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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6756064" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm going to agree with transcendentviewer here.  There isn't enough substance to this background, and it doesn't to me scream, "I'm Tarzan" or "I'm Mowgli".  In my house rules for 3e, the "I want to be Tarzan" proposition, led to the following trait:FERAL [TRAIT]You grew up alone far from civilized lands and call animals brothers.Prerequisite: Not fey, appropriate backgroundBenefit: You were raised by animals.  If you take the Feral trait, you are automatically assumed to have both the Primitive trait and the Illiterate disadvantage as well.Empathy (Animal) is always a class skill for you.  You begin play knowing the secret language of one group of animals (4 ranks) and may purchase others as bonus languages, but you lose all normal racial bonus languages from your list of bonus languages.  You find the civilized world to be frequently baffling; no matter how long you remain in it. You have a -4 penalty on all craft, bluff, diplomacy, disable device, open lock, perform, and sense motive checks.  On the other hand, you have a +2 bonus on all Knowledge (Nature) and Survival skill checks, and climb, jump, survival and swim are always class skills for you.  You also have a +4 bonus on skill and ability checks to notice or recognize smells.Special: You may not take both this trait and the Adopted trait.  If you take the Feral Trait, you are automatically assumed to begin with the Primitive trait as well.That's a pretty dense set of modifiers, and I won't try to unpack them all in detail because most of them aren't applicable to 5e or outside of my house rules.  But the point is that this trait gives you a lot of baggage - which is what you'd expect of a very abnormal background like 'raised by wolves'.  You can't read or write unless you spend future resources.  You'll never be good at a lot of skills unless you spend future resources, and even then you'll never be as good.   You pretty much aren't going to be wearing armor without spending a lot of character building resources.  But you have a lot of natural talents and things you can always be good at, regardless of your class.  You can speak to animals in their own language, but you can't speak to a lot of non-animals without spending expensive future resources, and if you invest it in, you can be really good at handling animals indeed.Compared to your example, you are gaining what - a small animal friend?   There just isn't enough in what you purpose or that makes the character different to justify the rules bloat.   Try to make it more different, give more small advantages, and a few penalties that amount to things that can really be a hinderance.  It's going to be a tricky background to make, because you don't want a background that gives you a straight up boost for no cost depending on the class you play.  In my example, no armor and no literacy together strikes out a huge array of potential 'hide the disadvantage' win-win concepts.As a smaller note, why does being raised by animals make you more likely to be a mason, and why is that under 'languages'?</blockquote>

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