D&D (2024) Bonus languages in One D&D backgrounds goes contrary to their other goals

[Charlaquin]

I'm thinking more of situations - and I've done this many times - where I don't want to know much about the character's background up front (e.g. random language generation), and just let it evolve organically through play and-or whatever leaps to mind later, possibly much later.

With the 1dnd method I have to almost completely nail the background down ahead of time in order to unlock various very important things, not least of which are my ASIs.

I don’t see how. Again, you can just grab one of the sample backgrounds.

 

[Cadence]

I don’t see how. Again, you can just grab one of the sample backgrounds.

Except that the sample backgrounds all come with a very particular story. So if there's lots of just grabbing and no thinking we end up with lots of scholars having learned from boring Draconic books, and lots of gladiators having bunked with a dragonborn, and orc, and a dwarf, and....

Would it be better to have the sample backgrounds have some randomly rolled things in them?

 

[Charlaquin]

I agree with the OP there that backgrounds universally giving bonus languages is weird, even if those backgrounds are only for demonstrative purposes. In 5E, some backgrounds give no languages and only tool proficiencies, because narratively it doesn't make sense for them to give languages. You can explain a Sage or a Noble learning extra languages as part of their training, but why should a Sailor learn an extra language while living in the streets? Why does being a labourer grant me Dwarvish or any other language automatically? Even if I grow up in a monocultural town, why does my background make me bilingual automatically?

I think they chose this path because they decided to standardise a few things in Backgrounds even if narratively it doesn't make sense (both a Noble and an Urchin start with 50 gp worth of things, every background grants one Language and one Tool, every instrument costs 20 gp and every tool costs 5 gp etc.). I'll already mention I don't like this general trend in my feedback to the playtest, but since this is the general trend, I doubt my opinion will change much.

Standardizing the benefits backgrounds grant is necessary for custom background to be the default. You need a common set of rules for what a background gives you in order to make your own. This is a big part of why in the 2014 rules a lot of people don’t even realize customizing backgrounds is an option. The 2014 Noble background just straight-up gives you more stuff than the 2014 Urchin background does, so picking the noble background but changing it to give you the same proficiencies as an Urchin grants is technically allowed by the 2014 rules, but it feels like cheating because it makes you functionally an Urchin with more stuff. That’s not a problem with these playtest rules because the background benefits have been standardized.

 

[Charlaquin]

Except that the sample backgrounds all come with a very particular story. So if there's lots of just grabbing and no thinking we end up with lots of scholars having learned from boring Draconic books, and lots of gladiators having bunked with a dragonborn, and orc, and a dwarf, and....

Would it be better to have the sample backgrounds have some randomly rolled things in them?

You don’t have to use the backstory provided with a sample background…

 

[Ondath]

Standardizing the benefits backgrounds grant is necessary for custom background to be the default. You need a common set of rules for what a background gives you in order to make your own. This is a big part of why in the 2014 rules a lot of people don’t even realize customizing backgrounds is an option. The 2014 Noble background just straight-up gives you more stuff than the 2014 Urchin background does, so picking the noble background but changing it to give you the same proficiencies as an Urchin grants is technically allowed by the 2014 rules, but it feels like cheating because it makes you functionally an Urchin with more stuff. That’s not a problem with these playtest rules because the background benefits have been standardized.

I'm not saying WotC did this by mistake, but it shows a thematic shift from 5E that doesn't fit my tastes. 5E was much more simulationist in how it judged equipment (things were priced according to how much they probably should cost in a faux-fantasy economy, and backgrounds and classes received equipment packs according to what made sense for their economic status and tools of the trade). Now, backgrounds are clearly a gamist construct that doesn't concern itself with creating a sense of verisimilitude: It's more important for the rules to give a fair amount of resources to everyone.

But since the resources in question are trivial (who cares if the Urchin starts with 2 silver pieces and the Noble starts with 10 gp? They'll both get hundreds of gp upon completing their first quest!), I don't think this standardisation was needed. Hell, you could still have custom backgrounds be the default but still keep simulationist prices: Just tell the players that they can choose up to 50 gp worth of starting equipment, but they're advised to choose 1 gp total for a lower-class character, 10 gp for a middle-class character and 50 gp for an upper-class one.

Hell, when it comes to tools and languages, 5E already was making things equal without making everyone bilingual: Backgrounds that gave no languages gave two tool proficiences and backgrounds that gave no tools gave two languages. The game already assumed that tools and languages were interchangeable. Why do we need to force everyone to get exactly one language and one tool now?

 

[Cadence]

You don’t have to use the backstory provided with a sample background…

Does that make it bad to give the background a particular name (liked we discussed above) then, if the particular name was chosen to go with the sample story and doesn't need to apply?

