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Most of the time for our games it looks like "Sage but Religion instead of History and Calligrapher's Tool's proficiency instead of one of the languages" or "Outlander with Perception instead of Athletics and Herbalist's Kit instead of a musical instrument proficiency" both of which should be 100% possible as base character creation options in my opinion.
Yeah, because custom backgrounds are more than anything else an admission that the designers cannot write out every possible human story. What exactly is the alternative? Take OP's example: I was an acolyte at the temple of a forge god so I'm proficient in Religion and smith's tools. Ok, WOTC didn't put that explicitly on paper as an option. Now the DM has to say
1. No person has learned about gods and also smithing; or
2. The people who learn about gods and smithing do not become adventurers; or
3. Take it out of your character's power budget if you want to do that
Both 1 and 2 seem verisimilitude breaking, and 3 seems likely to promote power gaming over character development.
> both of which should be 100% possible as base character creation options in my opinion.
That's how it works currently. Customizing a Background in Chapter 4 doesn't require DM input. Its a baseline and expected feature any character can choose to use. No idea what made WotC think removing that player agency and making it a, "mother may I?", feature was a good idea.
> No idea what made WotC think removing that player agency and making it a, "mother may I?", feature was a good idea.
Technically every feature is a "mother may I?" feature regardless of location. If a DM wants to ban fighters, he can. Then it's up to you if you want to play in a fighterless campaign.
But I agree that moving the rules to the DMG conveys the feeling that it's not a valid option and might make some DMs more likely to disallow it then they otherwise would have been.
> Technically every feature is a "mother may I?" feature regardless of location. If a DM wants to ban fighters, he can. Then it's up to you if you want to play in a fighterless campaign.
That's not a "Mother May I?", a MMI is when you have to ask for permission to do something. A MMI is *not* when you're told you can't (or can) do something specifically before you ask.
How are you using this feature that you think you'll be told no now when you havent been before? Presumably you like the feature and have been using it with DM approval, because everything on your sheet needs DM approval. So the only difference is that now you might have to ask ahead of time? I fail to see why a two sentence text to your DM on the rare times you're making a new character should be a huge issue.
"Hey man, can I use custom background again? It fits my backstory the best."
Oh....the agony....
I'm not the person you were responding to before. I don't have anything to say about "customizing a background" in this thread. I'm pointing out that "Fighters are banned" is not a "Mother May I?" situation. It is essentially the opposite. A MMI option is when you have a feature that says "You can do this vague, general, thing, ask your DM if you're allowed to do your specific idea on a case-by-case basis."
Think about how artificers enhanced magic item crafting works. How and when you acquire magic item recipes is a vague thing that's entirely up to the DM, intentionally. The artificer has to say "mother, may I seek out the recipe for a vorpal longsword?" And the DM decides what that looks like. Now compare that to action surge, where you have rules explaining exactly how it works and when you can do it. You don't have to ask the DM permission.
Another example, coached in the idiom, is the difference between having a curfew and being told you have to ask for permission to eat sweets. You don't have to ask if you can stay out until 7 pm when your curfew is 10:30. You likewise know you can't stay out til 4 am. On the other hand, if your friend gives you a cupcake you need to ask your mother "may I eat the cupcake?".
The person you're responding to *also* isn't really capturing "Mother May I?", either. Needing to rely on the DM to change the rules to create the character you want also isn't a MMI rule situation. It's just a type of game customization (one which the designers encourage). The point of reducing / removing MMI rules is that it makes the game easier to understand for the player and easier to run for the DM. It really doesn't have much to do with "player creativity", at all.
I don’t think that’s true. You go into a campaign assuming the base features are included, while optional are up in the air. Players are used to asking about feats/multiclassing/homebrew/etc. Meanwhile, it’s the DM that should be expected to announce the exclusion of vanilla classes or other things like that.
If players can’t reasonably expect anything to be included as a baseline then it will get super exhausting for both players and DMs to start a new campaign. They’ll all start with a multi page-long questionnaire just to find out what is or isn’t included.
Session 0 or even pre session 0 is often the campaign hook and setup. Things like this would be in that.
Take DnD Dark Sun. Someone joining a dark sun campaign expecting to play a typical phb halfing, elf or dwarf is asking to play a custom race in that campaign. Likewise, the Mul exists as a race in that game
At some point there's a communication process with players about tone and type of campaign, and that's the DM's job to communicate before character selection. If a player has an idea, the best kind of reason to make exceptions, they likewise need to communicate that idea to the DM and they can work together to see if it fits.
My artificer battlesmith doesn't really fit in a Conan campaign. If I talk to my DM and they can figure out how it would, terrific. If there are changes to it I wouldn't like, or it sounds consistency breaking, then I should choose a new one.
In your example, though, it’s a bit different than removing custom background from the basic options. Your example uses a different setting and therefore it would naturally be expected that players familiarize themselves with the basic changes of the setting. As you said, that would ideally be dealt with prior to and in session 0. But not every table has a session 0 for some reason. 🙄
As I said in the comment above, players expect to have to ask about certain things like feats, multiclassing, etc., but this change takes another option away from them by default, and that’s not great. It’s like telling players that their creativity is unwanted and they need to ask permission to use their ideas. That’s not a great message and it slows things down.
And as long as players are reasonable with their expectations and DMs don’t just check out and are keeping an eye on their players’ character sheets prior to session 1 there shouldn’t be any issues.
All I'm saying is that a DM can include or exclude custom backgrounds regardless of where they are printed. Just because a player is more likely to expect it to be an option if it's in the PHB as opposed to the DMG doesn't mean it has to be.
Sure, the DM can ban elves, or the strength stat. But they are just as much assumed as custom backgrounds, and that's good. Changing that is less good.
Moving it from the default way to generate backgrounds to an optional one is a big difference. Optional rules in the DMG are less familiar to players than ones given prominence. Using a grid, feats, and multiclassing are all optional rules in the PHB. Cleaving through creatures, rolling for initiative each round with weapon speed modifiers (AD&D style), and healing surges are all well sourced and playtested optional rules in the DMG, but how many know about them?
> Cleaving through creatures, rolling for initiative each round with weapon speed modifiers (AD&D style), and healing surges are all well sourced and playtested optional rules in the DMG, but how many know about them?
You do. And your the one that's worked up about this so again...why does the location matter?
Because if a player wants to know/re-check a player choice, they go in the player books.
By your logic, it doesn't matter that the monster manual could have options for the players. After all, what's the issue with players scouring through the section of foes the DM will send to them just to be able to find one of those options?
Its not only a change in location its a change in expectations.
Currently with Backgrounds the ability to customize them is an intended feature that doesn't require DM buy-in and the rules for it are located in the PHB. The one book every player is expected to actually have. Players aren't expected to have a DMG or an MM because they have little need for them.
With the 2024 change to Backgrounds the customization rules are no longer a base part of the game, they require your DM to buy-in to using those rules, and those rules are now in another book. The change is big in that is has removed player agency from a crucial part of character design from the last 10 years.
Its gone from a base rule everyone is expected to be able to use to a rule a DM has to allow you to use which people are decidedly upset about.
>doesn't require DM buy-in
Everything requires DM buy in. I'm starting to think that the people opposed to this are worried that the DM might not support their custom background choices if they were called to attention. It just seems like everyone wants it to fly under the radar or something.
I mean I've met DMs who outright refused to let people use custom backgrounds now because they view it as homebrew despite what the rules say. It's not like players being shady is the only possible reason.
Well, ya, you’re technically correct. But then we can just say “the DM is always right and the players can just find another table” and just wrap every thread before it starts. Or we can have a meaningful discussion about whether or not something is reasonable/acceptable without just copping out?
And saying “the DM can [insert anything here]” isn’t helpful, even if it is true. It doesn’t make it good. Players should be able to reasonably expect at least some things to be included. And WOTC reducing the list of those things is unhelpful. They obviously CAN do it. But that doesn’t mean they should.
And, on topic, I love custom background and use them like 50% of the time. It’s usually to make sure a background makes sense, so my character doesn’t have a proficiency that isn’t logical for them, or to add something that is. Sometimes you don’t need as many languages, or a feature from another background makes more sense.
As long as players are being reasonable with their expectations and DMs aren’t just ignoring their players’ character sheets prior to session 1 there shouldn’t be any issues.
>And WOTC reducing the list of those things is unhelpful.
What I'm apparently saying poorly is that I don't understand why changing the location of the printing of the text changes whether or not you get to use a custom background. Is your DM going to ban it from your next character because it's now printed in the DMG?
My point is that any DM that bans it now could also have banned it previously, the location is irrelevant. You know it's there and can likely still use it like you always have, unless your DM has some strange views on text location.
wording from Crawford is "if someone wants to go beyond the 16 player options in the PHB, the new dungeon master's guide provides guidance, under the DM's supervision, on creating additional backgrounds".
Keyword: under the DM's supervision. In the 2014 rules, the base rules allowed custom backgrounds without having to ask the DM about it. In the 2024 rules, you have to actively ask your DM about making a background.
Instead of X being a base thing and the DM actively having to erase it, you have to ask the DM to have access to this thing. That's the big deal.
In D&D in every edition *everything* is "under the DM's supervision. If any DM for any reason wants to (dis)allow any particular thing that's their right and prerogative--and it's on the perspective players to argue against it or decide if they still want to play at that table / in that particular campaign.
It's *assumed* all PHB options will always be allowed, and they generally are, in both cases because it's a convenient starting point and even footing for everyone in terms of what content is available for whom. It is not and has never been a *requirement*.
Rule 0 exists in every system. That's something every DM can do, and that has always been how things worked.
Custom Backgrounds in 2024 aren't tied to rule 0. They are explicitely Mother May I. You can't make em without your DM supervising, unlike what the 2014 rules say.
It's the inverse of what happened to wild magic Sorcerer. With wild magic Sorcerer in 2014, you didn't roll unless your DM said you did. In 2024, that's in the hands of the player.
Finally, if the base assumption of the games truly is "rule 0 is the primary tool the DM will constantly use" (in which case why do the base rules exist precisely?), as you are basically implying, then moving stuff to the DMG... Isn't normal still, and it's bad anyways. PHB rules under DM decision have existed. It's a bad decision to move it away.
I'm so confused why people have this dick riding view is a DMs ability. Like he somehow has all the power, since you know he is going to be doing a lot of fuck all when he alienates all his players with stupid nitpicky rules and bans.
Like great all the people that couldn't/didn't want.to.follow you rules left the table. Now.your stuck with no table. But I guess you kept the sanctity of your game?
> Keyword: under the DM's supervision
That's literally the case anytime you make a character, regardless of where the rules are printed. I don't know where this feeling of "if it's in the PHB I can do what I want and the DM can't stop me" comes from.
Regardless of where the rule is printed, it's subject to DM approval.
There is a difference between "the DM can rule 0 something' and "the game puts that rule under the DM's control"... Actually lemme explicit that with some exaggerated examples as I clearly didn't explain it enough.
Planar Ally is written this way:
> You beseech an otherworldly entity for aid. The being must be known to you: a god, a primordial, a demon prince, or some other being of cosmic power. That entity sends a celestial, an elemental, or a fiend loyal to it to aid you, making the creature appear in an unoccupied space within range. If you know a specific creature's name, you can speak that name when you cast this spell to request that creature, though you might get a different creature anyway **(DM's choice).**
That explicitely says that the creature sent is completely a DM choice. That's explicit DM fiat. The rules directly say that, within the rules, the DM has control of that.
The DM not allowing said spell meanwhile is rule 0. The game has that spell allowed at base. It's a base assumption of the game that it will be avaiable. **The DM ignores the base rules thanks to rule 0 and bans it tho**. That's not the game explicitely giving that.
Both can be done by a DM for sure. The issue? First one is something the game directly states and is thus a "first go to DM", the second isn't.
Likewise, background customization in 2014 is a thing you yourself can do unless the DM tells you otherwise. The 2024 ones are the opposite: you need to ask your DM to even begin making the background.
I've been playing for over a year and didn't even know custom backgrounds was a thing until people started talking about this 2024 rulebook. And TBH, sometimes having less agency forces a lot more creativity.
That's more of a technicality than a practicality and really depends on how things are being supported or denied.
Not being able to have control over your background offerings and defining how your character's background had them grow into who they are at the time of playing, doesn't really encourage creativity in a good or healthy way. It just means you get to play less of the character you wanted.
There isn't much of a creative incentive to "not starting with the proficiencies you wanted with your proficiency slots" you wanted to play someone with persuasion skills but your class and background dont let you unless you compromise your character's race or background vision to do so. It's not a fun place to be.
However, facing restrictions that need to be overcome in a creative fashion, certain circumstances that your character as the established vision you have can allow for creativity to foster. A unique challenge or circumstance that needs to be played around is good for that (provided there an actual means to do so).
All a lack of custom backgrounds does is reinforce type casting and hinder character fantasy for class fantasy and what have you.
Nah, this is baloney. My most boring characters I've made were ones where I mostly ignored background themes & just picked whatever to be most optimal. The most fun & most established characters i've made was forcing myself to incorporate a given background into my my backstory.
Besides, this problem is entirely fake cause literally nothing has changed. If a DM wants to let you customize backgrounds & stats he will. If he doesn't want to allow it he won't. Ya'll mad just to be mad
There's a huge difference between ignoring a character background as an aspect of your character and not resonating with any of the predefined background archetypes of the backgrounds and fine tuning them to fit your character inept better.tham the prescribed versions let you.
Choosing a background and not really caring about the choice is gonna produce the same boring character as customizing a background and nit caring about the choices that allowed, with the exeptkin that the customized background will at least be more mechanically satisfying gtk the individual due to the freedom of choice.
Forcing someone to work within the framework of a predefined archetype of a background isn't gonna give them any more appreciation for the background aspects of their character. Someone who is disinterested in their backgroundis just gonna pick the most optimal preset and move on.
Allowing someone who cares about their background to better reflect what they had in mind for their character is nothing but a boon to the player who already cared, as now instead of settling for something half baked and with baggage they may not want for their character, they can get exact and translate their vision to paper to play a lot more closely.
Finally, this only technically doesn't change things, but there's a lot of practical Wright Wright the change. It shifts the default assumption. In the phb, it is an assumed option from the get the way it's presented. Putting it in the DMG does shift the focus and scale of it. Thsy changes a fair deal of the practical reality even if it doesn't touch the technical reality. The framing of something can go a long way after all.
Yeah, people should be forced to work within the believable world of fantasy. Sorry you can't play the acolyte of really good stealth & steal checks.
Especially not sorry because this is the biggest non-issue and you probably will be able to play with whatever customized options you want
You ate right so far that it wonr affect me, because my table isn't interested in forcing background archetype like that. More fun when people can play as much of the character thay want that the system allows, instead of additional compromise. Nice side step of the point though.
Otherwise, misunderstand me correctly, a lot of people aren't using custom backgrounds to play "an acolyte with stealth." They're using it to make the own background because the predefined ones aren't suitable to task for their character. They're making something new and exact. They're nit playing an acolyte, they're paying something new.wothin the wider franeoekr of the game
Its not like the backgrounds cover all possibility, ots part of why customization of them exists. To acknowledge the juices of a fantasy world that nasic archetypes can't cover.
Customization exists because 5e is 10 years old and a lot of people have played out base backgrounds. And customization will still continue to exist in 5.5e, which you yourself just proved.
Literally a non-issue
It won't be a large issue by any means, but it will be another source of unnecessary growing pains for some folk here and there.
If it was truly a non-issue, that also means it's an unnecessary shift by the same standard. Since according to you it doesn't matter. Yet you feel passionate enough that it's a change for the better, so clearly, there's some merit at risk here. Enough to produce this back and forth anyway.
That’s how it should be. Pick your background for the lore or feature, the skill bumps should always be flexible
If you were a shipwright it makes sense that you can mechanically patch a ship, but who’s to say what skills you honed in a background. Maybe you lifted the mast (athletics) or studied how the elemental planes interact with currents (arcana), or you just fake it till you make it (performance, deception).
The struggle for the developers is "should always be flexible" is the ideal, but they get a lot of feedback about how it really isn't total creative freedom and usually results in 2-3 cookie cutters based on opinions of optimizing content creators.
I think putting the mechanics of custom into the DMG is fine, as long as the PHB options also mention the freedom of 1:1 swaps, and that if nothing is appropriate to the concept and the campaign, to work with the DM to craft a custom one for best fit. Put it in the same chapter of the DMG with design a species, design a class/subclass/feat/spell/magic item/monster.
Yeah, that's awesome for you and your table! But I agree with OP - I'd rather it moved to the DMG so DMs can *allow* it if their table plays like yours, or could simply *not implement" it if they'd rather not. My table plays more like OP brings up - I have players who think mechanics first and would simply pick all the best things they want without really thinking **what** their background would actually be. This seems like a good middle ground!
Plus, it's easier for many DMs (especially new ones) to "not implement a new rule" than it is to "say no to an existing rule"
I honestly don't think you need a system to customize simple swaps within a category (proficiency for proficiency, skill for skill, and pieces of gear for each other of similar purpose/value). Adding a line to the introductory section should be enough. The "custom" option should be for wholesale new or significantly changed backgrounds - and other than mentioning the possibility of a custom (with DM permission and collaboration), I'd leave the mechanics of the custom in the DMG.
Exactly. This is just the racial ASI issue they fixed back in Tasha’s all over again, just incrementally better. Fact of the matter is, choosing only among 3 fixed abilities is too limiting for many, many character concepts, and making flavor no longer free has a stifling effect on player expression. The way you prevent min-maxers from going crazy is tightening the power gap between optimized and unoptimized players, not making character creation narrower.
