Looking for an online DnD character creator? For many players, they’re an essential tool for playing Dungeons and Dragons in 2022. Building a DnD character can be a tough, time-consuming process; scouring books to choose a class, race, ability scores, min-max a build, and create a roleplaying background is a lot of work. Our guide makes it all easier by detailing the best DnD character creators free to use online.
These tools take most of the number crunching out of your hands so you can focus on the fun stuff. Most even compile your choices into tidy DnD character sheets, so you can get straight into adventuring. Others include DnD character creator visual tools that’ll create your character’s digital avatar into the bargain – and some do both! They’re all free to use, though most have optional paid features.
For other expert guidance on getting into Dungeons and Dragons, check out our guides to the DnD classes; DnD races; and DnD backgrounds for your character – or go back to basics with our walkthroughs of DnD stats and how to play Dungeons and Dragons.
Otherwise, engage your creative brain and press on, because…
The best DnD character creators are:
- D&D Beyond
- Dungeons Master’s Vault
- Reroll app
- Meiker.io
- Fast Character
- Aidedd Character Builder
- Fight Club 5th Edition
- DnD NPC generator
- Charactercreator.org
- Who the Fuck is my DnD Character?
D&D Beyond
By far the most expansive option, D&D Beyond‘s integrated character creator is likely to offer all the choice, guidance, and customisability you’ll need. Part of Wizards of the Coast’s official D&D digital toolset, it’s free to use (requiring only that you create a D&D Beyond account), and includes all 5e material that can be freely accessed under the DnD Open Games License.
From a player’s perspective, that means all classes (now including the Artificer 5e class), each with at least one subclass, all standard player races, along with a couple of extras thrown in, are available for free.
If you want to use material from other DnD books, you’ll need a member of your D&D Beyond campaign to have purchased it through the platform, and share it with the rest of the party. But even if you want to take the wholly free route, D&D Beyond’s character creator is still a rosy option.
Each step is presented intuitively, new players can use tooltips to navigate the choices, and generic game options, such as selecting a DnD level up system or encumbrance options, can be fine-tuned to keep track of your character’s progression in whatever level of detail feels right for your game. Rules are automatically accounted for, so you can sit back and let the computer do the number crunching.
And if you’re totally new to D&D, you can even use the Quick Build feature to whip up a competent adventurer in a flash. Select a class, pick a race, and choose a name – that’s it. Perfect for some speedy DnD roleplay.
If you’re not going to be holding your sessions online, character sheets can be exported to fillable PDFs, or integrated into a Roll20 campaign (using the handy Beyond20 browser extension). But it’s D&D Beyond’s digital character sheets that really shine. Ergonomic and interactive, every ability score, every skill, and every section is clickable, bringing up a panel explaining their rules, and application in-game. And it cuts out the need for physical DnD dice, too. Click on ability scores or DnD skills, and a virtual dice will roll on screen, sharing its score in the central log for all your fellow adventurers to see.
There’s also the option to create and use DnD homebrew content when building a character. D&D Beyond lets you add your own subclasses and races, particularly useful if you’re keen on expanding your campaign beyond official sourcebooks, or want to use the official D&D content you own in a physical format, but haven’t bought it digitally. Manually enter a class’s stats in the homebrew panel, and it’s as if they’re available to you as the real deal.
There are some limitations, however. 5e feats aren’t available to players who haven’t bought, or don’t have access to, the digital PHB, and, as you progress, you’ll need to spend some cash to unlock the character creator’s full features. But if you’re only looking for a means of building a level one character, and won’t be recording their progress through D&D Beyond’s automatic leveling system, you’ll be missing out on nothing.
Dungeon Master’s Vault
Dungeon Master’s Vault isn’t as replete as D&D Beyond, but it’s useful for players who know what they’re doing, and are simply after a quick set up. Particularly handy for homebrewers – with options to add complete custom subclasses, races, and backgrounds in a few clicks – it automates everything in a tidy array.
