Making a D&D 5e character from the book has always been harder than it should be

The first 165 pages of the Dungeons & Dragons 5e Player's Handbook is for making characters. And if I'm being perfectly honest (no Insight check required on your part), the book isn't great at walking a new player through the process of making even a 1st level character.

For the past five years, I've been playing D&D entirely online. I've been using D&D Beyond this whole time. D&DB is the online sourcebook and adventure subscription site that happens to have an okay search engine and an excellent, excellent character creator.

That character creator is, bar none, the best character creator you'll find for D&D anywhere. It's sleek, simple, and elegant. I wish any other app that I use on the phone or on desktop worked as wonderfully as D&DB's character creator. In fact, it's so good that when I tried to build a character only using the Player's Handbook, I was baffled by how long and unintuitive the process was. So much flipping back and forth. So many important details buried in the middle of paragraphs two and three chapters away. So little direction as to where anything went on the character sheet—a character sheet that was completely blank and buried at the back of the book.

Well, the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook wants to fix that. And D&D Beyond is showing us how. Yes, the same D&D Beyond that already has the best method for creating a character, will attempt to smooth out the process for people trying to make a character from the book.

The first major change, or rearrangement, is that your first step isn't to select a species (formerly race). Choosing a class is your first step now. So, your step-by-step instructions for building a character is no longer:

1. Choose a Race

2. Choose a Class

3. Determine Ability Scores

4. Describe Your Character

5. Choose Equipment

6. Come Together (which is one paragraph about talking to the DM and other players)

It's now:

1. Choose Your Class

2. Determine Origin

3. Determine Your Ability Scores

4. Choose an Alignment

5. Fill in Details

The 2024 character sheet is somehow both less elegant-looking and just as scattered. But at least D&DB will try walking you through where all these disparate details go on the page. The example leaves out one important recommendation I have for players though:

Write the page number of where you can find the information again in the Player's Handbook. You got the Great Weapon Fighting feat? Great! Write down its page number. You took the Prestidigitation cantrip? Wonderful! Page number. Glossaries are great and all, but the information on your character sheet is all information you want to have at a glance. As good as the glossary may be (and I hear the 2024 glossary is great), you don't want to be stuck at the table, flipping through an index when you should be heading straight to the page you need.

Now, this is a gentle first look at how character creation will play out in the new Player's Handbook. But it's still not the same as digging into it yourself, connecting the dots between the Player's Handbook and the character sheet—let alone getting the character in your head to spill out onto the page.

Look, it's a 384-page book. There's still going to be a large degree of flipping back and forth, and perhaps referring to the glossary for D&D-specific words, and referring to the index when you can't find out how to calculate your initiative bonus, or if that +2 proficiency bonus goes on both your saving throws and skills. And wasn't Alignment (Lawful Good, Chaotic Evil, et al) supposedly rumored to be going away? Yet here we see it's full-on Step 4 of the whole character creation process? 

We can only hope the hardcopy Player's Handbook took as many cues as possible from its D&D Beyond online counterpart. Celestia forbid the internet ever go on the blink and I have to break out a good ol' pen and pad to play my favorite hobby.