D&D (2024) Is anyone going to use the new 2024 backgrounds?

[mamba]

Actually, the backgrounds and the way abilities decouple from the species, is one of the reasons I am enthusiastically upgrading to 2024.

and no one said it cannot be one of the reasons, what we are saying it will not be the one deciding factor

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Five half-feats.

Nope: 3.5 full feats

Skilled: 2 skills + 1 tool
attribute increase: +2 to one ability
0.5 attribute increase: +1 to one ability
an origin feat: an origin feat

that make 3.5 (origin) feats.

 

[bedir than]

2024 backgrounds do have abilities. For example, in the UA playtest, Sailor comes with +2 Strength and +1 Constitution. We havent seen the official 2024 backgrounds yet, but we know each background comes with three abilities. A player can have +2 any and +1 any other, or +1 to all three.

Right. If everyone gets this it isn't a difference.
Might as well give backgrounds credit for the starting array.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Nope: 3.5 full feats

Skilled: 2 skills + 1 tool
attribute increase: +2 to one ability
0.5 attribute increase: +1 to one ability
an origin feat: an origin feat

that make 3.5 (origin) feats.

The disagreement here is that you are making "Origin" Feats equal to a +2 ASI, when they are very close to "half-feats" WITHOUT the +1 ASI, or essentially "worth" ONE +1 ASI. So the ASIs might be 1.5 Full Feats, but they're equal to THREE "Origin" feats. As Skilled and the other Origin Feat are also Origin Feats, that's FIVE Origin Feats, or 2.5 "Full Feats" (roughly).

 

[ART!]

To answer the OP: I won't be using the new background, no. As far as i can gather, they've dumped personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. So, I have no interest in this aspect of the 2024 game.

 

[Yaarel]

Right. If everyone gets this it isn't a difference.
Might as well give backgrounds credit for the starting array.

The concern is, it will make a difference.

Since Tashas, players tended to treat the "floating" abilities as a separate design space. The array and the adjustments were separate from species, background, and class.

But now, since the UA and confirmed for 2024, the backgrounds lock-in which abilities can be improved. So, a class and character concept requiring certain abilities will be forced to only have certain backgrounds to choose from. The DMs Guide will have some kind of discussion, and it isnt yet clear how inflexible the background abilities are. Who knows, there may be a sidebar describing some flexibility.

With regard to the array belonging to the backgrounds design space, I guess, pretty much yeah. Both the array and the background abilities will be selected together with an eye toward enhancing or finetuning the class, for an overall concept.

I prefer this. I would rather have the background be the determiner when wanting to play a certain class, than needing to be one of a few species to do it.

 

[Yaarel]

To answer the OP: I won't be using the new background, no. As far as i can gather, they've dumped personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. So, I have no interest in this aspect of the 2024 game.

My guess is, appearance, personality, goals, and relationships, will be in a separate "biography" section, after choosing species, background, and class.

Ideals, for example, might relate to species cultures, such as Halfling coziness or Uda Drow aggressive competition. Or class, such as what kind of Rogue, sometimes a detective has the same skills as a thief does. Or background, such as Sailor having strained, prolonged absences from loved ones. Ultimately, these personality characterizations work better after choosing the other three, like fleshing out a skeleton.

 

[ART!]

My guess is, appearance, personality, goals, and relationships, will be in a separate "biography" section, after choosing species, background, and class.

Ideals, for example, might relate to species cultures, such as Halfling coziness or Uda Drow aggressive competition. Or class, such as what kind of Rogue, sometimes a detective has the same skills as a thief does. Or background, such as Sailor having strained, prolonged absences from loved ones. Ultimately, these personality characterizations work better after choosing the other three, like fleshing out a skeleton.

I hope you're right, that these things are brought up elsewhere. Hopefully that section will take advantage of having a separate bit of the book to devote to it. I'm not optimistic, but I'll be happy to be wrong in that.

 

[Stormonu]

I almost wonder why they didn't bother to go ahead and give everybody a "half" feat every 2 levels instead of one "full" feat every 4. Just change ASI's to +1 from +2.

 

[tetrasodium]

Could you please elaborate on the reasons why you see things this way? I have only played 2e and 5e, and feel that the game is moving in a direction in which serious threats with real chances of PC failure/death are both unlikely and discouraged, and DMs are expected to please extremely powerful characters. Fine for those that like this, but it’s not my cup of tea. I haven’t seen any confirmation that optional rules such as gritty or healing variants will be present in the DMG, which goes against the early 5e philosophy of a modulad system

Many of the design choices we were seeing were giving off that sort of adversarial vibe even before Crawford and beyond started making comments about how dms are going to hate this [thing]. I think that a large part of it stems from the exclusive focus on following the polls that said 19 out of 20 toddlers want more candy while shrugging off the very idea that there could be a reason to consider the gm's needs before the dmg. Sly flourish did a great video documenting and discussing many of the examples not too far back. I'm linking it below since it should save a lot of time

Spoiler: said video

Those kinds of choices & references to the GM seem out of touch or horrifically communicated on their own, but piled up beside each other it shows a pattern that goes from out of touch & horribly communicated to completely logical if you start thinking of the GM simply as The Adversary as many red team/blue team exercises dub the red team.