D&D Adventurers League

Creating Your First Character

Welcome to Adventurers League (AL). If you’re reading this, it’s because you want to create your first AL character and start having some D&D fun.

Read the AL Players Guide

Assuming you know a little bit about D&D, the first step would be to read the first few pages of the AL Players Guide. The first few pages tell you the basic rules with which you can create your AL character.

The AL Players Guide can be found here: 📄Documents

Some Basic Overall Rules For AL

Choose Your Medium

First and foremost, you can choose to create your AL character using a standard D&D character sheet (pen & paper).

But if you’re looking for some digital tools, the following can help:

Dungeons & Dragons | The Official Home of D&D Get the latest D&D news, purchase official books, and use the D&D Beyond toolset to create characters and run adventures with ease. www.dndbeyond.com
Roll20 - Virtual Tabletop for Playing D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, TTRPGs Easily create characters, organize games, purchase content, find players, and customize your story for your group - all in your browser. roll20.net

AL itself does not require you to use any specific medium on which to create your character. However, DMs may have certain requirements in order to play in their games.

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Please note that these digital tools will show you some options which are not available in Adventurers League play. Be aware of which options are invalid and only select valid options.

Create Your Character

Step 1. Start At Level 1 or 5

All AL characters must start at level 1 or level 5.

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For your first AL character, I recommend you start your character at level 1. With a level 1 character, you can play in almost any Tier 1 (levels 1 - 4) game.

You can create a level 5 character. The drawback to that is that you miss out on “learning” how to play some of the early features of your class. But if you are already familiar with the D&D rules and the class, by all means, create a level 5 character.

Step 2. Choose Your Campaign

The word “campaign” is a little confusing in AL. It does not mean the book or adventure that you’re planning on playing.

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Unless your DM has told you otherwise, select Forgotten Realms as the campaign for your first AL character.

For a deeper explanation about campaigns in AL, please see 📓Campaigns in AL.

Step 3. Choose Your Class, Species, and Background

Based on your selected campaign, you can choose your class, species, and background.

You can always choose options from the Free Rules (2024) and/or the 2024 version of the Players Handbook (PHB). Additional options are listed on page 8 of ALPG v2026.2. This includes Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (TCE), Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse (MPMM) plus some others.

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If you use only the 2024 version of the Free Rules and/or Players Handbook when choosing all your character options, your character will be 100% AL-legal.

But wait, there’s more.

Depending on the AL campaign you choose for your character, look at the back of the ALPG for some additional books that you can use. For example, for a Forgotten Realms character, you can also use the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (SCAG) book, but you cannot use Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, which is for Ravenloft characters only.

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For a list of AL-legal species and their campaigns, please see 🧝Species & Races. For a list of AL-legal subclasses and their campaigns, please see 🧙‍♀️Classes and Subclasses.

Ability Scores

In Adventurers League, you never roll for your stats. You can choose Standard Array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), or Point Cost. Instructions for these are here: Determine Ability Scores

Step 4. Add Starting Equipment

Based on your class and background, you get some starting equipment and gold. This comes from the source books (eg. PHB).

Step 5. Sell Extra Starting Equipment

You can sell any of your starting equipment that you don’t think you’re going to use. The rules for selling equipment is in the PHB. You can sell equipment for half (50%) of the purchase price listed in the PHB.

Magic Items

You don’t get any magic items yet. You cannot buy them either. Magic items only come from adventures you play. Your DMs will give you those as you complete adventures.

The exception to this rule is when you reach level 5 (or create a level 5 character), then you can get one free magic item from the list on page 1 of the ALPG. See ⚔️Starting Play at Level 5 for the details.

Flavour is Free

While you may be limited in the races or weapons you can choose from, many DMs will allow you to flavour them as something else. For example, many people flavour winged tieflings as half-dragons.

Logging

Every AL character needs its own log. The log will record things like the adventures they went on, magic items they were awarded, etc. There is no “standard” format for AL logs. Text files, spreadsheets, etc. all work well as long as you can show it to your DM if they ask to see it.

Please see 📝Logging Your Adventures for more information about logging.

Have Fun

With your shiny new D&D Adventurers League Character, go find an AL-legal game and have some fun.

It’s OK to make a mistake creating your character. You won’t get banned from playing or anything like that. Many communities are happy to help you out too.

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If you find out before, during, or after your game that you used something that shouldn’t be used, don’t worry. Just fix it (your DM can help you) and move on to your next game. 😃

Don’t Worry, You Can Change Things

After playing a few games with your new character, if you’re unhappy with how it works, you have a few options: