Unearthed Arcana WOTC still can't get the backgrounds right in the new FR book.

[W'rkncacnter]

so because i'm a psychopath i decided to go through official WOTC adventures (namely eberron forgotten relics and dragonlance shadow of the dragon queen) and count up the number of combat encounters the party is likely to run into, assume each encounter lasts 3 rounds each, and see how many times an attack roll would succeed due to a +1.

by the start of level 10 (at this point i plan to shift to eve of ruin to get to level 20 but it's almost 2 am so i'll finish it another day), the party has gone through about 85 combat encounters (5-10 are random encounters that could technically never happen but they likely will) and about 22 attack rolls would statistically have succeeded due to the +1. my guess is both those numbers will about double by the time i get to level 20. "But that would make an utterly incomprehensible story!" yeah well i couldn't find a good way to get to level 10 for eve of ruin so too bad. "But Curse of Strahd!" hell no, i refuse to try and figure out what level a party might be at any given point in that thing.

 

[CreamCloud0]

it seems the part of the thread where we just throw long posts of number and calculations at each other has begun, so that's my cue to check out of the conversation for a while until that blows over.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

it seems the part of the thread where we just throw long posts of number and calculations at each other has begun, so that's my cue to check out of the conversation for a while until that blows over.

hey, i'm trying to go so overboard it kills that part early.

probably won't work but...well, i'm already halfway through, i might as well finish it.

 

[Tessarael]

There are only 2 backgrounds that have Strength and Constitution ... you pick one of them!

This is a good point. I was curious and took a look on https://5e.tools/backgrounds.html to see which pairs of ability scores lacked much choice in Background. On that link, you can filter by ability score bonus to see what is available.

The key pairings of most interest are Constitution + another ability score, or Dexterity + another ability score, i.e., boosting a primary ability score and an ability score that boosts HP or AC. Strength + Constitution indeed has the least options, with only Farmer or Soldier in the 2024 PHB.

However with Heroes of Faerun, all ability score pairings now have at least 5 Backgrounds from what I can see. It looks like they intentionally addressed this issue in Heroes of Faerun by adding more options. With Heroes of Faerun, the options for both Strength + Constitution boosts expands to Dead Magic Dweller, Farmer, Flaming Fist Mercenary, Ice Fisher, Rashemi Wandered, and Soldier. It is still a list where you may be limited to 2 to 3 choices depending on where the campaign is set.

The least supported pairing of ability score bonuses is Strength + Intelligence with only five options when Heroes of Faerun is included: Artisan, Guard, Knight of the Gauntlet, Lords' Alliance Vassal, and Noble - 3 of which are in the 2024 Player's Handbook, the other 2 are very campaign dependent.

This is the same problem as occurred with tying ability score bonuses to races in D&D 2014. For example in the 2014 Player's Handbook, the only races that gave both a Wisdom bonus and a Dexterity bonus were Half-Elf, Human, and Wood Elf. This was addressed with subsequent publications providing many more races with different options that had a variety of ability score bonuses.

So ultimately for D&D 2024, once more settings are published, there will be more background options that cater to more choices for what you want in a character build. Providing those backgrounds are not tightly tied to a specific setting, it should be okay.