go with?

Growing up on the street was tough; you had to lie and steal for a living. One day, you stole from someone and suddenly found yourself under the eyes of the local thieves’ guild. This was actually pretty great, because soon you were working with a crew, and you knew more people. Things were going well until something seemed to take over the leader of the thieves’ guild. They changed, and you don’t know how or why. Your missions started to become weird, and you stopped making money like you had been before. More and more members of the thieves’ guild changed as well. You need to find help outside the guild to figure out what is going on and save your city before the guild destroys it.

Background: Urchin (or Guild Artisan)
Class Archetype: Thief

You grew up in a small shipping town. It was a nice little town and grew larger as the town became a bigger shipping port. That attracted some unsavory sorts, including pirates. One day, the town were raided — most people hid, but you were working at the warehouse and weren’t able to get away. The pirates shanghaied you. The first few years on the ship were horrible — you got all the jobs no one wanted. But as time when on and pirates left or were killed, you got more and more responsibility. After five years, you were one of the top pirates on the ship. The captain got sick one day and passed away shortly thereafter. There was infighting among the pirates about who was going to take over, but you didn’t take part, because you knew where the captain’s secret stash was. Now you need help getting to it, but if you can, you’ll be rich, and you’ll be able to get your own ship and crew.

Class Archetype: Swashbuckler
Background: Folk Hero(?)

Your family was always a family of thieves. You’d travel from town to town, scamming people out of their hard-earned money. You didn’t do it to people who didn’t have much money to start out with — only to the rich. That gave you enough to live on. One night, a scam went wrong, and you got separated from your family. You were caught by the noble lady you and your family were trying to scam. You were still young, so she took pity on you. Instead of throwing you in jail or having you killed for trying to scam her, she offered you a position. Instead of being a thief, you were going to help protect her against any other thieves and con artists that might show up. It was a great job, and you left your life of crime behind, until someone stole the lady’s jewels and left two pieces among your belongings. Now you’re on the run, and you need to find out who framed you, which is probably something you can’t do on your own.

Background: Criminal
Class Archetype: Inquisitive

The noble of your town was not a good person, and they have a personal vendetta against your family. You were part of the highest-born family other than theirs, and they were constantly paranoid about your father stealing their title. Your father was never interested in that, but when you left to go to university, you got news that your parents had been killed in a “hunting accident.” You knew that wasn’t the case, and you spent some time in college studying so that you’d be able to take over your town and get revenge. While studying, you spent plenty of time also learning how to use weapons and to be able to kill without being seen. When you become a noble, you can hire someone to kill for you, but until then, and with the noble of your town, you want the revenge yourself. But to get in and kill them, you’re going to need help.

Background: Sage
Class Archetype: Assassin

When playing a rogue, have you stolen from your party? What have been some of your favorite rogue moments?

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Now, as a Dungeon Master (DM), you can focus more on survival, tracking, and exploring if you have a Ranger in your party. And as a player, you can play a ranger who is interested in or focused on either combat or social interactions; it’s just a bit trickier to do than with some other classes that also have the capacity for adding survival skills. The team at Wizards of the Coast updated the ranger class so that this character type is a bit more effective, and have created a new version of the class that’s available online, as the version of the ranger class offered in the Player’s Hand Book (PHB) is weaker than basically any other class. Where you can really get some strength out of the ranger is when you are in a campaign in which you have a specific type of creature/villain that you fight a lot. For example, if you’re facing off against Goblins, you can become a ranger who is an expert at tracking, finding, and killing them.

My piece of caution for the ranger class is to not play the Lone Ranger. As a player, you have the responsibility to give your character a reason to be with the party. And as a DM, it’s my responsibility to keep that reason there — or, if it is removed in some way (say you needed help killing the Goblin King and that’s been accomplished), then as DM and player, we need to work together to create a new or re-worked reason for you to stay around. On the other hand, there’s always the option to retire the character once their purpose or arc is fulfilled — if the time comes, the DM can determine that it would be best to allow the player to retire their character and roll up a new one. Some people might find a character switch to be a lot of fun, which is what we’re about when playing.

Now that we’ve talked about the standard features of this character type, let’s look at some different backstory possibilities for a Ranger character:

You grew up in the wild country with your nomadic tribe. Compared to many of them, whom you’d consider barbarians, you were always interested in society, and whenever you went to a town, you’d converse with the people and learn about them. When you got older, you realized you knew something that most other people didn’t — you knew the wild country, and you could create maps to sell and help people find their way through the wilderness. There’s a ring of mountains you’ve seen in the distance, and you want to be able to map it as well. However, everyone tells you that it’s too dangerous, and that no one has ever mapped it before. But you’ve found a group to travel with, and maybe if you work with them long enough, you can get them to help you map out that area.

As a child growing up in the streets of a small town, playing with friends, you never expected your life to change too drastically. But then, goblins attacked your village, and you were barely able to escape. You went to the city for a while, but when you were older and heard of another goblin attack back in your home county, you needed to go back and take care of the goblins. You spent time visiting there and learning everything you could about the goblins. Now you’re ready to kill the Goblin King. You need help, though — if only you could find some others as strong as you are.

For decades, you’ve been the protector of the realms, keeping the planes of existence separate. It’s a solitary lifestyle, and you’d grown used to it. Then, more and more planar portals started opening, and creatures started showing up. This is something bigger than what you can handle. You’ve tried to stem the flow of creatures and monsters, but you’re going to need help. And that means that, after so long, you’re going to have to be around people again. You’re going to have to open yourself up again and pray that it doesn’t end up with you getting hurt like last time.

Life was great — you were a guide for big game hunters, and you loved it. You knew where creatures lived and how to hunt them. But one horrible day, you watched as all of the the members of a well-paying party were killed while hunting a monster. There wasn’t anything you could have done to save them, but it ruined your reputation, and what you saw haunts you to this day. Now you need to rebuild your reputation, and you need help tracking down that monster before more hapless big game hunters try and fail to conquer it.

Have you had a chance to play a Ranger before? What was your reason for staying with the party?

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