For this series, I’m going to be focusing on races from the PHB (Players Handbook) and not some of the extra places that might have more races like Volo’s Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, or Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Those are extra things that are cool to pick up and add into your game, but you don’t need them, having the PHB is needed.

Elves

Elves will be the first race that we talk about, for no other reason than they popped into my head, and as I was reading Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, t here was a nice section on them that I remember fairly well.

Dungeons and Dragons, like most fantasy, pulls from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings when it gets its idea for elves. The elves are long lived, generally lean towards being stand offish and aloof, because they see the world in a different way than your average human would.

An elven adventurer is probably a couple hundred to five hundred years old and has had more of a chance to hone their craft. For elves, the reason that they do go adventuring, often, is because they want to leave their mark on the world. They have hundreds of years to do that, but that also means that their mark on the world is going to be more permanent. It also means that something that might be bad for a human, because it affects their short life, might not seem as pressing for a elf. If, for example, a goblin horde was threatening an area, it might be easier for an elf to just leave that area for a little bit and let the natural infighting and breakdown of goblin society happen through a couple of generations before returning, because the elves live so long, they can simply outlast the issue. Needless to say, that view might annoy your other party members.

That long view and ability to see the larger picture are useful in dealing with some situations, but it also is going to cause issues in other situations. You aren’t going to be able to relate as well to your shorter lived companions, and you might not become attached as easily. This is another reason that elves tend to be aloof. So think about that as you play as well, as you want to have a balance and not just be the outsider who is observing everything. It might also mean that you are more apt to overlook a more pressing issue as you’re paying attention to the expected longer term outcome.

Another thing to consider, based off of the age of your elven adventurer, is how they are treated in both elven and non-elven society. In a human society, an elves knowledge when they are one hundred is going to be considered impressive. In elven society, an elf who goes adventuring at one hundred is going to be considered an impetuous youth. So even though human society might treat them differently, an elf who is one hundred is still probably going to show respect and defer to the human elders.

Let’s talk a bit about the other thing that is often taken from Lord of the Rings, and that is the elf and dwarf rivalry and mistrust. This is something that still shows up fairly often in games, and is something that you want to handle fairly carefully. What you’re trying to avoid is the racist elf and dwarf interactions where they hate each other and just pick at each other. In Lord of the Rings, Legolas and Gimli don’t trust each other at the start, and it comes out in rivalry in battle, because they have a central focus they can both get behind. In your game, you can certainly play to that, and you can certainly have the characters poke fun at each other as well. But try to avoid open hostility or combat with another PC or even with dwarves in general, as that’s not something you really want to bog down a game with.

Finally, let’s talk a bit about the mechanics of an elf. Obviously, we’ve talked about their age, but there are a few other components. First, elves start out by getting dex bump. That means your elves are going to always make good rogues, monks, and rangers who focus on the light or dexterity based weapons. They also have darkvision (most races do), but they have a couple other big things. Fey Ancestry means that they can’t be magically put to sleep and they are harder to charm, aka they have advantage to being charmed. They also don’t sleep, elves trance. In Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, they really go into what trance means for an elf, and why that happens, but what it means for mechanics in the game, it means that they only need four hours of rest to refresh each night, and are not as oblivious to their surroundings as someone who is asleep would be. They can’t be the lookout (or they’d be a bad one) while trancing, but it makes setting watch easier.

So let’s come up with some elven character concepts and backstories.

As a member of the royal household you thought that your position and life was going to be set and simple. You lived for a couple hundred years in the lap of luxury before your younger sibling decided that they wanted your spot. When your parents died, you prepared to take on added leadership and responsibility that was expected for you, however, you had missed that your sibling had been planting lies and distrust around you in the community. They decided that your sibling was more fit to rule and you were exiled from the tribe. After thirty years of living off of the land and plotting your revenge, you feel like you might have an idea, you just need a few things first.
Class: Ranger
Background: Noble
Alignment: Chaotic Good

You were sent away by your parents to the wizarding school in a neighboring nobles lands. It was a great school, and since you’ve always had aptitude for learning, you dove into your studying. After fifteen years, you started teaching introductory classes, but you mainly did that so you could stay around and continue your own studies and have access to the library. Your teacher, who has other responsibilities than just teaching you, eventually got fed up with you after another ten years and told you that you were going to be kicked out of the tower and your library card suspended until you got some practical experience in your life and maybe had an adventure or two. You took the opportunity to visit another wizarding school, but your teacher was one step ahead of you, and they knew to send you on your way. Now you’re looking for an adventuring party to give you some simple experiences, just enough so you can get back into the school and to the library to learn some more.
Class: Wizard
Background: Sage
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Your family was a lesser known one in your elven community. People didn’t look down on you, but it had been generations since anyone in your family had done something that people really appreciated and remembered. Otherwise you were just kind of there. Your parents weren’t content with that, however, and they sought more for you. Eventually reaching out to an Archfey to see if they could help your family. Knowing fey creatures, that wasn’t that great an idea, but it did help their standing to have that connection. For you, when you were born, there was already a claim on you, and your parents didn’t treat your like your sibling, but you were kept separate. When you were seventy-five, you were sent off to work for the archfey as they had agreed upon before you were born. The work there was interesting, and they sent you out adventuring. In your mind, though, you feel slighted, you feel like you haven’t head the real life you were supposed to have, and you are looking for a way, and trying to hide the fact you’re looking, to get out of the deal that your parents made.
Class: Warlock
Background: Urchin/Outlander
Alignment: Chaotic Good/Chaotic Neutral

