Rules for character creation

Alignment

A typical creature in the game world has an alignment, which broadly describes its moral and personal attitudes. Alignment is a combination of two factors: one identifies morality (good, evil, or neutral), and the other describes attitudes toward society and order (lawful, chaotic, or neutral). Thus, nine distinct alignments define the possible combinations.

These brief summaries of the nine alignments describe the typical behavior of a creature with that alignment. Individuals might vary significantly from that typical behavior, and few people are perfectly and consistently faithful to the precepts of their alignment.

Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society. Gold dragons, paladins, and most dwarves are lawful good.

Neutral good (NG) folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs. Many celestials, some cloud giants, and most gnomes are neutral good.

Chaotic good (CG) creatures act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect. Copper dragons, many elves, and unicorns are chaotic good.

Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes. Many monks and some wizards are lawful neutral.

Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don’t take sides, doing what seems best at the time. Lizardfolk, most druids, and many humans are neutral.

Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else. Many barbarians and rogues, and some bards, are chaotic neutral.

Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order. Devils, blue dragons, and hobgoblins are lawful evil.

Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms. Many drow, some cloud giants, and goblins are neutral evil.

Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust. Demons, red dragons, and orcs are chaotic evil.

Alignment in the Multiverse

For many thinking creatures, alignment is a moral choice. Humans, dwarves, elves, and other humanoid races can choose whether to follow the paths of good or evil, law or chaos. According to myth, the good-aligned gods who created these races gave them free will to choose their moral paths, knowing that good without free will is slavery.

The evil deities who created other races, though, made those races to serve them. Those races have strong inborn tendencies that match the nature of their gods. Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc gods, and are thus inclined toward evil. Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life. (Even half-orcs feel the lingering pull of the orc god’s influence.)

Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn’t tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil.

Most creatures that lack the capacity for rational thought do not have alignments - they are unaligned. Such a creature is incapable of making a moral or ethical choice and acts according to its bestial nature. Sharks are savage predators, for example, but they are not evil; they have no alignment.

Backgrounds

Every story has a beginning. Your character’s background reveals where you came from, how you became an adventurer, and your place in the world. Your fighter might have been a courageous knight or a grizzled soldier. Your wizard could have been a sage or an artisan. Your rogue might have gotten by as a guild thief or commanded audiences as a jester.

Choosing a background provides you with important story cues about your character’s identity. The most important question to ask about your background is what changed? Why did you stop doing whatever your background describes and start adventuring? Where did you get the money to purchase your starting gear, or, if you come from a wealthy background, why don’t you have more money? How did you learn the skills of your class? What sets you apart from ordinary people who share your background?

The sample backgrounds in this chapter provide both concrete benefits (features, proficiencies, and languages) and roleplaying suggestions.

Proficiencies

Each background gives a character proficiency in two skills.

In addition, most backgrounds give a character proficiency with one or more tools.

If a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead.

Languages

Some backgrounds also allow characters to learn additional languages beyond those given by race.

Equipment

Each background provides a package of starting equipment. If you use the optional rule to spend coin on gear, you do not receive the starting equipment from your background.

Suggested Characteristics

A background contains suggested personal characteristics based on your background. You can pick characteristics, roll dice to determine them randomly, or use the suggestions as inspiration for characteristics of your own creation. Customizing a Background You might want to tweak some of the features of a background so it better fits your character or the campaign setting. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds. You can either use the equipment package from your background or spend coin on gear as described in the equipment section. (If you spend coin, you can’t also take the equipment package suggested for your class.) Finally, choose two personality traits, one ideal, one bond, and one flaw. If you can’t find a feature that matches your desired background, work with your GM to create one.

Acolyte

You have spent your life in the service of a temple to a specific god or pantheon of gods. You act as an intermediary between the realm of the holy and the mortal world, performing sacred rites and offering sacrifices in order to conduct worshipers into the presence of the divine. You are not necessarily a cleric - performing sacred rites is not the same thing as channeling divine power.

