Character Creation

For players: a session-zero handout covering what you can play, what your character knows, and how the world’s history shapes your starting position.

What You Can Play

Any 5e race and class is on the table. The Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting (TDCS) supplements are recommended but not required. Standard array, point-buy, or rolled stats — DM’s call.

Recommended Backgrounds & Hooks

These tie naturally into the campaign. Pick one that resonates, or use one as a starting point and adapt.

Optional Mechanical Packages

If your table is using 2024-style backgrounds, choose +2 to one listed ability and +1 to another, or +1 to all three listed abilities. If your table is using 2014-style backgrounds, ignore the ability and feat columns and use the skills, tools, languages, and feature as a custom background package.

Background	Ability Options	Skill Proficiencies	Tool / Language Proficiencies	Suggested Origin Feat	Campaign Feature
Whitestone-Born	Con, Wis, Cha	History, Insight	Mason’s tools or smith’s tools; one language	Tough or Skilled	Stone Memory. In Whitestone, you can usually find someone who remembers your family, your street, or the scar the war left there.
Council-Educated	Int, Wis, Cha	Arcana or History; Persuasion	Calligrapher’s supplies; one language	Skilled or Magic Initiate	Stamped Papers. Council seals, school records, or formal letters can get you a respectful first hearing from officials.
Ripley-Trained	Int, Wis, Dex	Medicine, Investigation	Alchemist’s supplies or herbalism kit; one language	Healer or Skilled	Clean Hands. In clinics, field hospitals, and Institute-adjacent spaces, people assume you know what you are doing until you prove otherwise.
Vasselheim-Faithful	Wis, Cha, Str	Religion, Insight	One gaming set or musical instrument used in temple life; one language	Magic Initiate or Tough	Temple Welcome. Most lawful temples will offer you a roof, a meal, and one honest answer if you approach with respect.
Air Ashari	Wis, Dex, Con	Nature, Survival	Herbalism kit or navigator’s tools; Primordial or one language	Magic Initiate or Alert	Elemental Etiquette. Ashari-trained communities recognize your manners, even if they do not know your name.
Wilds-Kept	Wis, Con, Dex	Survival, Perception	Herbalism kit or woodcarver’s tools; one language	Alert or Tough	Roadless Sense. In rural places, you can read weather, tracks, and nervous locals well enough to avoid the first obvious danger.
Concord Courier	Dex, Wis, Cha	Perception, Persuasion	Vehicles (land) or cartographer’s tools; one language	Alert or Skilled	Sealed Passage. When carrying a legitimate message, you can usually request basic lodging, stabling, or directions from Concord-friendly stops.
Understreet Operator	Dex, Int, Cha	Stealth, Sleight of Hand	Thieves’ tools; forgery kit or disguise kit	Lucky or Skilled	Second City. In any major settlement, you can usually find the unofficial entrance: a fence, lookout, card room, roof path, or back-door clerk.
War-After Child	Con, Wis, Cha	Insight, History	One artisan’s tool or one musical instrument; one language	Tough or Lucky	Inherited Name. Someone, somewhere, recognizes your family story and reacts before they think better of it.
Forge-Adjacent	Int, Dex, Con	Investigation, Athletics	Smith’s tools or tinker’s tools; one language	Crafter or Skilled	Shop Floor Sense. Around machines, foundries, weapon shops, and ledgers, you can tell who actually does the work and who only signs for it.
Road Company Veteran	Str, Dex, Wis	Athletics, Survival	Vehicles (land) or one gaming set; one language	Tough or Alert	Watch Rotation. Guards, caravan hands, and practical travelers recognize you as someone who knows road discipline.
Quiet Heretic	Int, Wis, Cha	Investigation, Deception	Forgery kit or calligrapher’s supplies; one language	Skilled or Magic Initiate	One Wrong Detail. When an official story is being repeated, you can usually spot the part people learned by rote instead of memory.
Cult-Raised	Wis, Cha, Dex	Deception, Religion	Disguise kit or forgery kit; one language	Lucky or Skilled	Old Passwords. With DM approval, you know a phrase, sign, or family habit that can open a dangerous conversation with Vox Machinist circles.

Whitestone-Born

You grew up in Whitestone. You attended Sun Tree services as a child. You know what the ash-garden is. You may have met Lady Cassandra once at a public ceremony. Your family lived through the Vox Machina occupation — you may have lost relatives, or your family may have been collaborators (a heavy choice — talk to the DM). Your starting feeling about the war is personal.

