D&D (2024) Learning to Love the Background System

[MarkB]

The Bonds, Ideals, Flaws and Personality traits?

Probably more like the flavour benefits, like an entertainer getting free lodging in return for a performance, or a sailor getting free passage on a ship.

Those were nice, but most of them still only came up very rarely, or were only minor benefits when they did (who can't afford a decent room for the night after 1st-2nd level?)

 

[Vael]

I like Ideals/Bonds/Flaws and Personality Traits for NPCs in adventure write-ups. Gave a fairly succinct summary of the NPC and how to roleplay them.

 

[occam]

you're ranting against a point i didn't make, but your commitment to making numerically un-optimised build choices is not 'more creative' because you had to fight against what the system makes most effective to make them.

Restrictions Breed Creativity applies when your party puts all their outside-the-box-thinking braincells together to macguyver a way to instakill the 15th level big bad on 6 gold, two 3rd level spell slots and a favour from the local post office with 4 hours before the world ends, it does not apply when you decide to put together two character creation options with poor synergy.

I replied to this:

The pithy quip of ‘restrictions breed creativity’ is a lie, at least when it comes to backgrounds and their mechanics, RBC is only true when you actually have room to be creative in, to improvise and explore possibilities, but the design of backgrounds and classes are set in stone in ways that deny creative problem solving because there are no alternative solutions, your wizard NEEDS INT to improve their spellcasting, and that means a background with STR, WIS, CHA, is entirely useless to them.

And I responded by "ranting" the following:

I'll make a point of telling that to my (pre-Tasha's) dwarf artificer (no bonus to Int), dwarf warlock (no bonus to Cha), and half-orc bard (also no bonus to Cha). I greatly enjoyed playing those characters, but apparently I've been playing D&D wrong all this time, having fun while continuing to make entirely useless selections. I'll figure this out eventually.

IOW, I used pre-Tasha's races that provided no primary ability score bonus for various spellcasting characters, analogous to the 2024 backgrounds that you stated would be "entirely useless" because they wouldn't provide primary ability score bonuses. The analogy I made is directly relevant to your point, and your shifted goalposts about BBEG insta-killing seems unrelated.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

5th Edition D&D is, at its heart, an effort to be an impossible thing. This is well illustrated by the tension over spellcasting and magic items. What did we hear nearly constantly during the "Next" playtest? People wanted magic to "feel magical" again. They wanted magic items to be "special."

And here we are, twelve years later, with magic that isn't any more magical-feeling than it was in 3e, and items that aren't any more special than they were in 3e. Why?

Because what people actually want is the feeling they had when they were first discovering D&D, while keeping everything perfectly consistent with tradition and the things they're familiar with. This is an impossible request. The very thing that would make it magical IS unfamiliarity, but when they were given something that seemed unfamiliar before, it was rejected as "wrong."

Hence, 5e is trapped in a cycle of repeatedly trying to square circles. It can't commit to a design philosophy or creative voice, because familiar is boring and different is wrong. It tries to be just different enough to not be wrong, and that goes for a while, but then gets boring. They've recapitulated the same problems races had before (with the minor tweak of three stats, not two) because they're waffling, unwilling to be the different that got backlash (remember how controversial Tasha's stats were at launch!) but unable to remain familiar.

When you chase feel and then grasp for mechanics, you're doomed to making the same mistakes over and over. But there was no other direction 5e could have gone.

Yeah, that's pretty fair. I like the basic design of 5e well enough, but many of the things I dislike are borne out of the design direction being vague and non-committal in an attempt to not upset anyone too badly. Granted, I'd probably like it even less if they solidly chose a design direction I disliked and committed to it,* so maybe they have the right idea.

(* But I would respect that more.)

 

[Corinnguard]

Probably more like the flavour benefits, like an entertainer getting free lodging in return for a performance, or a sailor getting free passage on a ship.

Those were nice, but most of them still only came up very rarely, or were only minor benefits when they did (who can't afford a decent room for the night after 1st-2nd level?)

Okay. As far as I know, my group has not made any use of those either.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I replied to this:

And I responded by "ranting" the following:

IOW, I used pre-Tasha's races that provided no primary ability score bonus for various spellcasting characters, analogous to the 2024 backgrounds that you stated would be "entirely useless" because they wouldn't provide primary ability score bonuses. The analogy I made is directly relevant to your point, and your shifted goalposts about BBEG insta-killing seems unrelated.

