Steve’s Guide to Making a Really Sweet D&D Character

GETTING EQUIPPED FOR ADVENTURE

So far we've done the basics. We've filled in a bunch of numbers and some very small character information like how he is huge and handsome. But now it's time for the second most important step to making a sweet D&D character: buying him equipment.

Barbarians start out with 100 gold coins in D&D, which is okay money, I guess. Keep in mind that this limit isn't usually that important because unless your DM is Marty you can pretty much explain any equipment away if you have a sweet background. Which we will, but that's in the next step.

Most important among a barbarian's equipment is obviously the weapon he will wield in the fury of battle. Your choices are a sword, an axe or a spear. Obviously, first I went to swords and I picked the best sword, which is the greatsword. Then I figured he should have an axe in case his sword broke or something, so I found the best axe, which is a greataxe. Then I figured that maybe someone would try to shoot him with arrows and he needed to have some way to attack back, so I found the best spear, which is the longspear.

I also gave him a dagger, but I didn't bother to figure out the stats for that because a barbarian would never fight with a dagger unless he was like tied to some other guy by the wrist in a gladiator pit and in that case I would have time to look up the stats. Otherwise he would just use it for cleaning kobold carcasses for the cook fire.

As for the rest of his equipment, I figured that barbarians would travel pretty light, so here is all his other equipment:

When I equipped Chocoba I thought about what sort of stuff a barbarian might like to carry around with him. I figured he would like a lot of different kinds of booze. I also figured he would like to look scary so I put that skull helmet thing on there, although that doesn't change his armor class. The last part on there on the first part is the diary and the quill and ink. I figured a barbarian might not be able to write any regular language, but he might want to sort of jot down his thoughts on his adventures and being a barbarian. Maybe draw some pictures or maps or something.

You'll also notice that stuff at the bottom. I figured why not include that since all that stuff like trees and women are free and it might help me come up with some good ideas for the most important step.