D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

Scott Christian said:

But to say a background "doesn't work" in a specific setting is silly. The features listed, just like skills, are transferrable. They can work in a variety of settings and situations.

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Bob takes that claim at face value and now requires that you add the fallen dhakani empire to your Forgotten Realms campaign and adjust goblins to match Eberron style goblins. I could go on to copy/paste backgrounds for specific dragonmarked houses, Alice expects you to add some Eberron's megacorp-like dragonmarked houses to your FR game world too.

Scott Christian said:

The answer is how hard does the DM want to work. Off the top of my head: You meet a local in Barovia who has a sending stone. And, by coincidence, he too was from your home plane, and maybe even the same area. He will contact this person for you - for a price? Done. Now suddenly the criminal background can come in handy.

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that is why I asked this as a question, you can always find some way to make things work. I'd rather not jump through too unlikely hoops for it, so I would not use your proposal and the Criminal has no way of contacting anyone at home. From a practical perspective I am not sure doing so would help them in Barovia anyway, even if they could, unless you come up with more convoluted and improbably explanations for how them being in Barovia has no actual impact on the feature.

tetrasodium said:

Spoiler: Bob calls that bluff

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Bob takes that claim at face value and now requires that you add the fallen dhakani empire to your Forgotten Realms campaign and adjust goblins to match Eberron style goblins. I could go on to copy/paste backgrounds for specific dragonmarked houses, Alice expects you to add some Eberron's megacorp-like dragonmarked houses to your FR game world too.

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Change Dhakaani Empire to The Kingdom of Many-Arrows or something similar. It wouldn't take too many modifications.

Scott Christian said:

I specifically stated that it might take work on the DMs part.

But to say a background "doesn't work" in a specific setting is silly. The features listed, just like skills, are transferrable. They can work in a variety of settings and situations.

The answer is how hard does the DM want to work. Off the top of my head: You meet a local in Barovia who has a sending stone. And, by coincidence, he too was from your home plane, and maybe even the same area. He will contact this person for you - for a price? Done. Now suddenly the criminal background can come in handy.

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Can they? I suppose. Is it going to make any sense, be helpful at all? No.. Is it going to start being a bit stupid when everyone in the party just happens to get so lucky? Yes, I think so. Let's say your characters have backgrounds criminal, noble, folk hero, gladiator, sage, sailor. Each one has a background feature that requires that they be recognized and given special treatment.

Except they're in Barovia, a strange land cut off from the normal world for centuries with no contact. A big part of the module is that the entire place is a mystery and they're fish out of water. How often can they "just happen to stumble across" people that know who they are? That sage is supposed to know who to contact to find info or where to go, but you know no one here and no one back home has ever heard of this place. The poor sailor of course is just completely SOL unless you redraw the map and add an ocean.

Scott Christian said:

I agree with you here. They should discuss their backgrounds with the DM, and if they want, each other. The DM can steer them or explain how some backgrounds might not be useful. That is actually what I was talking about. As for the sage, it could be slightly modified. That would be easy. In the description it says the information might come from a creature. Boom. Add a lore creature. Suddenly it's useful again. Add a tomb of scrolls to study and now it's even more useful. (I would also like to add that in the description it even tells the player you might have a hard time getting this information.)

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I like the idea of backgrounds and mechanically the additional proficiencies are useful and a good idea. But much like traits, bonds, ideals, flaws I just don't really see them widely used. The earlier background features are just too specific to be broadly used if in-world logic matters to the group. There's no innate magic to the older background features, but trying to make them work when it makes no sense to the scenario makes them feel like they are.

James Gasik said:

Change Dhakaani Empire to The Kingdom of Many-Arrows or something similar. It wouldn't take too many modifications.

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Is that pushing back against an unreasonable expectation I'm reading?...but no.... the background is explicit Bob is gaining support about how unreasonable you are being for trying to change the backstory he already settled on. While you were butting heads with Bob over that Dave &Eddy however a very excited about how much they are going to enjoy the benefit of having house cannith and siivus enclaves all I er to better outfit their fighter and wizard with high grade dragon mark tool crafted gear.

