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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MyISPHatesENWorld" data-source="post: 4447350" data-attributes="member: 65684">I'm not suggesting DM fiat or a house rule, any more than the people suggesting that this article be retconned out of existence or nerfbatted to irrelevance before the final copy is published in the complete magazine are suggesting a house rule. I'm suggesting the article and future articles like it be used to provide more options for creating a character, and if something breaks on the back end, they fix what breaks on the back end, not stop providing options. "Think about the children!"These are harmless, I'm going to stack them all? So dump an entire article becuase someone "just might" start stacking these bonuses.Despite allegations to the contrary, I consider myself, and the DMs I play with to be astute and experienced DMs. One of them is allowing the players to  retcon our choice of these onto our existing characters, adjusting the fluff if we want, and I'll be allowing the same (it hasn't come up yet with the other). And the inexperienced DMs I've played with in the past have picked up on real problems quickly enough that I know that the, "Think about the children!" reasoning doesn't hold up. Posts claiming that this entire article is broken and unbalanced seem to indicate that individual DMs and WotC do a far finer job of sieving out the good from the bad.I also advocate nipping the problem itself in the bud. But these backgrounds or untyped bonuses attached to them (or possibly soon to be typed "background bonuses" or whatever) themselves aren't a problem. There need to be more ways to achieve viable, good and optimal skill proficiency and backgrounds and untyped or newly typed bonuses provide that. The "potential problems" to use your term, are with how some high things might stack, not what things stack.The player with a 10 in CHA and trained in Intimidate (such as a fighter or a 12 CHA Dragonborn fighter) does need the bonus, specifically, he needs it more than the 18 CHA Dragonborn (say a Warlord) whose bonus, as he is "optimized" is already, um, optimal. But, since I'm not advocating a house rule, you wouldn't need to justify it. As an aside, I think sooner or later, people are going to have to face up to the fact that shifting to 4e because they didn't like all the splatbooks in 3.5 was a pretty crappy plan. You can only write once, "Pick two skills and add them to your class list or pick one skill and add it to your class list and pick a language." And that doesn't fill up much of your writing quota, or make the background in any way useful for anyone that has a class related to their background.</blockquote>

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