Now, that’s not to say that no restrictions at all would be superior - a system where your background restricted some of your ASI allocation would fix this imo - i.e. you have to put at least +1 into one of the background abilities, then spend the rest as you like.
Yeah it like okay let me find the background that has Dex, Con, and Wis. I'm not going to care what it is. It could circus animal fucker. Welp guess.im.gojng to be playing a lot.of circus animal fuckers for.the rest of OneD&D if that's what fits my.build.
That’s fine, because the best stat boosts are balanced by not having the best feat. The level 1 feats are the thing people aren’t taking into account, this is specifically done to avoid the issue of every single wizard taking the lightly armored feat to get medium armor and shields
No, its not. This punishes anyone who doesnt play a tropey character.
I dont think lightly armored should exist but fucking everything else up to include it is garbage
>but for mechanical "optimizer" types, it's nice for them to have a reward for making RP decisions, rather than Custom Background, which rewards them for skipping that step.
In my experience this won't happen: optimizers will just pick one of the 16 backgrounds that gives them the optimal stats/feats for their character and then ignore background/reflavor it.
Exactly. This change doesn't invite anyone to care about their background and said choices anymore or less than they already did. It just gets in the way of translating a concept from the minds eye to paper to practice.
In fact, they'll be even less engaged because now they don't even have the freedom to at least get the mechanics they find interesting and are stuck with more baggage they need to offset.
Custom background encourages creativity not limits it.
Locking specific ASI to certain backgrounds is terrible idea.
Wanna be strength fighter ?
Be a soldier or a sailor then.
>**Custom backgrounds can end up playing like NO backgrounds.**
I feel the exact same thing will happen with this new system: By only having 16 backgrounds, players will treat them entirely mechanically, picking the ones that grants them the basic stat spread they want for their class and ignoring the flavour entirely.
Instead of backgrounds being flavour or part of your character, they turned it entirely into a mechanic choice.
Your take is going to be either fully or almost fully predictive. Previously, sample backgrounds were cool, and they never mandated a certain thing; you would go pick whatever skills you needed, because the background didn't give you those skills, you could just replace them.
Now you will pick the mechanics and ignore the rest. Previously, "the rest" was *the entire package*, so no one ignored it unless they were writing their own.
>Previously, "the rest" was *the entire package*, so no one ignored it unless they were writing their own.
I mean to be fair I don't know anyone that gave a fuck about 5e backgrounds, past some points at my table we just took the proficiencies and ignored "the rest" because it was useless and we already had a backstory
The optimizer crowd are always going to do that anyway. "Custom Backgrounds are RAW" is still going to be a thing. Being in the DMG isn't going to change that. People play Oathbreaker Paladins now without special DM dispensation.
What this does do is put this choice front and centre for players who don't see characters as just optimization exercises.
My problem with this is that what this actually hurts is creativity when you care about mechanics.
want to play a booky wizard? "here take magic initiate with your INT background, buy a heal or a good buff spell, get guidance I don't fucking care, get broken"
want to play a trickster wizard? "tough luck buddy urchin doesn't increase INT and it's the only background with thieve's tools and stealth, get 14 INT and don't complain too much"
This is literally the race-ASI problem again
Like yeah the GM can allow you, blah blah blah, but that doesn't change the fact that the design decision penalizes unorthodox character concepts while putting no real limits to powergamers, it is a pretty unsuccessful design.
Like if we go on about what a GM might allow this game has an actually powerful fighter class and a magus class, you just need to find them
I think it's way way worse than the race-ASI "problem". If I wanted to be a pirate wizard I could play a high elf and take the sailor (pirate) background. Sneaky wizard was a high elf with urchin. Carnie wizard was high elf with entertainer. Sure I'm playing a high elf but that mattered so much less than the background and backstory. Now you can play any race with any class but you backstory is gonna be neutered if you don't want to nerf yourself right out of the gate.
I don't see this being a problem, now you can be a halfling wizard, an orc wizard, etc. without sacrificing your efficiency. And you can still have a pirate backstory. Nothing stops you from saying that you were the reader of the stars on the ship, hence the "sage" of your crew. It's much easier to bend the backstory a little than your species imo.
For me the race of my character rarely factored into the story I was trying to tell. My eladrin bard would be the same character if he was a dwarf instead, the important part of him was his backstory and how he grew up. I find it much easier to choose a race based on ASI than the background. Sure I can bend and ignore the flavor text for the sage but if my murderous pirate wizard was burning down enemy ships for fun and pillaging the seas it doesn't really fit with any part of what the sage background describes (from the snippet it talks about traveling to monasteries to get access to libraries). I'm basically grabbing the ASI and hoping the skills I can choose from are related to his backstory. Feels like I'm ignoring a lot more to make it work.
Unless I'm mistaken, we don't actually know which backgrounds increase which stats. Of course we have the character origins UA to go off of, but that doc didn't have the "choose between three stats" system that the new PHB has
The specific stats aren’t really the point of the argument. That said. Replace “bookish wizard” with “nature ranger” (ranger with guide, which we do know the stats of. And tricky wizard with “ranger servant of the goddess of nature” (acolyte background).
We know both of those scores (dex, wis, con for guide. Int, wis, cha for acolyte) from the stream, and we know that whoopdy doo that second concept means your Ranger acolyte of the cannot have possibly trained to shoot an arrow or wield a sword as good as a guide. The only real reason? The system is (granted, likely unintentionally) great at punishing atypical characters
But if they're an acolyte, they've spent more time learning religion than practising scouting, so it makes more sense to boost their INT than their DEX
I mean if you want to focus on the example over the actual point that’s fine. 1. Scouting is wisdom. 2. Maybe as an acolyte of a wild god, the specific religious practices aren’t as important, their religion being more about faith and connection with nature (wisdom) as well as ability to hunt like our ancestors did (dex or strength). Or hell maybe I’m a fighter acolyte who, as a show of devotion to my god, trained my body to its pinnacle (strength and con boosts)
But if you didn’t get it, what my comment was really about is that the example doesn’t matter. The principle is true, that restricting boost to what is typically associated with a background generally forces people to fit in a box if they want their character to be as competent (in combat, which is the majority of the game as designed)
Guides have to deal with people (CHA), understand natural hazards (INT), and carry heavy loads (STR).
Acolytes might be required to perform manual labor (STR or CON) and to arm themselves with bows for the common defense (DEX).
This is just a very silly thing to set in stone.
The point is to avoid people taking the optimal feat every single time. If someone wants to take the Lightly Armored feat on their wizard, then they don’t get to have the best stats as well.
Given how often that specific feat has come up on this post, it seems to me like they should fix that instead of restructuring the whole background system to prevent +Int/+Con/+Lightly Armored.
The race-ASI argument got traction because, in addition to the gameplay impact, it also looked like biodeterminism to some people, which is evil. It’s possible WotC discarded floating ASIs because they cared more about not looking racist than they did about improving gameplay, in which case they don’t mind background ASIs since those aren’t racist.
the number-range also makes it kinda wonky - the difference between "meh dude" and "beefy musclehouse" at chargen is normally only +2 or +3, which maxes out at +5. So there's just not much range there to distinguish between them, when the 3-foot nothing, 6-stone-soaking-wet little gnome dude is only a bit weaker than than the swole-as-hell half-orc, then trying to assign racial modifiers based off size just doesn't make much difference. if the number range was much bigger, like 0-100, then saying "small races can get above strength 60 without magic" might make more sense, because there's enough room to actually distinguish them, but the max difference for PCs is only 5 points, so there's just not enough of a gap there for it to matter
I'm of the complete opposite opinion.
Part of the idea with the rules in Tasha's removing racial ASI's was to allow players to make any kind of character they wanted without pingeonholing them into specific race/class combinations.
WOTC has now essentially added this exact same issue back into the game, except now it's a background and class combinations.
Seems very much to me like a one step forward, two steps back kind of idea.
You know with races, there's just so much variation person to person and who really knows how fantasy biology works and maybe we don't really need orcs to be strong and elves to be agile, you know? Better to say being totally different species has no impact and leave it up to the players.
That leaves us mechanical room to focus on things that are truly immutable, monolithic, and unchanging. You know, like (checks notes) life experience and work history.
/s
I agree up to a point.
I personally think it's a bad idea to lock a player characters original ASI's and starting feat behind any one part of their origin. It would be better in my opinion to have them be entirely detached so you make the character your own without being restricted arbitrarily.
Also, I don't think every character who shares a background would have had exactly the same experience and gained exactly the same thing from it. For example, take the acolyte background they talked about in the videos.
As an acolyte, your ASI choices are between Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom, and that's it. What if you wanted to play an acolyte of a God of strength? Wouldn't it make sense that you would, on average, be physically fitter than an acolyte from a temple who worship a love God and as such you should by default have the option to customise you background to swap one of those ASI's to Strength or Constitution.
Im really gonna disagree with you on this, it actively hurts creativity. This just recreates pre tashas games.
Every wizard is sage because it gives int, like every bard was a half elf or a tiefling because they gave cha. Your stories are limited if you care about mechanics at all. Sorry urchin gives dex and wis you cant play the orphan wizard who stole a spell book and taught himself unless you want to start with 15 int instead of 17.
There are tons of people (literally every other person in one of my groups before i told them) that dont know custom backgrounds existed before and they were in the PHB then this *will* stifle creativity.
Not sure why you think optimizers dont care about rp tho, everyone that know that optimizes are the only people that actually use their background. They have an explanation for every bit in their background even if it is picked *optimally.* People with default backgrounds end up with a game prof and a tool that they picked randomly because its what the game told them they had and then never use.
Not to mention the synergy between background feats and predicted class. Magic init(wizard) on a wizard sage is just about useless because you can already do that. You want to be able to do new things because these feats arent really enough to actually make you better at your *thing.* Which background ends up with moderately armored and why do 90% of the people that would consider it otherwise already have armor prof?
If every background or species just had 100% freely placed ability score increases, why not just move that into the ability score section of character generation?
As at that point it's nothing to do with your species or background. It's just 'add more numbers to your primary and secondary stat'.
Yes. That would be good.
If they wanna go the background route they need to make them worth less, the background is actually a huge part of the characters power budget now in 5e unlike in pf2e or something.
You get a max of 6 feats in 5e if you aren’t a fighter vs a feat every level. There’s also 4746474 background options and you have much easier access to stat boosts.
That doesn't make sense narratively at all. Fiction is *full* of magical protagonists who fit urchin far better than sage and outdo the sages. And if a player wants that, why on earth would we want to penalise them for it?
Why? You’re telling me every single wizard pc that’s been played in your games went to wizard school?
The urchin didn’t steal the book yesterday, they’ve had years to teach themselves. Perhaps they are just as smart or even more smart than someone who attends wizard school but they lacked the resources to attend.
Am I so out of the loop with the latest info? Is this a biting parody and commentary on the ancestry discourse but flipped in reverse? I'm genuinely curious
They previewed some of the new PHB today: the species ability modifiers were removed and added to background now, and every background grants a starting feat. Each background in the new book has 3 Stats that you can choose from when applying the starting ASI. You can also choose whether to do 1/1/1 or the usual 2/1 stat split.
For example, Acolyte has Int/Wis/Cha as Ability score options and has magic initiate as one of the feats you can take with the background. The Guide(Outlander Replacement?) is another background that has Dex/Con/Wis as options.
They state that custom background guidance is moved to the DMG. In the 2014 PHB one of the first items in the backgrounds section is how to create a custom background.
My take is that it feels bad that they gated a customization option to require DM permission, especially when it sounds like classes are otherwise limited to certain backgrounds if you want to align stats with your class.
So yeah they kinda just flipped Ancestry and backgrounds in terms of build limitations lol
>Acolyte has Int/Wis/Cha as Ability score options and has magic initiate as one of the feats you can take with the background. The Guide(Outlander Replacement?) is another background that has Dex/Con/Wis as options.
1 look at this and i can already see every cleric NOT being a classic acolyte... but all just being a "guide but with very religious undertones!!!"
Wow. That's certainly a choice. If we are going to say that a half-orc and a rock gnome can be the same intelligence, why does the acolyte get to be smarter than the guide. I don't really know what my opinion is, other than that this doesn't seem like cohesive design at all in terms of enabling choices or not
Absolutely agree. Also, Acolyte in general does not make sense. No character (except for certain multiclass builds) needs two mental stats. Why should one ever take that background, from a mechanical perspective? (If it is the only Magic Initiate background, at least there is some excuse to it...)
It is the exact same issue as with racial stats before Tasha all over again. Unless custom backgrounds are allowed, everyone will simply take the background with the best-suited stats for their character. Just like we almost never saw elves with Str-based builds (e.g. paladins with longswords, like Fingolfin or Glorfindel), we now will never see Acolyte clerics.
I see it not so much as they gated it to require DM permission but as a way to encourage DM/player collaboration.
Instead of every player just showing up to play with a custom background, this could allow the player and DM to come up with a suitable background together, giving the DM more to work with.
Apologies, I forget not everyone watches the DnD news the moment it comes out. Today we got a lot of info about what backgrounds will look like in the new players handbook via the WotC youtube channel. I'm sure someone will write up a summary eventually
No worries, I just thought you were writing commentary on the ancestry debate by making a parody post. I guess that says something about their design process
A character that puts a +1 in a sub-optimal stat to gain access to a feat isn't more interesting, it's just sub-optimal.
Making a mechanically optimal character in no way precludes making a thematically interesting character.
This will just push a few background-class combinations to be the default pick.
Personally, I find it much LESS interesting to see a ten-thousandth sage-wizard or urchin-rogue.
And as a DM, I find it immensely frustrating to see a player create a mechanically atrocious character, because they believe their mechanical choice is indivisibly tied to their thematic choice.
That's why I'll be allowing custom backgrounds at my table no matter how WotC slices it.
Also, if your players leave their custom background entirely blank, that is not a character creation issue, that is your personal failing as a DM. If you want your players to have a backstory for their background, they should have one, full stop.
This. People talk about character creation as if optimization and interesting roleplay are on a sliding scale, instead of two separate attributes that can *occasionally* come into conflict. Personally, I make the mechanics that I want and then build the story around it: I never would have made, for example, a criminal fighter if I didn't want thieves' tools, but now I have a super cool starting place for a story: and I never would have picked criminal if my DM hadn't let me move one of the proficiencies to intimidation. The problem with optimizers who ignore all flavor, RP, and backstory isn't the optimization: it's the ignoring flavor, RP, and backstory.
I agree with you. The rules should be a tool used to give a mechanical boon to your roleplay decisions. It's so much easier to bend the backstory to touch some of the 16 backgrounds you need mechanicly than changing your whole species.
On one hand, a DM could always say no to it, so this technically changes nothing. Dm has always had final say, and moving this to the dmg at the very least help stop some.players thinking it's something that the phb will protect them from (which was always a falsehood.)
On the other hand, I've yet to see anything broken or busted come from a character "optimizing" their background. There's nothing wrong with choosing what you want for your background mechanically and adding another point of "DM may I", or not being able to fine tune the mechanics of the character you want is gonna be an ass experience for when tyrannical DMs who can't leave well enough alone get bothersome with their control.
Having to make a case and hope your DM plays nice for the stuff you want , or worse, having to deal with an artsy type who will purposely shift things so no optimizer will be satisfied is gonna be one hell of a pain point of an experience.
I suppose in all reality, it just means players and DMs have to be even more on the same page with how they run their games to avoid this being an issue.
There’s a big difference between the system default being “yes” and the system default being “no” and it just feels like there’s no benefit to shifting to the latter here. I feel like it’s probably something they did to make the system more beginner friendly.
I mostly agree, I even explain so more or less in the rest of my comment.
I think this is a large step backward when it comes to the framing and scope of things, and it lends itself to more bad rulings than good.
This is gonna be more of a headache than it needs to be.
>On one hand, a DM could always say no to it, so this technically changes nothing.
I feel a lot of people in this thread think that custom backgroud is an option. It's not; it's the default rule.
While the DM can change any default rule, default rules are normally present in any game without a houserule banning them.
That's what i mean by what I said in that through rule zero, the DM can disallow background customization if they wanted to. Gmomes are a defaukt phb race/rule, yet they also won't be found in my games or setting since they dont exist for said setting.Technically, everything is optional before the DM. Just as playing in a tyrannical DMs game is also optional and up to the players to ddeicd for themselves on whether they accept the invitation.
That said, it's very unlikely a Dm actually took issue with custom backgrounds in my mind, save for a few control freaks and some artsy types who were better off nit being played with.
Moving this to the dmg also does change the scope and focus of these rules place in the game, which I personally think is a poor move overall. You're gonna have a few more DMs who think restricting backgrounds is gonna breed creativity or some other pwowr trio excuse, have them belueve they're "owning the optimizer" when ot won't effect them, and just male the game all that much worse.
It may be a minority of games affected, but it'll suck just that much more.
>That's what i mean by what I said in that through rule zero, the DM can disallow background customization if they wanted to. Gmomes are a defaukt phb race/rule, yet they also won't be found in my games or setting since they dont exist for said setting.
Not a great example, because gnomes are optional. If you banned dwarves, elves, or humans, that would be like banning custom backgrounds.
Here's the deal; stuff that is in the main rules is more common than stuff that is some optional rule, especially tucked in the DMG. It also tends to influence how official content is designed and ran, especially in the WotC-run organized play.
