D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook Reveal: Feats/Backgrounds/Species

[Shardstone]

Sure - but that's assuming no repeats and an even distribution, but more importantly, I'm talking about the Skills and Feat.

A bunch of Feats aren't "general purpose" - i.e. they're either bad or only suitable for some characters. Some may even be literally useless - "lightly armoured" is useless to what, 9 out of 12 classes? 10 out of 12? If a Background has that, few will want it. If it has certain stats associated with it, something very close to 100% of PCs will not want it.

Then you have Skills - if they Skills don't line up really well with the Feats and/or aren't general "adventuring skills" (and really, some aren't), people are not going to want that Background.

But I guarantee certain classes will have a Background which has their primary stat, CON and/or DEX (or both!), two skills which work well for that class, and a Feat that works well for that class, and like 70-80% of people playing that class will thus pick that background. And it may be a hilariously inappropriate Background. We can already see Acolyte is a bad pick for virtually all Clerics and Druids, which is pretty funny.


And far, far worse than Tasha's, which most people have been using for 5 years. So that's a nonsense comparison.

Anyway, I'm going to be laughing when the real choices are here, and one of you guys defending them and claiming your players are god's perfect himbos non-min-maxers is like "Omg why does every Cleric always pick Guide and never Acolyte?! Why are players so dumb?!".

I'm ok with optimal options existing if it doesn't completely invalidate more casual options. So far, 5E and 2024 design does not seem to invalidate casual builds. Thus, this change is very low stakes in the power budget and doesn't really matter. Already can you roll up to the table with your gnome barbarian who took magic initiate for RP alongside the hyper-optimized variant human sorlock. In fact, I think the balance in 2024 is tighter than in 2014 due to the increased number of options and guaranteed feat at level 1.

Furthermore, having worked as a game designer now for a few years with 5E, the system really isn't as fragile as the internet tries to gaslight everyone into thinking. The power differences aren't big enough except in extreme situations, and even then it is barely noticeable. Thus, these complaints feel like nitpicking, which is fine, but we shouldn't act like these are serious flaws when they aren't.

 

[Shardstone]

I think my biggest problem with "backgrounds" is that a lot of them don't really make sense to me. I guess in my head I usually picture the characters starting out as young adults.

So what does it mean to have "knight" or "soldier" as your background? Who should be better at fighting, a background of soldier who has started adventuring as a wizard or a background of sage who has started adventuring as a fighter? Should 't someone with background of soldier or knight and class of fighter be noticeably better than either of those at fightery things? If not, does that mean the sage background person was some sort of prodigy? Why can't the soldiery person also be a prodigy?

How are soldier, hero of the people, and urchin vaguely classifiable using the same system?

Or I guess I could just stop worrying about it.

I disagree with a lot of these assumptions, because they are assumptions, not objective truths. The idea of a soldier or sage being a savant with fighting or very learned in it and beating a knight is not that farfetched. The idea of a noble knight not actually being that skilled and being knighted only because of their lineage is also not that farfetched. We should be encouraging creativity with backgrounds via thinking about new ways to apply these ideas instead of saying these ideas fail to work anything outside of narrow definitions.

 

[TwoSix]

For weapon attacks, that add the stat to damage, yes. It's bigger than 5%.

To be clear, for any attack that does any positive amount of damage, unless the target difficulty range requires a 1- or a 20+ on the d20, the ratio of damage will always be greater than 5% for an additional +1 to the to-hit roll.

 

[Stalker0]

So lets get away from all the math for a second, because that's not really relevant here. I think we can all agree there are characters that will want to optimize every single bit of their stats, and others that won't. That is not the debate.

Ultimately....I don't understand what we gain from this change compared to the version in Tasha's. Why have the restriction at all? They are going to have a section in the book about getting your ability scores (probably the point buy and rolling sections and all that good stuff. It would have been trivial to put at the end (and now add +2 to any one stat you want, and +1 to a different stat. Alternatively, you can add +1 to 3 different stats). Done....super simple, super clean.

The problem I see is that for those players who do really care about their ability scores, that is going to color every choice they make. There are always going to be those who go "man I really wanted to play background X but I just can't because it doesn't give me a str boost and I just really need strength for my fighter". We all know those players exist, in fact I think many players are like that.

So why have them fret over it? Let them take the backgrounds that seem fun based on their RP desire, give them floating flexible stats. The people that don't care about stats wouldn't care either way, and the ones that do now can enjoy a flavorful choice without feeling "compelled" to a choice. It seems a complete win/win to me, I honestly cannot understand the advantage in going the way they did.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm ok with optimal options existing if it doesn't completely invalidate more casual options. So far, 5E and 2024 design does not seem to invalidate casual builds. Thus, this change is very low stakes in the power budget and doesn't really matter. Already can you roll up to the table with your gnome barbarian who took magic initiate for RP alongside the hyper-optimized variant human sorlock. In fact, I think the balance in 2024 is tighter than in 2014 due to the increased number of options and guaranteed feat at level 1.

