Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 9042062" data-attributes="member: 23484">In my opinion, the biggest benefit of backgrounds in 5e was that it gave a perfect answer to this question.Clerics were not priests; characters with the Acolyte background were.Acolyte gave the you the Shelter of the Faithful feature, which included the line "you can perform the religious ceremonies of your deity". Anyone with that feature was, if they wanted, a priest (see note 1).For me, that was perfect: I could make a cleric that wasn't a priest, and a rogue who was, both of which I did. The Background gave something that wouldn't impact play but could be beautiful for shaping story. Honestly, I think it's the best addition to the game that 5e brought.And then, they gave it away, at least for this one case. Because in Xanathar's they introduced the Ceremony spell. This implied that if you wanted to be married, or someone to perform a funeral, it required a level-1 spell. Not only was the spell silly (newlyweds get +2 AC?) but it undermined what the background feature guaranteed.And the 2024 PHB will not have background features at all. I'm sorry to lose them: I thought they were great but they never captured the community, so far as I can see.(note 1) You could still make a custom background of "heretic" for example and have that feature but Deception instead of Insight, and could of course choose that your character had knoweldge but not dispensation, or whatever. It's the feature not the specific background itself that's relevant.</blockquote>

Verification