Fort & Key

Originally Published 27 May, 2026

How To Speed Up Character Creation In D&D

Something that has always bothered me in D&D is equipment. I’m sure you reading a D&D article know the general procedure for making a character, but I’ll reiterate it here. When making a character in D&D, you:

- Roll your 6 stats. - Pick a class - Roll for how many gold pieces you have, then spend 40 minutes hemming and hawing over whether to buy a 7th piton, or if you can get away with 6.

This issue here is a long-standing one. In my experience, this is one of the most impactful time sinks in character creation. This is further exacerbated in games where equipment matters more than stats, like Cairn or most classic editions of D&D. In more modern games, you can get away with not buying an extra torch, or scrimping on the ammunition, but that’s a recipe for disaster in old school ones. That 7th piton might be the difference between scaling a 30-foot wall, and dying to orcs. That Lantern Oil gives flexibility to the characters: it’s either a resilient light source, or an emergency fireball. Having or not having a bag of caltrops could lead to a character meeting their end, or surviving heroically.

When every line in the equipment list is a dense, impactful choice it offers so much more than set-dressing. This much choice means there is a benefit to spending time buying items. I think that the party poring over the equipment list is a great thing — a feature, not a bug. All the characters have been rolled up, and they determine what they have purchased, who’s carrying what, and what they can choose to get away without spending the money on. This is the engagement that we want with the equipment list, which breeds a deeper knowledge of the game and allows for player agency. They are going to be kicking themselves when the wizard runs out of his backup fireballs.

However, this scenario isn’t what happens. More often than not, a character is going to die horrifically in the dungeon, a new character is going to be rolled up, and that player will spend 40 minutes on the equipment screen. During this time, the other player will either be playing without them, or be sitting, waiting to start, while the player debates 50' or 100' of rope. Neither of these are fun for anyone.

There isn’t an immediately great solution, but it can be assuaged. Again, this is a feature of the game. The issue here is that creating a character slows to a crawl here because there’s no other option, and it’s the best option too. The player gets a free pass of anything in the item list under or equal to their starting gold in this ephemeral void, temporarily unchaining themselves to verisimilitude. Again, the issue comes from how long this takes.

For the sake of brevity, they may choose to buy the bare essentials, and skip everything else that they might need. While doing this in an attempt to speed things up is commendable, it also puts the characters at greater risk. Because we want mundane equipment to matter, this forces the players to engage with it, which slows things down. Luckily, there is a solution in an unlikely place.

One of the few things that I will concede about D&D 5e is that it has a great system for starting equipment. It may even contain the solution to this problem, dare I say. Essentially, there is a list of starting items based on background and class. For backgrounds this is a static list, such as the one for the Acolyte background. Of which you gain:

This gives a foundation for the character, while offering some nice and flavorful extras. This is nice, but it doesn’t solve the problem. Functionally, this is just giving the required holy symbol for the cleric class, money and clothes. The rest of the gear is just flavor for 5e, and marginally useful for classic D&D editions. However, there’s another facet to this system: the classes’ equipment system. For example, there is the fighter, which gets to choose from the following:

*(a) chain mail or (b) leather armor, longbow, and 20 arrows

(a) a martial weapon and a shield or (b) two martial weapons

(a) a light crossbow and 20 bolts or (b) two handaxes

(a) a dungeoneer’s pack or (b) an explorer’s pack*

Notice how the player is given a choice from the start. He can have ranged capacity, or extra defense; a shield or two weapons. It’s great because it speeds things up, while still allowing player choice. A player reads through the list and quickly decides what to get, and moves on with his adventure. It’s a genuinely great system and makes me wonder why it was not the standard for all other RPGs.

Maybe it’s because, like all of D&D 5e, it’s tainted with pseudo-narrative-game-itis. There’s no deep choice in the equipment. The biggest is between Chain mail, or leather + bow. The player’s pick between: two weapons of your choice or any weapon of your choice + shield. There is no tension here. No trade-offs to consider, and look back at when it all goes wrong (Or all goes right). The game aspect is overlooked in favor of the players getting liberty over the accessories to their character.

