Practical Example: Step-by-Step Character Creation (D&D 5e SRD)

You’ve been invited to join a really cool campaign and now you need to build a character, but where do you start? This guide will walk you step-by-step through the process of building and leveling up a character using the D&D 5e SRD Rules System.

Getting Started

First things first, you’ll need to login to Hedron and navigate to the Player section of the site by clicking ‘Play Games’ in the navigation menu. 

As shown in the screenshot above, you’ll then want to ensure that the Rules System selection to the right of  ‘Find Games’ is set to ‘Dungeons & Dragons: 5th Edition SRD.’ This will narrow down the options available to you to only those used by that Rules System, making it much easier to find the correct options for character building. 

Now you’re ready to click the ‘Characters’ dropdown and select ‘Create a Character’ which brings up a dialog box asking you to name your new character.

Once you’ve chosen a name, you’ll find yourself on the character’s landing page. Lord Bork is ready to start being built out, so next you’ll click the pencil icon on the right to start customizing your character.

Character Editor

Once you open the character editor, you’ll see several options, which are explained below at a high level. Some items will have further information in the following section.

NOTE: I recommend saving your character before you get started, and then saving again after you make any changes. The save button will always be in the top right corner. (Highlighted with a red box in the screenshot below.

1. Short Introduction - this shows on your character landing page and can be used to summarize your character, if you wish, or it can be left blank.
2. Character Image - you can add an image from the internet using the image URL, upload your own image, or use an image that you previously uploaded to Hedron.
3. Editor Notes - any text saved here would only be visible to you (and to anyone else you designate as an editor, more on that soon). This area can be helpful to make quick notes on changes you might want to make later.
4. Description - this section has a visual editor which enables you to use formatting like headings, bold, italics, underline, lists, and so on. Text that you put here appears on your character’s landing page.
5. Default Character Sheet - unless your DM has created a character sheet, the only option available for the 5eSRD Rules System will be the Hedron Official Character Sheet
6. Sharing - You can set your character to be viewable by the general public, or only by select people. Characters default to private. More on this later.
7. Alignment - choose from the standard options
8. Ancestries - this is where you select your character’s origin. Unless your DM has expanded upon the SRD, you are limited to the 12 options shown. (Be sure to hit the arrow to view all options!)
9. Add Level - hitting this will allow you to start adding statistics and features to your character

Default Character Sheets

We’ll be walking through the process of building out the backend for your character in this guide, but you’re probably used to seeing characters in a different format—character sheets. There are countless versions of custom character sheets for any TTRPG that you might play, and D&D 5e is no different. 

The Hedron Official Character Sheet for the D&D 5e SRD rule system echoes the most common layout that you might see for a character sheet. Your DM might want to highlight different areas of the character sheet, in which case they would be able to create a custom character sheet layout that all of the attributes we’re building out would load into. 

Think of the character sheet as the visual skin of your character, while the character creation page shows the bones and connective tissues that shape the final appearance. Unless you or your DM want or need a different appearance from the standard layout though, you can mostly ignore this section after selecting the Hedron Official sheet.

Sharing

The default option is set to Private, but you may want to share your character sheet with your DM, or with your entire party. Fortunately, that’s simple enough. Once you click the ‘Add People’ button, you will get a popup like the one below. 

If you wanted to add people one by one, you would search for them by their username. If you wanted to add your entire campaign, you would search for the campaign and party name (if one was selected, otherwise it will list ‘Unnamed Party’. Both of those popups are shown below. In either one, once you start typing, it will narrow down the list to options that match.

The third option, Roles, will be much less common, but roles can be set up to manage various types of teams such as design collaborators. Searching for a role would work the same as the other two options.

Character Creation Fields

This is where the majority of the work will take place. Once you select an alignment (which is optional), you’ll click ‘Add Ancestry’ to dive into what who your character is going to be, and what they can do! As a reminder, the D&D 5e SRD ruleset is limited to a small subsection of all the options from the full D&D 5e ruleset, so your options will be limited to those that are available under SRD/OGL.

For Lord Bork, he’s going to be a chaotic good rock gnome. Once I click the ‘Add Level’ button, a new section appears under the ‘Level 1’ header. Now it’s time to start choosing Lord Bork’s statistics.

The initial input for ability scores uses the Point Buy method (other options may be added in the future!), so I have 27 points to allocate, and bonuses have already been applied from his rock gnome ancestry. I’m planning on building a fighter, so after I finish my ability score selection, it’s time to move on. 

IMPORTANT: The highlighted red box shows help text that appears. The second sentence is a hyperlink and you MUST click it to display all fields required to proceed properly.

Click the hyperlink to get started. Once you click the link, you will get a popup asking which class you want to add for that level.

For each level that you add to your character, you will need to repeat this process. Multiclassed characters will select a different class when they reach the desired level for multiclassing!

Once you choose your class, a new section will appear under the header ‘Class Levels.’

If you accidentally select the wrong class, you can simply click de-level at that point and redo the steps to choose the correct class.

Building Each Level

Each level will have several sections to complete, and sometimes they will appear to be repetitive, but it’s important not to skip any sections.

The top of each section will list the class and level (‘Level Breakdown: Fighter 1) as seen in the screenshot below. The next section displays information about hit points that is specific to the chosen class. Currently, Hedron uses averages for calculating starting hit points as well as the value gained for further levels.

The next section will display class features for the level selected. For fighters, first level awards your fighting style and second wind, so the options for those are displayed. To make a choice from a list of options, such as fighting style, you would click the LOCK symbol next to the option you want to unlock it for your character.

Fighters don’t generally have spellcasting, so that section lists ‘None’ as the casting list.

The Character Stats section doesn’t require any input from you. It displays several statistics that have been calculated based on the inputs you provided in the previous steps.

• Health Bars
• Ability Score Modifiers
• Ability Scores
• Other
• Saving Throws
• Skills

Ancestral Abilities, much like the class features section above, will display any features that you gain at the selected level that come from your chosen ancestry. Lord Boop gets Gnomish Cunning, Artificer’s Lore, Tinker, and Darkvision—skills that will surely help him survive!

The Bonus Abilities section can be used to add feats or other abilities. The list of options is available to scroll through once you click the ‘Add Ability’ button.

Add More Levels

Once you’re ready to move beyond level 1, you’ll click the ‘Add Level’ button again, which will prompt you with two options—select your existing class again, or choose a new one.

If this looks familiar, then you’re on the right track. You should now see an updated hit point total and any new abilities that your character gains at the new level. For Lord Boop, as a fighter, he only gains the action surge feature, so there isn’t much to see.

Character Stats and Ancestral Abilities will also update with any changes based on your current level. 

The only thing left is to keep repeating this as your character adventures and levels up!

REMINDER: Don’t forget to save often to avoid losing your changes!