It also gives short descriptions of each option, and their influence on your characters’ DnD stats – which will come in handy if you’re playing a class or race you’re not so familiar with.
What makes this character creator stand out, however, is that it builds your character in real-time. As you’re picking skill proficiencies, or weighing up two subclasses, you can easily see how the choices will influence your modifiers and ability scores at a glance. It’s especially useful if you have particular DnD character builds in mind, or are trying to min/max your character with optimum efficiency.
And for new players, it also offers the “character builder for newbies” option, stripping away all the usual D&D jargon, and replacing them with several generic questions. The idea is that you don’t need to know anything about D&D to use it, but can have a vague understanding of fantasy tropes, pick some general character cues that sound like fun, and it will do the leg work for you.
Reroll app
The Reroll app is one of our favourite DnD character creator visual tools. A two-in-one builder, it lets you create either a simple digital character build, or an adorable, customisable miniature pixel art avatar – or both.
Both its free and paid versions generate an interactive digital character sheet (viewable on mobile or desktop) that tracks your stats and inventory for you.
The Reroll app free version offers five character slots, and a “limited selection of armours, weapons, and mini-bases” for your avatars.
The paid version (a one-off purchase at $10, though it’s currently 30% off at $7) gets you unlimited character slots, and a much wider variety of doodads to deck out your avatar, including over 150 weapons, 300 armour pieces, 20 pets, and 15 mini bases.
Meiker.io
Meiker.io‘s Fantasy RPG character maker – the work of sci-fi and fantasy author A.K. Larkwood – is a lovely little DnD character creator visual tool which generates charming pen-drawn avatars from a pool of fantasy-themed body types, faces, and accessories.
As you’d expect, this Meiker.io character builder also features a ‘randomise’ button – and it does an admirable job of rolling up a visually distinct, quirky little guy every time.
If you’re big into colour, details, or 3D, then this isn’t the DnD avatar maker for you – but its pen-and-ink characters are a lot of fun, and at the very least can offer you a bit of inspiration to start from when putting together an image of your perfect DnD character.
Remember, though, this one is only a visual character creator; you’ll get no stats or character sheets from it, so you’ll need to combine it with one of the other character creators in this guide to be ready to play.
Fast Character
If you’re looking to waste no time, know exactly what you’re doing, and just want a quick means of automatically compiling a stat sheet, look no further than Fast Character. A web page solely dedicated to creating D&D characters, it’s, as you might expect, mightily speedy and massively streamlined.
Use the dropdown menus to select all the essentials, add any feats that your character has acquired, write some roleplaying notes if you’re so inclined, and, hey presto, you’ve instantly got a spiffy sheet. Although it automatically calculates your character’s stats, Fast Character doesn’t track progression, nor is it intended to guide you through the creation process.
If you’re familiar with D&D, or have the PHB sitting in front of you, Fast Character is a useful way of creating your character digitally. But it’s not great for learning how to do so, and isn’t beginner-friendly.
Spanning the contents of a good few additional sourcebooks, Fast Character includes a lot of subclasses outside of the PHB, but there are a few restrictions to its use. Rough and ready, it can’t cope with DnD multiclassing, and won’t display a list of 5e spells for any magic users, so you’re going to have to keep track of these elsewhere. Use it if you need to quickly create a digital sheet for a new or existing character.
Aidedd Character Builder
If you want to generate a fairly basic Dungeons and Dragons character real fast, real simple, with no huge lists of options, flashy visuals, or frilly extras to distract you, Aidedd Character Builder is another very viable option for you.
A straightforward, step-by-step online form-filling tool with every word, stat, number, and selection presented in black and white (literally), this tool looks barebones, but it’s a smart design that gets the basic job done in a satisfyingly no-nonsense way.
Making a character is super-quick, and when you’re done (assuming you’ve logged in with an email) you get your pick of generating a printable, official DnD character sheet; creating an interactive, online HTML version saved on the Aidedd site; and/or saving it down in .xml format, to re-upload and edit via the tool later on.
