Yeah, it depends on what you want from the background. What I appreciate is player's who lean into their characters background as part of the characterization. In my present games, I'm continually entertained and impressed by what players who took Archaeologist (use those cartographers tools per Xanthars), Courtier (that one can draw the "power map", excellent background for Whisper Bards), and Charlatan (though ours plays it more like George Peppard's Hannibal from the original A Team and went with Disguise kit ... which pushes it a bit but I allow it).
These features are foundational (I mean, background) and will likely be surpassed as the character develops, but it was a fun aspect I enjoy in 5e (they weren't in 2e when I stopped playing D&D).
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Powerwise: The strixhaven backgrounds give you a better version of magic initiate. This outright outshines the previously most powerful backgrounds, the ravnica ones which added spells to your class spell list if you had one. Below that is Celebrity Adventurer's Scion from Acquisitions Inc because it gives you a tool AND 2 languages. Whilst the other backgrounds just give you either 2 languages, 2 tools, or 1 and 1 of both. Anthropologist is below/equal to that because its feature is that you can spend time observing humanoids for 1 day and then learn enough gestures/words/etc for rudimentary communication if you don't speak their language.
Fluff/favorite-wise: Idk, I try to not pick the same background too many times, but I am partial to urchin, outlander, and acolyte.
It depends on the character of course, but I usually gravitate towards one of two types: Acolyte/Faction Agent/Noble/Soldier, because you're immediately part of a group that can plausibly help you out almost anywhere in civilized areas; or Investigator/Urban Bounty Hunter, because reliable ways of digging up information shady stuff currently going on can be incredibly useful. Both can be very convenient for your DM too, when they want to give the party a nudge in the right direction when things bog down.
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I had a DM who hated allowing us to use background features and for the life of me, I did not understand why. Maybe this was just an isolated case, but I had chosen my background (Faction Agent in this case) specifically for the safe haven feature. Have you encountered this reluctance to allow the use of features or any restrictions placed on them? It certainly influenced future games I played, both with this DM and others.
I had a DM who hated allowing us to use background features and for the life of me, I did not understand why. Maybe this was just an isolated case, but I had chosen my background (Faction Agent in this case) specifically for the safe haven feature. Have you encountered this reluctance to allow the use of features or any restrictions placed on them?
At a guess, I'd say it's because the coin has two sides: background features offer great advantages if the DM wants to avail themselves of them, but only if they put in the work. Safe Haven is wonderful, but it's also a bunch of NPCs the DM has to create, an organization to set up, heck, a codebook and a secret handshake to come up with. It's more stuff to do, and some DMs feel their plate is full enough already (they might have a point, at that, though if you're not up for a really heaped plate you'd better have streamlining your DMing process down to a T). Keep in mind, when new DMs ask for advice one of the first tips they get is invariably not to do any unnecessary work: prepare what you need now, not what you might want in six months. Tacking on background features for every PC may sound like it clashes with that notion.
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1) Any DM worth their salt wouldn't see this as something they "have to come up with" and instead see it as a great world building opportunity to flesh out the setting similar to a Warlock's patrons though. It's only bad when they get surprised by it but that would mean they didn't know what kind of characters they DM for which would throw a whole other kind of flag.
2) Of course new DMs already have a lot to handle but I don't think making up some secret organization that only comes up whenever the character uses this feature (and not even all the time since there can be plenty reasons why they simply can't help right now or aren't present) shouldn't be too much and could actually be helpful to guide the party into specific directions instead. You don't even need come up with a codebook, a secret handshake and all that stuff. You can just handwave it. In fact you can let your player do most of the work and have flesh out that organization so you just have to check whether it's reasonable or not. What's important is that they exist and that they can give the character relevant information sometimes.
1) it's not one or the other, it's both. And you basically get what you give: the more effort that goes into fleshing out that background the more interesting it will be during the game; if you decide to do as little as necessary for it to be used though, chances are it's not going to mean much to anyone.
2) eeehh... The issue then becomes that the player can try this approach as often as they like, and might resent it if it rarely results in anything helpful, especially if you let them do most of the work. There's still going to be decisions to be made about what you'll allow the feature to accomplish, you're still going to be playing one or more extra NPCs, you're still going to have come up with answers for whatever questions your player comes up with (and players come up with crazy stuff sometimes). Not all DMs enjoy improvising a whole lot, some like to be as prepared as possible. And allowing something and then making it much less interesting than what the player was expecting is in some ways worse than just not allowing it at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for backgrounds both from a DM POV and from a player POV. Backgrounds are great. I'm just trying to give an answer to a question, that's all.
I had a DM who hated allowing us to use background features and for the life of me, I did not understand why. Maybe this was just an isolated case, but I had chosen my background (Faction Agent in this case) specifically for the safe haven feature. Have you encountered this reluctance to allow the use of features or any restrictions placed on them?
At a guess, I'd say it's because the coin has two sides: background features offer great advantages if the DM wants to avail themselves of them, but only if they put in the work. Safe Haven is wonderful, but it's also a bunch of NPCs the DM has to create, an organization to set up, heck, a codebook and a secret handshake to come up with. It's more stuff to do, and some DMs feel their plate is full enough already (they might have a point, at that, though if you're not up for a really heaped plate you'd better have streamlining your DMing process down to a T). Keep in mind, when new DMs ask for advice one of the first tips they get is invariably not to do any unnecessary work: prepare what you need now, not what you might want in six months. Tacking on background features for every PC may sound like it clashes with that notion.
Well… yeah,it could certainly involve secret handshakes and codebooks etc… but those don’t necessarily have to mean more work for the DM. I mean, it’s not like a DM needs to actually invent a secret handshake to teach a player because when their PC uses that handshake with an NPC, no actual physical hands are involved. And a secret codebook need not actually be created, it can simply be handled the same as Thieves’ Cant or Druidic. When was the last time you actually invented all of those double entendres and finger wiggles for a Rogue? Do your Druid players and your Druid NPCs talk to each other in Druidic? In almost 30 years of D&D across 3 & ½ editions I never have.
For Cant I drew from gangster/spy movies and movies about shady dealings by an organized group, like the classic “finger swipe across the nose” as an inconspicuous shibboleth. Druids talk about and interact with “the spirits,” and express themselves using concepts derived from nature, stuff like ”all seasons pass into the next in their own time,” or “the fire burns, yes, but from the forest’s ashes new life always follows.” But I haven’t ever actually designed the whole Cant or Druidic. Or any other language for that matter. I come up with some few, specific touches just enough to have things “feel” like they are part of a larger whole to hopefully enhance verisimilitude, and leave it at that.*s I only ever develop anything more substantive if the players steer their PC’s stories towards situations in which I need more so I can “show” it to them when they arrive.
The most development I have put into anything that only really exists between the characters instead of players that would come close to “actively adding work to myself” is how I spell Dwarf and Orc names for the players to write down. Dwarven and Orcish both use the Dwarven runic alphabet for written language. Right? So I provide both a representation of the runic spelling, and a “translation” into Common script for NPCs so that it alludes to a depth and breadth to things (at least enough to satisfy my player’s).
One of the NPCs in the campaign I am currently DMing is a Dwarven woman who’s name is spelled as “PRNH KRLL” in Dwarven and “Prinnah Krül” in common, pronounced the same either way. There’s also an Orc sea Captain named “MGRL (aka Yimgarl),” a Half-Orc Reeve named “MMSH (Imsha in common) Tanner,” he was named after his Orc mother’s father, but his surname comes from his Human father; and a female Half-Dwarf Reeve named “Sharra BlDRK (Balderk in Common, the Bl representing a single rune). Note that they are all exactly four runes long when spelled runicly. Dwarven names sound kinda pretty and the mouth shapes required to make adjacent sounds are easier to flow through. Conversely, Orcish names have adjacent sounds that are more awkward to shape, and sound stranger to local ears.
