Backgrounds: Use 'Em or Lose 'Em?

GMMichael · Feb 24, 2019

How are D&D's expanded role-playing features coming along? Backgrounds, with their suggested Traits, Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws, give a PC more tools beyond Alignment to get into a character's head. But does anyone use them? Does anyone not use them? Will they make their way into 6E? Sound off!

Baldurs_Underdark · Feb 24, 2019

For me, the backgrounds are an essential part of a character, but the traits, bonds, ideals, flaws are about as important in game-play as the alignment: it's a suggestion for how you can play, but you can ignore it if you like. The proficiencies and other tricks of the backgrounds are however quite useful and fun.

5ekyu · Feb 24, 2019

The backgrounds play key character defining roles in my games snd with my PCs so... yeah good to go.

Retreater · Feb 24, 2019

For us, absolutely pointless. Just give us two extra trained skills of our choice at character creation and be done with this step.

S'mon · Feb 24, 2019

The PHB ones are pretty pointless, but the Primeval Thule Heroic Narratives have a lot f impact.

iserith · Feb 24, 2019

In addition to making heavy use of Inspiration from which the personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws are drawn (see The Case for Inspiration), I sometimes include challenges where specific backgrounds would provide an advantage. A sage in the University District of Sharn (Eberron), for example, can use Intelligence instead of Charisma on ability checks the DM calls for to influence someone's attitude. Or an urchin gains advantage on ability checks to "Scour the Cage" in my Planescape game, which allows him or her to travel further and find more useful locations in Sigil than someone with a different background.

cmad1977 · Feb 24, 2019

Use them all the time. ALL the time!

Baldurs_Underdark · Feb 24, 2019

I should have added to the previous post that personally, I write my own customized traits, bonds, ideals and flaws. It's really useful to write down while I'm getting to know my new character. But I only use the options in the PHB if I have zero inspiration.

As a joke, I once actually rolled the dice on the traits, bonds, ideals and flaws. The character that appeared was complete garbage, but it did give me inspiration for the character that I built in the next 30 minutes after those rolls.

Arilyn · Feb 24, 2019

I like the idea of backgrounds, but they could be more interesting. I encourage my players to create their own if nothing jumps out at them from the phb. I don't like the traits, bonds, etc. being placed on tables, as it encourages players to pick off the list or roll. Examples are great, but don't need them on tables. It's probably a pain for designers when new features are added that require tables of traits. I really encourage players to create their own traits and write them using their character's voice. It's fine to pick a few from book if stuck, or see one that's perfect. In my game, it's also okay to leave traits blank for few sessions, until the character gels. I'm also thinking very seriously about having 3 or 4 traits, plus a flaw, rather than the split into ideals and bonds. They overlap anyway, and it seems a little artificial that all characters have one bond, and one ideal plus 2 traits.

Satyrn · Feb 24, 2019

Baldurs_Underdark said:
As a joke, I once actually rolled the dice on the traits, bonds, ideals and flaws. The character that appeared was complete garbage, but it did give me inspiration for the character that I built in the next 30 minutes after those rolls.

That's my go-to method for selecting traits, etc. That's how I pick the background itself too, and my race. And class.The results really can be garbage, although I like to call it a "challenge."

Especially when the randomly placed ability scores don't line up at all well with the randomly selected class. :uhoh: