Character creation is easily one of the best parts of Dungeons & Dragons. It can be almost moreish putting together multiple potential characters to play as in your next campaign, as well as constructing NPCs and villains to fill out your world if you’re a DM. Some people need more than a pencil, paper, and their imagination to help craft a character, which is where pre-built character creators come in.
There’s a lot of information you need to keep track of for your D&D characters; their stats, equipment, backstory etc. A dedicated character creator not only helps neatly compile all that info, but it can also help springboard ideas for new characters, especially ones that handle stat details automatically so you don’t have to keep triple checking to ensure you got the math right. There are loads of them out there, but we’ve compiled a short list of what we think are some of the best D&D character creators available.
D&D Beyond
Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way. D&D Beyond is arguably the de facto character creator, since it’s owned by Wizards of the Coast. Aside from providing access to all manner of helpful tools for creating and running campaigns, the character creator is simple to understand for newbies, and lets you either painstakingly build every aspect of your character or quickly throw one together if you don’t want to spend too long on it. You can even randomly generate characters.
There are also loads of homebrew options, allowing you to come up with your own bespoke races, subclasses, and character backgrounds. Plus, signing up for an account is free. The downside is that there’s a lot of additional D&D content gated behind a paid subscription, with some of the more interesting races exclusive to certain rulebooks. Not to mention you can only have up to six characters at any one time with a free account, meaning you’ll need to delete a character to make room for a new one.
Dungeon Master’s Vault
As far as free D&D character creators go, Dungeon Master’s Vault may be the best one. While its choices are more limited compared to D&D Beyond, its in-depth homebrew options mean you can potentially recreate any missing races, feats, etc. you want to use. Character sheets are also incredibly easy to manage and edit for whenever you level up or acquire new items during the campaign.
In addition, Dungeon Master’s Vault comes with an NPC generator for if you need to quickly populate villages or cities as a DM. Best of all, though, is its Character Builder for Newbs, where you simply answer a series of basic questions, and the website puts together a character for you based on your answers. It’s perfect for anyone who finds D&D character creation intimidating.
MorePurpleMoreBetter
MorePurpleMoreBetter (or MPMB for short) is another fantastic option for simple D&D character creation, promising to automate calculations and the like so you can get right to adventuring. Its character sheets are also, frankly, very stylish in their presentation and can be either downloaded as a PDF or printed if you prefer a physical copy.
Again, much like Dungeon Master’s Vault, it doesn’t offer the same breadth of options as D&D Beyond, but new options can be added to it using JavaScript files, meaning you can incorporate your own or others’ homebrew content. That requires a little bit of technical know-how, but MPMB’s site has a dedicated walkthrough on how to do that. You can get access to the basics with a one-time payment, and you can give as much or as little as you want (the minimum price is $1), though there’s a Patreon you can pledge to if you fancy getting to vote on new features alongside other such benefits.
Baldur’s Gate 3
What if you’re not so much concerned with a character’s build, but more what they look like? Some players like having a definitive appearance for their character they can show to other players, and not everyone has the artistic skills to draw them for themselves. There are some websites that can help with that, but if you already own a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3, you can just boot that up.
Aside from having an extremely detailed character creator that lets you adjust everything, from their facial features to even their genitals, Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on D&D anyway so you can easily transfer your character’s build into a traditional tabletop campaign. One problem is that Baldur’s Gate 3 is missing a lot of races from D&D (you only have 11 to choose from in BG3), but it’s otherwise perfect for bringing your next character to life.
Published: May 15, 2024 02:06 pm