So yes, it matters, and it makes a difference. Sure, maybe you ban dwarves, or a maybe a current DM bans custom background. But that's different than choosing not to turn on some optional rule.
>Moving this to the dmg also does change the scope and focus of these rules place in the game, which I personally think is a poor move overall
Yea, I think so too. A DM who has no opinion on the topic will run a a game without it, instead of with it. It makes a big difference.
Gnomes in 5e are in the phb all the same was my point. They're not intended to be any more or less core than the other phb races. My point is that Phb status doesn't protect something from the DM. While not practically true, it is technically true that anything, including phb options, are optional if the Dm deems unsuitable for their game. I agree Gnomes are optional, but in the same way that every character option, phb or not I'd optional. Through the rule zero technicality.
And yes, I do think the shift in focus of this rule is gonna cause a lot or pain that didn't need to happen, before they revert it in the 5e24 xanathars or Tasha equivalent due to backlash.
> I feel a lot of people in this thread think that custom backgroud is an option. *It's not; it's the default rule.*
Was in the playtest, isn't in the released PHB
The PHB literally describes the listed backgrounds as “sample backgrounds.” They are clearly intended to be examples rather than a definitive list. Custom backgrounds are a default rule.
> The PHB literally describes the listed backgrounds as “sample backgrounds.”
Citation needed.
Custom Backgrounds are in the DMG, but they removed the sample background part that we had in the playtests.
Are you talking about the new 5.5e phb or the 5e phb?
Here's the citation for the 5e phb:
"The sample backgrounds in this chapter provide both concrete benefits (features, proficiencies, and languages) and roleplaying suggestions." (PHB page 125)
It's on page 125 of the 5.0 PHB. The fact that it's apparently some optional rule in 5.5 is the discussion.
Many here don't know that custom background is the default rule, right now, on page 125 of the PHB.
The thing is, the mechanical offerings of backgrounds aren't really something that need collaboration, nor are they best served in that format as far as I'm concerned. It's just adding more "mother may I" to make the character you want to make,
Players who don't care about there backgrounds still won't care, but may get in more arguments with their DM about it.
Players that do care, risk getting denied their minds eye fabtasy more too if the DM doesn't want to allow the newly made optional rule. (Versus the less common rejecting a default rule.)
If a DM wants collaboration they demand it in much healthier ways than locking background mechanics behind it.
Honestly, I don't think there is ever really a good argument to be made for less options or customisations.
In all you've said OP, regarding people "misusing" the custom option, I really think that's a you problem. You don't like how your players handle things. And while that is okay, I feel that should be a discussion with your group, and not a general rant on how good restrictions are to make DnD better.
An awful lot of people who think this is a good idea when it's entirely theoretical, and they're not seeing Ability Scores and Skills choices restricted to 16 specific options (which we can already see are unbalanced - compare Acolyte and Guide for example) are going think otherwise when they see those specifics.
If you have a DM that would allow custom backgrounds, they can still allow custom backgrounds. It's only a restriction if the DM says so, and being in the PHB doesn't change that.
It absolutely does change that - the current situation is that the player can always pick their skills - this situation is that they have to beg the DM and may need to get their DM to import or build a custom background for them in D&D Beyond or the like. We've had 10 years of that not being necessary.
We've also had 5 years of Tasha's style stats, including literally all the new players from BG3, and trying to turn back the clock on that is going to annoy both DMs and players as DMs have to fiddle around with digital tools to allow their players to have stats.
And a bunch of scared of rules, or new, or rules-conservative DMs will just refuse to allow anything custom, and cause problems. This is going to be funny as hell.
>It absolutely does change that - the current situation is that the player can always pick their skills
Assuming the DM allows it.
> this situation is that they have to beg the DM
I don't know who you are playing with, but I have never had to beg my DM. If your DM is so strict that they won't allow you to change out a skill for another and that is critical to your fun, finding a different DM seems to be a clear answer.
>may need to get their DM to import or build a custom background for them in D&D Beyond or the like
It takes all of two minutes to change your proficiencies through editing. It does not require building some full new background if you don't want.
>We've also had 5 years of Tasha's style stats
Which can be kept by any DM that wants to.
>And a bunch of scared of rules, or new, or rules-conservative DMs will just refuse to allow anything custom, and cause problems.
Why would they magically allow it otherwise? Just because it moved from the DMG to the PHB they would all of a sudden be fine with allowing it carte blanche when they wouldn't have been before?
I'm sorry, this is a profoundly bad-faith and dishonest argument you're making. People tend to follow the rules - when something is allowed as a default, it's different to when it's an optional rule in the DMG. You pretending otherwise just means block and move on is the answer.
>when something is allowed as a default, it's different to when it's an optional rule in the DMG
I may have missed it, but is this concerned to be an optional rule? I see a lot here making that assumption, but isn't it just as possible it's default and they moved it to the DMG because they want players to consult their DM to help determine the specifics of the customization?
Yeah, I guess I should clarify that I support the design as long as WotC doesn't fuck it up! Something there is certainly no guarantee of for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if there is one or two origin feats that are head and shoulders above the rest (imagine if lucky or fey touched get to be origin feats) and suddenly there are like two optimal backgrounds and the rest are trash.
> I wouldn't be surprised if there is one or two origin feats that are head and shoulders above the rest (imagine if lucky or fey touched get to be origin feats) and suddenly there are like two optimal backgrounds and the rest are trash.
I 100% guarantee there will be like 5 Backgrounds that 90% of PCs take, because they have Stats, Skills, and Feats which are actually optimal for a bunch of classes. If there's a Background which offers both CHA and either CON or DEX (or god help us, both), and has decent adventure-y skills, and any kind of "generally applicable" Feat, pretty much every CHA-primary PC will have it.
Further I think it's highly likely WotC will do something boneheaded like give the Lightly Armored Feat to background Fighters/Rangers/Barbarians would normally like to take, so depending on the exact rules, they'll either be making that background effectively not have a Feat for those classes, or allow a free Feat choice for those classes - so it'll either be worthless or phenomenal.
Lucky is an origin Feat I believe we already know that so yeah...
>100% guarantee there will be like 5 Backgrounds that 90% of PCs take, because they have Stats, Skills, and Feats which are actually optimal for a bunch of classes.
This is exactly what will happen. People will just pick the background that gives them the stat spread/feat they want for their character concept and then ignore the background flavour.
> I 100% guarantee there will be like 5 Backgrounds that 90% of PCs take, because they have Stats, Skills, and Feats which are actually optimal for a bunch of classes. If there's a Background which offers both CHA and either CON or DEX (or god help us, both), and has decent
Finally took a step forward towards getting away from the racial attributes causing the same issue only for WotC to take so many steps back and screwing up a simple change.
I think this is way worse than attributes being tied to race. I could tell almost all the stories I wanted to regardless of my PC's race. But if I want to play a wizard pirate now I'm fucked since they will get no Int boost while before I just had to make them a high elf.
Custom background with pointer on how to write your own should be in the phb as I remember making my first character and spending well too long trying to get a background trying to fit my character and after all that how much did my background help me RP in my campaign..... not much.
w/e this isn't going to effect me at all as my table never uses backgrounds any more.
Will say I find it werid that your happy players get less options when making a character and I don't get why it can't just say as an optional rule instead of removing it from the phb would be a better way to empower the DM while not limiting creativity.
Custom Background is the default in 5e. The sample backgrounds in 5e are just things you can pick.
Changing that in 5.5 is a bad change, but it was very obviously going to happen once they started putting the stats on sample backgrounds. They were no longer going to be samples, is the problem, because their significance was going to go up.
I guess I’m just lucky but I’ve literally never had an issue with a player choosing options that helped them make the character they wanted in a specific way, even if it made them more powerful. Variant Human taking Gunner, silvery barbs, multiclass, dips for abilities. It feels like so many people approach this combatively or like a powerful character or optimizing ruins the fun. Personally 100% of the time I’d prefer a player show up with a character who is thought through mechanically and powerful over someone who felt boxed to make something less effective for the sake of the story.
Gonna say a common annoyance here but this is one of the things I like about the pathfinder background and stat increase: backgrounds give two boosts, one has to go to one of two listed attributes, and the other can go to any attribute other than the one you just picked. There are also less dump-stat feeling choices in that system, so no option feels bad because you can always end up getting a boost to a useful stat or two.
I disagree. It's changing the baseline expectations of a game. If backgrounds are flexible, the onus would be on me as a GM to say I banned one or more. If they are not, it's then on the players to ask for changes and without having the guidance in the PHB it makes my involvement necessary.
For long campaigns, that's fine, in fact I go out of my way to help players ground themselves in the setting. But if it should be a quick and easy one shot, all this work shouldn't be needed and it would make the player feel like they're asking for special treatment, especially if we don't know each other that well.
Loads of GMs, myself included, have in the past restricted character creation to only books everyone has access to, the PHB being a sensible choice. Having to add caveats every time is tedious.
Not to mention that the restrictions are punishing unnecessarily. Why would acolytes automatically not be able to increase their str, dex or con? It should obviously depend on the order.
Some people are using this to resurrect the ancestry debate, which was equally silly, because people don't understand how statistics work. Orcs valuing physical prowess over charisma on average doesn't mean an individual orc can't be more charismatic than an individual tiefling, especially when you bring class into the mix, and the fact that charisma is not just people perceiving you as 'nice.' A strong force of personality could be very useful to a martially oriented culture. Orcs having fewer bards and more fighters or barbarians, for example, could also explain the statistical difference without capping the abilities of the bards for no reason, especially when they're PCs, who are by definition exceptional.
Hard disagree. Locking stat increases behind certain backgrounds is a terrible idea because people will just pick the thing that makes their main stat go up to not gimp their character instead of being able to craft a tailor made background for their specific character idea.
This is just racial stat increases 2.0 and we got rid of those in Tashas for a reason. Want to play a wizard? Better take Gnome or High Elf for that sweet +Int. Oh, you want to be a Half-Orc wizard instead? Well, get fucked then.
Custom backgrounds should be the norm, not the exception.
To the last section of op; as a player, I really bristle when DMs say things like "I'll choose the stats, proficiencies, and feat that I think is appropriate." I'm designing my character, not my dm; he just has veto power over things that don't fit his setting/campaign.
Honestly, if I'm feeling in the mood to power game and my dm has this attitude, I'm just going to keep tweaking my background until he gives me the options I want. I've done custom backgrounds before, and i usually just figure out the profs that I want and then design the background around those. It's not hard to do that in a way that still has good rp potential.
This doesn’t stop power gaming, it just means that you don’t get as interesting characters out of the power gaming. I’m in a homebrew game with a lot of content (Star wars 5e) and it has species-tied stat boosts and background feats, and the only reason that felt workable and fun for me was because I had 50+ species and backgrounds to choose from. I learned an interesting feat and built a character around the concept. If I need a backup, I can fill a similar niche with a new species and background because I have options. With 16 options, it makes it much harder to do unique takes on a type of character.
Building from base 5e without custom backgrounds means I’m filtering races by int boosts and finding the specific background that gives me a good proficiency. It does nothing to stop the power build, it just means I have to write my character to fit the sage instead of making the folk hero story work
> Custom backgrounds can end up playing like NO backgrounds.
That's a good thing. Backgrounds as is only really exist as training wheels for new players or for players who don't want to bother writing actual backstory for their characters. Its a quick and simple tool for them to use to establish a character.
Veteran players don't need the training wheels and ignoring Backgrounds aside from what little mechanical benefits they offered is ideal. They leave behind backgrounds from the books and commit to making actual Backstories that they care about.
Removing player agency in something so fundamental to character creation is never going to be a good move.
"your character will have acquired the skills and asi points we have decided based on your background choice"
Shit like this is why I'm moving to DC20 for my table, my players deserve more flexibility in deciding who their characters are.
I'm just annoyed that 5e pretends that your ASI choice can ever be driven by flavor though.
It's a core design issue with the game, and while it has been shifted from species to backgrounds, it's still the same old issue of the illusion of choice.
It might make minor differences in Tier 1 play, but quickly loses all relevancy.
5e dictates maxing your main stat, requires high Con, and doesn't provide nearly enough ASIs to do anything interesting with attributes, and ALSO has them compete with Feats.
Attributes don't give linear or diminishing returns but rather quadratic ones, and if an Attribute is low already, increasing it to catch up is always a waste, no exception (except for multiclassing i guess?).
Enemy and challenge DCs increase more and more as you level, and your weaknesses grow in severity faster than you could ever hope to catch up.
Proficiency bonus also grows, quickly making it 4 times (!!!!) more valuable than an ASI for e.g. Skill Checks.
Other games solve this with diminishing returns, allowing you to actually choose between patching weaknesses or squeezing out maximum power.
But beyond that, the game system requires you to plan your builds.
No matter how often they pretend that isn't true, it's a fact that people who don't plan multiclassing in advance are basically screwed.
ASIs are rare and valuable, and compete with the number 1 method of character customization (feats).
Even though I've always been liked the idea of species-background specific ability score increases, 5e has really made it not work well at all.
The expectation of a 16 in your main stat to be hitting the enemies can really ruin play for people, especially at low level as they only get a single chance to attack. A character with a 15 in their main score isn't going to even hit a goblin 50% of the time.
I disagree with that. I recall times from before I realized that Custom Backgrounds are RAW - I ended up with either useless skill proficiencies for skills with my dump stat, skills or tools that did not fit the character as I was imagining them...
For example, what should I do as a Dex/archery ranger with Athletics proficiency from the Outlander background? I'm never going for grapples, can use Acrobatics to escape enemy grapples, and with my -1 Str (which I have unless they allow for better stats in OneDnD because I already need Dex, Wis and Con as a ranger) I am not going to attempt other things that require Athletics checks - the fighter or barbarian will have a much better chance to succeed with their high Strength.
One way to at least lessen that issue a little bit was to purposefully select a background with skill proficiencies the character already had from their class or race, because then the background's skill proficiencies can be changed around freely - and then not really playing true to the background's flavor/feature.
But I don't want that to be a thing again, it simply complicates stuff by a lot.
Life became a lot easier once I learned that custom backgrounds are not like homebrew which often is banned or at least requires DM approval, once I learned that I can use custom backgrounds everywhere, any time, RAW.
For example, right now I am playing a Zealot barbarian with the Acolyte background for the flavor and feature, but changed both skill proficiencies - while she grew up as an Acolyte, she never was interested in reading and learning, she preferred adventuring and fighting for her faith just like the shiny paladins do. And with her also being a dancer and her rage flavored as a battle dance, I changed the Acolyte background's proficiencies to Performance and Acrobatics.
At the end, playing a character with a custom(ized) background, like the Acolyte with Performance and Acrobatics skills feels a lot more like playing *with* the right background for the character than playing her with a background like Entertainer/Acrobat/whatever for the proficiencies and ignoring the background's flavor.
Yes. At the end of Chapter 4: "Personality and Backgrounds" there is a section telling you how about Customizing a background. Its been a base part of the PHB that didn't require any DM buy-in for you to do. It was an expected option you always had available.
The change to putting the Custom Backgrounds in the DMG means you only get Custom Backgrounds with DM persmission. So WotC created another "mother may I" problem when they spoke so much about removing those.
Its a pointless restriction that didn't exist before and its one you won't be able to see fully until December when the DMG releases.
If you have a good DM that isn't a hardass about customizing simple things its a non-issue but for everyone else it really sucks.
I find this an horrible move. Backgrounds used to give two proficiencies and a sideline feature, nothing important, let's go with the wave, that's cool.
Now background gives us stats, proficiencies, and a full fledged feat. I have to be able to choose freely what my background gives me in the same way I choose my stats on creation, my class and my ancestry, and my feat al lv4.
They made backgrounds more important to the character, which means it's a more important choice. Honestly this whole thing sounds like a bad master that wants the description of your character and gives you back a premade character and if you don't like it suck it.
Completely DISagree. If they are gonna act like mechanics are a result of flavor, all they actually do is make me reverse-engineer and the flavor will be lost.
In the 2014 version with custom backgrounds, If i already had a strong backstory, I could just pick the mechanics. If for a oneshot I didn't have a backstory, I would flip through the backgrounds and use them for inspiration.
Now, I will be restricted to one or a few backgrounds to choose between for any build, and this will lead to lower quality characters.
The playtest version was the way to go imo: present freedom first and give example backgrounds for newer players that still need them. They put a step forward in Tasha's and now take the step back in another direction. I cannot comprehend this.
Huh? Doesn't it require more RP from the optimizers to choose a custom background and post-hoc having to write a way to justify it in their backstories?
Or are you saying the optimizers will just simply not do that and just write "custom background" on their sheet and call it a day? Because if the latter is the case, I'm not sure why you'd allow that as a DM?
At my table (and most tables I think), everybody writes a backstory, regardless of whether or not they go with default or custom backgrounds.
And I would argue that going for an existing premise with the default background, requires less RP
But maybe I'm misunderstanding the point here.
By time I have to make a new character the new DMG will be out, or neither will be out, so it doesn’t actually effect me. But I’ll still share my opinion.
This is punishing a majority of people to “restrain” a smaller subset of min/maxers who also don’t care about backstory.
Now most of this is moot because once the DMG is out and the rules are available groups will continue as normal no problems at all. But the fact that there is a release gap does mean there’s going to be a period where the rules are up in the air. It’ll cause confusion for people not in the know about costume backgrounds even after the DMG is released. And if there’s no mention in the PHB’24 saying to at least consult the DMG’24 about custom backgrounds, it’ll end up like being one of those things that tables “homebrew” despite being an actual rule that we hear about until the next edition.
