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

[Micah Sweet]

Backgrounds provide the extra mechanics you mention in the first sentance, but not the story part you mention in the second.

Your backstory is what actually defines in story termsp who your character was before they go out and adventure, and the backstory would do this whether or not they had a background.

Further backgrounds, as they are, restrict the backstory elements. What if my father weas an adventurer and I was born into the adventurer life (not a farmer, or a soldier, or a sailor but an adventurer)? What if my character was a serf on an elemental plane? What if I was born as part of an Orc war tribe?

There are backgrounds for all of those things.

 

[ECMO3]

Eh. No more restrictive than class or species.

True, but species now have fewer mechanics tied to them and class is the definition of your character.

Also to be clear, I am against fencing things behind a specific class. I hate the idea that I can't get Paladin, Ranger or now Warlock spells with Magic Initiate.

These character creation "packages" are part of D&D, and I'm fine with it. Of course, of the 3, I'm fine with backgrounds being the most "editable" because they consist only of modular objects, including ability score bonuses, proficiencies, and gear, as opposed to "powers".

Well based on the link, RAW you can use an old 2014 background and arbitrarily pick new any ability bonuses and any Origin feat. If this is true then why tie those things to the 2024 backgrounds in explicit ways.

 

[ECMO3]

There are backgrounds for all of those things.

Ok. I will bite. What is the 2024 background for raised as an adventurer? What is the background for raised in an Orc war tribe? What is the background for raised as a slave of Fire Elementals in the City of Brass? What is the background for created as an experiment by an evil Wizard? What is the background for say raised as a male in a royal house in Menzobarrenzen, like Drizzt Dourden? How about a background as someone born in a Hive Mind that escaped?

 

[ECMO3]

Then that would be awesome. I would say go for it! The one thing that I don't want to see is players choosing a background that is ASIs, two skills and a feat. Period. I want those ASIs, two skills and a feat justified by the backstory, because that will generate interesting story and content.

The best way to get away from this is make the background NOT connected to ASIs, two skills and a feat.

This was part of my original thoughts on it - If I take a 2014 background I can choose the background on mostly thematic basis. Then I can use story elements to tie in the ASIs and feat The skills are more deterministic, but I can even fix that RAW with a custom background.

The current backgrounds offer no story justification at all for the specific ASIs or feat other than "you picked this background"

 

[mamba]

The current backgrounds offer no story justification at all for the specific ASIs or feat other than "you picked this background"

apart from the obvious ‘as a scholar I learned about and studied things, which gives me an INT bonus’ vs ‘as a sailor I lead a rough life climbing the rigging of sailing ships, giving me a DEX bonus’…

I did not expect that needed spelling out in the backgrounds

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ok. I will bite. What is the 2024 background for raised as an adventurer? What is the background for raised in an Orc war tribe? What is the background for raised as a slave of Fire Elementals in the City of Brass? What is the background for created as an experiment by an evil Wizard? What is the background for say raised as a male in a royal house in Menzobarrenzen, like Drizzt Dourden? How about a background as someone born in a Hive Mind that escaped?

You could easily customize any of those for 2024, but honestly I would just use the Level Up backgrounds (which exist for each of those) in your WotC 5e game. All the details are available at the A5e Tools site.

 

[ECMO3]

apart from the obvious ‘as a scholar I learned about and studied things, which gives me an INT bonus’ vs ‘as a sailor I lead a rough life climbing the rigging of sailing ships, giving me a DEX bonus’…

I did not expect that needed spelling out in the backgrounds

As for Scholar, it is not one of the 2024 backgrounds, so that is not a good example to use. If you want to build a scholar you need to use a custom background.

As far as sailor - strength is the ability typically used for climbing checks, not dexterity.

In any case, sailor on a Longboat is not climbing rigging at all, and neither is a sailor on many of the Spelljammers or a dozen other examples I could use that background for. Further, I don't know what the 3 abilities for a sailor are, but it is a safe bet I can certainly come up with an example that would have warranted other abilities or other feats.

As an example - Rollibar, the ships mage on Sea Sprite in the Drizzt novels for example is a sailor, and if I was his apprentice on Sea Sprite the magic intitate and +2 intelligence ASI would be right on point (maybe with strength as the +1 for climbing rigging, or maybe a +1 Wisdom for the time I spent looking at nautical charts, or maybe +1 Constitution for holding my breath while using the mending cantrip to close a hole in the hull underwater, or maybe something else), but without Intelligence and Magic Initiate I can't do that. No other 2024 background would remotely match the backstory for that character and the Sailor mechanics, whatever they are, will not generally match the backstory either for a character that is undeniably a sailor.

 

[cbwjm]

I think instead, if I move to 5.5e, I'd let players to pick the elements and then write whatever they want as their background (or not write anything). The backgrounds are just a quick starting point which is good for new players but for my group, I think they're sort done as a PC building element.

 

[Argyle King]

If I choose one of the old backgrounds, it seems that I also still get the background feature.

 

[Corinnguard]

The current backgrounds offer no story justification at all for the specific ASIs or feat other than "you picked this background"

It sounds like you want backgrounds to provide no mechanical benefit to the character. That nothing the character learns as an acolyte, a soldier or as a sailor goes on to help them mechanically as a member of a particular class. You might as well make a character class into a background.