Choosing a Class

Your class is what your character does. It is the first choice worth making, because it decides more of the sheet than anything else you pick — and most of what it decides, it decides for you, the moment you choose it.

There are eighteen classes to read. This page is about what you are actually choosing between.

What the class decides for you

• How hard you are to kill. Your class sets your Hit Point Die — a d6, d8, d10 or d12 — and that die is where your Hit Points come from, at first level and at every level after.
• What you can wear and wield. Your armor training and your weapon proficiencies come from your class and from nowhere else. A class with no heavy armor training does not get it later by finding heavy armor.
• Two saving throws. Every class grants proficiency in exactly two saving throw abilities — never one, never three. Since saves are what stand between you and the worst things in the game, this is a quieter decision than it looks.
• A handful of skills. The class names a list and a number: pick that many skills from that list. Your background gives you two more, and those come free of any list.
• Whether you cast at all. Some classes cast spells from first level, some gain it later through a subclass, and some never cast anything.

Primary ability

Each class names the ability it runs on — the one your attacks, your spells or your signature features key off. It is not a requirement and nothing stops you ignoring it, but a class played away from its primary ability is a character that misses more often than the table expects.

That single number is also the strongest link between this page and the next two: the class tells you which ability you want highest, and ability scores is where you make that true.

The subclass comes later

Every class chooses its subclass at 3rd level, without exception. A subclass is a set of extra features layered onto the class — the same chassis, pointed somewhere specific.

If you are building a 1st-level character, you do not pick one yet. It is still worth reading the options for the class you are considering, because they are where a class's range actually shows: two characters of the same class and different subclasses can play nothing alike.