The Aidedd Character Builder‘s main limitation is that there’s no in-built process for levelling up your character. Whichever of the above methods you’ve chosen, when it’s time to level up your character, you’ll have some of your own admin to do to make sure all your relevant stats are updated, with none of the guidance or guard-rails of a D&D Beyond-like experience.
Still, when all we need is to generate a complete, functioning D&D character sheet with minimum fuss, Aidedd is often the tool we turn to.
Fight Club 5th Edition
Often, you’ll want your DnD character sheet to be portable. No one wants to lug a laptop to their weekly roleplaying session just so they can read character stats off a screen. To save you some hassle (and back pain) try creating your character on your phone. You’ll be able to whip it out whenever you need it, and impress any passer-by with your incredibly optimised Sorlock build.
For a D&D character creator app that’s smooth and complete, we recommend Fight Club 5th Edition. It’ll whizz you through creation in a tight walkthrough, before serving up a nifty character sheet that’s compact and interactable. As well as tracking your stats, DnD weapons, and spell slots, you can also use it as a dice roller. Tap on any ability score, attack, or skill to instantly make a check. The app will automatically include all the relevant proficiencies and bonuses in the calculation, too.
Bear in mind, Fight Club 5th Edition only contains material that’s free to use under D&D’s Open Games License – which doesn’t even cover the full PHB. However, the app does include the function to add your own content or download entire compendiums of user-made resources online. A quick search will show numerous resources for adding homebrew material to the app, so you shouldn’t be left wanting.
If you know you’ll be playing D&D at several friends’ houses, or will be switching between game stores, this is a handy tool. Pack everything you need on your phone, and you’ll be able to play wherever, whenever.
Charactercreator.org
A fairly basic cartoon avatar generator, Charactercreator.org is one of the lighter DnD character creator visual tools out there – but can still be useful in a pinch, when your imagination is a little taxed and/or there are only minutes left before your first RPG session.
There’s a fairly deep selection of customisation options – from belts, to Tiefling 5e horns, to pet parrots – but mostly you’ll be using the magic ‘Random’ button to generate bizarre new avatars until you get the combo of features that feels right to you.
Worth noting is that, in our experience with it, there are far more modern-day or sci-fi style looks in this avatar generator than there are fantastical options. So, if you’re playing in a traditional, medieval fantasy-themed DnD setting, best dig into the lists manually and pick out the accessories you want instead of randomising.
DnD NPC generator
Playable D&D characters aren’t the only ones populating your fictional world; there are heaps of non-playable characters (NPC) that the DM needs to bring to life to fill your campaign with conflict and colour. Luckily for any DM who needs a bit of creative help, there’s a DND NPC Generator that can help you create unique and memorable NPCs.
This generator gives each character a distinct appearance and personality, and there are plenty of details that make these characters feel more real. The cowardly Wood DnD Elf becomes more three-dimensional when you learn she’s deaf in one ear – or straight-up unusual when you find out she’s also allergic to Tieflings. As well as a stat block, each NPC comes with a plot hook that provide a jumping-off point for future quests.
Who the fuck is my DnD Character
A sillier option, but surprisingly useful in moments, Who the Fuck is my DnD Character isn’t a usual character creator. It doesn’t build a character sheet for you, and it won’t teach you how to fill one. Rather, it provides random, pithy, and often tongue-in-cheek character descriptions, to serve as a basis for your build. Perfect if hours of adventuring has sucked all the roleplaying imagination from your brain.
Some of the backgrounds its serve up include:
- A naive Dwarf Fighter 5e character from the Salt Flats who always wanted to be an artist
- A sophisticated Gnome Monk 5e character from a poorly run orphanage who is in way too deep with the wrong sort of people
- A reliable DnD Halfling Sorcerer 5e character from a poor dairy farm who doesn’t speak a word of common
Will it help you to quickly create a character and get adventuring? Probably not. But even a character with the most rigorously balanced stats will be no fun to play if there’s not an engaging roleplaying base backing them up.
Source: Wargamer