I’m well aware what post you were referring to, and my point hadn’t changed at all, my point was always that the system of sticking together two pre-packaged mechanics-blocks, regardless of the optimisation of any potential combinations, lacks the fundamental ability to let you express creativity in the way that the statement of 'restriction breeds creativity' is actually meant to refer to because RBC needs an environment in which you can apply lateral thinking to, which is what my point about killing a big bad was about, there is no way to approach class and backgrounds, no outside-the-box combination you can make with them that will change the nature of the game or the problems you can solve with them, a skill proficiency will always just be a skill proficiency, an ASI will never change anything except the numbers in the calculations.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

players want magic items because the idea to have the same rusty sword you picked up at boot camp be with you for 10+ levels is depressing.

I didn't really deny that, my point was that they want the magic items to feel as magical as they did when they knew nothing of what D&D was. This is impossible, because the game needs to be familiar in most ways in order to fit the bill of being traditional, but the only way to capture the "magic" and "specialness" is to make things unknown and different. The very thing that would satisfy the desire for mystery is unacceptable because it would cease to be what is already known and comfortable.

Folks are asking to read the exact same book again, for the first time. One or the other must give way; you can't have "perfectly familiar" and "wondrous new mysteries unfold" in the same ruleset.

 

[ECMO3]

Floor for abilities should be linked to races/species.

We moved away from +X tied to species because it prevents species/class combos for everyone to be at max effectiveness, but some of that flavor can be kept in mechanic as still leave option to have any ability at "17" at start for any combination.

give floor to one or two abilities for every species.

I.E:
Elves are never clumsy.
So every Elf needs atleast "12" to be asigned to Dex

Orcs need minumum of 12 in Str

Dwarves need minimum of 12 in Con


Simple fix is this:
any +2 fixed ASI for a race is turned into "min 12"
any +1 fixed ASI for a race is turned into "min 10"

and you still keep your floating +2/+1 to put anywhere you need them.

IMO floor abilities shouldn't exist, but they make a lot more sense than bonuses when it comes to background.

Also the points you make on Elves, Orcs and Dwarves are stereotypes that should not always follow in play. Mr. Witch for example in WBW is an Elf with an 11 Dexterity and Dexterity is his lowest ability score in fact. He did not look or act like your typical elf. Would it be better if they made him a human or a half-orc or another race more in line with his ability scores? I don't think so.

 

[ECMO3]

I'll make a point of telling that to my (pre-Tasha's) dwarf artificer (no bonus to Int), dwarf warlock (no bonus to Cha), and half-orc bard (also no bonus to Cha). I greatly enjoyed playing those characters, but apparently I've been playing D&D wrong all this time, having fun while continuing to make entirely useless selections. I'll figure this out eventually.

But here is the thing, if it was up to you where to put ability scores you could make the same choices. Make the bonuses float and give your Dwarf Warlock and Artificer Constitution and Wisdom, your Half-Orc Bard Strength and Constition.

You are still able to do that and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is telling other players who want to play a Dwarf Warlock or Half-Orc Bard or alternatively a Farmer Warlock or Sailor Bard that this is where they need to put their bonuses too.

Also, while you had fun with these builds (and I had fun with similar too), it did provide an objective mechanical advantage to not doing that and a lot of players flat won't do this.

When we had fixed bonuses we had very few Dwarf Wizards or Warlocks. After we let people float those to any stat, that was the most popular race for those classes for a while.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Also the points you make on Elves, Orcs and Dwarves are stereotypes that should not always follow in play. Mr. Witch for example in WBW is an Elf with an 11 Dexterity and Dexterity is his lowest ability score in fact. He did not look or act like your typical elf. Would it be better if they made him a human or a half-orc or another race more in line with his ability scores? I don't think so.

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Mr. Witch and Mr. Light are weird ones. I'm not sure what their species brings to the table. My personal feeling is that in such cases, I'd have either have defaulted to humans (a safe baseline for most campaign worlds) or, since they're connected to both the Feywild and Ravenloft (see Van Richten's Guide for details), I might have made them Shadar-Kai or Eladrin.

That said, Mr. Witch definitely expands the canonical depiction of what elves can be. Sometimes they're portly middle-aged dudes with depression.