I approached solo play like being half-DM and half-player, so knowing where the story wanted to go was worth the tradeoff of surprise to me. I think reading through an adventure completely before playing it solo is preferable to “discovering” the story as you play.
#DND 5E CHARACTER BUILDER GUIDE PC#
To Hell and Back Again takes a single character from level 1 through 3 which (after levelling to 4th at the end) makes the solo PC roughly the equivalent of a 1st-level party and ready to take on the first chapter of Descent Into Avernus. It also ties well into the Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus adventure, which I had read through earlier as a kind of “lonely fun.” It has just the right amount of choose-your-own-adventure elements without becoming mechanical. This time around I tried using published adventures, and it made a big difference, especially starting with an adventure that was designed from the ground up for solo play (either with a DM or self-DM): the excellent To Hell and Back Again by Kienna Shaw and Donathin Frye. Maybe it was because I’m not that great at world building, but it felt more like being a DM and less like being a player than I was looking for, so I didn’t stick with it. I first tried playing solo about a year ago - using the DMG random campaign tables and MUNE - and, while it was interesting, it didn’t stick past the first world-building session. the Encounter Builder/Combat Tracker Adventure Selection
My typical setup while playing on a laptop with open tabs for: 1. We then divee into each of the three pillars of Dungeons & Dragons: exploration, combat, and social interaction, with a special emphasis on tools to make solo play more fun & efficient.
In this guide we’ll first talk about adventure and character creation for solo play. I’m sure there are plenty of resources I’ve overlooked if you know any others that aren’t represented, please let me know and I’ll try and add them to the resources section at the end. There are a lot of other great guides for playing solo, and I borrowed a lot from other folks (I especially found the one-on-one guide from DnD Duet invaluable). Also, this isn’t a definitive guide, just what worked for me. We’ll just assume you’ve decided to give it a shot. I’m not going to get into why you might want to play D&D solo - maybe we can get into that in a future post. I had so much fun playing D&D solo that I thought I’d share how I approached it, and what worked well for me.Ī couple of disclaimers before I start. A lot of play time happened nights and weekend during the shelter-in-place in March & April of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, you’re going first every time.Last weekend, I completed a solo Dungeons & Dragons level 1-20 campaign that I played over the last eight weeks or so - averaging about an hour a day - on my laptop, tablet and/or phone. Even if someone somehow rolls higher than you, you can use Lucky to roll again. With this build you now have a +23 Initiative with Advantage. Alert gives you +5 to Initiative and Lucky will allow you to reroll a Skill Check, choosing the higher of the two rolls.
Two levels in Wizard with Tactical Wit allows you to add Intelligence to Initiative.Two levels in the Unleashed Arcana version of Ranger will get you Advantage on Initiative with Natural Explorer.You’ll need two levels in Bard for Jack of All Trades which allows you to add half of your Proficiency Bonus to Initiative.There’s a lot of freedom here, so just throw a Bard together with the Human Variant and get Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma up to 20 as soon as possible.How many times have you watched your friends win a fight before you even get to take a turn? How often have you sat there taking hit after hit while you wait helplessly for your chance to attack? With the Me First build, you’ll be guaranteed to take the first turn in every single encounter. In my years playing DnD, here are the top 10 most OP characters I’ve encountered. What happens when you’ve cycled through all of the classic tropes like the Dwarf Cleric, Halfling Rogue and Elf Wizard? Well, that’s when you start thinking outside of the box, and it’s when those creative juices start flowing that some of the most bizarre, most powerful characters come to life. Many say your first DnD character is a reflection of yourself.īut what happens after you’ve created your first character, and then your second, and then your third and fourth until no more fantasy versions of you remain? What are the most Overpowered D&D character builds?Ĭreating a character in DnD can be a very intricate, very personal process that takes hours or days to complete.