Part 2 - How to make a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Character (Ability Modifiers, Traits & HP) 

Just for following the videos, I started a new character. My dice roll for scores: 8 9 9 10 9 10, in that order. Not joking. Dice *hate* me.

First time I see a Fighter having an Intelligence score that is double of their Strength score.

My brother showed me this little series when I made my first character, I've used it to make three characters so far, I am coming back to make a fourth lol

So well explained. I'm looking to DM for the first time in a few weeks with a fresh bunch of players who've never played before and these guides have been a life saver. So easy to understand, thanks so much!

I normally write the modifiers above the scores, since you tend to use the modifier more than the score.

I rolled pretty good! Three 14's, 17, 16 and a 7. 'u'b I put the 7 as her intelligence because being a slave since she was like 5 yrs old and only recently got her freedom, her reading, writing and general knowledge of the outside world isn't the best yet - but hell if she'll admit it! haha 17 strength - rough past and also becoming a paladin 14 dexterity - she has a good throwing arm! 16 constitution - cleaning nightmares 14 wisdom - she might not be book smart, but she has learned through experience! 14 charisma - she is a kind and friendly person, although she tends to keep things bottled up inside I'm going to get that book eventually and maybe the 4th edition as well. It seems to be the two most people reference.

Info Comment! Thumbnail art is official art from the D&D Players Handbook. Part 3 *may* be a bit delayed. Edit looks like it's going to take longer than I expected and I want to re-record some parts to explain them better. Also, I am knackered and have been working every day & night for over a week now and just need to chill for a few hours. Yes, I got "Serena" from Nina-Serena. XD

This is so amazing!! Loving the kind of in depth explanations for each thing so far! Can't wait for part 3!

Super helpful when trying to figure out how to fill in basic stuff. It took me forever to find this channel. Thank you so much for the videos.

What a great series. Man, to the point, clear, concise and intuitive. Thanks so much.

I'm really liking these videos, the editing is really nice too, I'm glad you're showing us pictures of each area rather than trying to explain it with just words, its really useful

This has been the easiest video series to comprehend on how to make a character I’ve come across! Thanks for taking the time to make these!

Thank you for making this series Mark. I've seen quite a number of tutorials on character creation, but yours is by far the best, and easiest to follow.

This is the most helpful guide I've seen yet! Very simple and straightforward. The visuals of zooming in and filling out as we go is essential for my understanding of the sheet. Thank you very much!

This is the best and most helpful D&D video out there for new players, I would definently recommend it to everyone!

These videos have been so helpful omg, i’m playing for the first time in a littles bit and i hadn’t realized how unprepared i was ^_^” thank you sm for all the help!!!

Fantastic series (and indeed channel) so far, Mark, very informative!

Bro thank you so much! I love D&D, but the setup can be super confusing, but you managed to make it really easy! I can't thank you enough my man!

Thank you so much for uploading. I can't wait to start playing this with my kids. You've explained this very well and easy to understand!

Thank you for this! I am very new to the D&D world and I made my first ever character along side these videos.

Thanks for the videos. Me and 2 friends bought our first set last weekend and began it last night. We had many questions and had a very hard time finding good explanations for complete beginners. It seems for the most part we managed to figure it out but thanks to your videos I have found several small mistakes we had made and I am grateful because now our characters will have a better creation. Thanks so much for your help.

Awesome job, bro. Nice and clean! Looking forward to pt3

Introducing a first time player into the campaign that i'm DM'ing, hopefully she'll find this as helpful as i do. There really is a plethora of other guides out there, which i wish i'd known about and consulted when i started playing, but this is the one that i feel is the most helpful. You've set the gold standard here, and i will be referring all my new players to this series!

This was so useful. This helped me and my friend so much with creating our characters!! We were struggling to understand a lot of it but this has helped so much :)

this was very helpful! i am a new dm and dnd player, and i am learning the ropes through the provided handbook + videos on yt. thank you man 🙏 these videos are very helpful!!

These videos are really good. currently waiting for it all to be done so I can share all the parts with the D&D community I have on facebook.

This is so useful!! I'm making a Drow rouge named Ophelia Newbound and thanks to you she's a lot closer to being done

thank u so much for this series!! my friends and i are starting trying to play d&d and some things are so confusing but this series is rly helping lmao

Hey mark if you could do a part four for leveling up characters of certain types that would be amazing!

Small-sized archer characters: arrows at a dangerous elevation. Thanks for the video mark, looking forward to the next one! Something I've noticed when picking stats, is that it's often the tendency of a lot of people to want to subconsciously up-sell all of the traits and virtues of their character, leading to the soft 'but she's good at all of these things, honest' kind of yearning. It's one of the things, I feel, that leads people to want to re-roll many times, until they get a 'high' spread, and struggle with using things like the standard array. One thing I've found seems to help counter this inclination is to think about your character from both directions, and really consider, specifically, what things they aren't very good at, and place importance on assigning those stats too. This way, you may assign your highest stat in the array first... but if you then deliberately assign your lowest number second, and switch back and forth like that, the last ones you fill out are the middle-of-the-road stats, which is much easier to do. sometimes this can even cause the issue of a person having a character being better statistically at something than they actually want them to be, because they've taken that time to consider it and now have a couple of things prominent in mind that the character is poor with, but not enough lower stats available to them to map it out that way ^.^ I wanted to lower my little halfling's Con to 6, along with her strength, to reflect her extreme slightness... but our DM said that doing that would be far, far too dangerous...

Mark, i must say thins is one of the best and well edited videos on RU-vid

It's good to see the Chanel growing :) hope your well mark.

You've been a great help so far I'm hoping to start playing soon

I'm still confused on a few things and have don't have the handbook to get certain Info but these videos are helping a lot seeing as I'm very new to dnd!

