Backgrounds

Lord Sessadore said:

Well, if we kept the PHB2 backgrounds as-is and revamped the L4W region bonuses to the same format, then we have the best of both worlds, right Oni? At least, that's what I'm sort of going for with #3.

I suppose that, whatever we do, we could also say that characters with the "old region bonuses" could just keep them if they want, or switch to the new ones (assuming we do something like #3). It will be a small enough difference that it's negligible; I'm not inclined to worry about it.

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Letting the old backgrounds stand is definitely a good idea, just so that you don't have a ton of characters that need to have minor changes made to them.

I guess there should be some option for people to change from the old backgrounds to the new just to prevent anyone from feeling shorted. But for me, from a roleplaying perspective your background lies in the past and is pretty much unmutable, i.e. I won't change mine unless I'm required to.

The way I read #3 was that the backgrounds would be built using the new rules, but set per by region which is what I disagree with. If it's just suggested backgrounds and not set it stone, by region I think that's great though and conveys flavor without being a straitjacket.

I feel like this may be one of those things that I'm going to spend too much time on.

Ok, two other ideas.

4. People can just choose whatever they want. Old characters leveling up can change their background to the PHB2 ones, just like they can currently change their background to a different L4W one. This is probably what I should have put in my first post for #1.

5. We take the conditional bonuses of the current backgrounds and make them really minor but simplified and equalized (probably a +1 conditional skill bonus). Then you get both a PHB2 background and a L4W mini-background. So, for example, a soldier from the Kingdom of Jade might have +2 to endurance (PHB2) and a +1 to social Bluff against foreigners (L4W).

"Quick" thoughts as to what the region bonuses would be:
Daunton: +1 to knowledge checks while in library.
Bacarte: +1 to Streetwise in Bacarte.
Valley of Bone: +1 to undead monster knowledge checks.
Kingdom of Jade: +1 social Bluff against foreigners.
Mykonos Sanctuary: +1 Endurance to go without food or water.
Imperium: +1 Diplomacy when addressing a crowd.
Isle of the Laughing Gallows: +1 Athletics while on a ship.
Ea: +1 to psychic monster knowledge checks. "Psychic" isn't a monster keyword, so this would apply to monsters whose attacks have the psychic keyword.
Feywild: +1 Perception while in Feywild.

Yeah, some of these are still better than others. Well, they're just examples.