This background works for almost any class. A fighter may have trained with the city watch, a rogue may know the old smuggler cuts beneath the stone streets, a cleric may serve at the Sun Tree, a sorcerer may have manifested strange power near a scarred place, and a bard may have grown up surrounded by victory songs that never quite sounded true.

Council-Educated

You attended the Tal’Dorei Council Academy in Emon. You learned diplomacy, arcana, or martial discipline under master tutors. Lady Allura Vysoren signed your graduation certificate. You have a Council contract waiting in Whitestone for your first assignment.

Not every Council-trained character is a wizard or noble. You might be a battlefield medic, a legal clerk, a duelist, a courier, a translator, a junior investigator, a failed diplomat, or the child of servants who won a scholarship and now carries the weight of it everywhere.

Ripley-Trained

You are a current resident or recent graduate of the Ripley Institute. You have met Dr. Anna Ripley personally — she interviewed you. You are a doctor first, an adventurer second. (Best for: rangers, clerics, artificers, certain monks. Wizards and bards possible.)

The Institute also produces surgeons, anatomists, alchemists, prosthetic engineers, trauma chaplains, monster-field researchers, and grimly practical bodyguards. A non-magical character can come from here just as cleanly as a caster: someone who knows what blood loss looks like, how fear smells in a ward, and why a clean hand can be more terrifying than a raised blade.

Vasselheim-Faithful

You serve a faith. You trained in Vasselheim’s temple complexes. You may know Lady Kima distantly. Your patron deity is your own — but expect their will to matter more than usual in this campaign.

You do not have to be a cleric or paladin. You might be a temple guard, a scribe, a relic-handler, a monastery dropout, a singer of funeral rites, a skeptic raised inside sacred walls, or a warlock whose pact is tolerated because the priests know exactly how dangerous ignorance can be.

Air Ashari

You are druid-trained or Ashari-raised. You know about the lake. You may have been a child during the war and remember Pala in her younger years. Korrin is the closest thing to a grandfather you have.

This can support druids, rangers, monks, storm sorcerers, barbarians, or any character shaped by elemental discipline rather than formal schooling. You may have left respectfully, been sent out as an observer, or walked away because the stillness of home began to feel like a sentence.

Wilds-Kept

You grew up beyond civilization — in the Bramblewood, Frostweald, Stormcrest foothills, or one of the small townships beyond Council reach. The war touched you sideways, not directly. You came to the cities later. The Saviors are figures you’ve heard about, not people.

Use this for rangers and druids, but also for fighters, barbarians, rogues, warlocks, sorcerers, and clerics whose faith was learned from weather, hunger, and old graves rather than temples. You may know roads no map admits to, old songs that survived without permission, or practical truths city people politely call superstition.

Concord Courier

You carried letters, writs, sealed warrants, payment chests, or diplomatic packets between towns that still remember how quickly peace can break. You have slept in guardhouses, roadside shrines, ferry stations, and stables. You know which roads are watched, which inns ask too few questions, and which official seals make common people go quiet.

This background works for rogues, rangers, fighters, monks, bards, and anyone with a reason to move. Your first session reason is easy: you brought something to Whitestone, followed someone there, or realized halfway through the journey that the message in your satchel was heavier than paper.

Understreet Operator

You learned the world through locks, rooftops, alleys, back rooms, coded debts, and people who never put their real names on a ledger. Maybe you were a thief, maybe a spy, maybe a locksmith, maybe an informant, maybe just the kid who could get into places adults pretended were secure. You know that every polished city has a second city underneath it, and that the second one often tells the truth first.

This is the cleanest rogue hook, but it can also fit bards, monks, rangers, fighters, and warlocks. In Whitestone, it might mean old smuggler cuts from the occupation years. In Emon, it might mean Council informants, dockside crews, or black-market relic brokers. Your first question is simple: who still has your name written down somewhere it should not be?

War-After Child

You were born after the war, but your life was arranged by it. A missing parent, a rebuilt village, a family debt, a memorial stipend, an old injury, a name no one speaks kindly — something about the conflict shaped the house you grew up in before you were old enough to understand it.

This is the most flexible hook for players who want a grounded character first and a class second. Any class can fit. The important question is not what you can do, but what story adults handed you before you had the strength to refuse it.