Elves can really work for any class and background combination as they live such long lives they can study a lot of things and try a lot of different professions. I tried to come up with things that seemed particularly elf like for each of the backstories, but I think that, because of their long life, a lot of these stories also work for other races.

Have you played an elf before, do you lean into their age or their aloofness when you play them?

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Core Books
I say you don’t have to get just books, but definitely consider getting just books. If you know someone who has been playing D&D for a while, as a player who doesn’t have the monster manual and they’ve been talking about getting into DM’ing, get them a monster manual or the Dungeon Masters Guide. Same can be said for someone in any of the game systems. If they don’t have one of the core books, consider getting it for them. Or if you have someone who is playing Star Wars: Force and Destiny consider getting them the Edge of the Empire core book.

Extra Content Books
Hey, more books, but we’re just getting the different types of books out of the way, one more to go after this one. When I say extra content books, also known as splatbooks, I’m talking about things like Volo’s Guide to Monsters or Xanathers Guide to Everything. These provide extra content for your game and might be world or class specific in games, but they aren’t going to give you a specific game that you have to play. Most game systems the longer they are around get more of them, so consider buying your DM extra content, or find the books that have player classes and get those for players in the game.

Campaign Books
Final type of book, these are the pre-generated campaigns that DM’s can run. These I would say be most careful when getting. If the DM you are getting it for runs games in their own world or in an existing world but their own stories, they might be pretty improv heavy or like to come up with their own stories in a very specific way. So a campaign book might not be as useful for them. However, maybe that’s what your group runs, if that’s the case, go ahead and find one that your DM doesn’t have, or go onto something like DM’s Guild and there are lots of things out there for campaigns (as well as other things).

Dice
Maybe your DM or player already has all of this that they want. I have yet to meet an RPG player who wouldn’t gladly take more dice. Depending on what system you use, the dice might be different, but if they are playing Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder, you are going to be using the standard set of dice, so look for something that has a twenty, twelve, two ten, eight, six, and four sided dice. Or if they are playing the Dragon Age RPG, some six sided dice, or for the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG, the specific dice for that. Dice sets are generally not that expensive, so they make nice stocking stuffers. But it could be that you want to give a nice set of dice, consider Easy Roller Dice which can be made out of metal, so it’s a really nice set. I will say, I really like my metal dice from there, and because they are heavy, they roll very with a satisfying thud.

Dice Accessories
What are dice accessories? They are things like dice trays, dice towers and dice bags. These things just add a little bit of fun accessory wise for your game. A dice tray is nice, especially if you have metal dice because those can ding up a table or are just loud on a table. The dice tower means that your dice will roll a bit more randomly as it’s just something aesthetic to drop your dice into and have them bounce down through it. And a dice bag is really nice as it helps you move around your sets of dice more easily. For the dice bag, you could also just give them a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey as that can come with a bag that a lot of people use as a dice bag.

Spell Cards
Spell cards seem extra to the hobby, you can always just look up your spells in the players handbook or whatever supplement you have spells from. But Spell Cards allow you to track what you have available a whole lot easier and what spells you might have used or not have access to anymore. They aren’t that expensive when they are in print from Wizards of the Coast, so they can make a solid stocking stuffer.

RPG Video Game
Now, this one is completely different because it isn’t part of the table, it’s something that they can do separate from their regular gaming. While there aren’t a ton of amazing RPG video games out there, in my opinion, there are some really good ones. Consider grabbing one of them or grabbing a trilogy of them like the Dragon Age games. I’m sure there are a lot of other good ones out there, Diablo III comes to mind as well, so find one that you think would match what the person likes and get it for them on the system that they have. This can be trickier though, because they might not be a big video game fan, so if they aren’t, don’t force this one, there are plenty of other good things, or there are always dice.

I’m sure there are a whole lot more things out there for RPG players. If they are doing a podcast or video stream, that opens up a whole other realm of possibilities. Just spend some time figuring out what game they play as that might change up what they want, and I’m already thinking of other things that I could have put down, so use your imaginations for that RPG gamer in your life.

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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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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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