The only rule text is the benefit itself, nothing prevents you from changing fluff. If the backgrounds are available to you, the only rules requirement to select any is to select that background in lieu of another background.
So what we're really looking at here is a list of freebie bonuses and nothing more? The entire article is about rewarding fluff with mechanical benefits: the two are intricately tied here in a way that they aren't elsewhere in the game, and that's pretty much the entire problem.
The cleric of any other deity is proscribed from taking Sehanine's Reversal if he isn't a cleric of Sehanine. Backgrounds aren't proscribed from any character. There is only one rule a a background, the mechanical benefit. Everything else is fluff, and fluff can be changed.
Sorry, I meant prescribed.
Feats aren't all well balanced, by the same standard to which you are holding backgrounds to each other. You state this later in your post saying that some feats are so bad that people don't take them.
And they don't feel like they should, or that they need to. This article means that someone who describes their character as a former blacksmith turned adventurer is encouraged to choose the incredibly weak background.
Well, since you get that benefit from Gritty Sergeant, and a Rogue or Cleric could just as well have previously served in the military as a fighter, even with the default fluff, that doesn't go against type. Maybe the issue isn't that they go against type as much as some people's view of an appropriate "type" being more much more limited than others.
A character's type should be what the player wants that character's type to be. I don't expect a certain type from any particular race or class combination. Backgrounds are a tool to allow a player to make a particular class and race combination into the type he or she wants it to be.
Unless he wants it to be a straightforward progression from background to career. The player writes up a warlord who graduated from being a gritty sergeant, and as his reward, he gets screwed.
He said there wasn't significant advantage to be gained from the abilities. If you think getting any mechanical benefit to be overpowered, then you would consider all of these significant advantages. But that is your opinion. If you took his written article as a challenge or personal affront, I just don't get that.
A feat is a significant advantage, and some of these backgrounds are better than feats.
Wrong. The fighter is gaining the same mechanical benefit when +3 to Intimidate is gained from a background as when +3 to Intimidate is gained from a feat because since you can only have one background, it doesn't need a 'type' to prevent it from stacking with another background benefit. Because you can have more than one feat, you need to have a 'feat' limitation on the bonus to keep it from stacking with the benefits of other feats.
He gets a benefit that can later be combined with a feat, which may or may not be skill focus intimidate. Someone with skill focus intimidate cannot later gain a background, and can never benefit from another feat that provides a feat bonus.
No background in here is significantly weaker than all feats. You admit as much as this below in regard to the balance of Skill Focus:History. It is no more unbalanced than anything else in the game.
Which doesn't matter, because there is no suggestion that a character should take such a feat. This article suggests that players who write a certain background should choose a certain background bonus.
Out of curiosity, are you complaining about the Forgotten Realms regional benefits? It's almost the same mechanic but actually does force a specific benefit on you based upon your backstory. Do you blame David Noonan for those too? Did he somehow get complete editorial control over everything WotC publishes? Or does he write stuff and everyone at Wizards looks at it and says, "Boy this sucks but Dave is a nice guy so let's publish it..."
I don't particularly like the forgotten realms benefits, but it seems that the author of those has a far better grasp of mechanics: outright bonuses are limited to +1 if they're combat applicable, +2 if not. Skills which warrant a higher bonus get rerolls instead (which has the same effect on average as +5 to a skill, but doesn't raise the maximum roll one can get, or eliminate the possibility of low rolls).
No. You're isolating my example from the proper context of all players in a group being able to select one background, and backgrounds thus being a limited and finite resource. To get a background benefit, he has to be able to select a background. Since there are no mechanical requirements for selecting a background, he has the opportunity to take any background. If he chooses to expend that resource to gain +3 to Intimidate, he can't spend that resource in another way. He has other viable options and by gaining this benefit, he is foregoing other potential benefits, so he will be paying a fair cost for the benefit he receives from his choice.
Since this is an article whose sole purpose is to tie fluff to mechanics, I don't think that arguments based off ignoring the fluff are valid.
Gaining access to resources the environment doesn't normally provide is a mechanical benefit. You're granting it via roleplay/backstory rather than the mechanics of travel and social interaction (or acquisition via combat). So your personal resolution system for acquiring raw materials or crafting a weapon is in fact tying roleplay/backstory to mechanical benefit.
Guy A walks to a smithy and buys a sword for 30gp.
Guy B walks to a smithy and forges a sword for 30gp.
Where precisely is the mechanical advantage that B is gaining?
We aren't talking about my players, we're talking about what you said - that players should be allowed to make anything they want rather than buying it, and the implication that you would allow them to do so, which is inconsistent with the attitudes toward "type" you've displayed throughout this thread. By your question, you've proven my point.
You said that your players would attempt to do things that ran counter to their own supplied backgrounds, and implied that this was a problem with my system. That would seem to be a problem with you and your players rather than anything else.
And if the player wants to roleplay being a contributer to someone who does have ritual casting, that works. If he actually wants to be able to make magic weapons and armor, he's S.O.L.
He wants to be able to make magic items without using magic: this is kind of a fundamental mismatch between the players expectations and the default world of D&D. See below for what to do if your world differs significantly from this assumption.
In your campaign, where you would allow the player to make weapons and armor, but not magical weapons and armor, he would have to pay two feats to make magical weapons and armor even though you say that the benefit he is getting is worth about a quarter of a feat. So, if he really wants to be able to make weapons and armor, he takes the background rather than two feats. For that player, it is like getting 2 feats. Is it an optimal choice? No, but it is more optimal than spending 2 feats.
TBH, if he really was fixed on producing them himself, and was not interested in any other ritual, and the flavour of my game said that such things made sense (ie - it's possible to craft magical items without the use of magic), then I'd just let him do it with no feats and no rituals, with the requirement that he must have a specially prepared smithy (which incidentally costs the same as buying the ritual). Buying magical items of your level is no big deal, so I see no problem with allowing people to describe how they do it in different ways.
I don't understand the second paragraph here: nothing in the backgrounds confines the ability to craft to non-magical weapons and armour. It seems to me that the function of the background is to give a character without Arcana or Religion limited access to the Enchant Item ritual, with a slightly different time requirement for crafting.
Read it again: the crafting backgrounds specifically allow their possessors the ability to craft non magical items.
