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<blockquote data-quote="Wolfwood2" data-source="post: 4326014" data-attributes="member: 39394">The DMG's advice on this is to just let the player make up whatever backstory they want for their PC and then make it relevent in play.&nbsp; So if your PC is a former cabinet maker, then you get a big bonus on a perception check to notice a cabinet with a false bottom and you let them build a cabinet without rolling if they want to.&nbsp; Yes the DM is &quot;winging it&quot; but not really more so than deciding that this sort of thing come up in any prior edition.&nbsp; The only difference is that now the DM is winging both the situation coming up and the bonus it gives, instead of just the situation coming up.The protest against doing it this way that I've heard in the past is, &quot;Well, some munchkin player will just have his PC have 50 backgrounds in order to get bonuses on everything.&quot;&nbsp; To which my response is, so what?&nbsp; Having a character with a stable and consistent backstory is a reward in itself.By the way, I also recommend handling languages this way, if your campaign world has multiple regional langauages rather than &quot;Common&quot;.&nbsp; Let the character speak whatever languages makes sense from their backstory, and let them learn new languages if they spend in-game time doing so.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wolfwood2, post: 4326014, member: 39394"] The DMG's advice on this is to just let the player make up whatever backstory they want for their PC and then make it relevent in play. So if your PC is a former cabinet maker, then you get a big bonus on a perception check to notice a cabinet with a false bottom and you let them build a cabinet without rolling if they want to. Yes the DM is "winging it" but not really more so than deciding that this sort of thing come up in any prior edition. The only difference is that now the DM is winging both the situation coming up and the bonus it gives, instead of just the situation coming up. The protest against doing it this way that I've heard in the past is, "Well, some munchkin player will just have his PC have 50 backgrounds in order to get bonuses on everything." To which my response is, so what? Having a character with a stable and consistent backstory is a reward in itself. By the way, I also recommend handling languages this way, if your campaign world has multiple regional langauages rather than "Common". Let the character speak whatever languages makes sense from their backstory, and let them learn new languages if they spend in-game time doing so. [/QUOTE]

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