Why is it bad to put in a randomizer for things that don't go with almost all scholars, or soldiers or whatnot? If Draconic is only for a small subset of scholars who have a story akin to this one, why not 1=Draconic, 2=Elvish,....etc... Does that make it that hard to make the new character?

---

if the goal of the backgrounds is to make it easy to make characters, do they only need one sample background for each class?

 

[Charlaquin]

I'm not saying WotC did this by mistake, but it shows a thematic shift from 5E that doesn't fit my tastes. 5E was much more simulationist in how it judged equipment (things were priced according to how much they probably should cost in a faux-fantasy economy, and backgrounds and classes received equipment packs according to what made sense for their economic status and tools of the trade).

Right, but the result was that nobody customized backgrounds because it felt like cheating.

Now, backgrounds are clearly a gamist construct that doesn't concern itself with creating a sense of verisimilitude: It's more important for the rules to give a fair amount of resources to everyone.

I mean, they always were a gamist construct. I guess if you don’t like that fact being transparent that’s unfortunate for you. Personally, I think transparency of design is always a good thing.

But since the resources in question are trivial (who cares if the Urchin starts with 2 silver pieces and the Noble starts with 10 gp? They'll both get hundreds of gp upon completing their first quest!), I don't think this standardisation was needed.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter that the difference between starting with 2sp and starting with 10 gp is negligible by the time you finish your first quest. It still makes it feel like cheating to take the proficiencies that come with the 2 sp but still get the 10 gp; enough so that DMs are gonna ban customizing backgrounds, and players aren’t even gonna realize they had the option in the first place.

Hell, you could still have custom backgrounds be the default but still keep simulationist prices: Just tell the players that they can choose up to 50 gp worth of starting equipment, but they're advised to choose 1 gp total for a lower-class character, 10 gp for a middle-class character and 50 gp for an upper-class one.

You could do that. I don’t think very many players would ever go for less than the full 50, but it wouldn’t hurt to mention that you can start with less than the full 50 if you want to.

Hell, when it comes to tools and languages, 5E already was making things equal without making everyone bilingual: Backgrounds that gave no languages gave two tool proficiences and languages that gave no tools gave two languages. The game already assumed that tools and languages were interchangeable. Why do we need to force everyone to get exactly one language and one tool now?

True, and I would not at all be opposed to backgrounds granting two total between languages and tools, as they do in the 2014 rules. I’ll probably suggest that in the survey.

 

[Charlaquin]

Does that make it bad to give the background a particular name (liked we discussed above) then, if the particular name was chosen to go with the sample story and doesn't need to apply?

Giving the sample backgrounds names makes it easier for the player who just wants to pick a sample background and go to decide which one they want. They just choose based on which name sounds closest to what they envision for their character. This just happened a week ago, I was helping a friend make a character for an upcoming Witchlight game we’re both going to play in. She just had me read off the names of the backgrounds in the PHB, said, “Entertainer sounds close enough,” and then had me tell her what stuff she got from it.

Why is it bad to put in a randomizer for things that don't go with almost all scholars, or soldiers or whatnot? If Draconic is only for a small subset of scholars who have a story akin to this one, why not 1=Draconic, 2=Elvish,....etc... Does that make it that hard to make the new character?

You could put in some tables for rolling a random background. That might appeal to some more old-school players. I don’t think it would appeal to most new players these days. Going back to my example of the friend I just helped make a character, she insisted on making her own character; she thought using a pre-generated one would suck the fun out of it, because it wouldn’t feel like “hers,” and I have no doubt a random one wouldn’t have either. But, she didn’t really do what I would normally think of as “making a character.” She just picked things she thought sounded cool - fairy, sorcerer, entertainer - and had me tell her what to write down on the sheet. That’s how casual players are.

---

if the goal of the backgrounds is to make it easy to make characters, do they only need one sample background for each class?

Nah, that wouldn’t work for the same reason it doesn’t work to randomly generate a character. Casual players want to feel like they made a decision. They just don’t care about the mechanics. They want to pick race, class, and background because it feels like they’re deciding who the character is. They don’t want to choose proficiencies and the like because they barely understand what that even means, and don’t really care.

 

[Haplo781]

Consolidating Sylvan and Elvish does nothing to address that problem, it just makes there be fewer languages. You just shift the problem from “all elves speak the same language” to “all fey speak the same language.” The solution is not to remove languages but to deracialize them. Chande the the language from Elvish to Espruar (that’s the FR name for it, I didn’t make it up) and have it be spoken regionally instead of tying it to a race.

Sylvan is a regional language. That region is "the Feywild and deep forests."

I'm not really seeing the big distinction here.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sylvan is a regional language. That region is "the Feywild and deep forests."

I'm not really seeing the big distinction here.

Right, I’m saying make Elvish a regional language too (and change the name because elf is a race, not a region).