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

[pukunui]

And people pay money for this? Willingly?

That's not the only thing you're paying for.

The thing is: you can still manually adjust things like skill/tool proficiencies, languages, feats, etc. They have simply clamped down on customizing the prepackaged backgrounds in the back-end character builder. You used to be able to select the skill proficiencies, tool proficiencies, etc. But now it does it for you. You can even briefly see the dropdown boxes when you first select a background, but then they disappear and get replaced with text indicating what your skills and tools are for that background. But you can still go to the main character sheet view and click on the gear wheels in the appropriate sections and manually modify them.

So like we just started a new 1st level campaign in the group I'm playing in, and I chose Wildspacer as my background, but I'm playing an autognome who was built as a bartender, and I wanted Insight instead of Survival (cos bartenders are good at listening and a mechanical guy hasn't got much need for worrying about finding food and water and tracking creatures in space), but the character builder wouldn't let me swap them out in the back-end. I had to go to the character sheet and then manually make Survival non-proficient and Insight proficient.

There are pros and cons to using DDB. One of the big pros is how so many things are hyperlinked in the character sheet and monster statblocks - e.g. in a spellcaster statblock, you can hover over a spell and it will bring up the details of that spell in a pop-up. Things like magic items, skills, and conditions are also hyperlinked. On the character sheet, you can roll digital dice and click on skills, ability scores, character features, etc and get the full text in a sidebar. It's pretty handy and speeds things up (no more page flipping!).

 

[Daztur]

That's not the only thing you're paying for.

The thing is: you can still manually adjust things like skill/tool proficiencies, languages, feats, etc. They have simply clamped down on customizing the prepackaged backgrounds in the back-end character builder. You used to be able to select the skill proficiencies, tool proficiencies, etc. But now it does it for you. You can even briefly see the dropdown boxes when you first select a background, but then they disappear and get replaced with text indicating what your skills and tools are for that background. But you then go to the main character sheet and click on the gear wheels in the appropriate sections and manually modify them.

So like we just started a new 1st level campaign in the group I'm playing in, and I chose Wildspacer as my background, but I'm playing an autognome who was a bartender, and I wanted Insight instead of Survival, but the character builder wouldn't let me swap them out in that part. I had to go to the character sheet and then manually make Survival non-proficient and Insight proficient (which then makes the black dot blue).

There are pros and cons to using DDB. One of the big pros is how so many things are hyperlinked in the character sheet and monster statblocks - in a spellcaster statblock, you can hover over a spell and it will bring up the details of that spell in a pop-up. On the character sheet, you can roll digital dice and click on skills, ability scores, character features, etc and get the full text in a sidebar. It's pretty handy and speeds things up (no more page flipping!).

OK, that makes more sense. You can just toggle on and off as many skills as you want in the character sheet and overrule the tool and change any number you want after the character is made?

In any case, they can pry my paper character sheets out of my cold dead hands.

 

[pukunui]

OK, that makes more sense. You can just toggle on and off as many skills as you want in the character sheet and overrule the tool and change any number you want after the character is made?

Yeah, exactly. And in some cases, it lets the DM know you've done that - like in the skills, any manually added skill proficiency shows a blue dot instead of a black one. The DM can easily see if you're trying to cheat!

But you can't give yourself extra spells known / prepared. That's something that's hard-coded in. And you can't manually increase the number of attuned magic item slots - so if you want to use DDB but ignore that rule, the easiest workaround is to create a version of the magic item that doesn't require attunement.

In any case, they can pry my paper character sheets out of my cold dead hands.

Fair enough! I think most of the people I play with became accustomed to using DDB during the COVID lockdowns, and so even though we're back to playing in person, we still like the convenience of the digital character sheet, even if it does have its quirks and limitations. (I'd say for us, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.)

 

[Bacon Bits]

That is what they presented, but we do not know what feedback they got.

What type of feedback would you expect from a misleading presentation except similarly misleading feedback?

 

[Parmandur]

What type of feedback would you expect from a misleading presentation except similarly misleading feedback?

What I am saying is thwt maybe they had people asking for something more like they ended up doing, like maybe a bunch of people liked the general idea but wanted to silo customization to the DMG and add more choice to the ASI assignments: just because they present something as a test is not a blood Oath it will end up being exactly that way in the final book. That's why it is a test.

 

[pukunui]

What I am saying is thwt maybe they had people asking for something more like they ended up doing, like maybe a bunch of people liked the general idea but wanted to silo customization to the DMG and add more choice to the ASI assignments: just because they present something as a test is not a blood Oath it will end up being exactly that way in the final book. That's why it is a test.

I suspect the shifting of customized backgrounds into the DMG was an internal decision to focus the PHB on players and the DMG on DMs. It makes sense. It's just annoying what with the staggered release schedule. We all need to be patient and wait till November and then we'll have a fuller picture of the revised rules for both players and DMs. (The MM is not as important to that picture, I don't think.)

 

[lall]

For Adventurers League, players will have to go with what’s in the PHB, I’m assuming. Stuff being in the DMG won’t matter. I never play AL anymore, but I keep my characters AL-legal for balance, so as a player I’ll be ignoring what’s in the DMG, at least with respect to these potential non-AL-legal options.

 

[Parmandur]

I suspect the shifting of customized backgrounds into the DMG was an internal decision to focus the PHB on players and the DMG on DMs. It makes sense. It's just annoying what with the staggered release schedule. We all need to be patient and wait till November and then we'll have a fuller picture of the revised rules for both players and DMs. (The MM is not as important to that picture, I don't think.)

Could go either way, but...we don't know. They received hundreds of thousands of replies to thst first UA article, and it could be thst tons of those called for the changes they made. And we would never know, frankly.l, unless WotC says something...but honestly thst wouldn't settle it, either lol.

 

[Parmandur]

For Adventurers League, players will have to go with what’s in the PHB, I’m assuming. Stuff being in the DMG won’t matter. I never play AL anymore, but I keep my characters AL-legal for balance, so as a player I’ll be ignoring what’s in the DMG, at least with respect to these potential non-AL-legal options.

Not necessarily the case at all.

 

[pukunui]

Could go either way, but...we don't know. They received hundreds of thousands of replies to thst first UA article, and it could be thst tons of those called for the changes they made. And we would never know, frankly.l, unless WotC says something...but honestly thst wouldn't settle it, either lol.

Why they did it doesn't matter that much to me. It's more the being patient and waiting bit ... cos there's a lot riding on what's in the DMG.