House Rule Idea: Free "Background" Feat

[Kinneus]

I never quite liked backgrounds, so I thought for a campaign I'm planning to run this summer I would instead let players select one free feat at level 1. The idea is to give them something to flesh out their character. I could give them a free feat, no restrictions, but then I'm afraid that everyone would just snag Weapon Expertise or something like that. I want this feat to actually reflect their backgrounds, and create interesting roleplay and stuff.

I'm trying to think of the right way to phrase this, and which feats to allow. I'm thinking something like: "You can choose one free roleplay feat at character creation. You can choose from Linguist, Skill Focus, Skill Training, or a Multiclass Feat."

What do you think? Any that should be added to the list?

 

[ppaladin123]

You might want to add martial practices and/or rituals to the list. I don't mean the feats, I mean offer the players a single ritual or martial practice.

I made a rune priest for a game recently and wanted him to be a weapon/armor smith. I just wanted to be able to make mundane items that I could later enchant with the enchant magic item ritual (I picked up the Mark of Making). I noticed that in order to be able to do this I would have to take two more feats (one to multiclass to a martial class and another to pick up the ability to perform martial practices). My DM just let me add the "master artisan" practice to my ritual book at level one.

This doesn't even require any houserules in the character builder...you can simply buy a ritual book and add whatever you like to it (even martial practices).

Some of the rituals/practices like precise forgery, master artisan, comprehend languages, dowsing rod, embalm, detect secret doors, feat of strength, etc. are flavorful and work with previous professions or other background features.

 

[LostSoul]

Adding a feat won't add anything about a PC's background. It'll just be another feat on the character sheet. Players who already make the effort to associate their Feats with their PC's background will still do it. Players who don't won't change.

If you want players to roleplay their background, make their PC's background a factor in resolution. That's all you need to do.

You could formalize it in some way. For example:

Write down a single sentence that describes your background. Whenever your background comes into play, the DM will assign one of the following:

• a +2 bonus to your roll
• a +1 bonus to a defense
• the chance for in-depth knowledge
• greater understanding of an NPC or monster

That way, the player will have to say, "Hey, because I was the son of a blacksmith and spent all my time at the forge, do I know anything special about this strange ore we've found?" If it's a feat or anything like that, the +2 will be factored into the skill modifier and there won't be any need to explain why that bonus is there.

 

[Kinneus]

You have a good point, Lost Soul, but my reasoning for this is two-fold. First, I want to give players license to prop up their background a bit with mechanical benefits. Second, I just plain want to give players a new feat. More options means more fun. The first part of my reasoning might be a pipe dream, but I feel pretty good about that second part.

ppaladin123, I considered adding the Ritual Casting feat to that list, but I think I like your idea better. What rituals/martial practices would you recommend?

 

[LostSoul]

Cool. I think you should introduce a restriction on when the feat can be used. The reason why is that someone is going to have to say, "Hey, my background is X; can I use my background feat here?" That will force you to think about and talk about the background in a way that having it pre-calculated on your sheet won't.

If you have to think about your background, make judgement calls as to whether or not it applies, and describe your actions in ways that will make your background apply, you will get the RP that you're looking for. I think.