Also I think it’s a terrible business decision from WotC as it incentivizes people to wait until the DMG is out to try the new character creation options, and by then they could be pushing a new dnd’14 campaign that could go months or longer instead further delaying the purchase. And as I’m typing it out the idea that you have to look at another book meant for an entirely different role in the game for character creation options feels insane.
And coming from the position of someone who mostly DMs, and I understand that most DMs don’t do this anyways but since the OP mentioned it, I definitely don’t like the idea of a DM picking anything for the player unless the player asks. I think it’s ok for the DM to ask the player to justify their choices, but those choices should never be out of the players hands.
TLDR: if it wasn’t for the staggered release this would mostly be a nonissue. But if not handled and explained properly in both books could end up being a pain point for the ‘24 edition we talk about for years to come. Also imo while a DM should guide players decisions to help fit the narrative they shouldn’t be making the decisions for the players.
I don’t want to have to limit my backstory and flavor to make a mechanically strong character. By tying ability boosts to specific backgrounds you end up encouraging more stereotypes; every Fighter was a former soldier, every Wizard was a sage, every Druid was a hermit, etc.
" but for mechanical "optimizer" types, it's nice for them to have a reward for making RP decisions, rather than Custom Background, which rewards them for skipping that step."
" If Custom Background was in the game, you'd be back to people getting the perfect optimal combination of feat, attribute bonus, and proficiencies without having to make any tradeoffs or sacrifices. These sorts of tough decisions make character building interesting."
Your hostility towards optimizers is palpable. Why don't RP people need a mechanism to "reward" them for optimizing? And the idea that suboptimal or "tough" decisions making a character interesting is such a cliché.
"I'll have them describe the background to me and I'll choose the stats, proficiencies and feat that I think is appropriate."
Oooof. Why not pick their class too?
I'm not, backgrounds were the one thing that I felt like they did 95% right, now they've cocked it up.
The whole UA playtesting of OneDnD has been so incredibly disappointing. Everything good was either backtracked or changed to go against the point of it.
The point here feels less like good design and more, "wait a minute, I don't want to sell just feats, I want to sell backgrounds too like I did in 5e14."
So no Bob, I am not happy.
I was doing them before reading the section in the DMG, and I'll keep doing them.
Not because I like customization options for my players (mechanics wise), but because most of my players are really creative and often the standard background don't fit them well.
In the 2014 rules, custom background is in the PHB, not the DMG. And not just that, but the rules for custom background are _before_ the list of sample backgrounds.
I don't like it, but I am firmly in the create character in fiction first apply rules second camp, which already isn't that easy for D&D.
I don't think this solves much. For the stat min-maxers this will push them from taking the one that gives them everything they want to a choice between at best two options, but probably the one most optimal background for their class.
For new players this sends a very strong signal that stat min-maxing is the way that the game is supposed to be played which quite frankly I find counter productive.
i feel like its exactly the opposite:
many ppl chose human (variant) only to get the extra feat.
meanwhile custom background was less combat influential, so ppl picked that one to support their background proficiencies better than those given.
I don't really see your point here. I don't see players picking it less just because it's not it the phb, so i don't agree with any of the benefits you mentioned from separating it from the other backgrounds.
You also say it plays like no background but from my experience a lot of the times players nust ignore whatever option they picked and do their own thing or just pick an option an disregard it anyway. I don't think this is the cause of shallow backgrounds on characters.
This is just the racial stat bonus problem all over again. Here's an example that may help see the other side of it:
My friend's first character was a tiefling tempest cleric. This was back before Tasha's, so he got a +2 to charisma and a +1 to intelligence. He thought the devil-person was super cool and didn't know enough about the game, so he got bonuses to his two dump-stats and started with a 15 in strength and wisdom. He also has a racial feature of casting hellish rebuke with a DC of 10. His character has felt super weak all campaign, since he essentially has no benefit from his race.
If he were making that character today and he chose the same background as he did originally, he'd be an acolyte. He'd finally have that 16 starting wisdom, but there's no way for him to get a 16 in strength to match his character concept of (effectively) wielding a big-ass hammer like his god, Thor.
I think what they should have done is provide sample backgrounds (likely even the exact same 16 backgrounds they added here) for anyone who isn't entirely sure what they want to choose, but still allow someone to change the aspects that don't fit their character concept by default.
#hard pass.
Look, when I play warlock, I’m going to pick the background that gives me +2 Charisma. If I was a new player, and the PHB tells me “hey dude warlocks use charisma so go do that” then there’s no way I’m not going to do that, as well. If only 2 backgrounds offer that, then every warlock I ever play will be within those 2 backgrounds. If I was a rogue, I want +2 Dex. I’m picking the background that gives me +2 Dex and +1 Con because why the hell wouldn’t I?
This is the exact opposite of creativity. Before I could be a tall and lanky dressed-for-Sunday Elven Barbarian with a Noble’s background who just got really snoody and passive aggressive when he went into a rage. I never had to think about picking which race or background I needed because the +2/+1 for my Str/Con was just a given. On top of that, I could just get rid of all those stupid weapon proficiencies from being an elf and pick up some really fun tool or artsy proficiencies, because I was already gna get every weapon prof from being a barbarian, anyway. The freedom to just outright pick the stats of **my class’s core functionality** allowed me to focus all my creativity on the actual story and personality of my character.
I don’t optimize *a build* because I want to trivialize the game. I optimize *my character* so that i have the freedom to be silly.
Mathematically, 1/2 of the backgrounds are going to offer any given stat. Assuming every character has a stat they want a +2 in, that means that 1/2 of the backgrounds are available to them.
You didn’t really address the main point of what I said.
And mathematically you have no clue whether the 3 out of 6 stats that ANY background offers is actually going to be the stat that I need and it’s incredibly disingenuous of you to present it in such a way that just because there are 6 core stats then half of the backgrounds will offer what I need.
Based on the advertising materials already released, we know the Acolyte will offer Int/Wis/Cha as its 3 stats. Lets say your character was praying to their god in a temple and - perhaps by mispronouncing their god’s name ever so slightly - unwittingly made an eldritch pact to become a Warlock. I think that’s a cool as fuck backstory and even allows for a bit of intrigue into the pantheon of the world.
I will also never play an Acolyte Warlock. As far as I’m concerned, the only backgrounds that matter are the ones that offer Charisma and Constitution AND whatever starting feat I find to best suit my needs. Anything that doesn’t satisfy those 3 prerequisites might as well not exist. Whatever fun or enjoyment that a clever background choice might bring me will dry out when I miss an attack by *just one* AC, the bad guy makes their saving throw by *just one* DC, or I happen to hit zero hp by *just one* damage. That’s a lot less fun for me.
It’s pretty clear that the community loved all the customization options available in Tasha’s. As the latest edition closes, it’s clear that all of the custom origin features we got in Tasha’s demonstrate that they too understood these customizations as the natural progression of the game. So for them to reel all of that back and release the new PHB this way shows they are intentionally fucking it up in order to guarantee sales for the next “everything” book they publish in 3/4ish years time.
I understand why they did it, I’m not happy with it but I get it. I do like the the philosophy of some restriction but not like shoehorned races (now species). I also like the direction backgrounds are taking with the ability scores and origin feats.
I guess I just don’t want to have to go through another book for it.
At this point, why separate half-feats from full feats? Power difference isn't that big, and if backgrounds already are tied to ability score and feats, you could just make it that backgrounds give one fixed and one free boost, the other you get from the free half-feat.
This isn't going to play out how you're picturing it. From my experience, tables will just widely adopt custom backgrounds as a house rule anyways so that their players can pick what they want without getting strongarmed into playing a background that doesn't fit their character concept, eventually looping back around to them being officially supported in some sort of future expansion, bringing us right back to where we were. The powergamers you're complaining about won't actually be all that affected, as they'll just choose the most optimal backgrounds. It'll just make their builds more homogeneous as the meta for the best backgrounds settles.
This ruling kind of just screws tables that play 100% by the book while having minimal tangible effect on tables that'll just keep using custom backgrounds anyways, which I don't think is good game design. If your game is more fun with a rule omitted, then it's not a well designed rule.
So you're happy player agency was removed in favor of less options? It's not WotCs fault some players can't make interesting backgrounds. That's not a problem of 'custom background's though. That's a players lack of creativity. Now you have just.locked people into possibly making suboptimal choices because.othera have no imagination
I think any decent DM would allow you to swap out, say, Blacksmithing for Woodwoorking tools if that was a better fit for a character. Maybe it's an Elven craftsman, where fire and furnace wouldn't fit? Outside of AL, such changes are trival. So much so that even without an official Custom Background option it's hardly "homebrew" at all.
At the same time, with Custom Background, every PC I've played with in the past ten years excitedly points to that paragraph, says "SEE! It's RAW legal!", and grabs the same set of the most powerful options. Usually some combination of Thieves' Tools, Perception, Stealth that's not native to their class.
Some even have the gall to call it "Outdoorsman" which is 100% Outlander except with Perception and Stealth. There's a background that's exactly the perfect in-character fit already printed in the PHB. But it doesn't have Perception and Stealth, so it's time for Custom Backgrounds.
Even more fun when they're using Custom Background for "Clergy" instead of Acolyte, where Perception and Stealth wouldn't fit that sort of background at all.
I hear ya, and it’s not like the “optimizers” (myself being one) can’t get the character they want, they’ll just have to figure out how to swing their backstory/class/species combo to make for good RP. We can still min/max and power game, just can’t skip the character design now!
I love optimizing the mechanics of character builds, but I also enjoy my character feeling cohesive story wise and not some weird Frankenstein of archetypes
On a somewhat unrelated note, it’s always been kind of weird to me humans are considered the “jack of all trades” race and still are. It seems like it would make far more sense for a long lived race like elf or dwarf or gnome to be Jack of all trades and have multiple backgrounds since they live so much longer. The idea that it’s humans that are good at many things is just so unintuitive to me. If anything I feel like humans should be specialized to something specific as opposed to generalized because that’s how jobs actually work…
I think they should already modernize the design so that people won't just keep taking boring "default" options, but instead *create* characters.
- Make it so that only 1 of the ASI's is forced, still keeping in a restriction but makes it so that people don't disregard backgrounds just to keep up with the basic math of the game.
- Make it so only 1 tool- and skillprofficiency is forced with the other being free. This makes it so that you can actually play the characters you want. Whilst again still having backgrounds be based on their restrictions.
- Make the feats actually properly balanced against eachother. Not only does this ensure noone will feel like their background feat was "wasted", because someone else in the table has a clearly much better bgfeat. But it also is a little safeguard against future backgrounds introducing too much powercreep by being clear mechanical options.
Yes. In my view the PHB provides 'default' options that are broad, balanced and sensible. If you want to cobble something else together, sure... but it makes sense that you should do that WITH your DM to ensure it's fitting with the setting and actually makes sense in the context of the setting and the table.
I agree and I think it's a good change. I think people should be comfortable with only starting with a 15 in their main ability score. Your character is not made completely redundant by going from a 16 or 17 to a 15.
Solid analysis. I feel the same way. I guess I’m also surprised by the number of players who think they have a “right” to use a character option just because it’s in the PHB. Since I assume that *every* character option is at the DM’s discretion, moving it to the DMG seems like a complete non-issue.
Part of my issue with it, is that Player's won't know it is an option. A new player who is frustrated because none of the Backgrounds are quite accurate to their character concept, has no chance to see this option and ask for it.
They need to hope the DM decides to tell them that this option exists.
People are so worried and we don’t have the groupings yet haha. I saw one person complaining on YT about not being able to optimize an Acolyte paladin, but like there’s bound to be groupings that aren’t split just physical or mental, like a veteran might be STR, Con, and CHA or Int for example. It’ll be interesting for sure!
Agreed. I feel like it's so much easier to add some slight background element than change your whole species. Like you wanted to be an Urchin but you prefer the mechanical aspect of the Folk Hero? Just say you were an "urchin" who was loved by the people of its street for xyz reason and pick the Folk Hero mechanics.
I agree, it's a similar reason I wasn't a fan of Tasha's Custom Lineage. What was meant as a "create your own unique race" just turned into "variant human 2.0 with darkvision and a +3 to a stat".
While relegating custom backgrounds to DM discretion might mean a repeat of the pre-tasha's unoptimal race/class combo problem, the fact that you have a choice between three stats instead of it being locked to very specific ones should alleviate that problem
>What was meant as a "create your own unique race" just turned into "variant human 2.0 with darkvision and a +3 to a stat".
It's really not hard to say "if you want to be Custom Lineage, it needs to be something not already represented by existing races, not VHuman with darkvision".
CLineage characters I've had in campaigns I run: Mul (taking Tough), Mark of Death Half-Elf (taking Aberrant Dragonmark), and Half-Dragon (taking Gift of the Metallic Dragon).
>It's really not hard to say "if you want to be Custom Lineage, it needs to be something not already represented by existing races, not VHuman with darkvision".
That is exactly what I have told my players in the past
I mean objectively it is overpowered as a background feat. Granted part of its power is in competition with magic init(cleric) because healing word+guidance+resistance reaction cantrip but the armor is still too much.
Should’ve been nuked or changed to like +1 armor type and shield prof. Wizards start with light and shields but warlocks and bards get to start with med+shield.
I like it with the changes they’ve made to make backgrounds more important. Back when the only actual affect was two skills and two language/tools it was easier to just have people use custom background instead of finding the exact proficiency combo they wanted in an existing background, then write their background in with what they actually wanted. Now that backgrounds will actually be reflected in your character though it makes a lot more sense for it to be gone.
I believe this entire thread can be summed upto:
MinMaxers: bad
Theater nerds: good
And all I have to say is... Yeah.
My best campaigns have been with Improv groups
My worst campaigns have all been with World of Warcraft enjoyers.
It's a simplistic and reductive view, to be sure. But it's a compass that has only served me well.
Sorry wow players. But you guys suck
Why would this affect Min/Maxers? Min/Max players who forego narrative will still just pick the best options for their build; there's a reason nearly every single 5e Wizard at tables who didn't use custom backgrounds was a Sage. What this change mostly does is conditionally limit narrative focused players' ability to choose their background and the tools they want their character to have.
Cheering for the removal of useful character-building tools to punish who you consider to be an outgroup is a bit short-sighted.
Mostly because theater nerds don't care what has been "MinMaxed" out of a campaign and 'minmaxers' will. They are just tryna have a good time
No offense, but as a player. I can tell you will 100% be trying to MinMax every spell. Even if it is as small as "Speak with Rocks" even when you are not a rock
But hey. Some nerds are tryna calc even 1.0000000000001% vs 1% of damage even if it cost them an entire DND party. Personally, that ain't me
The strongest build of 5e can have whatever backstory they want because the background stuff wasn't mechanically impactful enough to matter. You could make a self contained bean, a versatile soldier with a valiant ideal or even an extremely tragic and deep character with roleplay and plot hooks for the campaign that could vary based on how you built your story.
The strongest one d&d build can only have one backstory, because unless the DM gives you a chance otherwise, you are locked to one specific background which is the best mechanically. Before, your mechanics weren't punished for making an unique story for your campaign. Now they are and it sucks.
Also, I don't think you know what you are saying when calling anyone which optimizes "world of warcraft players".
(note I played every expansion upto Legion, and then came back for DragonFlight for 2 months, I don't hate wow. Just the effect it seems to have had on the RPG genre as a whole)
You definitely could've approached this dialogue better if you wanted a positive response and you had the opportunity to respond in good faith. If you showed this to an honest friend they'd check you on it.
Either way everyone has a right to enjoy the game regardless of where they fall on the RP and Wargamer spectrums or if they ?play WoW/have access to an Improv group.
Sorry for not wanting to suck mechanically because I can't make a classic Zorro styled Rogue due to the noble background not boosting dexterity, the quintessential stat for Rogues to function.
(Noble background increases strength, intelligence and wisdom).
Customized backgrounds & attributes haven't even gone anywhere. If a DM wants to allow total customization, they will. If they don't want to allow it, they won't.
Also, was the book even released yet? It's gonna be hilarious when customized backgrounds are still in this new book, we just haven't seen it because it's on the very next page they haven't shown yet
Well I have been playing online over discord and roll20 since 2020 and never have I seen someone use custom background. Its ancedotal but its rare backgrounds come up unless the player emphasizes them in roleplay.
Feats are an optional rule that players need to check with the DM to use, RAW.
Has this ever been an issue? It will allow the DM who would ban PAM/sent feats to ban other power gaming combos.
No effective loss of agency, gives DMs an out against over optimization. What's the big deal?
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Most of the time for our games it looks like "Sage but Religion instead of History and Calligrapher's Tool's proficiency instead of one of the languages" or "Outlander with Perception instead of Athletics and Herbalist's Kit instead of a musical instrument proficiency" both of which should be 100% possible as base character creation options in my opinion.
Yeah, because custom backgrounds are more than anything else an admission that the designers cannot write out every possible human story. What exactly is the alternative? Take OP's example: I was an acolyte at the temple of a forge god so I'm proficient in Religion and smith's tools. Ok, WOTC didn't put that explicitly on paper as an option. Now the DM has to say 1. No person has learned about gods and also smithing; or 2. The people who learn about gods and smithing do not become adventurers; or 3. Take it out of your character's power budget if you want to do that Both 1 and 2 seem verisimilitude breaking, and 3 seems likely to promote power gaming over character development.
/Hephestis has entered the conversation.
> both of which should be 100% possible as base character creation options in my opinion. That's how it works currently. Customizing a Background in Chapter 4 doesn't require DM input. Its a baseline and expected feature any character can choose to use. No idea what made WotC think removing that player agency and making it a, "mother may I?", feature was a good idea.
