D&D 5E D&D Next Blog: Beyond Class & Race

[Klaus]

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[Szatany]

I'm liking everything I read in this blog. I used to prefer long and hard method of generating my characters, browsing through hundreds of feats and fine-tuning my skill points. Nowadays I prefer something much simpler, and themes and backgrounds seem to offer exactly this.
Great job, WotC.

 

[Sunseeker]

I was going through going: "This really caters to Chris and not Laura...." And then we hit the goldmine. The perfect solution to the perfect problem: custom backgrounds and themes. That my friends, is pure and utter WIN, 110% of it. Give us a value of "points" or "slots" or "features", give us a list of skills, feats and features we can choose, and let us go to town. I'm downright giddy for that feature, provided it's as good as it seems.

 

[dkyle]

So, essentially, Backgrounds would be pre-generated Skill progressions, while Themes would be pre-generated Feat progressions? Sounds reasonable, although hopefully they won't fall into the "lousy but flavorful" trap that pregens tend to fall into.

This could also be used to effectively support the "3 pillars" design. Background (Skills) would be dedicated to Interaction and Exploration, while Theme would be dedicated to Combat. I'm of the opinion that significant tradeoffs between combat and non-combat in a game like DnD is a bad design, so making them parallel choices would be a good thing.

We might have a Rogue who takes the "Burglar" Background, which would give bonuses to urban stealth, lock-picking, and acrobatics, and the "Lurker" Theme, which would be about making stealth viable in combat. And a Ranger might take the "Wildling" Background, which would give bonuses to stealth in nature, tracking, and endurance, but might still take the "Lurker" Theme.

I'm also picturing Skills looking a lot like 3.X/4E Feats, in that they'd be free-form blocks of mechanics, not just points put into a predefined set of skills. So a lot of non-combat feats from those editions would just become Skills.

 

[Ellington]

I'm not a huge fan of being able to customize everything. Everyone will end up doing so and themes and backgrounds will become meaningless.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I love it. I am looking forward to not having to micro-manage my feat and skill selection (but also in being able to do that, if I decide I want to).

I can see some people trying to min/max the skill part of the game, if the ability scores carry the weight of the resolution system (Perception, Stealth, Heal > Speak Goblin, Cook A Meal, Chop Wood), but that's something that some careful design can help ameliorate, so I'm not too worried -- just something to watch out for.

 

[dkyle]

I'm not a huge fan of being able to customize everything. Everyone will end up doing so and themes and backgrounds will become meaningless.

I could see giving the pre-made Backgrounds and Themes a little something extra that can't be gotten using the "custom build" rules, to make up for the power of being able to build towards synergies with custom builds.

For example, the Essentials fighter is a lot less customizable than the original PHB Fighter, but is a competitive choice partly because it does things that the PHB Fighter can't do.

 

[Kynn]

Innnnnteresting.

The "themes" implementation he describes is pretty much the "vocations" rule from D&D Gamma World.

I heartily approve of them stealing stuff from Gamma World.

 

[Savage Wombat]

So "themes" and "backgrounds" become the quick-start character system. I'm OK with this.

 

[Minigiant]

I like.
I really like.
And now we have a guess about how background and themes.

With that...
Now that we have an idea of the impact of background or themes, sub classes I doubt subclasses can fit as backgrounds and themes. No monk or sorceror or paladin theme.