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First Post
Oh hey, I was just about to PM you about this.
Backgrounds and Themes are both mechanical aspects of your character.Backgrounds were introduced in the PHB2, I believe, and are pretty minor- they're just a little way to give your character backstory a little mechanical impact. For example, is your PC an ex-soldier? You can take the Occupation: Military background, which has two associated skills (Athletics and Endurance, I think). Since the background you chose has those two associated skills, you can do one of two things- you can add one of those skills to your class skills list (allowing you to be trained in a skill that a sorcerer normally wouldn't be able to train without spending a feat) OR you can gain a free +2 bonus to a skill. You can find backgrounds FRPG, PHB2, PHB3, other books, and various Dragon articles. Some of them do more interesting things (like gain a small amount of resist to a specific damage type, or use a stat other than CON to determine your hp) but those are not allowed here in L4W- skill bonus backgrounds only. You can also invent your own Background benefit, as long as it makes sense and conforms to the pattern established by the PHB2 backgrounds (2 associated skills, add one of them to class list or gain +2 to one of them).
Themes are more complicated and have greater mechanical impact. They're designed to give your character a little more mechanical variety- a Fighter with visions of the future would be difficult to do mechanically, except that you can simply take the Seer theme to give your Fighter a touch of prescience. Want to shape-shift or have an animal companion but you want to play a Wizard? There are themes for that. They were introduced in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, but changed slightly after the Essentials line of books began. In the DSCS taking a theme gave your PC an extra encounter power, and access to powers that they could take instead of class powers at the appropriate level. Since then, themes have switched to giving you extra features at L1, L5, and L10, instead of the initial encounter power (or sometimes an initial encounter power and then features at L5 and 10). You can find themes in Dragon articles and in some of the newer books, like Heroes of the Feywild and Heroes of the Elemental Chaos.
