Ultimate Cheat Sheets: Essential Spell Tools for New D&D Players

I'm a huge Dungeons + Dragons nerd. It's perfect for me — I love rules, worldbuilding, creating fantasy characters and stories, and snacks.

Recently, I was asked to be the DM for a group of new players — one had never played a video game for more than a few minutes, one had played D + D in high school, and two were tweens who were brand new to all the concepts. To help give them the best experience for their first time playing Dungeons + Dragons (because nobody wants to listen to me read rules aloud for hours), I created some stock characters on D + D Beyond.

I don't own spell cards, so I used Canva to design these "Spell Cheat Sheets" with just the spells those stock characters had. Plus, the cards would likely have been a little overwhelming, such as spell components. I removed all the information that I deemed to be unnecessary or confusing for a first-timer, leaving me with just the name of the spell, its type, casting time, range and duration, and description.

I'm glad we didn't have to learn to navigate D&D Beyond or hold a plodding learn-the-ropes session zero that would likely never have lead to a session one. After they were printed and passed around, these sheets served as quick references for my players. They had fun and have been asking me to DM another game, though next time, I'm making them create their own toons.