Choose a god, a pantheon of gods, or some other quasi-divine being from among those listed in “Fantasy–Historical Pantheons” or those specified by your GM, and work with your GM to detail the nature of your religious service. Were you a lesser functionary in a temple, raised from childhood to assist the priests in the sacred rites? Or were you a high priest who suddenly experienced a call to serve your god in a different way? Perhaps you were the leader of a small cult outside of any established temple structure, or even an occult group that served a fiendish master that you now deny.

Skill Proficiencies: Insight, Religion
Languages: Two of your choice
Equipment: A holy symbol (a gift to you when you entered the priesthood), a prayer book or prayer wheel, 5 sticks of incense, vestments, a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 15 gp

Feature: Shelter of the Faithful

As an acolyte, you command the respect of those who share your faith, and you can perform the religious ceremonies of your deity. You and your adventuring companions can expect to receive free healing and care at a temple, shrine, or other established presence of your faith, though you must provide any material components needed for spells. Those who share your religion will support you (but only you) at a modest lifestyle.

You might also have ties to a specific temple dedicated to your chosen deity or pantheon, and you have a residence there. This could be the temple where you used to serve, if you remain on good terms with it, or a temple where you have found a new home. While near your temple, you can call upon the priests for assistance, provided the assistance you ask for is not hazardous and you remain in good standing with your temple.

Suggested Characteristics

Acolytes are shaped by their experience in temples or other religious communities. Their study of the history and tenets of their faith and their relationships to temples, shrines, or hierarchies affect their mannerisms and ideals. Their flaws might be some hidden hypocrisy or heretical idea, or an ideal or bond taken to an extreme.

d8 Personality Trait
1 I idolize a particular hero of my faith, and constantly refer to that person’s deeds and example.
2 I can find common ground between the fiercest enemies, empathizing with them and always working toward peace.
3 I see omens in every event and action. The gods try to speak to us, we just need to listen
4 Nothing can shake my optimistic attitude.
5 I quote (or misquote) sacred texts and proverbs in almost every situation.
6 I am tolerant (or intolerant) of other faiths and respect (or condemn) the worship of other gods.
7 I’ve enjoyed fine food, drink, and high society among my temple’s elite. Rough living grates on me.
8 I’ve spent so long in the temple that I have little practical experience dealing with people in the outside world.
d6 Ideal
1 Tradition. The ancient traditions of worship and sacrifice must be preserved and upheld. (Lawful)
2 Charity. I always try to help those in need, no matter what the personal cost. (Good)
3 Change. We must help bring about the changes the gods are constantly working in the world. (Chaotic)
4 Power. I hope to one day rise to the top of my faith’s religious hierarchy. (Lawful)
5 Faith. I trust that my deity will guide my actions. I have faith that if I work hard, things will go well. (Lawful)
6 Aspiration. I seek to prove myself worthy of my god’s favor by matching my actions against his or her teachings. (Any)
d6 Bond
1 I would die to recover an ancient relic of my faith that was lost long ago.
2 I will someday get revenge on the corrupt temple hierarchy who branded me a heretic.
3 I owe my life to the priest who took me in when my parents died.
4 Everything I do is for the common people.
5 I will do anything to protect the temple where I served.
6 I seek to preserve a sacred text that my enemies consider heretical and seek to destroy.
d6 Flaw
1 I judge others harshly, and myself even more severely.
2 I put too much trust in those who wield power within my temple’s hierarchy.
3 My piety sometimes leads me to blindly trust those that profess faith in my god.
4 I am inflexible in my thinking.
5 I am suspicious of strangers and expect the worst of them.
6 Once I pick a goal, I become obsessed with it to the detriment of everything else in my life.

Fantasy-Historical Pantheons

The Celtic, Egyptian, Greek, and Norse pantheons are fantasy interpretations of historical religions from our world’s ancient times. They include deities that are most appropriate for use in a game, divorced from their historical context in the real world and united into pantheons that serve the needs of the game.

The Celtic Pantheon

It’s said that something wild lurks in the heart of every soul, a space that thrills to the sound of geese calling at night, to the whispering wind through the pines, to the unexpected red of mistletoe on an oak–and it is in this space that the Celtic gods dwell. They sprang from the brook and stream, their might heightened by the strength of the oak and the beauty of the woodlands and open moor. When the first forester dared put a name to the face seen in the bole of a tree or the voice babbling in a brook, these gods forced themselves into being.

