Richard Baker

When you’re creating a character for your Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game, you want to choose the best powers, feats, skills, and gear for your character’s race and class. This Cheat Sheet provides tips for making wise power, feat, skill, and gear choices when you’re creating a new Dungeons & Dragons character.

D&D is a cooperative game, not a competitive one. In other words, you don't compete against the other players and you don't win by beating them. Instead, there are a lot of different ways to "win" the game. The common denominator in every victory condition is "fun." If you and the other players have fun, everyone wins a game of D&D.

You need three distinct components to play a Dungeons & Dragons game: Players: You need players, usually two to six of them, to take on the roles of adventurers in the fantasy world. The adventurers controlled by the players are also called heroes or player characters (PCs, for short).A Dungeon Master: The Dungeon Master (DM) controls all of the nonplayer characters (NPCs) — the monsters, villains, and other incidental characters that inhabit the fantasy world.

A Dungeons & Dragons player character lives in an ancient time, in a world much like ours was in medieval times, when knights and castles filled the land. Imagine this place, where magic really works and dragons roam in the dark beyond the firelight. Your character might be a strong fighter or a nimble rogue, a wise cleric or a charismatic sorcerer.

Part of the fun of roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, is customizing a character. But sometimes you just want to get down to the game. Want an easy way out of shopping for your 1st-level Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition character? Just choose one of the equipment packages here and add it straight to your character sheet: Fighter, Great Weapon: Scale mail (40 gp), greataxe (30 gp), standard adventurer’s kit (15 gp), 2 javelins (total 10 gp), sling and 20 bullets (2 gp), 3 gp left over.

Choosing feats in the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition roleplaying game can be pretty daunting because there are so many to choose from. It’s a good idea to have a plan for which feats your character will select over the next few levels so that you can make sure you get the feats you want as quickly as possible.

When you create a 1st-level character in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, you begin roleplaying with training in a certain number of skills. The number of skills your character gains training in depends on your character’s class and race (humans begin with one extra skill as a racial benefit). The list of skills you can choose for your character is limited by his or her class.

One of the great things about roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons is that you get to completely customize your character, starting from scratch. When you’re creating a new 1st-level character for your Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game, you get to select the following types of class powers: Two 1st-level at-will powers (for a human character, pick three) One 1st-level encounter power One 1st-level daily power As your character gains experience levels, he or she gains additional powers.

Take your Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition character on an adventure using these battle grids. One battle grid is blank, so you can customize it to your particular adventure, or just use it as a large, open area to practice combat against monsters. The other battle grid is divided into several rooms, which you can use as the basis for a small dungeon.