D&D 5E Backgrounds and other personality aides continually through your levels?

[CapnZapp]

Hmm, the problem with backgrounds "leveling" in a similar way that a class does, is that that implies you continue in your background throughout your adventuring career. However, in many cases, your background is something that you have left behind in order to become an adventurer.

Let me just stop you right there and tell you I didn't want to continue "levelling" in the background I chose at level 1.

The whole point would be to return to the PHB section on backgrounds and make new choices over your career.

Not just look up new benefits from a choice you made all the way back at level 1.

So I'm all for making choices based on your current career; how you define yourself now.

Adding choices so everybody don't have to define themselves as "adventurers". Perhaps you're old school and want to define yourself as "guild leader" or "lord of a castle". Perhaps your adventures have enabled you to become "cult leader" or "High Priest of Dagon".

The idea would be to present (something like) levelled-up versions of the backgrounds in the PHB, but not make any assumptions on choosing the same one as you chose last time.

Or perhaps something completely different? After all, I'm asking you what other rpgs have come up with in this area

 

[CapnZapp]

I feel there is a disconnect here between the intent of the mechanic and the interpretation of the mechanic.
The background mechanic is meant to replicate roleplaying choices that occurred in the formative years before you took direct control of the character for RP. As an attempt to mimic organic character development.



The there are mechanics that cover learning proficiencies after character creation (not just burning feats, there are training guidelines). And factions to cover the social benefits angle.

That would leave quirks, which are basic guidelines for how a character should act. Such guidelines are naturally refined, discarded, or unofficially added (Acted out but not written down), as you play the character. There is no point to going back to the random generation tables after you start playing. If you feel the need to have them update their personality on the character sheet, just ask them to add another sentence to those boxes every time they level up.

Yeah... I am basically feeling a bit sad that great chapter doesn't get referenced once you've begun play.

I'm here because I want to know if there's good ideas to expand the personality section to allow players to return there at higher levels, to make the chapter more relevant and more "alive" to even high level chars...

 

[DEFCON 1]

7th Sea is another one where you get XP when your background is resolved, and you then pick another (e.g New rival, new lost lover, etc).

7th Sea was exactly the system I was going to mention when I saw the topic.

What's interesting about how 7th Sea does it is that every character at the start of the campaign can buy 3 points of backgrounds in any combination (three 1-pointers, a 1-pointer and a 2-pointer, a single 3 pointer) and the bigger the number, the more frequency, importance and difficulty that background will have on the character during play. A 1-point 'Rivalry' might be with an old school chum that you rarely see anymore. a 3-point 'Rivalry' might be with another member of The Musketeers (of which you are a member). Any time the background "comes up" in some form or fashion during a game session, you'll get an extra XP point equal to the level of the background. Then eventually when the background is "resolved" (IE the problem is fixed), you earn three times the level of the background for that session. Then, at any point after that you can purchase a new background that you find yourself in if you have the points available.

So if you were to resolve your 3-point 'Rivalry' background (you quit the Musketeers because your rival became the head of the group and you quit in a huff)... you then had 3 background points to now spend on other ones that might have come up over play. Perhaps you spend 2 points on the 'Hunted' background because you took one of the Musketeer's puzzle swords with you when you left and they are going to continually try and retrieve it, and then you save the 1-point remaining for some other background that might come up later.

And to top it off... for any player that really wanted to go crazy, there was an Advantage you could buy at character creation called 'Foul Weather Jack', which gave you a single 4-point background (the only one you were allowed to have) that basically was one of the most dominant features of your character because at 4 points it assured that the background involved one of the most important people or most difficult situations in all of Theah. So like your Foul Weather Jack is 'Hated Relative' because you are the brother of the Emperor of Montaigne (the most powerful and richest person in all of Theah). And because the Emperor's reach and resources are so long... you pretty much have to deal with being his hated brother all the time.

It's a really interesting and cool concept for an RPG and it really draws players into the 7th Sea world (in the several campaigns I've been a part of.) The only kind of a pain is on the GMs part though, as he has to somehow work in one to three background per PC into various game sessions every week. The more PCs there are, that's more backgrounds that need attribution during game sessions, and things can occasionally get a little out of hand if the GM isn't really good at weaving threads together.

 

[fba827]

While I'm not sure I personally would want such a thing hard coded in to advancement and instead leaving it for natural development opportunities through play, if you DID ant something hard coded in to advancement, maybe ...
At the start of each tier (aside from 1st since they get backgrounds), pcs get a title and benefit .. And the benefit should be rp oriented and same power level as the background benefits.(but not the proficiencies you get in backgrounds as that would be a lot of proficiencies over the course of PC life). And the title should reflect something the PC was focused on during the prior tier. So if he was spending apprentice tier trying to get info and contacts into a cult his title at the next tier could be infiltrator and he has a dual secret identity established in that cult (there is a background benefit like that)

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]: Sounds to me like what you're wanting is akin to 3e's prestige classes or 4e's paragon paths/epic destinies.

 

[bedir than]

To me the "leveling" of background would be combined in a few things;

1 - actual gameplay showing your character's personality
2 - use of downtime to do more than just make magic items and/or power up
3 - choice of skills/ASI/features/feats based on how the character behaves and "build"

 

[Nine Hands]

For a convention game, when I made the characters, I gave them a background at each Tier of play. The normal one at 1st level. One at 5th, one at 11th, and eventually one at 17th. I thought it was a nice way of giving them some growth after character creation. I just gave them the background's ability instead of all of the additional stuff but it might be neat to give them the tool and languages as well and let them swap around some skills if they wanted to.

 

[bedir than]

That makes sense for characters that aren't played up to a specific tier.