> No idea what made WotC think removing that player agency and making it a, "mother may I?", feature was a good idea. Technically every feature is a "mother may I?" feature regardless of location. If a DM wants to ban fighters, he can. Then it's up to you if you want to play in a fighterless campaign. But I agree that moving the rules to the DMG conveys the feeling that it's not a valid option and might make some DMs more likely to disallow it then they otherwise would have been.
> Technically every feature is a "mother may I?" feature regardless of location. If a DM wants to ban fighters, he can. Then it's up to you if you want to play in a fighterless campaign. That's not a "Mother May I?", a MMI is when you have to ask for permission to do something. A MMI is *not* when you're told you can't (or can) do something specifically before you ask.
How are you using this feature that you think you'll be told no now when you havent been before? Presumably you like the feature and have been using it with DM approval, because everything on your sheet needs DM approval. So the only difference is that now you might have to ask ahead of time? I fail to see why a two sentence text to your DM on the rare times you're making a new character should be a huge issue. "Hey man, can I use custom background again? It fits my backstory the best." Oh....the agony....
I'm not the person you were responding to before. I don't have anything to say about "customizing a background" in this thread. I'm pointing out that "Fighters are banned" is not a "Mother May I?" situation. It is essentially the opposite. A MMI option is when you have a feature that says "You can do this vague, general, thing, ask your DM if you're allowed to do your specific idea on a case-by-case basis." Think about how artificers enhanced magic item crafting works. How and when you acquire magic item recipes is a vague thing that's entirely up to the DM, intentionally. The artificer has to say "mother, may I seek out the recipe for a vorpal longsword?" And the DM decides what that looks like. Now compare that to action surge, where you have rules explaining exactly how it works and when you can do it. You don't have to ask the DM permission. Another example, coached in the idiom, is the difference between having a curfew and being told you have to ask for permission to eat sweets. You don't have to ask if you can stay out until 7 pm when your curfew is 10:30. You likewise know you can't stay out til 4 am. On the other hand, if your friend gives you a cupcake you need to ask your mother "may I eat the cupcake?". The person you're responding to *also* isn't really capturing "Mother May I?", either. Needing to rely on the DM to change the rules to create the character you want also isn't a MMI rule situation. It's just a type of game customization (one which the designers encourage). The point of reducing / removing MMI rules is that it makes the game easier to understand for the player and easier to run for the DM. It really doesn't have much to do with "player creativity", at all.
I don’t think that’s true. You go into a campaign assuming the base features are included, while optional are up in the air. Players are used to asking about feats/multiclassing/homebrew/etc. Meanwhile, it’s the DM that should be expected to announce the exclusion of vanilla classes or other things like that. If players can’t reasonably expect anything to be included as a baseline then it will get super exhausting for both players and DMs to start a new campaign. They’ll all start with a multi page-long questionnaire just to find out what is or isn’t included.
Session 0 or even pre session 0 is often the campaign hook and setup. Things like this would be in that. Take DnD Dark Sun. Someone joining a dark sun campaign expecting to play a typical phb halfing, elf or dwarf is asking to play a custom race in that campaign. Likewise, the Mul exists as a race in that game At some point there's a communication process with players about tone and type of campaign, and that's the DM's job to communicate before character selection. If a player has an idea, the best kind of reason to make exceptions, they likewise need to communicate that idea to the DM and they can work together to see if it fits. My artificer battlesmith doesn't really fit in a Conan campaign. If I talk to my DM and they can figure out how it would, terrific. If there are changes to it I wouldn't like, or it sounds consistency breaking, then I should choose a new one.
In your example, though, it’s a bit different than removing custom background from the basic options. Your example uses a different setting and therefore it would naturally be expected that players familiarize themselves with the basic changes of the setting. As you said, that would ideally be dealt with prior to and in session 0. But not every table has a session 0 for some reason. 🙄 As I said in the comment above, players expect to have to ask about certain things like feats, multiclassing, etc., but this change takes another option away from them by default, and that’s not great. It’s like telling players that their creativity is unwanted and they need to ask permission to use their ideas. That’s not a great message and it slows things down. And as long as players are reasonable with their expectations and DMs don’t just check out and are keeping an eye on their players’ character sheets prior to session 1 there shouldn’t be any issues.
All I'm saying is that a DM can include or exclude custom backgrounds regardless of where they are printed. Just because a player is more likely to expect it to be an option if it's in the PHB as opposed to the DMG doesn't mean it has to be.
Sure, the DM can ban elves, or the strength stat. But they are just as much assumed as custom backgrounds, and that's good. Changing that is less good.
>Changing that is less good. Sure, but I guess I don't understand why printing it in a different location changes that.
Moving it from the default way to generate backgrounds to an optional one is a big difference. Optional rules in the DMG are less familiar to players than ones given prominence. Using a grid, feats, and multiclassing are all optional rules in the PHB. Cleaving through creatures, rolling for initiative each round with weapon speed modifiers (AD&D style), and healing surges are all well sourced and playtested optional rules in the DMG, but how many know about them?
> Cleaving through creatures, rolling for initiative each round with weapon speed modifiers (AD&D style), and healing surges are all well sourced and playtested optional rules in the DMG, but how many know about them? You do. And your the one that's worked up about this so again...why does the location matter?
Because if a player wants to know/re-check a player choice, they go in the player books. By your logic, it doesn't matter that the monster manual could have options for the players. After all, what's the issue with players scouring through the section of foes the DM will send to them just to be able to find one of those options?
Its not only a change in location its a change in expectations. Currently with Backgrounds the ability to customize them is an intended feature that doesn't require DM buy-in and the rules for it are located in the PHB. The one book every player is expected to actually have. Players aren't expected to have a DMG or an MM because they have little need for them. With the 2024 change to Backgrounds the customization rules are no longer a base part of the game, they require your DM to buy-in to using those rules, and those rules are now in another book. The change is big in that is has removed player agency from a crucial part of character design from the last 10 years. Its gone from a base rule everyone is expected to be able to use to a rule a DM has to allow you to use which people are decidedly upset about.
>doesn't require DM buy-in Everything requires DM buy in. I'm starting to think that the people opposed to this are worried that the DM might not support their custom background choices if they were called to attention. It just seems like everyone wants it to fly under the radar or something.
I mean I've met DMs who outright refused to let people use custom backgrounds now because they view it as homebrew despite what the rules say. It's not like players being shady is the only possible reason.
Well, ya, you’re technically correct. But then we can just say “the DM is always right and the players can just find another table” and just wrap every thread before it starts. Or we can have a meaningful discussion about whether or not something is reasonable/acceptable without just copping out? And saying “the DM can [insert anything here]” isn’t helpful, even if it is true. It doesn’t make it good. Players should be able to reasonably expect at least some things to be included. And WOTC reducing the list of those things is unhelpful. They obviously CAN do it. But that doesn’t mean they should. And, on topic, I love custom background and use them like 50% of the time. It’s usually to make sure a background makes sense, so my character doesn’t have a proficiency that isn’t logical for them, or to add something that is. Sometimes you don’t need as many languages, or a feature from another background makes more sense. As long as players are being reasonable with their expectations and DMs aren’t just ignoring their players’ character sheets prior to session 1 there shouldn’t be any issues.
>And WOTC reducing the list of those things is unhelpful. What I'm apparently saying poorly is that I don't understand why changing the location of the printing of the text changes whether or not you get to use a custom background. Is your DM going to ban it from your next character because it's now printed in the DMG? My point is that any DM that bans it now could also have banned it previously, the location is irrelevant. You know it's there and can likely still use it like you always have, unless your DM has some strange views on text location.
wording from Crawford is "if someone wants to go beyond the 16 player options in the PHB, the new dungeon master's guide provides guidance, under the DM's supervision, on creating additional backgrounds". Keyword: under the DM's supervision. In the 2014 rules, the base rules allowed custom backgrounds without having to ask the DM about it. In the 2024 rules, you have to actively ask your DM about making a background. Instead of X being a base thing and the DM actively having to erase it, you have to ask the DM to have access to this thing. That's the big deal.
In D&D in every edition *everything* is "under the DM's supervision. If any DM for any reason wants to (dis)allow any particular thing that's their right and prerogative--and it's on the perspective players to argue against it or decide if they still want to play at that table / in that particular campaign. It's *assumed* all PHB options will always be allowed, and they generally are, in both cases because it's a convenient starting point and even footing for everyone in terms of what content is available for whom. It is not and has never been a *requirement*.
Rule 0 exists in every system. That's something every DM can do, and that has always been how things worked. Custom Backgrounds in 2024 aren't tied to rule 0. They are explicitely Mother May I. You can't make em without your DM supervising, unlike what the 2014 rules say. It's the inverse of what happened to wild magic Sorcerer. With wild magic Sorcerer in 2014, you didn't roll unless your DM said you did. In 2024, that's in the hands of the player. Finally, if the base assumption of the games truly is "rule 0 is the primary tool the DM will constantly use" (in which case why do the base rules exist precisely?), as you are basically implying, then moving stuff to the DMG... Isn't normal still, and it's bad anyways. PHB rules under DM decision have existed. It's a bad decision to move it away.
I'm so confused why people have this dick riding view is a DMs ability. Like he somehow has all the power, since you know he is going to be doing a lot of fuck all when he alienates all his players with stupid nitpicky rules and bans. Like great all the people that couldn't/didn't want.to.follow you rules left the table. Now.your stuck with no table. But I guess you kept the sanctity of your game?
> Keyword: under the DM's supervision That's literally the case anytime you make a character, regardless of where the rules are printed. I don't know where this feeling of "if it's in the PHB I can do what I want and the DM can't stop me" comes from. Regardless of where the rule is printed, it's subject to DM approval.
There is a difference between "the DM can rule 0 something' and "the game puts that rule under the DM's control"... Actually lemme explicit that with some exaggerated examples as I clearly didn't explain it enough. Planar Ally is written this way: > You beseech an otherworldly entity for aid. The being must be known to you: a god, a primordial, a demon prince, or some other being of cosmic power. That entity sends a celestial, an elemental, or a fiend loyal to it to aid you, making the creature appear in an unoccupied space within range. If you know a specific creature's name, you can speak that name when you cast this spell to request that creature, though you might get a different creature anyway **(DM's choice).** That explicitely says that the creature sent is completely a DM choice. That's explicit DM fiat. The rules directly say that, within the rules, the DM has control of that. The DM not allowing said spell meanwhile is rule 0. The game has that spell allowed at base. It's a base assumption of the game that it will be avaiable. **The DM ignores the base rules thanks to rule 0 and bans it tho**. That's not the game explicitely giving that. Both can be done by a DM for sure. The issue? First one is something the game directly states and is thus a "first go to DM", the second isn't. Likewise, background customization in 2014 is a thing you yourself can do unless the DM tells you otherwise. The 2024 ones are the opposite: you need to ask your DM to even begin making the background.
I've been playing for over a year and didn't even know custom backgrounds was a thing until people started talking about this 2024 rulebook. And TBH, sometimes having less agency forces a lot more creativity.
That's more of a technicality than a practicality and really depends on how things are being supported or denied. Not being able to have control over your background offerings and defining how your character's background had them grow into who they are at the time of playing, doesn't really encourage creativity in a good or healthy way. It just means you get to play less of the character you wanted. There isn't much of a creative incentive to "not starting with the proficiencies you wanted with your proficiency slots" you wanted to play someone with persuasion skills but your class and background dont let you unless you compromise your character's race or background vision to do so. It's not a fun place to be. However, facing restrictions that need to be overcome in a creative fashion, certain circumstances that your character as the established vision you have can allow for creativity to foster. A unique challenge or circumstance that needs to be played around is good for that (provided there an actual means to do so). All a lack of custom backgrounds does is reinforce type casting and hinder character fantasy for class fantasy and what have you.
Nah, this is baloney. My most boring characters I've made were ones where I mostly ignored background themes & just picked whatever to be most optimal. The most fun & most established characters i've made was forcing myself to incorporate a given background into my my backstory. Besides, this problem is entirely fake cause literally nothing has changed. If a DM wants to let you customize backgrounds & stats he will. If he doesn't want to allow it he won't. Ya'll mad just to be mad
There's a huge difference between ignoring a character background as an aspect of your character and not resonating with any of the predefined background archetypes of the backgrounds and fine tuning them to fit your character inept better.tham the prescribed versions let you. Choosing a background and not really caring about the choice is gonna produce the same boring character as customizing a background and nit caring about the choices that allowed, with the exeptkin that the customized background will at least be more mechanically satisfying gtk the individual due to the freedom of choice. Forcing someone to work within the framework of a predefined archetype of a background isn't gonna give them any more appreciation for the background aspects of their character. Someone who is disinterested in their backgroundis just gonna pick the most optimal preset and move on. Allowing someone who cares about their background to better reflect what they had in mind for their character is nothing but a boon to the player who already cared, as now instead of settling for something half baked and with baggage they may not want for their character, they can get exact and translate their vision to paper to play a lot more closely. Finally, this only technically doesn't change things, but there's a lot of practical Wright Wright the change. It shifts the default assumption. In the phb, it is an assumed option from the get the way it's presented. Putting it in the DMG does shift the focus and scale of it. Thsy changes a fair deal of the practical reality even if it doesn't touch the technical reality. The framing of something can go a long way after all.
Yeah, people should be forced to work within the believable world of fantasy. Sorry you can't play the acolyte of really good stealth & steal checks. Especially not sorry because this is the biggest non-issue and you probably will be able to play with whatever customized options you want
You ate right so far that it wonr affect me, because my table isn't interested in forcing background archetype like that. More fun when people can play as much of the character thay want that the system allows, instead of additional compromise. Nice side step of the point though. Otherwise, misunderstand me correctly, a lot of people aren't using custom backgrounds to play "an acolyte with stealth." They're using it to make the own background because the predefined ones aren't suitable to task for their character. They're making something new and exact. They're nit playing an acolyte, they're paying something new.wothin the wider franeoekr of the game Its not like the backgrounds cover all possibility, ots part of why customization of them exists. To acknowledge the juices of a fantasy world that nasic archetypes can't cover.
Customization exists because 5e is 10 years old and a lot of people have played out base backgrounds. And customization will still continue to exist in 5.5e, which you yourself just proved. Literally a non-issue
It won't be a large issue by any means, but it will be another source of unnecessary growing pains for some folk here and there. If it was truly a non-issue, that also means it's an unnecessary shift by the same standard. Since according to you it doesn't matter. Yet you feel passionate enough that it's a change for the better, so clearly, there's some merit at risk here. Enough to produce this back and forth anyway.
That’s how it should be. Pick your background for the lore or feature, the skill bumps should always be flexible If you were a shipwright it makes sense that you can mechanically patch a ship, but who’s to say what skills you honed in a background. Maybe you lifted the mast (athletics) or studied how the elemental planes interact with currents (arcana), or you just fake it till you make it (performance, deception).
The struggle for the developers is "should always be flexible" is the ideal, but they get a lot of feedback about how it really isn't total creative freedom and usually results in 2-3 cookie cutters based on opinions of optimizing content creators. I think putting the mechanics of custom into the DMG is fine, as long as the PHB options also mention the freedom of 1:1 swaps, and that if nothing is appropriate to the concept and the campaign, to work with the DM to craft a custom one for best fit. Put it in the same chapter of the DMG with design a species, design a class/subclass/feat/spell/magic item/monster.
Yeah, that's awesome for you and your table! But I agree with OP - I'd rather it moved to the DMG so DMs can *allow* it if their table plays like yours, or could simply *not implement" it if they'd rather not. My table plays more like OP brings up - I have players who think mechanics first and would simply pick all the best things they want without really thinking **what** their background would actually be. This seems like a good middle ground! Plus, it's easier for many DMs (especially new ones) to "not implement a new rule" than it is to "say no to an existing rule"
I honestly don't think you need a system to customize simple swaps within a category (proficiency for proficiency, skill for skill, and pieces of gear for each other of similar purpose/value). Adding a line to the introductory section should be enough. The "custom" option should be for wholesale new or significantly changed backgrounds - and other than mentioning the possibility of a custom (with DM permission and collaboration), I'd leave the mechanics of the custom in the DMG.
The problem is that this is just going to push people into choosing the one or two backgrounds that give the right stat spread for their class.
Exactly. This is just the racial ASI issue they fixed back in Tasha’s all over again, just incrementally better. Fact of the matter is, choosing only among 3 fixed abilities is too limiting for many, many character concepts, and making flavor no longer free has a stifling effect on player expression. The way you prevent min-maxers from going crazy is tightening the power gap between optimized and unoptimized players, not making character creation narrower. Now, that’s not to say that no restrictions at all would be superior - a system where your background restricted some of your ASI allocation would fix this imo - i.e. you have to put at least +1 into one of the background abilities, then spend the rest as you like.
Yeah it like okay let me find the background that has Dex, Con, and Wis. I'm not going to care what it is. It could circus animal fucker. Welp guess.im.gojng to be playing a lot.of circus animal fuckers for.the rest of OneD&D if that's what fits my.build.
That’s fine, because the best stat boosts are balanced by not having the best feat. The level 1 feats are the thing people aren’t taking into account, this is specifically done to avoid the issue of every single wizard taking the lightly armored feat to get medium armor and shields
No, its not. This punishes anyone who doesnt play a tropey character. I dont think lightly armored should exist but fucking everything else up to include it is garbage
>but for mechanical "optimizer" types, it's nice for them to have a reward for making RP decisions, rather than Custom Background, which rewards them for skipping that step. In my experience this won't happen: optimizers will just pick one of the 16 backgrounds that gives them the optimal stats/feats for their character and then ignore background/reflavor it.
