Gearing Up For Adventure

Your character begins the game with starting equipment determined by their background and class. Starting equipment includes everything from weapons and armor to general tools and items. Be sure to record your starting equipment on the character sheet. 

If you’d like to have more flexibility in the gear your character starts the game with you can alternatively use your class’ gold pieces (gp) to buy your own. 

Be sure to keep in mind that your character has to carry everything you buy! Strength scores determine the maximum amount of equipment characters can carry. Avoid going over a total weight in pounds greater than your Strength score times 15, and be mindful of any bulky items that weigh over 40 pounds or are larger than 2 feet across. 

If your character is going on a journey, they will also need to carry food and water with them (or whatever it is they eat and drink). You can carry a number of days' Supply equal to your Strength score, in addition to your equipment, weapons, and armor.

Defense

Your Armor Class (AC) represents your character’s ability to avoid sustaining damage in battle. Numerous things affect your AC in various ways, such as armor, traits, features, Dexterity and more. 

Unarmored, your character’s AC is 10 + their Dexterity modifier. While wearing armor, utilizing shields, or taking advantage of traits and features, the AC calculation will differ based on the circumstances. For equipment the details of AC calculation are available as part of an item’s description, and the criteria and effects of other options are listed in your character’s class, heritage, or culture.

When your character is subject to more than one way to calculate their AC, you can choose which one to apply. 

One of the key things to remember when making your character is that not everyone can use armor and shields. Your character must be proficient with armor and shields in order to use them with any efficiency, and there are certain drawbacks from struggling to use either without knowing how to properly do so. 

Offense

Weapons are the bread and butter of any savvy adventurer, even those who use them as only a last resort. 

Weapon attacks are made by rolling a d20 and adding your proficiency bonus (as long as your character is actually proficient with the weapon) and the appropriate ability modifier. Weapon damage is calculated by rolling the weapon’s damage die and adding any applicable modifiers.

Melee weapons use your character’s Strength modifier or Dexterity modifier for attack and damage rolls. 

Meanwhile, ranged weapons use Dexterity for attack and damage rolls. Some weapons with the thrown property, such as javelins, allow you to use your character’s Strength modifier instead. 

All attacks also indicate the type of damage they deal. A sickle deals slashing damage while a heavy maul deals bludgeoning damage. Damage types, besides being cool aspects of your character, also come into play as some situations may call for one type of damage type over the other.  

Some special attacks (basic combat maneuvers that you use to grapple or shove a creature) instead do an amount of damage called basic melee damage. This is equal to 1 + your Strength modifier.