Blog: Background and Themes a closer look.

[Redbadge]

A couple of people have already mentioned how "pure" Themes and Backgrounds might pale to to customized sets of Feats and Skills when viewed at the same table, especially after a couple of years of splat. Obviously, it is impossible to speculate much more past this without more information about the system, but I don't see the problem in trying to envision any potential problems ahead of time.

Consider the following hypothetical example in which 5e feats closely resemble 4e/3e feats (obviously they may not, which renders this thought experiment less useful). Assume that I want to offer full customization to those of my players that really enjoy it (my brother-in-law), while also entertaining a player who has a bit less system mastery, wants to limit complexity in character building, but is all about the flavor (my little brother). Also assume that numerous sources of new themes and feats have come out since the 5e release, and that I allow all of them (obviously, I can ban a subset if I choose, but in this case I don't). We're playing in the Eberron setting.

My brother picks the Sage Theme at level 1. He gets the following feats:
Linguist (Three new languages)
Master Scholar (Roll twice on knowledge checks)
Ritualist (Casts rituals faster and cheaper)

My brother-in-law also decides to pick the Sage theme. However he decides to replace Ritualist and Linguist with 2 new feats:

Mark of Scribing (4 new languages, casts rituals faster and cheaper, +2 to Arcana checks)
Fire Lance (Gain Fire Lance at-will)

Well, when and if my brother finds out that my brother-in-law gave up basically nothing compared to him to gain +2 to Arcana and an at-will, he's going to be disappointed with his choice to pick the pure Theme (note these types of scenarios are already common in prior editions; I just think that themes might be a tool to combat this disparity if they are given a minor mechanical advantage specific to that theme).

I'm not saying that it will turn out this way, just that it is very possible. If themes don't have some minor mechanical advantage built in (in this case I might give my brother a free spellbook, which is normally 50 gold, plus maybe an extra ritual known at first level, so he can feel good about having taken a pure theme, rather than dissatisfied), then the feats will have to be very well balanced.

In other words, you can't have a Berserker Theme containing a feat giving +1 to charge attacks (or a Dual Wielder theme giving +1 to offhand attacks, etc.), while still having a feat in the game like Weapon Expertise, which gives +1 to all weapon attacks. And this is just one example; there are numerous other comparisons that can be made in prior editions.

 

[Janaxstrus]

There should be no bonus given to people who won't take the time to build their character. People who take the time to be invested in the system should be slightly rewarded for their due diligence.

 

[Tallifer]

This looks like huge bloat.

In the Fourth Edition we have far too many feats, but at least they are grouped by class, race, combat, et cetera.

In the Fifth Edition, I will have to wade through hundreds of fluffy Theme descriptions to find the right feats and skills.

Prepackaged characters always suck compared to customized. The designers always love to give sub-optimal choices to the pregenerated characters at the back of an adventure module.

Moreover it will be harder for the designers to balance certain feats and skills if they are buried in Themes. They will have to be careful not to let flavour govern mechanics, so that certain Themes become useless or others get the coolest stuff.

 

[Redbadge]

There should be no bonus given to people who won't take the time to build their character. People who take the time to be invested in the system should be slightly rewarded for their due diligence.

My problem is that I like themes, and I'm invested in the system. If players are rewarded for not using themes, I'm afraid that I won't get to use them.

The reason I'm OK with themes being given a unique something extra is that I recognize that they are already underpowered, and this something extra is compensating for that.

Occasionally, I might want to use themes (flavor, quickness to build, whatever), but giving up customization is a big deal. However, I'd be happy to try it out if, say, the pure Beastmaster Theme allowed my pet to start with 1 extra trick.

 

[BryonD]

Prepackaged characters always suck compared to customized. The designers always love to give sub-optimal choices to the pregenerated characters at the back of an adventure module.

Moreover it will be harder for the designers to balance certain feats and skills if they are buried in Themes. They will have to be careful not to let flavour govern mechanics, so that certain Themes become useless or others get the coolest stuff.

I suspect you have a very good point here.

If I'm reading it right (and it seems you see the same) then themes could just be simple examples of character builds. Which is fine by me since I greatly prefer having the vast number of options to choose from. But it isn't really a selling point if that is all they are.

Though it may also be that certain abilities are keyed directly to themes and it is just the theme plug ins feats that are interchangeable. And that could be good or bad. It is easy to imagine that becoming a way to limit options rather than build them. But sight unseen I'll withhold judgment there.

