Blog: Background and Themes a closer look.

[grimslade]

Themes and Backgrounds

I like this. I like the chunky breakdown between 'Class only at my table' to 'backgrounds and themes but no subs' to 'mix and match what you like'. You can have a BECMI/OSRIC style player sit at a table with CharOp 3.x masters and new players playing the same game. It also seems to place character creation back to a logical grouping. It also lends itself to being a campaign specific style of Character Creation.

The proof is in the eating, if there is imbalance or sucker choices that Monte was a fan of in the creation of 3E, this will be so much wasted paper as folks separate the wheat from the chaff.

The Prestige Theme at 6th level points to a different break up of tiers from 4E. Maybe hearkening back to BECMI style of tier definition.

1-5 level beginner/basic/OSRIC tier, Single attacks, limited AoE, small healing lower magic item abilities

6-10 Prestige tier, new theme to add feats/ feat paths, multiple attacks, Save or Suck, AoE begins to grow, basic tier enemies become minion like, flight and teleport appear

11-15 Paragon tier, Name levels! Divergent paths Kingdom/legacy management vs. higher powered dungeon crawls

16-20 Planar tier, 20 silver a day tours of Sigil and City of Bronze

20+ Epic Tier, tell Orcus his mother was bit clingy last night and a terrible breakfast cook.

 

[Mattachine]

I don't think all the themes and backgrounds have to be mechanically balanced, especially not balanced with an eye to combat. Sure, they all should provide in-game benefits, but some can be better than others. Many players don't care, and some specifically want a sub-optimal theme/background.

All that is needed is a little transparency, like a statement that not all themes are created equal, or require some themes to get DM approval, etc.

 

[Janaxstrus]

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.

That is something I could see and would have no problem with at all. You take a focused theme, you get some minor benefits. As long as they are available to anyone (meeting the requirements), it would be a good solution to offset the custom vs preset background/theme, especially at low levels.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Well, themes and backgrounds have so far been a pretty mixed bag for me. I love the idea behind them and how it's an easy way to give the same class tons of flavor options.

What I don't like is how they can just be completely ignored. If a theme/background is just a few feats and class skills, I suspect seasoned players will just start handpicking them themselves rather quickly. Why don't we just allow players to pick class features since complete customization is what everyone seems to want? Classes can just be guidelines for newer players!

Sorry, that's overreacting! I mean, I haven't even seen them yet. I was just really excited when I heard about the idea of backgrounds/themes, and I hope they don't turn out to be redundant for experienced players.

That's kind of the point, though. If you want to just pick skills and feats, you can do that. If you don't want to bother picking, take a background and theme. If you don't want to deal with them at all, don't use backgrounds and themes.

The only problem is to make it so 'a la carte' characters are not massively overpowered compared to background/theme characters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Except that choosing feats is a pain in the neck, and so is dealing with them in play. I want a mechanically simpler option, not an option that pats me on the head and tells me not to worry about the mechanics.

If you want to pay attention to detail, you pick your own feats. If you don't pay attention to detail, you pick a theme and it tells you your feats for you, and you only have to worry about the stuff on your own character sheet. If you REALLY don't want to pay attention to detail, you don't use themes at all.

None of those three options work for you?

Basically, what we're seeing is kind of like this: You can play a classic 4E fighter, or you can play a classic 4E fighter where your powers are chosen for you in advance. I want the ability to play an Essentials knight.

So you want some themes that aren't collections of feats, but rather completely different things that are equivalent to collections of feats?

This seems semantic. An e-knight is, results-wise, not a lot different from a 4e fighter where your powers are chosen in advance. It's different in the details, of course, but I don't think they're at the point in the 5e dev cycle where they're nailing down details. They're thinking about results. If they have "themes = feat packages" in mind for results, then they can design within that rubric without necessarily adhering strictly to a bland one-for-one trade.

That is to say, as long as the vertical and horizontal power of a theme is roughly the same, it can be a list of 5 feats, or a single ability that is the equivalent of those 5 feats, or whatever you want. I don't think they're implying that themes can only be lists of pre-selected feats, just that this equivalence is the broad design goal.

 

[LostSoul]

This doesn't impress me but I'm not exactly sure why.

I want to advocate for my PC - that is, I want my PC to succeed in whatever goals I decide. That means when I'm creating my PC I want to optimize for those goals. However, I don't want to look over lists of feats and skills; that is, I don't want character creation to be that detailed. From what I can tell I will have to decide which is more important to me.

I'd also rather that characters "advanced" based on what happens to them in-game. I would like the game to be designed so that you wouldn't be able to plot out all the themes that you're going to pick before playing the game; which themes you can choose would be based on what has happened during play.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

If conceivably feats which belong in feat packages could allow one to do things like magically imbue arrows (Arcane Archer) or turn into a wolf (Werewolf), then there's a list of things I don't want to be feats. And that includes all the feats you needed to take in 3e to get anything else like Dodge, Combat Expertise, and Power Attack, or feats that just add a numeric bonus like Weapon Focus.

They were always the you had to take them feats, and you could never take the more interesting feats or else you'd be substandard. Like the mention on how Martial Practices was always turned down for Weapon Expertise of some variety.

 

[vagabundo]

It all reminds me of warhammer careers, which is a good thing.

It sounds good. It's one of the first, more complex, pieces that would bring me from homebrewed 4e.

It also sounds like they will not be making as many classes and will use themes and background to flesh out those more niche concepts. Which is great as the main classes get more attention.

Hard to comment more without some crunch.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Think about it that way:

fighter is a generic choice, which gives you basic combat abilities. Maybe some basic feats/features. A melee weapon, Some armor, some hp.

Themes give you at first level: one more armor, or a ranged weapon. At 2nd level you get some more at that line. One theme is called soldier. Which at 5th level has taken care of giving you all abilities you expect from a fighter. If you instead took the archer theme, you won´t get heavy armor. But you get some cool archery features.

And at level 6 you could just say: hey, i take the other one to be a well rounded fighter at level 10.

Also this makes multiclassing much more easy: if you multiclass, you don´t get all features of the other class immediately. As some of the burden is taken by the themes. A multiclass fighter/mage is still a soldier until level 5.
You could swap some feats to be less soldiery and more magically immediately, but you don´t get both.

Done right, this could be really really great!

 

[gideonpepys]

A feat that only appears once across any set of themes *is* a "unique" ability.

Not if it's also available on a list of individual feats. Which, by the sounds of it, it will be.