Forge-Adjacent

You are not one of Lady Cassandra’s rare firearm-bearers, but you grew up near the industry that made modern Whitestone feared and necessary: powder mills, smithies, clock shops, quarry crews, supply ledgers, foundries, glassworks, or the quiet little offices where dangerous inventions become public policy.

This works for artificers and gunslingers, but also for fighters, rogues, clerics, wizards, bards, and common-born characters with grease under their nails. You might understand machines without owning one, know the people who make weapons without trusting the people who authorize them, or carry a burn scar from a day everyone agreed not to discuss.

Road Company Veteran

You served with a caravan guard, mercenary charter, temple escort, monster-hunting company, or reconstruction crew. You are not famous. You were paid to keep people alive in places where the official peace thinned out and the old wilderness remembered its teeth.

This background is good for martial classes, healers, scouts, bards, and support casters. You know how to share watches, judge strangers by their boots, patch a wheel in rain, and tell the difference between a frightened village and a lying one.

Quiet Heretic

You were raised on the official histories and found one piece that did not fit. Maybe it was a forbidden song, a contradictory temple record, a family story, a battlefield relic, or a teacher who lowered their voice before answering your question. You are not necessarily a cultist. You are someone who learned that truth can be dangerous before it becomes useful.

This works especially well for bards, rogues, wizards, clerics, warlocks, and investigators, but any class can carry it. Talk to the DM about how much you know at the start. The best version gives you a question, not an answer.

Cult-Raised (Reckoning-stance only)

You were raised in a Vanguard’s Heirs household. You left, recently or long ago. You know things about Vox Machina that the official histories don’t include — not because they’re true, but because the cult tells different stories. Your family may still be in the cult. Talk to the DM extensively before choosing this.

What Your Character Knows

What everyone knows

Vox Machina rose, attempted to seize Exandria, were defeated. Names, basic deeds, official histories.
The Saviors won. Their names. The basic outline of who did what.
The Concord exists.
Whitestone is ruled by Cassandra de Rolo. Emon by Sovereign Uriel IV. Vasselheim is the Eternal City. Etc.
Firearms exist but are rare and tightly controlled by the Whitestone forge. Most adventurers will never see one. Most soldiers do not carry them.

What scholars and Council-affiliated characters know

The cults of the Fallen exist. The Vanguard’s Heirs are public; the Dawnchildren are mostly underground but real.
The major Saviors are aging.
Anna Ripley is choosing her successor.
Tiberius died early in the war and his role is debated.
Some artifacts (Bad News, the Plate of the Dawnmartyr, the Spire of Conflux) are missing from official Vault inventories.

Class Notes

Firearms classes (Gunslinger, Artificer/Battle Smith with firearms) — possible but rare. Your PC must explain how they got their weapon. Most likely answer: trained at the Whitestone forge under Orthax (a Tier 2-level mentorship — you may not have it at level 1). Lady Cassandra approves a small number of trusted firearm-bearers each year.
Necromancy and Death-domain clerics — completely allowed, but expect the Raven Queen’s clergy and Lady Delilah to notice you and offer guidance. Your magic is not evil. The world has learned the difference between necromancy-as-tool and necromancy-as-tyranny.
Warlocks — patron choice matters. Pact-of-the-Fiend warlocks should expect questions, especially in Vasselheim. Pact-of-the-Archfey, Celestial, Fathomless, Genie are all fine. Pact-of-the-Hexblade tied to a Vox Machinist artifact is a very interesting character but requires DM coordination.
Bards — you may have read Scanlan’s Vanguard Hymnal (banned but accessible). The original songs are good, which is part of what makes them dangerous. Most bards will not perform them publicly.
Druids and Air Ashari-trained classes — Pala will know you exist. You may know her.
Paladins — your oath matters more than usual in this campaign. The Raven Queen, Pelor, Bahamut, and Erathis all have active clergy. Oathbreakers are rehabilitatable but watched.

Your First Session

You will be in Whitestone or arriving in Whitestone. You may have received Lady Delilah’s letter, or you may be there for another reason and will become entangled in the campaign’s opening arc. Bring three things to session one:

A reason to be here that fits your background.
A relationship to the Saviors — not “I know them,” but “I have feelings about them.” Hero-worship, skepticism, gratitude, pity, indifference. Anything sincere.
A small mystery in your past — something you’d like to investigate during the campaign. The DM will weave at least two of these into the larger plot.

Welcome to Exandria. The world was saved. You arrive twenty-three years late.