Urban Bounty Hunter from SCAG Courtesy of Extra Life

[MENTION=6748898]ad_hoc[/MENTION]: How do you keep finding these things? I've been looking and looking and refreshing and refreshing. Still nothing!

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

double post, sorry

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Sure. But the Urban Bounty Hunter isn't giving us a new example. It's just a tweaked version of the Criminal's feature.

Okay, first I have to ask how demonstrating how someone could tweak an existing background isn't a new example, because that sounds ridiculous.

Second, I have to point out that the Criminal feature is all about passing messages to other criminals (with no reason listed, but perhaps hiring or talking shop are assumed) and the Urban Bounty Hunter feature is all about getting information on local people and places. You might be able to use the two features to some similar ends, but they are very different means, and can be used for some things that the other isn't likely to be useful for.

 

[pukunui]

Yeah, sure, it's an example of how you can repurpose an existing feature. It's not a brand new example, though, which is all I meant.

 

[Warbringer]

Granted, not everyone wants to create new backgrounds, but it's far harder to create subclasses, and I'd rather the pages spent there.

Rules are pretty explicit in mechanic wise how to create a new backround: fluff wise, well isn't that why we play this silly game?

 

[Li Shenron]

Well this preview is really really bad. It tells me that very likely all the section about backgrounds (which already I was thinking we didn't need so many new ones) is basically worth 1 feature per page and nothing else.

This sample background (and presumably all others) doesn't come with new traits/ideals/bonds/flaws, which are not strictly 'crunch' but at least would be interesting.

It doesn't even have a fixed set of proficiencies, but lets you choose them from a pool (with some options not even making sense... a bounty hunter with gaming sets and musical instruments?). There is already an option for picking your proficiencies freely or swapping the background profs, so what's the point of writing a bundle of presets that aren't set, and don't even make sense with the concept?

The new background features will undoubtedly be useful, the more the better! But they could have fit 12 of them in 1 single page.

Now this makes me skeptic about the rest of the book really... I need to know how many subclasses they really designed because if the 1 page per background is wasted like this, then there's a good chance that the classes section is just as wasteful and most space if filled with fluff about "how to fit this class and its subclasses into FR".

 

[CapnZapp]

As a fellow cruncher, I could have told you all the pages on Backgrounds were wasted as soon as the TOC hit.

You're welcome.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Unlike some people who collect bounties, though, you aren’t a savage...

Wow. Who wrote this?

 

[gyor]

If you read the background the musical instrument and gaming set make sense, you work by inflitrating a particular subset of society, things like criminals or the noblility (although the line between the two is blurry at best), so for example if your hanging out searching for criminals among the nobles, knowing how to play an instrument could be useful as that would be a common persuit, if your inflitrating brothels to hunt down cultists of Glaysa, well again an instrument would be impressive skill. If you hunt for mutinious crews, hanging out with sailors who like to gamble would mean being profient in a gaming set, say dice or cards makes sense.

While I personally would have prefered more subclasses or races, I actually liked this background way more then I expected, its flexible, yet inspiring, and didn't have the bonds, flaws, extra which I never liked to begin with. I could see taking Urban Bounty Hunter.

 

[gyor]

Wow. Who wrote this?

Yeah that line was unfortunate.

 

[Lucas Yew]

Wow, the skill choices... Just... wow...