D&D 5E Do you use/allow custom backgrounds?

[CubicsRube]

As a player, it wouldn't occur to me to ask the DM for permission to customize my background. It's a core rule.

My faith in you all has boomed!

It is a core rule, but i think its mentioned so briefly its easy to overlook. I would have loved a section on customising background features as well.

Doss anyone have good examples of what they or other players have made?

 

[Blue]

Absolutely. I allow it, and also am open for players to come to me with alternate background special abilities.

 

[mgshamster]

My faith in you all has boomed!

It is a core rule, but i think its mentioned so briefly its easy to overlook. I would have loved a section on customising background features as well.

Doss anyone have good examples of what they or other players have made?

Absolutely!

I'm fact, I wrote an entire guide on designing background features, found here:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t8u4?Bookrats-Advice-on-Designing-Background

 

[BookBarbarian]

Custom backgrounds are great.

In fact so many of the backgrounds in SCAG are just variations of PHB ones. I actually liked that a lot. Taking the soldier and saying some Soldiers will be Knights of the Order, and others Mercenary Veterans and showing how they might have a different feature than the regular soldier was great. Likewise taking the Acolyte and asking "what if this person had faith in a group of people rather than a deity?" resulted in the Faction Agent. I'll after seeing those I almost always use a SCAG bcakground, or tweak a PHB one to be something a little more specific.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Well it's a default rule that is completely mechanically balanced and allows customization of character concept with no effort from the DM (unless the player requests a custom feature). So why wouldn't I allow it?

 

[CubicsRube]

Well it's a default rule that is completely mechanically balanced and allows customization of character concept with no effort from the DM (unless the player requests a custom feature). So why wouldn't I allow it?

I think people may be confused by my choice of words in the subject.

I'm not suggesting people disallow it. In the years I've been playing 5e I've never seen anyone customise a background. Many people don't even seem to realise that it's an option.

So what I'm really asking is do you use or know people that use custom backgrounds? They seem to be under utilised in my personal experience.

 

[CubicsRube]

Absolutely!

I'm fact, I wrote an entire guide on designing background features, found here:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t8u4?Bookrats-Advice-on-Designing-Background

Thanks! I'll take a look

 

[Staccat0]

I use a lot of custom backgrounds.

In my current campaign players rolled on tables I created to seed the world with weird places/stories they had heard about. These things created the backgrounds for the world. You chose one that had "touched your life" in some way and that imparted skills informed by the initial die roll associated with that one.

Example: Players might roll up "A landmark, forgotten by many where animals can speak" which might provide 2 of the following skills: Survival, History and Animal Handling. They then would write like a 3 or 4 sentence or vague description of that place.

If a player chose that background they would then just explain how it touched their lives. (ex: My mom used to read me stories about it as a kid and I always wanted to see it)

In a campaign I'm about to start soon I am doing a similar thing with a mega-dungeon that appeared when a sinkhole came opened up in the middle of the city. The night that it happened everyone in the city had a nightmare. Each character's background will probably be which of the things in the mega-dungeon their character seeks.

I think backgrounds are basically the quickest shortcut to world-building and buy in.

 

[redrick]

In our home games, pretty much every character I make has a custom background. Sometimes it will just be a modified existing background — like switching the agrarian Folk Hero to have more of a fishing/trapping river people feel. Other times I'll just create a background from scratch to match a character concept, like my Parent background. (I think the skills for that were Medicine and Persuasion, though limiting parenting to just two skills is absurd.) Sometimes I'm lazy about the exact detail of the class feature. I just encourage the DM to allow me to apply my experience of parenting when it feels appropriate.

As a DM — I don't actually know that anybody has ever used custom backgrounds with me or not. I don't check character sheets in our home game unless something seems way crazy.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think people may be confused by my choice of words in the subject.

I'm not suggesting people disallow it. In the years I've been playing 5e I've never seen anyone customise a background. Many people don't even seem to realise that it's an option.

So what I'm really asking is do you use or know people that use custom backgrounds? They seem to be under utilised in my personal experience.

I haven’t seen players take advantage of the ability to choose custom backgrounds either. I see a few reasons for this:

1. Despite being explicitly mentioned as an option in the core rules, a lot of players have a lot of anxiety about picking options that the DM might disallow. Nobody wants to fill out a character sheet, only to be told they’ve chosen an option the DM has banned, so some players hedge their bets, only taking the most vanilla, “by-the-book” options available unless specifically told by the DM that they can do otherwise.

2. Some players like the additional restrictions. When you have unlimited options it can be hard to decide on anything, so if there’s a package of “recommended” skills, tools, languages, etc. many players are happy to pick one of those and call it a day.

3. Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws. I have never once met a player who wanted to come up with their own set of these traits. Nor a player who wanted to read through all of these features from every background to decide which of the examples they like best. Usually, they would rather pick a background based on its name, then either roll for those traits, or read the list from the background they’ve chosen and pick their favorites from those.

4. Starting equipment packages. Most players I’ve played with (though admittedly not all) prefer to take the starting equipment from their Class and Background than take the starting gold and buy their equipment. Now, personally, I tell players if they want to take a custom background, they can take the starting equipment package for what ever background their Background Feature is associated with. But, similar to above, not a lot of players want to read through all of the Background Features and starting equipment packages to see which one they like best. They’d rather just take the background with the name they like and accept whatever it comes with.

Ultimately, most players I’ve played with will take convenience over customizability every time. I see a lot more standard humans than variant humans for a similar reason. No one wants to risk being told “I don’t allow variant humans” (even though I do), and +1 to all ability scores is much more convenient than choosing a skill and a feat.