Moving away from this for now, there’s a third facet here, which you may have noticed. The fighter gets the choice between a dungeon’s pack or an explorer’s pack. Yet again, this is D&D 5e at its best: it streamlines the annoying stuff, baking it into the game. When creating a character, you get a pick of a gear pack — a grouping of items for a fee. This ranges from packs with bedrolls and tinderboxes, to supplies for writing documents. It’s pretty interesting, and offers some choices off the bat.

*Explorer’s Pack (10 gp): Includes a backpack, a bedroll, a mess kit, a tinderbox, 10 torches, 10 days of rations, and a waterskin. The pack also has 50 feet of hempen rope strapped to the side of it.

Dungeoneer’s Pack (12 Gp): Includes a backpack, a crowbar, a hammer, 10 pitons, 10 torches, a tinderbox, 10 days of rations, and a waterskin. The pack also has 50 feet of hempen rope strapped to the side of it.*

If the game actually focused on the capabilities of equipment to solve problems, not just a generic skill roll, then this would be an impactful choice. Again, it’s tainted, because the real difference between the two is the name, and like 2 items. It’s rather unfortunate that these systems are the way that they are out of the box, because they’re incredibly useful for making characters. It would be great if they were just slightly different, but alas, they are not.

Perhaps it’s clear where I’m going with this, but there is nothing stopping us from making our own. I’ve used this system for an entire campaign, and time and again, it has proved to be an invaluable tool for speeding up campaigns. I use a combination of my own sheet of 5e-inspired tables, and Basic Fantasy’s Equipment Emporium (page 25) to make this happen. For the sake of example, here’s my “fighter/general martial class” table:

*(a) chain mail or (b) leather armor, short bow, quiver of 20 arrows

(a) short sword and a shield or (b) halberd

(a) dagger or (b) 2h-sword

(a) Fighter Pack or (b) Adventuring Pack 1*

On top of this, players start with 1d6 rations, 2d6 gold and one of the Bag packs to start out with.

As you can see here, there is a choice to be had. Do they be a pseudo-thief with a dagger, leather armor and a bow? Or does the player go all-in with heavy chainmail and the unwieldy two-handed sword? Even the packs still have that tension. The adventuring pack has some traditionally good picks for dungeoneering: chalk to mark walls, a lantern and oil, etc. But all that stuff is pretty heavy, compared to the relatively lighter fighter’s pack, which just gives some torches and extra rations. It improves on the base of 5e’s system whole cloth, and allows for quick and easy character creation with a bit of extra choice.

However, there are legitimate issues with this system. Primary of this is how it can erode some character individuality. A tricksy thief will only be so different from the last 5 tricksy thieves, etc. Not that this is something to strive to avoid, but it can make things blur together in a way that may be annoying later on. Even if the group doesn’t care about aesthetics while I feel there is enough diversity of choice, eventually, the combinations will be exhausted. Again, this isn’t inherently bad, per se, but it is something to note.

Lastly, something that’s become increasingly annoying to grapple with is the fact that a lot of really great game ideas are not contained in the rulebook. Some of my favorite house rules for D&D: stone encumbrance, Target20, 2D6 Thief Skills, etc., and this as well, aren’t contained in whatever edition of B/X I’m peddling to my friends today.

I’ve spoken about this before, but there is significant dissonance in the player’s minds when the DM points to the “supplemental rules and revisions” document (Real or metaphorical), rather than the official book.

I would love to create my own version of D&D that is A) at-cost Print on Demand on Amazon and B) Has some of these wonderful rules and revisions in the book by default. While I doubt there’s a wider market for it, I would definitely buy some for me and my friends, at least.

Tangents aside, this system is definitely worth using, especially in pursuit of speeding up character creation elegantly. As it stands, the current de facto procedure is slow and obnoxious. This offers a simple solution that incorporates player choice really well. Especially when paired with something like the improved Chainmail combat adaptation that I’ve described in the past, where having a pole-arm versus a short sword is mechanically distinct beyond simple damage numbers.

It’s good to be back. Follow for more shenanigans.

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