The Celtic gods are as often served by druids as by clerics, for they are closely aligned with the forces of nature that druids revere.

The Greek Pantheon

The gods of Olympus make themselves known with the gentle lap of waves against the shores and the crash of the thunder among the cloud-enshrouded peaks. The thick boar-infested woods and the sere, olive-covered hillsides hold evidence of their passing. Every aspect of nature echoes with their presence, and they’ve made a place for themselves inside the human heart, too.

The Egyptian Pantheon

These gods are a young dynasty of an ancient divine family, heirs to the rulership of the cosmos and the maintenance of the divine principle of Ma’at–the fundamental order of truth, justice, law, and order that puts gods, mortal pharaohs, and ordinary men and women in their logical and rightful place in the universe.

The Egyptian pantheon is unusual in having three gods responsible for death, each with different alignments. Anubis is the lawful neutral god of the afterlife, who judges the souls of the dead. Set is a chaotic evil god of murder, perhaps best known for killing his brother Osiris. And Nephthys is a chaotic good goddess of mourning.

The Norse Pantheon

Where the land plummets from the snowy hills into the icy fjords below, where the longboats draw up on to the beach, where the glaciers flow forward and retreat with every fall and spring–this is the land of the Vikings, the home of the Norse pantheon. It’s a brutal clime, and one that calls for brutal living. The warriors of the land have had to adapt to the harsh conditions in order to survive, but they haven’t been too twisted by the needs of their environment. Given the necessity of raiding for food and wealth, it’s surprising the mortals turned out as well as they did. Their powers reflect the need these warriors had for strong leadership and decisive action. Thus, they see their deities in every bend of a river, hear them in the crash of the thunder and the booming of the glaciers, and smell them in the smoke of a burning longhouse.

The Norse pantheon includes two main families, the Aesir (deities of war and destiny) and the Vanir (gods of fertility and prosperity). Once enemies, these two families are now closely allied against their common enemies, the giants (including the gods Surtur and Thrym).

Celtic Deities

Deity Alignment Suggested Domains Symbol
The Daghdha, god of weather and crops CG Nature, Trickery Bubbling cauldron or shield
Arawn, god of life and death NE Life, Death Black star on gray background
Belenus, god of sun, light, and warmth NG Light Solar disk and standing stones
Brigantia, goddess of rivers and livestock NG Life Footbridge
Diancecht, god of medicine and healing LG Life Crossed oak and mistletoe branches
Dunatis, god of mountains and peaks N Nature Red sun-capped mountain peak
Goibhniu, god of smiths and healing NG Knowledge, Life Giant mallet over sword
Lugh, god of arts, travel, and commerce CN Knowledge, Life Pair of long hands
Manannan mac Lir, god of oceans and sea creatures LN Nature, Tempest Wave of white water on green
Math Mathonwy, god of magic NE Knowledge Staff
Morrigan, goddess of battle CE War Two crossed spears
Nuada, god of war and warriors N War Silver hand on black background
Oghma, god of speech and writing NG Knowledge Unfurled scroll
Silvanus, god of nature and forests N Nature Summer oak tree

Greek Deities

Deity Alignment Suggested Domains Symbol
Zeus, god of the sky, ruler of the gods N Tempest Fist full of lightning bolts
Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty CG Light Sea shell
Apollo, god of light, music, and healing CG Knowledge, Life, Light Lyre
Ares, god of war and strife CE War Spear
Artemis, goddess of hunting and childbirth NG Life, Nature Bow and arrow on lunar disk
Athena, goddess of wisdom and civilization LG Knowledge, War Owl
Demeter, goddess of agriculture NG Life Mare’s head
Dionysus, god of mirth and wine CN Life Thyrsus (staff tipped with pine cone)
Hades, god of the underworld LE Death Black ram
Hecate, goddess of magic and the moon CE Knowledge, Trickery Setting moon
Hephaestus, god of smithing and craft NG Knowledge Hammer and anvil
Hera, goddess of marriage and intrigue CN Trickery Fan of peacock feathers
Hercules, god of strength and adventure CG Tempest, War Lion’s head
Hermes, god of travel and commerce CG Trickery Caduceus (winged staff and serpents)
Hestia, goddess of home and family NG Life Hearth
Nike, goddess of victory LN War Winged woman
Pan, god of nature CN Nature Syrinx (pan pipes)
Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes CN Tempest Trident
Tyche, goddess of good fortune N Trickery Red pentagram

