Our First D&D Session: Creating Our First Characters

Keep in mind that at this point we still had no clue how this game was played. My tiny shreds of knowledge came only from playing Neverwinter Nights which is a third edition based PC game.

One thing I did know though was that people love clerics, but people didn't necessarily enjoy playing a cleric. I figured I would endear myself to the group by taking on that role and have a nice simple time of casting "Cure Light/Moderate/Critical Wounds" over and over again while learning to play more complicated parts of the game.

My wife decided to go for the barbarian figuring that it would also be simple to be the person in charge of running up and hitting things. The classic barbarian has the lowest Intellect score, so it makes sense that it should be the easiest to play, right?

Loran, my first DM, was a great person to introduce us to the game. He and his wife continued to be part of our D&D adventures in Houston up until we left.

Here's specifically why Loran was a great DM, especially for newbies like us:

He's a friendly person for one. Unfriendly people do not make good DMs. When your job at the game table is to thwart and confound your friends, it helps to be completely unlike the villains you are portraying. Otherwise it becomes far too easy for people to assume you really hate them. For example, DMs should try their best to not cackle maniacally at their players' misfortune. At the end of the day, even after characters have been melted, ignited, perforated, sliced and diced... your DM should still be your friend.

For two, Loran seemed excited to share the hobby with new people, and he had a good sense of humor about it. For some players, character creation is a fine craft that must be approached with the utmost reverence and seriousness. These players should not be the first ones to volunteer to help you make your new character.

I know. I know you can help them make their first character super awesome and amazing and perfect... but, just remember that it's a game and some people - and most first timers I assume - have fun just finding their character in a process of thinking about the person they want to create.

I told Loran that I wanted to play the cleric - obviously assuming that every group still needed one in this edition. I then picked out half-elf for my character's race. The reason I picked half-elf was two-fold. In all previous editions of D&D half-elves were just awful. They pretty much had the weakest bonuses of both humans and elves, so I was excited to see that in 4th they became more of a unique player race.

The second reason I chose half-elf was because I thought charisma was still a handy stat to have as a cleric. In 3rd edition charisma determined everything about the cleric's Turn Undead ability, and I remembered that being a really awesome power in Neverwinter Nights. I remember I actually caused a server to crash because I had gathered up an innumerable amount of skeletons around me before unleashing Turn Undead to destroy them all.

In 4th edition, charisma is still a secondary stat for clerics, but the Turn Undead ability is much less a cornerstone power for them.

At any rate, in those days there were two potential builds for clerics: Devoted, and Battle... or as Loran put the question to me, "Would you rather be a standing in the back guy or more of a battle-pope?" While I found the idea of playing a D&D version of Pope Julius II intriguing and hilarious, I figured that the standing in the back guy was standing back there casting Cure Light Wounds, etc.

I decided to go for the more healing sounding one rather than the self-buffing warrior type. As it turns out, every cleric in 4th edition gets to do other things in addition to healing - that's were the real dichotomy between devoted and battle-popes come in. Iannan would get to heal whether he was in the front lines doing it or in the back. 

I should also mention that I was a cleric of the Raven Queen. I wanted to be a cleric of Ilmater, but this is what a newbie I was: I had no idea that the Forgotten Realms (which Ilmater is from) was a specific setting for D&D. I thought all D&D was set in the Forgotten Realms. This was just as the Forgotten Realms materials were being released so Loran had no sources for clerics of Ilmater.

Cassandra created a rageblood half-orc barbarian. Interestingly enough her newbie assumptions about her class and play style were closer to the truth than mine were. Her build really was a good way to learn the game as it mostly involved running up to things and bisecting them with an axe. It was very direct and she had the luxury of not having to worry about taking care of other people.

In my next post: How My First Character, Iannan the Characterless Cleric of the Raven Queen, Died.