hi! if you dont mind me asking, how did you go about organizing your players handbook? as dumb as this might sound what exactly do you mean by organizing? i have one too and ive browsed through it before in prep for character creation but the depth and detail of all the info leaves me a little confused sometimes.
i’m just gonna post a pic again so it’s easier to explain:
so, first off, the top row of sticky notes are the chapters! the color-coding there was accidental (bc i ran out of blue sticky notes) but it actually worked out well. the blue sticky notes are setting up your character, and then the yellow is for help in actually playing and also has all the spells!
the right row is races (green) and classes (orange)! i could’ve broken some down more (for example, i could’ve also strictly labelled high elves and drows, and i could’ve broken up wizard specializations) but that kinda would’ve driven me up a wall and also i have kinda a shitty back and i was in a good amount of pain after being hunched over the book for an hour labelling omg
but!!! the labels!!! i decided to break it up into four parts (setting up the game, actually playing, races, and classes) bc, since me and my friends are still pretty new to dnd but i’m our designated dm, i wanted to make it easy to find everything! so i only labelled the basics. like, i could’ve broken down the backgrounds (like criminal, noble, etc.) but, bc at large, those don’t have huge mechanical weight, i just left those under the general “background” sticky note. and all equipment is under “equip” and so forth
and, tbh, if you’re gonna break down your phb, i recommend doing it by chapter! just bc, idk abt you, but i get super overwhelmed having to flip back and forth between the table of contents and the shit i’m looking for, so knowing exactly where to flip helps smooth out the process. and then i labelled all races and classes to make character creation and game play easier!!! bc, for example, my friends play a high elf and a half-orc, so they both have abilities that they might not know abt, so i can check for them easily while playing!
and then, idk how clear it is on the picture, but i made specific sticky notes for spellcasting and all the spells you can learn!! just bc there’s a lot and, when playing, i have to constantly be checking spells, so it’s just that much easier to keep everything streamlined
tldr: separate by chapter, and i rec breaking down the races and the classes but that is more of a personal choice. there are also appendixes in the back that i forgot abt omg but, again, my back was screaming after being hunched for an hour so i was kinda just like “alright let’s get this over with”. there are probably more in-depth ways to break it down, like having specific tabs for stuff like subraces and multiclassing, but tbh that’s almost Too Organized for me bc that would be A Lot of tabs
tbh, the one thing the phb is kinda unclear abt, at least in my opinion (as someone who, before getting this book, learned 95% of my dnd knowledge from taz and 5% from cr), is skill check modifiers? but, after doing a quick google search, i’m pretty sure it’s [ability modifier] + [proficiencies if applicable]
(so, for example, if you have a +3 for wis and a prof. bonus of +3 w/ proficiency in perception, then perception would have a modifier of +6.... i think)
did this help? i kinda started rambling omfg