Funny how simply forcing FR to change awkwardly for some other setting's lore immediately causes things change from how the GM is required to fold in any background fueled world building easy peasy because the background is explicit and players couldn't have unrealistic expectations counter to the setting

The generalized issue I always saw with Background Features is that some DMs "just say yes" and others "let the dice decide".

So when you have a Feature like 'Rustic Hospitality' that says the Folk Hero PC can find a place to hide and rest among the commoners, one DM would take that Feature on its face and just let the Folk Hero (and quite possibly their friends) find a place to hole up when they arrive in a village, no questions asked and no game mechanic check necessary because that's what the Feature grants.

But another DM runs their game through the mechanics, and finding a place to hide for their game might involve a whole series of checks and roleplaying... thereby rendering the Feature basically worthless. The Folk Hero just can't "find a place to hide" automatically, because D&D is a game and a game has mechanics and rules. And why have the mechanics if you aren't going to use them?

Now of course 5E24 is going in the opposite direction-- rather than a Feature that gives you something "for free"... they are giving you a Feat that has a distinct game mechanic and rule. Which is great for the latter group of DMs above, but the DMs of the former group are now losing what they enjoyed. So I don't begrudge anyone's pleasure or displeasure with the 5E24 rules regarding Backgrounds. Speaking personally... the actual solution would be for any DM to use the 5E24 Background Feat AS WELL as re-incorporate the 5E14 Background Feature into everyone's individual Backgrounds. There's zero reason why as a DM you can't just bring the Acolyte's Feature forward into 5E24 and give it to your player as a house rule, so just do it.

DEFCON 1 said:

Speaking personally... the actual solution would be for any DM to use the 5E24 Background Feat AS WELL as re-incorporate the 5E14 Background Feature into everyone's individual Backgrounds. There's zero reason why as a DM you can't just bring the Acolyte's Feature forward into 5E24 and give it to your player as a house rule, so just do it.

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Absolutely what I'm going to do. Considering I was giving level one feats before, it's essentially maintaining the status quo. Those backgrounds were never campaign altering aspects, but I can think of several different memorable moments that exist only because of them in my past games. Fun, flavorful, character illuminating, low impact, losing them would make me sad just like the potential loss of Stonecunning for Dwarves.

tetrasodium said:

Is that pushing back against an unreasonable expectation I'm teasing?...but no.... the background is explicit Bob is gaining support about how unreasonable you are being for trying to change the backstory he already settled on. While you were butting heads with Bob over that Dave &Eddy however a very excited about how much they are going to enjoy the benefit of having house cannith and siivus enclaves all I er to better outfit their fighter and wizard with high grade dragon mark tool crafted gear.

Funny how simply forcing FR to change awkwardly for some other setting's lore immediately causes things change from how the GM is required to fold in any background fueled world building easy peasy because the background is explicit and players couldn't have unrealistic expectations counter to the setting

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I had to read this twice. You keep talking about "pushing back" and "folding"- that was a simple compromise to fit the background into an existing campaign with minimum fuss.

Where are you finding these players who are so unreasonable that they insist to use backgrounds exactly as printed and refuse to allow the DM to adjust them to make them work? And why would any DM put up with them as players?

Your hypothesis that somehow WotC reinforces bad players without giving the poor DM any recourse is ridiculous in the extreme. No DM is forced to run a game at gunpoint.

The books tell players they can reasonably expect their background features to come up. The DMG tells the DM to work with the players to see if it's possible to make that happen, and even tells DMs that they can create custom backgrounds for their game if existing ones aren't up to snuff.

Games do not require giant block letters saying "THE GM IS KING" in order to be played. Any group that cannot compromise shouldn't be playing any game together, D&D or otherwise.

Xamnam said:

Absolutely what I'm going to do. Considering I was giving level one feats before, it's essentially maintaining the status quo. Those backgrounds were never campaign altering aspects, but I can think of several different memorable moments that exist only because of them in my past games. Fun, flavorful, character illuminating, low impact, losing them would make me sad just like the potential loss of Stonecunning for Dwarves.

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That's how I do it. If your background doesn't get a feat, you can pick one that fits the background.

TwoSix said:

That's how I do it. If your background doesn't get a feat, you can pick one that fits the background.

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I've started doing that as well in my game. Copy the feats from the backgrounds that do have them and I added a couple. You can't take any feat, but if there's something not on my list we can discuss.