Character Creation

This will be a long-term, somewhat serious/dark in tone campaign set in the Forgotten Realms.

I will be using the module Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus as reference material for this campaign. However, I will not be following that module as written, and I will be pulling in other source material as well as homebrewing some of my own. There may or may not be any descending into Avernus. Events from that module will happen and you will be given the opportunity to engage with them, but we will run this as a sandbox campaign set in the Baldur’s Gate region of the Sword Coast (including Elturgard, Candlekeep, etc.), rather than as a railroad with NPC conductors, incidentally beginning in Baldur’s Gate and headed straight for hell. I encourage your characters to have goals and motivations of their own. The shape of the campaign is up to you!

That said, a brave doer of good who might descend into hell to do impossible tasks if the stakes were high enough is a good thing to be. But if you all want to play some ne’er-do-wells who get inadvertently caught up in something bigger than them, that’s cool, too.

As for quest hooks — well, there isn’t a fixed starting quest, so I can’t give you any. Please use the setting material provided as inspiration and come up with a group of characters you think will be fun to play, and then I will figure out where and when the campaign starts. I encourage you all to collaborate on character creation.

Starting Level

We will start at level 1.

Ability Scores

We will use point buy for ability scores, with the standard 27 points.

Pre-approved Sourcebooks

Character options from the following sourcebooks are pre-approved for use in character creation.

• Player’s Handbook
• Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
• Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
• Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything

Where two sources have different versions of the same thing, use the more recent one. Example: the Bladesinger arcane tradition for wizards is published in both the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide and in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Since Tasha’s was published later, only its version of Bladesinger is allowed.

This campaign is going to be very grounded in the Forgotten Realms setting, so I don’t want to open the door to the more exotic menagerie of species in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, and other options are either specific to other settings or outdated.

House and Variant Rules

I don’t have many house rules. They’re all described on this page.

House Rule: Hit Points on Level Up

When you gain a level, don’t roll for hit points. Take the fixed value as listed in your class description.

Variant Rules

You may select a Feat in place of an Ability Score Increase when you level up.

Multiclassing is not forbidden, but please discuss it with your DM first.

Variant humans and half-elves are permitted (variant half-elves are described in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide). Variant tieflings as described in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide are also allowed, with the exception of the Winged tiefling variant, which is prohibited.

Tasha’s optional rules

Optional rules from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything are allowed unless otherwise indicated in the table below.

Starting Equipment

You can take the equipment provided by your class and background if you prefer. Or, you can start with a quantity of gold per the Starting Gold by Class table, and spend it on any gear from the Player’s Handbook. If you do so, you must give up the equipment you would normally get from your class and background.

Fears and Flaws

Make sure you choose a flaw for your character when you select a background. Additionally, make a list of three things that your character fears, and give it to the DM.