Frankly, my biggest concern is that if they focus too much energy into making certain everything has a simple alternative, then they won't have the design freedom to make a "best of the best" game. It may very well be a "good" game, but it needs to be better than that. It needs to be a LOT better than that.

We will see.

 

[The Shadow]

Reading between the lines a bit, it seems that while backgrounds and themes *primarily* package skills and feats, they occasionally go beyond that role.

The Awakened background grants minor telepathy, which is a little hard to imagine as a skill. Meanwhile, Werewolf and Revanent are mentioned as themes. I likewise do not think it likely that those are packages of feats, they almost certainly have to be all-or-nothing deals. If I'm right, then in some cases even experienced players will take backgrounds and themes.

If there are enough backgrounds and themes in the core books, I could see "published backgrounds and themes only" as a viable campaign ground rule.

I really like this article, it gives me much hope.

 

[KidSnide]

There should be no bonus given to people who won't take the time to build their character. People who take the time to be invested in the system should be slightly rewarded for their due diligence.

That's a reasonable view, but my campaign would be better served by a system where players don't need to "invest in the system" in order to play effective characters.

As a DM, I really want my PCs to be balanced against one another, even though some of my players know the system and others don't. In 4e, a painfully large amount of my DMing prep time went to helping the less experienced players choose powers and abilities. If I didn't, there would be major gaps in character effectiveness, which would have annoyed me and some of my players.

My preference would be a system where I can tell my players "choose whatever seems fun" and expect to get reasonably balanced characters. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I think that should be the goal. I like customization, but I would like it to be as divorced as possible from character effectiveness. Customization should be it's own reward.

-KS

 

[Redbadge]

One way to make themes worth looking at for the true "system enthusiast" might be the use of prerequisites. In other words, just choosing feats are subject to prerequisites, but themes are not.

For example (a pretty wild hypothetical, so just focus on the intent, not the specifics) using my Sage theme:

Linguist (Prerequisite: Intelligence 15)
Master Scholar (Prerequisite: Trained in Arcana, History, Dungeoneering, Nature, Religion)
Ritualist (Prerequisite: Ritual Caster)

However, my fighter with 14 intelligence, no training in Religion, and no ritual casting can still choose the Sage theme (and theoretically is now able to cast Rituals to boot).

Just brainstorming. Any thoughts?

 

[Sunseeker]

This looks like huge bloat.

In the Fourth Edition we have far too many feats, but at least they are grouped by class, race, combat, et cetera.

In the Fifth Edition, I will have to wade through hundreds of fluffy Theme descriptions to find the right feats and skills.

Prepackaged characters always suck compared to customized. The designers always love to give sub-optimal choices to the pregenerated characters at the back of an adventure module.

Moreover it will be harder for the designers to balance certain feats and skills if they are buried in Themes. They will have to be careful not to let flavour govern mechanics, so that certain Themes become useless or others get the coolest stuff.

The way it sounds to me is that a Theme is a way to simply take the work out of finding the appropriate feats. Their term "Feat Delivery System" makes it sound like by picking say, the Slayer theme, you'll get all your usual +1 to hit, +1 to dmg type feats, with some fluffy wrapping. It's basically like selecting a "build" in certain video games, the "build" tells you what you need in order to get a certain result, and it goes as far as to simply elect them for you ahead of time.

I assume pre-packaged characters only suck because there's some false choices under the expectation that you will end up customizing anyway. From the way that Wizards seems to be designing Themes, some of them will "suck" from a CharOp perspective, and some of them will be powerful strikers and hitters as thought they copied a build right off the CharOp board. It doesn't sound like they'll be including a lot of false-choice feats, it sounds like that's going to be the flavorful wrapping around the more mundane feats.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Just brainstorming. Any thoughts?

Another possibility is to have little extras in the theme, but not make them strictly unobtainable via the more custom route.

For example, take 4 feats with the "lore" keyword, get some "lore" rider ability on top of that. Doesn't matter if you get the feats from a single theme, custom picks, or some combination. It's just unlikely to happen unless you stick fairly close to the theme.

In effect, there is a second tier of feat-like abilities (maybe "prestige feats"? ) that are fairly difficult to get unless you commit some serious resources towards that theme's concept. If you don't mind swapping out one or two of the critical choices now, with the intent of picking them up later, you still qualify when you do finally pick up the missing ones. Take the theme unchanged, get the rider immediately.