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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5756387" data-attributes="member: 82106">PHB2 provided backgrounds. They are a fairly loosely designed rule. Basically you pick some background elements for different categories, so you can pick a 'birth', 'profession', 'geography', etc element (there are 100's of these, in practice just make up what you like). Each one lists 1 or 2 skills or sometimes a language or in rare cases some setting specific ones list some other minor benefit. Your character either gets +2 to that skill, can add that skill to the list his class allows training in at 1st level, or gets the language specified. You only get to take a benefit from one of your background elements.If the PC finds himself in a situation where his background is specifically relevant to a skill check, then he can generally add +2 to the check. So you can say &quot;background: profession - artisan (blacksmith)&quot; and you could say take a +2 to Endurance or Athletics (or maybe some other skill, really all you need to do is justify it as much as the DM cares about). Now if you happen to run into a situation where success relates to blacksmithing in some way you can add a +2 to whatever the skill check is. Your character is now a blacksmith, presumably he can make ordinary items out of iron without trouble if he has the equipment required on hand. This works fine and does pretty much everything the d20 CPP skills did mechanically (IE not much). What it doesn't do is make you give up a valuable feat slot or adventuring skill to pick up some ability that is unlikely to be used much. It is just as official and mechanical as it was in any other edition.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5756387, member: 82106"] PHB2 provided backgrounds. They are a fairly loosely designed rule. Basically you pick some background elements for different categories, so you can pick a 'birth', 'profession', 'geography', etc element (there are 100's of these, in practice just make up what you like). Each one lists 1 or 2 skills or sometimes a language or in rare cases some setting specific ones list some other minor benefit. Your character either gets +2 to that skill, can add that skill to the list his class allows training in at 1st level, or gets the language specified. You only get to take a benefit from one of your background elements. If the PC finds himself in a situation where his background is specifically relevant to a skill check, then he can generally add +2 to the check. So you can say "background: profession - artisan (blacksmith)" and you could say take a +2 to Endurance or Athletics (or maybe some other skill, really all you need to do is justify it as much as the DM cares about). Now if you happen to run into a situation where success relates to blacksmithing in some way you can add a +2 to whatever the skill check is. Your character is now a blacksmith, presumably he can make ordinary items out of iron without trouble if he has the equipment required on hand. This works fine and does pretty much everything the d20 CPP skills did mechanically (IE not much). What it doesn't do is make you give up a valuable feat slot or adventuring skill to pick up some ability that is unlikely to be used much. It is just as official and mechanical as it was in any other edition. [/QUOTE]

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