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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9738609" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean, isn't it?You talk about  the zero-to-hero narrative, but when was that last really true in actual D&D? 2E had Kits which absolutely blew that concept out of the water (some of them being very elaborate, literally from the launch of 2E). 3E had L1 Feats and all sorts of stuff. 4E similarly. 5E 2014's approach to background was incredibly flexible, and absolutely if you wanted a longer backstory you could just pick a custom background and sort it out. Sure you start at L1, but levels are a metagame contrivance like HP.2024 is really the only version of D&D since 1989 that really doesn't seem to want to offer that. Like that actually seems opposed to the concept, rather than offering some support, and that's solely because of the bizarre and inexplicable designer decision to (without playtesting, without acceptance testing, without even floating the idea, and I believe to this day without any explanation whatsoever) get rid of custom backgrounds entirely and also to hard-tie stats to background. It's very odd. That was someone's bad idea. I kind of suspect it wasn't even Crawford or Perkins because I think they'd have explained why they did it and defended the idea.</blockquote>