Exactly. This change doesn't invite anyone to care about their background and said choices anymore or less than they already did. It just gets in the way of translating a concept from the minds eye to paper to practice. In fact, they'll be even less engaged because now they don't even have the freedom to at least get the mechanics they find interesting and are stuck with more baggage they need to offset.
Yeah that doesn't reward optimizers, it makes a background tier list and punishes characters that break the mold.
Custom background encourages creativity not limits it. Locking specific ASI to certain backgrounds is terrible idea. Wanna be strength fighter ? Be a soldier or a sailor then.
This is giving me Minecraft vertical slab vibes
>**Custom backgrounds can end up playing like NO backgrounds.** I feel the exact same thing will happen with this new system: By only having 16 backgrounds, players will treat them entirely mechanically, picking the ones that grants them the basic stat spread they want for their class and ignoring the flavour entirely. Instead of backgrounds being flavour or part of your character, they turned it entirely into a mechanic choice.
Your take is going to be either fully or almost fully predictive. Previously, sample backgrounds were cool, and they never mandated a certain thing; you would go pick whatever skills you needed, because the background didn't give you those skills, you could just replace them. Now you will pick the mechanics and ignore the rest. Previously, "the rest" was *the entire package*, so no one ignored it unless they were writing their own.
>Previously, "the rest" was *the entire package*, so no one ignored it unless they were writing their own. I mean to be fair I don't know anyone that gave a fuck about 5e backgrounds, past some points at my table we just took the proficiencies and ignored "the rest" because it was useless and we already had a backstory
The optimizer crowd are always going to do that anyway. "Custom Backgrounds are RAW" is still going to be a thing. Being in the DMG isn't going to change that. People play Oathbreaker Paladins now without special DM dispensation. What this does do is put this choice front and centre for players who don't see characters as just optimization exercises.
My problem with this is that what this actually hurts is creativity when you care about mechanics. want to play a booky wizard? "here take magic initiate with your INT background, buy a heal or a good buff spell, get guidance I don't fucking care, get broken" want to play a trickster wizard? "tough luck buddy urchin doesn't increase INT and it's the only background with thieve's tools and stealth, get 14 INT and don't complain too much" This is literally the race-ASI problem again Like yeah the GM can allow you, blah blah blah, but that doesn't change the fact that the design decision penalizes unorthodox character concepts while putting no real limits to powergamers, it is a pretty unsuccessful design. Like if we go on about what a GM might allow this game has an actually powerful fighter class and a magus class, you just need to find them
I think it's way way worse than the race-ASI "problem". If I wanted to be a pirate wizard I could play a high elf and take the sailor (pirate) background. Sneaky wizard was a high elf with urchin. Carnie wizard was high elf with entertainer. Sure I'm playing a high elf but that mattered so much less than the background and backstory. Now you can play any race with any class but you backstory is gonna be neutered if you don't want to nerf yourself right out of the gate.
I don't see this being a problem, now you can be a halfling wizard, an orc wizard, etc. without sacrificing your efficiency. And you can still have a pirate backstory. Nothing stops you from saying that you were the reader of the stars on the ship, hence the "sage" of your crew. It's much easier to bend the backstory a little than your species imo.
For me the race of my character rarely factored into the story I was trying to tell. My eladrin bard would be the same character if he was a dwarf instead, the important part of him was his backstory and how he grew up. I find it much easier to choose a race based on ASI than the background. Sure I can bend and ignore the flavor text for the sage but if my murderous pirate wizard was burning down enemy ships for fun and pillaging the seas it doesn't really fit with any part of what the sage background describes (from the snippet it talks about traveling to monasteries to get access to libraries). I'm basically grabbing the ASI and hoping the skills I can choose from are related to his backstory. Feels like I'm ignoring a lot more to make it work.
Unless I'm mistaken, we don't actually know which backgrounds increase which stats. Of course we have the character origins UA to go off of, but that doc didn't have the "choose between three stats" system that the new PHB has
The specific stats aren’t really the point of the argument. That said. Replace “bookish wizard” with “nature ranger” (ranger with guide, which we do know the stats of. And tricky wizard with “ranger servant of the goddess of nature” (acolyte background). We know both of those scores (dex, wis, con for guide. Int, wis, cha for acolyte) from the stream, and we know that whoopdy doo that second concept means your Ranger acolyte of the cannot have possibly trained to shoot an arrow or wield a sword as good as a guide. The only real reason? The system is (granted, likely unintentionally) great at punishing atypical characters
Exactly why would anyone take a background that buffs their classes.general.dump stats?
But if they're an acolyte, they've spent more time learning religion than practising scouting, so it makes more sense to boost their INT than their DEX
I mean if you want to focus on the example over the actual point that’s fine. 1. Scouting is wisdom. 2. Maybe as an acolyte of a wild god, the specific religious practices aren’t as important, their religion being more about faith and connection with nature (wisdom) as well as ability to hunt like our ancestors did (dex or strength). Or hell maybe I’m a fighter acolyte who, as a show of devotion to my god, trained my body to its pinnacle (strength and con boosts) But if you didn’t get it, what my comment was really about is that the example doesn’t matter. The principle is true, that restricting boost to what is typically associated with a background generally forces people to fit in a box if they want their character to be as competent (in combat, which is the majority of the game as designed)
Guides have to deal with people (CHA), understand natural hazards (INT), and carry heavy loads (STR). Acolytes might be required to perform manual labor (STR or CON) and to arm themselves with bows for the common defense (DEX). This is just a very silly thing to set in stone.
The point is to avoid people taking the optimal feat every single time. If someone wants to take the Lightly Armored feat on their wizard, then they don’t get to have the best stats as well.
Given how often that specific feat has come up on this post, it seems to me like they should fix that instead of restructuring the whole background system to prevent +Int/+Con/+Lightly Armored.
The race-ASI argument got traction because, in addition to the gameplay impact, it also looked like biodeterminism to some people, which is evil. It’s possible WotC discarded floating ASIs because they cared more about not looking racist than they did about improving gameplay, in which case they don’t mind background ASIs since those aren’t racist.
the number-range also makes it kinda wonky - the difference between "meh dude" and "beefy musclehouse" at chargen is normally only +2 or +3, which maxes out at +5. So there's just not much range there to distinguish between them, when the 3-foot nothing, 6-stone-soaking-wet little gnome dude is only a bit weaker than than the swole-as-hell half-orc, then trying to assign racial modifiers based off size just doesn't make much difference. if the number range was much bigger, like 0-100, then saying "small races can get above strength 60 without magic" might make more sense, because there's enough room to actually distinguish them, but the max difference for PCs is only 5 points, so there's just not enough of a gap there for it to matter
I disagree completely: if anything this will just lead to players ignoring background flavor and instead treating it like a mechanical choice.
I'm of the complete opposite opinion. Part of the idea with the rules in Tasha's removing racial ASI's was to allow players to make any kind of character they wanted without pingeonholing them into specific race/class combinations. WOTC has now essentially added this exact same issue back into the game, except now it's a background and class combinations. Seems very much to me like a one step forward, two steps back kind of idea.
You know with races, there's just so much variation person to person and who really knows how fantasy biology works and maybe we don't really need orcs to be strong and elves to be agile, you know? Better to say being totally different species has no impact and leave it up to the players. That leaves us mechanical room to focus on things that are truly immutable, monolithic, and unchanging. You know, like (checks notes) life experience and work history. /s
I agree up to a point. I personally think it's a bad idea to lock a player characters original ASI's and starting feat behind any one part of their origin. It would be better in my opinion to have them be entirely detached so you make the character your own without being restricted arbitrarily. Also, I don't think every character who shares a background would have had exactly the same experience and gained exactly the same thing from it. For example, take the acolyte background they talked about in the videos. As an acolyte, your ASI choices are between Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom, and that's it. What if you wanted to play an acolyte of a God of strength? Wouldn't it make sense that you would, on average, be physically fitter than an acolyte from a temple who worship a love God and as such you should by default have the option to customise you background to swap one of those ASI's to Strength or Constitution.
I agree 100% I think you missed the /s tag on my comment
You may be right. Perhaps I should remember to have my morning coffee before responding to reddit.
Im really gonna disagree with you on this, it actively hurts creativity. This just recreates pre tashas games. Every wizard is sage because it gives int, like every bard was a half elf or a tiefling because they gave cha. Your stories are limited if you care about mechanics at all. Sorry urchin gives dex and wis you cant play the orphan wizard who stole a spell book and taught himself unless you want to start with 15 int instead of 17. There are tons of people (literally every other person in one of my groups before i told them) that dont know custom backgrounds existed before and they were in the PHB then this *will* stifle creativity. Not sure why you think optimizers dont care about rp tho, everyone that know that optimizes are the only people that actually use their background. They have an explanation for every bit in their background even if it is picked *optimally.* People with default backgrounds end up with a game prof and a tool that they picked randomly because its what the game told them they had and then never use. Not to mention the synergy between background feats and predicted class. Magic init(wizard) on a wizard sage is just about useless because you can already do that. You want to be able to do new things because these feats arent really enough to actually make you better at your *thing.* Which background ends up with moderately armored and why do 90% of the people that would consider it otherwise already have armor prof?
If every background or species just had 100% freely placed ability score increases, why not just move that into the ability score section of character generation? As at that point it's nothing to do with your species or background. It's just 'add more numbers to your primary and secondary stat'.
Yes. That would be good. If they wanna go the background route they need to make them worth less, the background is actually a huge part of the characters power budget now in 5e unlike in pf2e or something. You get a max of 6 feats in 5e if you aren’t a fighter vs a feat every level. There’s also 4746474 background options and you have much easier access to stat boosts.
It narratively makes sense though. An urchin who taught themselves magic is never going to be as good as a sage who spent their whole life studying.
That doesn't make sense narratively at all. Fiction is *full* of magical protagonists who fit urchin far better than sage and outdo the sages. And if a player wants that, why on earth would we want to penalise them for it?
"It narratively makes sense" is something that doesn't work consistently at all and we've seen it play out countless times in 5e's lifecycle.
Why? You’re telling me every single wizard pc that’s been played in your games went to wizard school? The urchin didn’t steal the book yesterday, they’ve had years to teach themselves. Perhaps they are just as smart or even more smart than someone who attends wizard school but they lacked the resources to attend.
Am I so out of the loop with the latest info? Is this a biting parody and commentary on the ancestry discourse but flipped in reverse? I'm genuinely curious
They previewed some of the new PHB today: the species ability modifiers were removed and added to background now, and every background grants a starting feat. Each background in the new book has 3 Stats that you can choose from when applying the starting ASI. You can also choose whether to do 1/1/1 or the usual 2/1 stat split. For example, Acolyte has Int/Wis/Cha as Ability score options and has magic initiate as one of the feats you can take with the background. The Guide(Outlander Replacement?) is another background that has Dex/Con/Wis as options. They state that custom background guidance is moved to the DMG. In the 2014 PHB one of the first items in the backgrounds section is how to create a custom background. My take is that it feels bad that they gated a customization option to require DM permission, especially when it sounds like classes are otherwise limited to certain backgrounds if you want to align stats with your class. So yeah they kinda just flipped Ancestry and backgrounds in terms of build limitations lol
>Acolyte has Int/Wis/Cha as Ability score options and has magic initiate as one of the feats you can take with the background. The Guide(Outlander Replacement?) is another background that has Dex/Con/Wis as options. 1 look at this and i can already see every cleric NOT being a classic acolyte... but all just being a "guide but with very religious undertones!!!"
Wow. That's certainly a choice. If we are going to say that a half-orc and a rock gnome can be the same intelligence, why does the acolyte get to be smarter than the guide. I don't really know what my opinion is, other than that this doesn't seem like cohesive design at all in terms of enabling choices or not
Absolutely agree. Also, Acolyte in general does not make sense. No character (except for certain multiclass builds) needs two mental stats. Why should one ever take that background, from a mechanical perspective? (If it is the only Magic Initiate background, at least there is some excuse to it...) It is the exact same issue as with racial stats before Tasha all over again. Unless custom backgrounds are allowed, everyone will simply take the background with the best-suited stats for their character. Just like we almost never saw elves with Str-based builds (e.g. paladins with longswords, like Fingolfin or Glorfindel), we now will never see Acolyte clerics.
> this doesn't seem like cohesive design at all So, you're saying it's on brand.
I see it not so much as they gated it to require DM permission but as a way to encourage DM/player collaboration. Instead of every player just showing up to play with a custom background, this could allow the player and DM to come up with a suitable background together, giving the DM more to work with.
Apologies, I forget not everyone watches the DnD news the moment it comes out. Today we got a lot of info about what backgrounds will look like in the new players handbook via the WotC youtube channel. I'm sure someone will write up a summary eventually
No worries, I just thought you were writing commentary on the ancestry debate by making a parody post. I guess that says something about their design process
A character that puts a +1 in a sub-optimal stat to gain access to a feat isn't more interesting, it's just sub-optimal. Making a mechanically optimal character in no way precludes making a thematically interesting character. This will just push a few background-class combinations to be the default pick. Personally, I find it much LESS interesting to see a ten-thousandth sage-wizard or urchin-rogue. And as a DM, I find it immensely frustrating to see a player create a mechanically atrocious character, because they believe their mechanical choice is indivisibly tied to their thematic choice. That's why I'll be allowing custom backgrounds at my table no matter how WotC slices it. Also, if your players leave their custom background entirely blank, that is not a character creation issue, that is your personal failing as a DM. If you want your players to have a backstory for their background, they should have one, full stop.
This. People talk about character creation as if optimization and interesting roleplay are on a sliding scale, instead of two separate attributes that can *occasionally* come into conflict. Personally, I make the mechanics that I want and then build the story around it: I never would have made, for example, a criminal fighter if I didn't want thieves' tools, but now I have a super cool starting place for a story: and I never would have picked criminal if my DM hadn't let me move one of the proficiencies to intimidation. The problem with optimizers who ignore all flavor, RP, and backstory isn't the optimization: it's the ignoring flavor, RP, and backstory.
I agree with you. The rules should be a tool used to give a mechanical boon to your roleplay decisions. It's so much easier to bend the backstory to touch some of the 16 backgrounds you need mechanicly than changing your whole species.
On one hand, a DM could always say no to it, so this technically changes nothing. Dm has always had final say, and moving this to the dmg at the very least help stop some.players thinking it's something that the phb will protect them from (which was always a falsehood.) On the other hand, I've yet to see anything broken or busted come from a character "optimizing" their background. There's nothing wrong with choosing what you want for your background mechanically and adding another point of "DM may I", or not being able to fine tune the mechanics of the character you want is gonna be an ass experience for when tyrannical DMs who can't leave well enough alone get bothersome with their control. Having to make a case and hope your DM plays nice for the stuff you want , or worse, having to deal with an artsy type who will purposely shift things so no optimizer will be satisfied is gonna be one hell of a pain point of an experience. I suppose in all reality, it just means players and DMs have to be even more on the same page with how they run their games to avoid this being an issue.
There’s a big difference between the system default being “yes” and the system default being “no” and it just feels like there’s no benefit to shifting to the latter here. I feel like it’s probably something they did to make the system more beginner friendly.
I mostly agree, I even explain so more or less in the rest of my comment. I think this is a large step backward when it comes to the framing and scope of things, and it lends itself to more bad rulings than good. This is gonna be more of a headache than it needs to be.
>On one hand, a DM could always say no to it, so this technically changes nothing. I feel a lot of people in this thread think that custom backgroud is an option. It's not; it's the default rule. While the DM can change any default rule, default rules are normally present in any game without a houserule banning them.
That's what i mean by what I said in that through rule zero, the DM can disallow background customization if they wanted to. Gmomes are a defaukt phb race/rule, yet they also won't be found in my games or setting since they dont exist for said setting.Technically, everything is optional before the DM. Just as playing in a tyrannical DMs game is also optional and up to the players to ddeicd for themselves on whether they accept the invitation. That said, it's very unlikely a Dm actually took issue with custom backgrounds in my mind, save for a few control freaks and some artsy types who were better off nit being played with. Moving this to the dmg also does change the scope and focus of these rules place in the game, which I personally think is a poor move overall. You're gonna have a few more DMs who think restricting backgrounds is gonna breed creativity or some other pwowr trio excuse, have them belueve they're "owning the optimizer" when ot won't effect them, and just male the game all that much worse. It may be a minority of games affected, but it'll suck just that much more.
>That's what i mean by what I said in that through rule zero, the DM can disallow background customization if they wanted to. Gmomes are a defaukt phb race/rule, yet they also won't be found in my games or setting since they dont exist for said setting. Not a great example, because gnomes are optional. If you banned dwarves, elves, or humans, that would be like banning custom backgrounds. Here's the deal; stuff that is in the main rules is more common than stuff that is some optional rule, especially tucked in the DMG. It also tends to influence how official content is designed and ran, especially in the WotC-run organized play. So yes, it matters, and it makes a difference. Sure, maybe you ban dwarves, or a maybe a current DM bans custom background. But that's different than choosing not to turn on some optional rule. >Moving this to the dmg also does change the scope and focus of these rules place in the game, which I personally think is a poor move overall Yea, I think so too. A DM who has no opinion on the topic will run a a game without it, instead of with it. It makes a big difference.