This guide is amazing! So simple but also really helpful. But no wacky intro D:

super useful, tomorrow im going to meet with my friends to create our first characters ever and this is useful so I can help them through it!

Howdy I was wondering if you could do one on artificer. I’ve looked around but I haven’t had any luck and the way you explain is Just chef’s kiss

Great videos, never played before. Looking forward to give it a try now.

That thumbnail is gorgeous. The type of art I would get obsessed creating an entire campaign around.

Oh my gosh! This was so helpful 😁

Hey I just wanna say thank you. I’ve wanted to play for 20 years. When my stepson asked if we could get it I don’t know who was more excited him when I said yes or me when I decided yes in less than a second. Now I’m using your video to create my first character and gonna show him the ropes soon. Thank you again.

Best explanation and walk through I have found

Serena! After Nina! That's so cute!~

Helpful stuff dude.

Thanks so much. As a noob trying to learn with my son, this is fantastic.

Mark are you mocking nina's height?

Yo this helped me so much making my first druid, thanks so much!!

Bout to start a game up in a couple days, last time I played 2e was the newest thing (yea, back when it was tsr). This is helpful, thanks.

Learned so much !!! :)

This helped a lot, thanks!

This was very helpful

That dwarf looks amazing nice pick

10/great video marku

This helped soooooooooo much!

This is really helpful for people like me who decided to take part in a DND with experts, who when they try and explain this to someone like me, I assume they are speaking an alien language.

Honestly you give the best ways on how to start out I'm trying to start out a d & d campaign with a few of my friends but since I never really played before probs gonna get the starter set but wanna have us create our own characters for it. Also do you have a vid for like explaining how to be a dm like just starting out just need something to go off of

Thank you!

THANK YOU !

I respect that you allocated your stars based on the concept of the character which makes that character more interesting instead of just trying to make her the best fighter possible. Not that it’s a bad thing to do that but this is a role playing game after all.

thanks Mark need the help :)

very help-full

6:25 Personal Timestamp

As a person who has trouble reading a 300 page book this really helps thanks a bunch

Thank you

This is helping so much thank you... I’m a half wood elf

making my first ever character. rolled so well. 12,12,13,14,14,15. then +1,+1,+1,+2,+2,+2

Getting ready for a possible run through of I believe hoard of the dragon queen. I'm making a scourge aasimar tomelock with pact of the fiend. So far his unmodified ability scores are 10, 14, 14, 12, 8, and 15. It'll be interesting to roleplay with 8 wisdom on how he managed to get tricked by a erinyes who was disguised as a celestial, stuck inside of a painting on top of that, to make him serve her in exchange for power to root out evil.

Hey @Tabletop Weekly Archive I still don't understand what are the hit points and for what are them. Im really confused about that.

I am more familiar with the point buy system. But the standard array is also interesting.

Since the ability score is less important than the modifier once you start playing it's more helpful (especially for new players) to write the score in the little oval and the modifier in the big box.

Question (I hope you reply) can you choose any name because in the players handbook it has a section of names but is that just a suggestion to help people or do you have to choose one of those names

Hey mark, quick question! What is the under dark and how do you get to it?

i have trouble understanding things and processing information but this was super easy for me to intake, so thank you very much!!

Rolled stats for a Goliath blood Hunter. Got a 17, 12, 9, 10, 14 and 14. This'll be fun :)

I got 15 14 14 12 11 10. So pretty good. I'm not sure which race to pick yet, I was gonna pick elf but gnome could be more fun.

I'm having a problem with understanding something. What does it mean having a 1 d10 hit dice? And if you get a 1d10 (or 6) + con modifier then does that mean that your character would have 18 hit points at level 2? 11 + 6 + 1 = 18. Is that right?

im a little confused about hit dice. so when i level i roll my hit dice and add the number i get to my hp?

What is the modifier for wizard🧞‍♂️🧙‍♂️

I'd suggest actually switching the possition of where you write the ability score and the ability modifier, since you pretty much only use the modifier it's much easier to have that as the bigger and more standing out number. :)

You can also get your ability scores by subtracting 10 and dividing by 2

On my DND sheets from a starter set, the Modifiers are where you put the score

I know this comment is a bit late... but I would recommend an Aarakocra Ranger. Aarakocras can fly, so being able to shoot arrows from the sky is awesome. Also, you can avoid enemy creatures. :)

Do you think it would be better to pre-fab characters for a one-shot, or let players make their own? I want to speed run Phandelver for busy people.

Hey Mark, great video! Actually leads me to a question. When first getting into D&D I missed the rule of rolling 4 d6 and taking out the lowest. So for my characters stats I would roll 4 d6 and add them up together. Is this too powerful and should I change the stats of my four party members before we really start playing?

Very good video Mark, but why would you choose a d6 over a d10 when a d10 is aways better? Is it due to having a massive constitution bonus that could make multiple d6 really good?

what would i put down on "features & traits" ?

Him saying 'gnome" only reminds me of the way Gnomeo would from Gnomeo & Juliet because of his accent

I plan on joining a group of players soon when I asked the DM if I could use a race that was home brew he said sure so now start the humble beginnings of a myconid druid... not too sure how this is gonna turn out but it should be funny

what online sheet did he use?

Is the music from Disney Infinity Pirates of the Caribbean?

I was making a Gnome Fighter when I was watching this.

Can you make it a garden gnome?

Helpful, thank you. ~_~

My halfling paladin is gonna be lit

Can you give the link to the template?

i don't understand the "hitpoints at higher levels" part: how many hitpoints does this fighter gain at, per say, level 2 or 3?

So did I understand the hitpoint system correctly? Every level-up you throw the hit point dice for your class and add the number you throw to your maximum hitpoints?

do daggers for rouges fall into the str stat?

Monk is such a squishy class