October 23rd, 2017

This update provides users the ability to create their own Homebrew Character Backgrounds: 

The homebrew backgrounds will not only provide textual data in their own listing and details pages, but will also allow users to select characteristics and be granted skill proficiencies, tool proficiences,  known languages, and starting equipment in the character builder!

The main homebrew page has been updated with a slot for backgrounds:

And there is now a listing page for homebrew backgrounds:

As with other homebrew-able data, you can either create a homebrew background from and existing, publicly available background to use as a guide, or create one from scratch.

These are the publicly available backgrounds to use as templates:

Here, I have used the Criminal / Spy background as a template and am renaming it to 'Gambler'

The main form for creating a background is fairly self-explanatory. You enter data for the introduction, any background-specific text / roll table, skills, tools, languages, equipment, features, variants, etc. But the real fun happens after the initial save. THEN you get to add attribute data that will be used in the character builder:

For the skill and tool proficiencies and languages, the forms will present you with a selector where you can select DEFAULT values the user should be able to choose from in the character builder. If you leave the selector BLANK and simply hit save, it will allow the user to select from the entire list of that type (skill, tool, language) for any that they haven't already revived from another source (class, race, etc.):

^ Just hit save here with an empty selector to grant users the ability to choose from the entire list of skills.

OR

^ provide the list of skills they should be allowed to choose from.

For starting equipment. This one is a little more complete. You start by creating a phrase like 'a short sword', or 'a pouch of 10GP and a cloak', or 'a dagger or thieve's tools'. For phrases that are a single item or phrases joined by an AND you then create that same phrase as individual choice. If the phrase is joined by an OR, you create multiple individual choices. For each choice you then created the associated mapped data that is actually used by the character builder. As an example:

^ here we have created am equipment phrase of 'a sack cloth and a shield'. We then used the same text for the Equipment Phrase Individual Choice. Since this phrase is an AND, we then create two associated data records on the same choice a CUSTOM type with a value of 'a sack cloth' (a sack cloth isn't a real item in the database), and a ARMOR of Shield (which is an item in the database).

For an example of an OR phrase:

^ here we've created an individual choice for 'a dagger AND a pouch' OR 'a set of thieve's tools'. And this is how that is presented to the user in the character builder in the starting equipment section:

For suggested characteristics, you simple enter the text per row of the table type: 

Once your homebrew background is created, it will then be available to you (and anyone in your campaign if you have content sharing enabled)!

And as always, if you have any questions to issues, let us know in the forums!

For a little insight into what we're still working on for homebrew. Next up will be homebrew feats, then races/sub-races, and then sub-classes. Along the way, we will also be adding comments to all published homebrew data. Updating forms to allow users that have access to licensed material the ability to use those as creation templates, or add links to them (like adding a PHB spell to their Homebrew magic item). And finally, addressing the issue with the Ammunition types in magic items.