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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7914764" data-attributes="member: 6677017">Good point. Re-reading it (I didn’t even recall using that word), I can see how it might be taken as antagonistic to DMs, though that’s not the intent (I’m a DM as often or more than a player, and I have my own restrictions and house rules).I‘m not sure a background can even be too strong if you’re just using the options given and not creating new background features. (Though some of the variant ones in later books like Ghosts of Saltmarsh really irritate me because they don't follow the rules and do things like give you two features and 1 skill. The PHB background pattern is solid, don’t mess with it.)Lets take one of the players in my current group. She’s playing a fighter who is an honorable assassin, with nimbleness and rogue-like abilities. Conceptually, she went with the Faction Agent from SCAG, because that’s what she is. But to customize it for the character concept she took Stealth and Thieves’ Tools. She’s a variant human, and all four of the other skills she picked (including Perception) were already on the fighter‘s class list.So there is an example of (unintentionally) choosing to customize to get the “power options”. What does this do for the character’s power level over sticking with default Faction Agent choices? Not much. The character wears medium armor to avoid a Stealth penalty from it, rather than heavy. The ability to occasionally not suck at Stealth is likely a net loss compared to having an AC 3 points less than they otherwise would. As far as Thieves’ Tools, 100 sessions in and I’m not sure when the last time it was used was (if at all). The reason? Because the party’s rogue has Expertise in it and so the fighter never needs to use it. I suppose the ability to make use of it if the rogue is out of commission is a benefit to the party and a chance to shine...but overpowered? No.The thing is, tools, languages, and background features aren’t a power boost, and about the only skill that is is Perception, which literally half of the PHB classes get on their class list. So the only power issue that can arise from background customization (as long as you keep it to the PHB principles and don’t make features that grant actual power increases or change the number of skills and tools/languages granted), is that the 6 classes that don’t have Perception on their class skill list have the option to take it anyway. Is that really anything near overpowered? I can’t see how. You could completely remove class skill restrictions (which is virtually what customizing backgrounds ends up doing) and it would have almost zero effect on game balance.</blockquote>

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