Egyptian Deities

Deity Alignment Suggested Domains Symbol
Re-Horakhty, god of the sun, ruler of the gods LG Life, Light Solar disk encircled by serpent
Anubis, god of judgment and death LN Death Black jackal
Apep, god of evil, fire, and serpents NE Trickery Flaming snake
Bast, goddess of cats and vengeance CG War Cat
Bes, god of luck and music CN Trickery Image of the misshapen deity
Hathor, goddess of love, music, and motherhood NG Life, Light Horned cow’s head with lunar disk
Imhotep, god of crafts and medicine NG Knowledge Step pyramid
Isis, goddess of fertility and magic NG Knowledge, Life Ankh and star
Nephthys, goddess of death and grief CG Death Horns around a lunar disk
Osiris, god of nature and the underworld LG Life, Nature Crook and flail
Ptah, god of crafts, knowledge, and secrets LN Knowledge Bull
Set, god of darkness and desert storms CE Death, Tempest, Trickery Coiled cobra
Sobek, god of water and crocodiles LE Nature, Tempest Crocodile head with horns and plumes
Thoth, god of knowledge and wisdom N Knowledge Ibis

Norse Deities

Deity Alignment Suggested Domains Symbol
Odin, god of knowledge and war NG Knowledge, War Watching blue eye
Aegir, god of the sea and storms NE Tempest Rough ocean waves
Balder, god of beauty and poetry NG Life, Light Gem-encrusted silver chalice
Forseti, god of justice and law N Light Head of a bearded man
Frey, god of fertility and the sun NG Life, Light Ice‐blue greatsword
Freya, goddess of fertility and love NG Life Falcon
Frigga, goddess of birth and fertility N Life, Light Cat
Heimdall, god of watchfulness and loyalty LG Light, War Curling musical horn
Hel, goddess of the underworld NE Death Woman’s face, rotting on one side
Hermod, god of luck CN Trickery Winged scroll
Loki, god of thieves and trickery CE Trickery Flame
Njord, god of sea and wind NG Nature, Tempest Gold coin
Odur, god of light and the sun CG Light Solar disk
Sif, goddess of war CG War Upraised sword
Skadi, god of earth and mountains N Nature Mountain peak
Surtur, god of fire giants and war LE War Flaming sword
Thor, god of storms and thunder CG Tempest, War Hammer
Thrym, god of frost giants and cold CE War White double-bladed axe
Tyr, god of courage and strategy LN Knowledge, War Sword
Uller, god of hunting and winter CN Nature Longbow

Languages

Your race indicates the languages your character can speak by default, and your background might give you access to one or more additional languages of your choice. Note these languages on your character sheet.

Choose your languages from the Standard Languages table, or choose one that is common in your campaign. With your GM’s permission, you can instead choose a language from the Exotic Languages table or a secret language, such as thieves' cant or the tongue of druids.

Some of these languages are actually families of languages with many dialects. For example, the Primordial language includes the Auran, Aquan, Ignan, and Terran dialects, one for each of the four elemental planes. Creatures that speak different dialects of the same language can communicate with one another.

Standard Languages

Language Typical Speakers Script
Common Humans Common
Dwarvish Dwarves Dwarvish
Elvish Elves Elvish
Giant Ogres, Giants Dwarvish
Gnomish Gnomes Dwarvish
Goblin Goblinoids Dwarvish
Halfling Halflings Common
Orc Orcs Dwarvish

Exotic Languages

Language Typical Speakers Script
Abyssal Demons Infernal
Celestial Celestials Celestial
Draconic Dragons, dragonborn Draconic
Deep Speech Aboleths, cloakers -
Infernal Devils Infernal
Primordial Elementals Dwarvish
Sylvan Fey creatures Elvish
Undercommon Underworld traders Elvish