Furthermore, having worked as a game designer now for a few years with 5E, the system really isn't as fragile as the internet tries to gaslight everyone into thinking. The power differences aren't big enough except in extreme situations, and even then it is barely noticeable. Thus, these complaints feel like nitpicking, which is fine, but we shouldn't act like these are serious flaws when they aren't.

I’m perfectly aware that balance doesn’t matter, but I’m still not going to start with a 15 when I could have a 16.

 

[TwoSix]

So why have them fret over it? Let them take the backgrounds that seem fun based on their RP desire, give them floating flexible stats. The people that don't care about stats wouldn't care either way, and the ones that do now can enjoy a flavorful choice without feeling "compelled" to a choice. It seems a complete win/win to me, I honestly cannot understand the advantage in going the way they did.

Exactly. If they had left it free-floating, no one would have been saying “Boo, they should have added it to backgrounds to add more verisimilitude!”

Backgrounds already got feats attached to them. They didn’t need more “glow up”.

 

[Cadence]

I disagree with a lot of these assumptions, because they are assumptions, not objective truths. The idea of a soldier or sage being a savant with fighting or very learned in it and beating a knight is not that farfetched. The idea of a noble knight not actually being that skilled and being knighted only because of their lineage is also not that farfetched. We should be encouraging creativity with backgrounds via thinking about new ways to apply these ideas instead of saying these ideas fail to work anything outside of narrow definitions.

I can see anyone with a PC aura beating someone who doesn't have it!

My only quibble would be if someone creating a character with that PC aura had no meaningful way to really go all in with that background beyond someone else with the PC aura who chose something unrelated to their class. (Note use of quibble and not horrified objection to ).

 

[Scott Christian]

Oh wow. Okay you're saying all the bioessentialism arguments were made in bad faith? Okay I see. I don't agree at all, and I think that is itself pretty inflammatory. Class essentialism is the same general thing, just less offensive to Americans. If you don't want to see that fine but you haven't made a rational argument here, you're just accused people who disagree with you of making bad faith arguments without any evidence or real rationale.

It's not 5% either, because a lot more of your rolls use that +1 - it's not just to hit, but it'll be to damage as well in most cases.

I never said all bioessentialism arguments were made in bad faith. Second, I said essentialism. People attach themselves to this education philosophy and contort it to a fantasy game. They do this to highlight the negative. They do this as opposed to saying:

It's not admitting anything, because it's the correct argument.

A 1st level character made with point buy in 5e should always be able to have a 16 in their primary stat, regardless of their choice of race or background. Simple and straightforward.

Simple and straightforward. This is the argument. Should the PHB allow characters to start with a 15 instead of a 16 because of the player's choices during character creation?

It has nothing to do with classism, essentialism, etc. It only revolves around those things when someone feels they can't state that their psyche needs to have a 16 at level one.

The argument made against this has been stated a million times. Not everyone needs a 16 (clear and evident from the takes on these forums), and many believe there are tradeoffs during character creation that are worthwhile. On the other hand, many believe the opposite: Everyone needs a 16 (clear and evident from the takes on these forums), and many believe that tradeoffs shouldn't exist.

(And for the record, we're all against the language used by the 2014 PHB regarding orcs. That, again, is not what this is about. But, I will put money that eventually someone breaks down one of these backgrounds and uses to highlight something awful and negative in order to justify a change in the background's feat or ability bonuses.)

 

[Epic Meepo]

But, I will put money that eventually someone breaks down one of these backgrounds and uses to highlight something awful and negative in order to justify a change in the background's feat or ability bonuses.

Too late. Upthread, I've already broken down one of these backgrounds and used it to highlight something awful and negative to justify changing the way ability bonuses are assigned...

And frankly, I don't regret saying it. I find it absolutely absurd that D&D continues to use mechanics which associate only certain, specific character origins with high Intelligence. As if absorbing, processing, and recalling knowledge is somehow unique to one particular lifestyle.

Even if a game mechanic which ties ability scores to specific backgrounds didn't have any potentially problematic implications at all, it would still interfere with character creation. It would, for example, make it extremely hard to ever implement the classic "diamond in the rough" trope, where a character from an unlikely background just happens to be extremely good at something they have no right being good at when suddenly given the chance, just because they're awesome like that.

 

[ECMO3]

Boring. Contextualizing those mechanics is as important as the mechanics themselves to a lot of players.

Yeah but flavor is free. Your ability to contextualize is unlimited if the basic machanics are there.

The way it is going to be done is very restrictive. For example under these rules my Acolyte Fighter must take bonuses in Wisdom, Charisma or Intelligence, so that character is going to be at a disadvantage.

Meanwhile if it was the mechanics above I could contextualize my acolyte background by choosing a fighting type church or maybe you were the enforcer/bad boy of the acolytes.