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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dumapic" data-source="post: 9444683" data-attributes="member: 7047041">I've been looking at the changes to the 2024 backgrounds, and I'm probably just going to try them as-is. But my initial impression is that they're a little too restrictive. I'm fine with the idea of restriction leading to creativity. But not necessarily when creativity leads to having skills and feats that you'll never actually use.For context, I'm coming at this from the standpoint of a story-leaning GM. I'm not overly interested in optimized characters, but also feel that players shouldn't be unduly punished for making story-positive choices.My main concern is the restriction of a single origin feat per background. I suspect this will lead to players choosing the origin feat they want first, then the background that has that feat, where in 2014 D&D, they tended to lean in more on backgrounds that just made sense story-wise. For example, in an Eberron game I ran, we had a pirate sorcerer. She'd likely be a sailor in this version, which would lead to her getting the tavern brawler origin feat. I'm fairly certain that our sorcerer didn't make a single melee attack all campaign, so that would have been wasted. Or she could have chosen a better origin feat for her character, which would have pushed her story in a different direction. Not necessarily bad, but I'm not a fan of having to modify your character's origin story to avoid "benefits" that don't actually benefit you.My initial thought is to give players a choice of two origin feats per background. I did a quick pass to see what I could come up with, and here are the first few:Acolyte: Magic Initiate (cleric) or HealerArtisan: Crafter or SkilledCharlatan: Skilled or Magic Initiate (wizard)Criminal: Alert or LuckyNow having said this, without thinking of my example above, I assigned a secondary origin feat option of musician to the sailor background. I don't know how much that would have helped my pirate sorcerer player. So it's not perfect, but it adds some flexibility.Any thoughts?</blockquote>

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