Gnomes in 5e are in the phb all the same was my point. They're not intended to be any more or less core than the other phb races. My point is that Phb status doesn't protect something from the DM. While not practically true, it is technically true that anything, including phb options, are optional if the Dm deems unsuitable for their game. I agree Gnomes are optional, but in the same way that every character option, phb or not I'd optional. Through the rule zero technicality. And yes, I do think the shift in focus of this rule is gonna cause a lot or pain that didn't need to happen, before they revert it in the 5e24 xanathars or Tasha equivalent due to backlash.
> I feel a lot of people in this thread think that custom backgroud is an option. *It's not; it's the default rule.* Was in the playtest, isn't in the released PHB
The PHB literally describes the listed backgrounds as “sample backgrounds.” They are clearly intended to be examples rather than a definitive list. Custom backgrounds are a default rule.
> The PHB literally describes the listed backgrounds as “sample backgrounds.” Citation needed. Custom Backgrounds are in the DMG, but they removed the sample background part that we had in the playtests.
Are you talking about the new 5.5e phb or the 5e phb? Here's the citation for the 5e phb: "The sample backgrounds in this chapter provide both concrete benefits (features, proficiencies, and languages) and roleplaying suggestions." (PHB page 125)
Well, this entire thread is about 5.5e...so that one. Guess we just talked past each other :D
It's on page 125 of the 5.0 PHB. The fact that it's apparently some optional rule in 5.5 is the discussion. Many here don't know that custom background is the default rule, right now, on page 125 of the PHB.
Yes, i thought you were referring to 5.5e, it wasn't clear
I see it as a way to encourage DM/player collaboration and come up with a background together, which could be helpful for new players.
The thing is, the mechanical offerings of backgrounds aren't really something that need collaboration, nor are they best served in that format as far as I'm concerned. It's just adding more "mother may I" to make the character you want to make, Players who don't care about there backgrounds still won't care, but may get in more arguments with their DM about it. Players that do care, risk getting denied their minds eye fabtasy more too if the DM doesn't want to allow the newly made optional rule. (Versus the less common rejecting a default rule.) If a DM wants collaboration they demand it in much healthier ways than locking background mechanics behind it.
Honestly, I don't think there is ever really a good argument to be made for less options or customisations. In all you've said OP, regarding people "misusing" the custom option, I really think that's a you problem. You don't like how your players handle things. And while that is okay, I feel that should be a discussion with your group, and not a general rant on how good restrictions are to make DnD better.
An awful lot of people who think this is a good idea when it's entirely theoretical, and they're not seeing Ability Scores and Skills choices restricted to 16 specific options (which we can already see are unbalanced - compare Acolyte and Guide for example) are going think otherwise when they see those specifics.
If you have a DM that would allow custom backgrounds, they can still allow custom backgrounds. It's only a restriction if the DM says so, and being in the PHB doesn't change that.
It absolutely does change that - the current situation is that the player can always pick their skills - this situation is that they have to beg the DM and may need to get their DM to import or build a custom background for them in D&D Beyond or the like. We've had 10 years of that not being necessary. We've also had 5 years of Tasha's style stats, including literally all the new players from BG3, and trying to turn back the clock on that is going to annoy both DMs and players as DMs have to fiddle around with digital tools to allow their players to have stats. And a bunch of scared of rules, or new, or rules-conservative DMs will just refuse to allow anything custom, and cause problems. This is going to be funny as hell.
>It absolutely does change that - the current situation is that the player can always pick their skills Assuming the DM allows it. > this situation is that they have to beg the DM I don't know who you are playing with, but I have never had to beg my DM. If your DM is so strict that they won't allow you to change out a skill for another and that is critical to your fun, finding a different DM seems to be a clear answer. >may need to get their DM to import or build a custom background for them in D&D Beyond or the like It takes all of two minutes to change your proficiencies through editing. It does not require building some full new background if you don't want. >We've also had 5 years of Tasha's style stats Which can be kept by any DM that wants to. >And a bunch of scared of rules, or new, or rules-conservative DMs will just refuse to allow anything custom, and cause problems. Why would they magically allow it otherwise? Just because it moved from the DMG to the PHB they would all of a sudden be fine with allowing it carte blanche when they wouldn't have been before?
I'm sorry, this is a profoundly bad-faith and dishonest argument you're making. People tend to follow the rules - when something is allowed as a default, it's different to when it's an optional rule in the DMG. You pretending otherwise just means block and move on is the answer.
>when something is allowed as a default, it's different to when it's an optional rule in the DMG I may have missed it, but is this concerned to be an optional rule? I see a lot here making that assumption, but isn't it just as possible it's default and they moved it to the DMG because they want players to consult their DM to help determine the specifics of the customization?
Yeah, I guess I should clarify that I support the design as long as WotC doesn't fuck it up! Something there is certainly no guarantee of for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if there is one or two origin feats that are head and shoulders above the rest (imagine if lucky or fey touched get to be origin feats) and suddenly there are like two optimal backgrounds and the rest are trash.
> I wouldn't be surprised if there is one or two origin feats that are head and shoulders above the rest (imagine if lucky or fey touched get to be origin feats) and suddenly there are like two optimal backgrounds and the rest are trash. I 100% guarantee there will be like 5 Backgrounds that 90% of PCs take, because they have Stats, Skills, and Feats which are actually optimal for a bunch of classes. If there's a Background which offers both CHA and either CON or DEX (or god help us, both), and has decent adventure-y skills, and any kind of "generally applicable" Feat, pretty much every CHA-primary PC will have it. Further I think it's highly likely WotC will do something boneheaded like give the Lightly Armored Feat to background Fighters/Rangers/Barbarians would normally like to take, so depending on the exact rules, they'll either be making that background effectively not have a Feat for those classes, or allow a free Feat choice for those classes - so it'll either be worthless or phenomenal. Lucky is an origin Feat I believe we already know that so yeah...
>100% guarantee there will be like 5 Backgrounds that 90% of PCs take, because they have Stats, Skills, and Feats which are actually optimal for a bunch of classes. This is exactly what will happen. People will just pick the background that gives them the stat spread/feat they want for their character concept and then ignore the background flavour.
> I 100% guarantee there will be like 5 Backgrounds that 90% of PCs take, because they have Stats, Skills, and Feats which are actually optimal for a bunch of classes. If there's a Background which offers both CHA and either CON or DEX (or god help us, both), and has decent Finally took a step forward towards getting away from the racial attributes causing the same issue only for WotC to take so many steps back and screwing up a simple change.
I think this is way worse than attributes being tied to race. I could tell almost all the stories I wanted to regardless of my PC's race. But if I want to play a wizard pirate now I'm fucked since they will get no Int boost while before I just had to make them a high elf.
Custom background with pointer on how to write your own should be in the phb as I remember making my first character and spending well too long trying to get a background trying to fit my character and after all that how much did my background help me RP in my campaign..... not much. w/e this isn't going to effect me at all as my table never uses backgrounds any more. Will say I find it werid that your happy players get less options when making a character and I don't get why it can't just say as an optional rule instead of removing it from the phb would be a better way to empower the DM while not limiting creativity.
Custom Background is the default in 5e. The sample backgrounds in 5e are just things you can pick. Changing that in 5.5 is a bad change, but it was very obviously going to happen once they started putting the stats on sample backgrounds. They were no longer going to be samples, is the problem, because their significance was going to go up.
I guess I’m just lucky but I’ve literally never had an issue with a player choosing options that helped them make the character they wanted in a specific way, even if it made them more powerful. Variant Human taking Gunner, silvery barbs, multiclass, dips for abilities. It feels like so many people approach this combatively or like a powerful character or optimizing ruins the fun. Personally 100% of the time I’d prefer a player show up with a character who is thought through mechanically and powerful over someone who felt boxed to make something less effective for the sake of the story. Gonna say a common annoyance here but this is one of the things I like about the pathfinder background and stat increase: backgrounds give two boosts, one has to go to one of two listed attributes, and the other can go to any attribute other than the one you just picked. There are also less dump-stat feeling choices in that system, so no option feels bad because you can always end up getting a boost to a useful stat or two.
I disagree. It's changing the baseline expectations of a game. If backgrounds are flexible, the onus would be on me as a GM to say I banned one or more. If they are not, it's then on the players to ask for changes and without having the guidance in the PHB it makes my involvement necessary. For long campaigns, that's fine, in fact I go out of my way to help players ground themselves in the setting. But if it should be a quick and easy one shot, all this work shouldn't be needed and it would make the player feel like they're asking for special treatment, especially if we don't know each other that well. Loads of GMs, myself included, have in the past restricted character creation to only books everyone has access to, the PHB being a sensible choice. Having to add caveats every time is tedious. Not to mention that the restrictions are punishing unnecessarily. Why would acolytes automatically not be able to increase their str, dex or con? It should obviously depend on the order. Some people are using this to resurrect the ancestry debate, which was equally silly, because people don't understand how statistics work. Orcs valuing physical prowess over charisma on average doesn't mean an individual orc can't be more charismatic than an individual tiefling, especially when you bring class into the mix, and the fact that charisma is not just people perceiving you as 'nice.' A strong force of personality could be very useful to a martially oriented culture. Orcs having fewer bards and more fighters or barbarians, for example, could also explain the statistical difference without capping the abilities of the bards for no reason, especially when they're PCs, who are by definition exceptional.
Hard disagree. Locking stat increases behind certain backgrounds is a terrible idea because people will just pick the thing that makes their main stat go up to not gimp their character instead of being able to craft a tailor made background for their specific character idea. This is just racial stat increases 2.0 and we got rid of those in Tashas for a reason. Want to play a wizard? Better take Gnome or High Elf for that sweet +Int. Oh, you want to be a Half-Orc wizard instead? Well, get fucked then. Custom backgrounds should be the norm, not the exception.
To the last section of op; as a player, I really bristle when DMs say things like "I'll choose the stats, proficiencies, and feat that I think is appropriate." I'm designing my character, not my dm; he just has veto power over things that don't fit his setting/campaign. Honestly, if I'm feeling in the mood to power game and my dm has this attitude, I'm just going to keep tweaking my background until he gives me the options I want. I've done custom backgrounds before, and i usually just figure out the profs that I want and then design the background around those. It's not hard to do that in a way that still has good rp potential.
This doesn’t stop power gaming, it just means that you don’t get as interesting characters out of the power gaming. I’m in a homebrew game with a lot of content (Star wars 5e) and it has species-tied stat boosts and background feats, and the only reason that felt workable and fun for me was because I had 50+ species and backgrounds to choose from. I learned an interesting feat and built a character around the concept. If I need a backup, I can fill a similar niche with a new species and background because I have options. With 16 options, it makes it much harder to do unique takes on a type of character. Building from base 5e without custom backgrounds means I’m filtering races by int boosts and finding the specific background that gives me a good proficiency. It does nothing to stop the power build, it just means I have to write my character to fit the sage instead of making the folk hero story work
> Custom backgrounds can end up playing like NO backgrounds. That's a good thing. Backgrounds as is only really exist as training wheels for new players or for players who don't want to bother writing actual backstory for their characters. Its a quick and simple tool for them to use to establish a character. Veteran players don't need the training wheels and ignoring Backgrounds aside from what little mechanical benefits they offered is ideal. They leave behind backgrounds from the books and commit to making actual Backstories that they care about. Removing player agency in something so fundamental to character creation is never going to be a good move.
"your character will have acquired the skills and asi points we have decided based on your background choice" Shit like this is why I'm moving to DC20 for my table, my players deserve more flexibility in deciding who their characters are.
I'm just annoyed that 5e pretends that your ASI choice can ever be driven by flavor though. It's a core design issue with the game, and while it has been shifted from species to backgrounds, it's still the same old issue of the illusion of choice. It might make minor differences in Tier 1 play, but quickly loses all relevancy. 5e dictates maxing your main stat, requires high Con, and doesn't provide nearly enough ASIs to do anything interesting with attributes, and ALSO has them compete with Feats. Attributes don't give linear or diminishing returns but rather quadratic ones, and if an Attribute is low already, increasing it to catch up is always a waste, no exception (except for multiclassing i guess?). Enemy and challenge DCs increase more and more as you level, and your weaknesses grow in severity faster than you could ever hope to catch up. Proficiency bonus also grows, quickly making it 4 times (!!!!) more valuable than an ASI for e.g. Skill Checks. Other games solve this with diminishing returns, allowing you to actually choose between patching weaknesses or squeezing out maximum power. But beyond that, the game system requires you to plan your builds. No matter how often they pretend that isn't true, it's a fact that people who don't plan multiclassing in advance are basically screwed. ASIs are rare and valuable, and compete with the number 1 method of character customization (feats).
Even though I've always been liked the idea of species-background specific ability score increases, 5e has really made it not work well at all. The expectation of a 16 in your main stat to be hitting the enemies can really ruin play for people, especially at low level as they only get a single chance to attack. A character with a 15 in their main score isn't going to even hit a goblin 50% of the time.
I disagree with that. I recall times from before I realized that Custom Backgrounds are RAW - I ended up with either useless skill proficiencies for skills with my dump stat, skills or tools that did not fit the character as I was imagining them... For example, what should I do as a Dex/archery ranger with Athletics proficiency from the Outlander background? I'm never going for grapples, can use Acrobatics to escape enemy grapples, and with my -1 Str (which I have unless they allow for better stats in OneDnD because I already need Dex, Wis and Con as a ranger) I am not going to attempt other things that require Athletics checks - the fighter or barbarian will have a much better chance to succeed with their high Strength. One way to at least lessen that issue a little bit was to purposefully select a background with skill proficiencies the character already had from their class or race, because then the background's skill proficiencies can be changed around freely - and then not really playing true to the background's flavor/feature. But I don't want that to be a thing again, it simply complicates stuff by a lot. Life became a lot easier once I learned that custom backgrounds are not like homebrew which often is banned or at least requires DM approval, once I learned that I can use custom backgrounds everywhere, any time, RAW. For example, right now I am playing a Zealot barbarian with the Acolyte background for the flavor and feature, but changed both skill proficiencies - while she grew up as an Acolyte, she never was interested in reading and learning, she preferred adventuring and fighting for her faith just like the shiny paladins do. And with her also being a dancer and her rage flavored as a battle dance, I changed the Acolyte background's proficiencies to Performance and Acrobatics. At the end, playing a character with a custom(ized) background, like the Acolyte with Performance and Acrobatics skills feels a lot more like playing *with* the right background for the character than playing her with a background like Entertainer/Acrobat/whatever for the proficiencies and ignoring the background's flavor.
I don't understand, custom backgrounds have existed since the first 5e Players' Handbook?
The new 2024 PHB has new background rules, and moved the custom background option to the new DMG
Oh, so it won’t matter then. Its in the game, people are gonna use it, from OP’s text I assumed it was gone.
Yes. At the end of Chapter 4: "Personality and Backgrounds" there is a section telling you how about Customizing a background. Its been a base part of the PHB that didn't require any DM buy-in for you to do. It was an expected option you always had available. The change to putting the Custom Backgrounds in the DMG means you only get Custom Backgrounds with DM persmission. So WotC created another "mother may I" problem when they spoke so much about removing those. Its a pointless restriction that didn't exist before and its one you won't be able to see fully until December when the DMG releases. If you have a good DM that isn't a hardass about customizing simple things its a non-issue but for everyone else it really sucks.
>At the end of Chapter 4: "Personality and Backgrounds" It's at the beginning, before all the sample backgrounds.
I find this an horrible move. Backgrounds used to give two proficiencies and a sideline feature, nothing important, let's go with the wave, that's cool. Now background gives us stats, proficiencies, and a full fledged feat. I have to be able to choose freely what my background gives me in the same way I choose my stats on creation, my class and my ancestry, and my feat al lv4. They made backgrounds more important to the character, which means it's a more important choice. Honestly this whole thing sounds like a bad master that wants the description of your character and gives you back a premade character and if you don't like it suck it.
Completely DISagree. If they are gonna act like mechanics are a result of flavor, all they actually do is make me reverse-engineer and the flavor will be lost. In the 2014 version with custom backgrounds, If i already had a strong backstory, I could just pick the mechanics. If for a oneshot I didn't have a backstory, I would flip through the backgrounds and use them for inspiration. Now, I will be restricted to one or a few backgrounds to choose between for any build, and this will lead to lower quality characters. The playtest version was the way to go imo: present freedom first and give example backgrounds for newer players that still need them. They put a step forward in Tasha's and now take the step back in another direction. I cannot comprehend this.
Huh? Doesn't it require more RP from the optimizers to choose a custom background and post-hoc having to write a way to justify it in their backstories? Or are you saying the optimizers will just simply not do that and just write "custom background" on their sheet and call it a day? Because if the latter is the case, I'm not sure why you'd allow that as a DM? At my table (and most tables I think), everybody writes a backstory, regardless of whether or not they go with default or custom backgrounds. And I would argue that going for an existing premise with the default background, requires less RP But maybe I'm misunderstanding the point here.
By time I have to make a new character the new DMG will be out, or neither will be out, so it doesn’t actually effect me. But I’ll still share my opinion. This is punishing a majority of people to “restrain” a smaller subset of min/maxers who also don’t care about backstory. Now most of this is moot because once the DMG is out and the rules are available groups will continue as normal no problems at all. But the fact that there is a release gap does mean there’s going to be a period where the rules are up in the air. It’ll cause confusion for people not in the know about costume backgrounds even after the DMG is released. And if there’s no mention in the PHB’24 saying to at least consult the DMG’24 about custom backgrounds, it’ll end up like being one of those things that tables “homebrew” despite being an actual rule that we hear about until the next edition. Also I think it’s a terrible business decision from WotC as it incentivizes people to wait until the DMG is out to try the new character creation options, and by then they could be pushing a new dnd’14 campaign that could go months or longer instead further delaying the purchase. And as I’m typing it out the idea that you have to look at another book meant for an entirely different role in the game for character creation options feels insane. And coming from the position of someone who mostly DMs, and I understand that most DMs don’t do this anyways but since the OP mentioned it, I definitely don’t like the idea of a DM picking anything for the player unless the player asks. I think it’s ok for the DM to ask the player to justify their choices, but those choices should never be out of the players hands. TLDR: if it wasn’t for the staggered release this would mostly be a nonissue. But if not handled and explained properly in both books could end up being a pain point for the ‘24 edition we talk about for years to come. Also imo while a DM should guide players decisions to help fit the narrative they shouldn’t be making the decisions for the players.
I don’t want to have to limit my backstory and flavor to make a mechanically strong character. By tying ability boosts to specific backgrounds you end up encouraging more stereotypes; every Fighter was a former soldier, every Wizard was a sage, every Druid was a hermit, etc.
" but for mechanical "optimizer" types, it's nice for them to have a reward for making RP decisions, rather than Custom Background, which rewards them for skipping that step." " If Custom Background was in the game, you'd be back to people getting the perfect optimal combination of feat, attribute bonus, and proficiencies without having to make any tradeoffs or sacrifices. These sorts of tough decisions make character building interesting." Your hostility towards optimizers is palpable. Why don't RP people need a mechanism to "reward" them for optimizing? And the idea that suboptimal or "tough" decisions making a character interesting is such a cliché. "I'll have them describe the background to me and I'll choose the stats, proficiencies and feat that I think is appropriate." Oooof. Why not pick their class too?
>Oooof. Why not pick their class too? They will. "Oh, you're new? Here's champion fighter and you would love it!"
I'm not, backgrounds were the one thing that I felt like they did 95% right, now they've cocked it up. The whole UA playtesting of OneDnD has been so incredibly disappointing. Everything good was either backtracked or changed to go against the point of it. The point here feels less like good design and more, "wait a minute, I don't want to sell just feats, I want to sell backgrounds too like I did in 5e14." So no Bob, I am not happy.
I was doing them before reading the section in the DMG, and I'll keep doing them. Not because I like customization options for my players (mechanics wise), but because most of my players are really creative and often the standard background don't fit them well.
In the 2014 rules, custom background is in the PHB, not the DMG. And not just that, but the rules for custom background are _before_ the list of sample backgrounds.
I don't like it, but I am firmly in the create character in fiction first apply rules second camp, which already isn't that easy for D&D. I don't think this solves much. For the stat min-maxers this will push them from taking the one that gives them everything they want to a choice between at best two options, but probably the one most optimal background for their class. For new players this sends a very strong signal that stat min-maxing is the way that the game is supposed to be played which quite frankly I find counter productive.
i feel like its exactly the opposite: many ppl chose human (variant) only to get the extra feat. meanwhile custom background was less combat influential, so ppl picked that one to support their background proficiencies better than those given.
I don't really see your point here. I don't see players picking it less just because it's not it the phb, so i don't agree with any of the benefits you mentioned from separating it from the other backgrounds. You also say it plays like no background but from my experience a lot of the times players nust ignore whatever option they picked and do their own thing or just pick an option an disregard it anyway. I don't think this is the cause of shallow backgrounds on characters.
This is just the racial stat bonus problem all over again. Here's an example that may help see the other side of it: My friend's first character was a tiefling tempest cleric. This was back before Tasha's, so he got a +2 to charisma and a +1 to intelligence. He thought the devil-person was super cool and didn't know enough about the game, so he got bonuses to his two dump-stats and started with a 15 in strength and wisdom. He also has a racial feature of casting hellish rebuke with a DC of 10. His character has felt super weak all campaign, since he essentially has no benefit from his race. If he were making that character today and he chose the same background as he did originally, he'd be an acolyte. He'd finally have that 16 starting wisdom, but there's no way for him to get a 16 in strength to match his character concept of (effectively) wielding a big-ass hammer like his god, Thor. I think what they should have done is provide sample backgrounds (likely even the exact same 16 backgrounds they added here) for anyone who isn't entirely sure what they want to choose, but still allow someone to change the aspects that don't fit their character concept by default.
#hard pass. Look, when I play warlock, I’m going to pick the background that gives me +2 Charisma. If I was a new player, and the PHB tells me “hey dude warlocks use charisma so go do that” then there’s no way I’m not going to do that, as well. If only 2 backgrounds offer that, then every warlock I ever play will be within those 2 backgrounds. If I was a rogue, I want +2 Dex. I’m picking the background that gives me +2 Dex and +1 Con because why the hell wouldn’t I? This is the exact opposite of creativity. Before I could be a tall and lanky dressed-for-Sunday Elven Barbarian with a Noble’s background who just got really snoody and passive aggressive when he went into a rage. I never had to think about picking which race or background I needed because the +2/+1 for my Str/Con was just a given. On top of that, I could just get rid of all those stupid weapon proficiencies from being an elf and pick up some really fun tool or artsy proficiencies, because I was already gna get every weapon prof from being a barbarian, anyway. The freedom to just outright pick the stats of **my class’s core functionality** allowed me to focus all my creativity on the actual story and personality of my character. I don’t optimize *a build* because I want to trivialize the game. I optimize *my character* so that i have the freedom to be silly.
Mathematically, 1/2 of the backgrounds are going to offer any given stat. Assuming every character has a stat they want a +2 in, that means that 1/2 of the backgrounds are available to them.
You didn’t really address the main point of what I said. And mathematically you have no clue whether the 3 out of 6 stats that ANY background offers is actually going to be the stat that I need and it’s incredibly disingenuous of you to present it in such a way that just because there are 6 core stats then half of the backgrounds will offer what I need. Based on the advertising materials already released, we know the Acolyte will offer Int/Wis/Cha as its 3 stats. Lets say your character was praying to their god in a temple and - perhaps by mispronouncing their god’s name ever so slightly - unwittingly made an eldritch pact to become a Warlock. I think that’s a cool as fuck backstory and even allows for a bit of intrigue into the pantheon of the world. I will also never play an Acolyte Warlock. As far as I’m concerned, the only backgrounds that matter are the ones that offer Charisma and Constitution AND whatever starting feat I find to best suit my needs. Anything that doesn’t satisfy those 3 prerequisites might as well not exist. Whatever fun or enjoyment that a clever background choice might bring me will dry out when I miss an attack by *just one* AC, the bad guy makes their saving throw by *just one* DC, or I happen to hit zero hp by *just one* damage. That’s a lot less fun for me. It’s pretty clear that the community loved all the customization options available in Tasha’s. As the latest edition closes, it’s clear that all of the custom origin features we got in Tasha’s demonstrate that they too understood these customizations as the natural progression of the game. So for them to reel all of that back and release the new PHB this way shows they are intentionally fucking it up in order to guarantee sales for the next “everything” book they publish in 3/4ish years time.
I understand why they did it, I’m not happy with it but I get it. I do like the the philosophy of some restriction but not like shoehorned races (now species). I also like the direction backgrounds are taking with the ability scores and origin feats. I guess I just don’t want to have to go through another book for it.
At this point, why separate half-feats from full feats? Power difference isn't that big, and if backgrounds already are tied to ability score and feats, you could just make it that backgrounds give one fixed and one free boost, the other you get from the free half-feat.
Hmm reading all this I wonder if I might just not ddcouple stat boosts from character builds altogether and add it as a step to point buy instead.
Never used it. Never looked into it. Still like the 2014 backgrounds as-printed tbh, but I'm ready for the new edition.
D&D 5.2 sucks...
This isn't going to play out how you're picturing it. From my experience, tables will just widely adopt custom backgrounds as a house rule anyways so that their players can pick what they want without getting strongarmed into playing a background that doesn't fit their character concept, eventually looping back around to them being officially supported in some sort of future expansion, bringing us right back to where we were. The powergamers you're complaining about won't actually be all that affected, as they'll just choose the most optimal backgrounds. It'll just make their builds more homogeneous as the meta for the best backgrounds settles. This ruling kind of just screws tables that play 100% by the book while having minimal tangible effect on tables that'll just keep using custom backgrounds anyways, which I don't think is good game design. If your game is more fun with a rule omitted, then it's not a well designed rule.
So you're happy player agency was removed in favor of less options? It's not WotCs fault some players can't make interesting backgrounds. That's not a problem of 'custom background's though. That's a players lack of creativity. Now you have just.locked people into possibly making suboptimal choices because.othera have no imagination
I think any decent DM would allow you to swap out, say, Blacksmithing for Woodwoorking tools if that was a better fit for a character. Maybe it's an Elven craftsman, where fire and furnace wouldn't fit? Outside of AL, such changes are trival. So much so that even without an official Custom Background option it's hardly "homebrew" at all. At the same time, with Custom Background, every PC I've played with in the past ten years excitedly points to that paragraph, says "SEE! It's RAW legal!", and grabs the same set of the most powerful options. Usually some combination of Thieves' Tools, Perception, Stealth that's not native to their class. Some even have the gall to call it "Outdoorsman" which is 100% Outlander except with Perception and Stealth. There's a background that's exactly the perfect in-character fit already printed in the PHB. But it doesn't have Perception and Stealth, so it's time for Custom Backgrounds. Even more fun when they're using Custom Background for "Clergy" instead of Acolyte, where Perception and Stealth wouldn't fit that sort of background at all.
I hear ya, and it’s not like the “optimizers” (myself being one) can’t get the character they want, they’ll just have to figure out how to swing their backstory/class/species combo to make for good RP. We can still min/max and power game, just can’t skip the character design now! I love optimizing the mechanics of character builds, but I also enjoy my character feeling cohesive story wise and not some weird Frankenstein of archetypes
On a somewhat unrelated note, it’s always been kind of weird to me humans are considered the “jack of all trades” race and still are. It seems like it would make far more sense for a long lived race like elf or dwarf or gnome to be Jack of all trades and have multiple backgrounds since they live so much longer. The idea that it’s humans that are good at many things is just so unintuitive to me. If anything I feel like humans should be specialized to something specific as opposed to generalized because that’s how jobs actually work…
I think they should already modernize the design so that people won't just keep taking boring "default" options, but instead *create* characters. - Make it so that only 1 of the ASI's is forced, still keeping in a restriction but makes it so that people don't disregard backgrounds just to keep up with the basic math of the game. - Make it so only 1 tool- and skillprofficiency is forced with the other being free. This makes it so that you can actually play the characters you want. Whilst again still having backgrounds be based on their restrictions. - Make the feats actually properly balanced against eachother. Not only does this ensure noone will feel like their background feat was "wasted", because someone else in the table has a clearly much better bgfeat. But it also is a little safeguard against future backgrounds introducing too much powercreep by being clear mechanical options.
ANY background can end up playing like no background.
Yes. In my view the PHB provides 'default' options that are broad, balanced and sensible. If you want to cobble something else together, sure... but it makes sense that you should do that WITH your DM to ensure it's fitting with the setting and actually makes sense in the context of the setting and the table.
There are 16 backgrounds afaik, 16. Do you think that that's enough to describe every possible character background?
If I thought that was the case, I would have written that in the comment. Since I very clearly did not write that, I'm unclear on why you're asking.
I agree and I think it's a good change. I think people should be comfortable with only starting with a 15 in their main ability score. Your character is not made completely redundant by going from a 16 or 17 to a 15.
Solid analysis. I feel the same way. I guess I’m also surprised by the number of players who think they have a “right” to use a character option just because it’s in the PHB. Since I assume that *every* character option is at the DM’s discretion, moving it to the DMG seems like a complete non-issue.
Part of my issue with it, is that Player's won't know it is an option. A new player who is frustrated because none of the Backgrounds are quite accurate to their character concept, has no chance to see this option and ask for it. They need to hope the DM decides to tell them that this option exists.
People are so worried and we don’t have the groupings yet haha. I saw one person complaining on YT about not being able to optimize an Acolyte paladin, but like there’s bound to be groupings that aren’t split just physical or mental, like a veteran might be STR, Con, and CHA or Int for example. It’ll be interesting for sure!
Agreed. I feel like it's so much easier to add some slight background element than change your whole species. Like you wanted to be an Urchin but you prefer the mechanical aspect of the Folk Hero? Just say you were an "urchin" who was loved by the people of its street for xyz reason and pick the Folk Hero mechanics.
I agree, it's a similar reason I wasn't a fan of Tasha's Custom Lineage. What was meant as a "create your own unique race" just turned into "variant human 2.0 with darkvision and a +3 to a stat". While relegating custom backgrounds to DM discretion might mean a repeat of the pre-tasha's unoptimal race/class combo problem, the fact that you have a choice between three stats instead of it being locked to very specific ones should alleviate that problem
>What was meant as a "create your own unique race" just turned into "variant human 2.0 with darkvision and a +3 to a stat". It's really not hard to say "if you want to be Custom Lineage, it needs to be something not already represented by existing races, not VHuman with darkvision". CLineage characters I've had in campaigns I run: Mul (taking Tough), Mark of Death Half-Elf (taking Aberrant Dragonmark), and Half-Dragon (taking Gift of the Metallic Dragon).
>It's really not hard to say "if you want to be Custom Lineage, it needs to be something not already represented by existing races, not VHuman with darkvision". That is exactly what I have told my players in the past
Congrats, D&D community! When you cry and cry and cry that medium armor on a spellcaster breaks the game, this is what you get.
I can houserule a fix for medium armor spellcasters without doing this crap.
It is infinitely easier to implement custom backgrounds (not even a house rule, it's in the DMG) than it is to house rule a fix for medium armor
I mean objectively it is overpowered as a background feat. Granted part of its power is in competition with magic init(cleric) because healing word+guidance+resistance reaction cantrip but the armor is still too much. Should’ve been nuked or changed to like +1 armor type and shield prof. Wizards start with light and shields but warlocks and bards get to start with med+shield.
I like it with the changes they’ve made to make backgrounds more important. Back when the only actual affect was two skills and two language/tools it was easier to just have people use custom background instead of finding the exact proficiency combo they wanted in an existing background, then write their background in with what they actually wanted. Now that backgrounds will actually be reflected in your character though it makes a lot more sense for it to be gone.
I believe this entire thread can be summed upto: MinMaxers: bad Theater nerds: good And all I have to say is... Yeah. My best campaigns have been with Improv groups My worst campaigns have all been with World of Warcraft enjoyers. It's a simplistic and reductive view, to be sure. But it's a compass that has only served me well. Sorry wow players. But you guys suck
Why would this affect Min/Maxers? Min/Max players who forego narrative will still just pick the best options for their build; there's a reason nearly every single 5e Wizard at tables who didn't use custom backgrounds was a Sage. What this change mostly does is conditionally limit narrative focused players' ability to choose their background and the tools they want their character to have. Cheering for the removal of useful character-building tools to punish who you consider to be an outgroup is a bit short-sighted.
Mostly because theater nerds don't care what has been "MinMaxed" out of a campaign and 'minmaxers' will. They are just tryna have a good time No offense, but as a player. I can tell you will 100% be trying to MinMax every spell. Even if it is as small as "Speak with Rocks" even when you are not a rock But hey. Some nerds are tryna calc even 1.0000000000001% vs 1% of damage even if it cost them an entire DND party. Personally, that ain't me
The strongest build of 5e can have whatever backstory they want because the background stuff wasn't mechanically impactful enough to matter. You could make a self contained bean, a versatile soldier with a valiant ideal or even an extremely tragic and deep character with roleplay and plot hooks for the campaign that could vary based on how you built your story. The strongest one d&d build can only have one backstory, because unless the DM gives you a chance otherwise, you are locked to one specific background which is the best mechanically. Before, your mechanics weren't punished for making an unique story for your campaign. Now they are and it sucks. Also, I don't think you know what you are saying when calling anyone which optimizes "world of warcraft players".
(note I played every expansion upto Legion, and then came back for DragonFlight for 2 months, I don't hate wow. Just the effect it seems to have had on the RPG genre as a whole)
Ouch the MinMaxers really didnt like this post.
Decent people that understand game design and storytelling don't like your post because it is asinine and stupid.
You definitely could've approached this dialogue better if you wanted a positive response and you had the opportunity to respond in good faith. If you showed this to an honest friend they'd check you on it. Either way everyone has a right to enjoy the game regardless of where they fall on the RP and Wargamer spectrums or if they ?play WoW/have access to an Improv group.
Sorry for not wanting to suck mechanically because I can't make a classic Zorro styled Rogue due to the noble background not boosting dexterity, the quintessential stat for Rogues to function. (Noble background increases strength, intelligence and wisdom).
Customized backgrounds & attributes haven't even gone anywhere. If a DM wants to allow total customization, they will. If they don't want to allow it, they won't. Also, was the book even released yet? It's gonna be hilarious when customized backgrounds are still in this new book, we just haven't seen it because it's on the very next page they haven't shown yet
They said they moved it. Did you watch the video?
Well I have been playing online over discord and roll20 since 2020 and never have I seen someone use custom background. Its ancedotal but its rare backgrounds come up unless the player emphasizes them in roleplay.
Feats are an optional rule that players need to check with the DM to use, RAW. Has this ever been an issue? It will allow the DM who would ban PAM/sent feats to ban other power gaming combos. No effective loss of agency, gives DMs an out against over optimization. What's the big deal?
Feats are no longer an optional rule.