I didn’t really put much work into it, I just named a Dwarf back in 2e, did the imitation rune thing “por sabor.” All the rest just grew organically one name at a time. I still do the same thing now: I give them whatever name sounds right for them to me, chop out all the vowels and as many consonants as I can get away with (just like the shorthand I eventually used as a waiter). Then I capitalized the remaining ones to act as Latin-alphabet representations of the Runes for the sounds. That meant I had inadvertently established it a phonetic alphabet. And the first two names both just happened to be four “runes” long, so on a whim I decided to stick with it as a convention. That’s it, I mostly made it up as I went, 1 phonetic runs at a time and (usually) manage to keep things consistent enough that nobody has ever called me out on anything. Heck, I didn’t even decide on the four runes/name thing until after I named my first Dwarf way back in 2e. That little extra touch is usually quicker for me to do than thinkin’ up good names in the first place. (I suck at names.)
For everyone who’s thinking that my system conflicts with the lore, my table doesn’t use the FR, so we are not obligated to comply with that setting’s lore.
For all of those NPC you mentioned that need to be created, Commoner + Race + Background + realistic walkin’ around equipment (sometimes including a basic Trinket) is the simplified version of my system for “NPCs made easy.” (So easy hat I have occasionally done it behind the DM screen while I’m speaking as an NPC that didn’t exist until they suddenly did.
So, while I agree that there can be some additional steps associated with some Background features, they don’t need to be burdensome or anything. In terms of any “time costs,” there are ways to do things on a budget and still make them impactful. Na mean?
For backgrounds with "connections" I usually work it like this:
Party enters town, PC asks, "DM would [insert cool character name] have any contacts here from the Convivial Machinists Over Non?"
DM replies, "Mmm, sure" and sorta like 'Sposta I think I gotta enough mojo to improv something. I mean these folks are like the Felix Leiters to the PC's James Bonds. They're sorta there, I mean you could do a whole plot with them, but mostly they're there, give the PCs the lay of the land, maybe an important message, keys to a safehouse and then they're sorta gone doing the Adventures of Felix Leiter or maybe actually wandering into Westworld, it's not going to make an iota of difference to the narrative more often than not.
Sometimes a character's background fits really well into the campaign and I do run with a lot of prep work, more often it's part of their backstory and gives them a minor "help" card to play when it makes sense to the DM and the player asks for it.
Thoughts?
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It does rather depend on what you want your character to be, but i often take urchin for the proficiencies and tools it gives.
The new ones that give free feats seem pretty powerful.
I’m partial to the “Urban Bounty Hunter”.
It provides useful skills, potential proficiency in Thieves Tools, and a decent feature for gathering information.
I also like the “Knight” background, specifically because it grants you companions.
”Archeologist” is a recent favorite of mine, because the various tables are just so fun to work with.
That’s like asking what “the best” flavor of ice cream is. It’s the one that suits one’s mood most at the time.
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Yeah, it depends on what you want from the background. What I appreciate is player's who lean into their characters background as part of the characterization. In my present games, I'm continually entertained and impressed by what players who took Archaeologist (use those cartographers tools per Xanthars), Courtier (that one can draw the "power map", excellent background for Whisper Bards), and Charlatan (though ours plays it more like George Peppard's Hannibal from the original A Team and went with Disguise kit ... which pushes it a bit but I allow it).
These features are foundational (I mean, background) and will likely be surpassed as the character develops, but it was a fun aspect I enjoy in 5e (they weren't in 2e when I stopped playing D&D).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I haven't seen those yet, out of interest which ones do you mean?
They’re the new backgrounds in Strixhaven. They each only grant access to a single specific feat in that book.
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I think the new backgrounds in Strixhaven give you the Strixhaven Initiate feat, which gives you a few spells. https://youtu.be/Sc2KBiC_oM8?t=109
The Strixhaven Student Background give the Strixhaven Initiate feat, but I don't see many DMs allowing them in games not set in that School/Plane.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/strixhaven-initiate
The ravnica backgrounds added spells to a character's class list but wasn't all that powerful all things considered.
Powerwise: The strixhaven backgrounds give you a better version of magic initiate. This outright outshines the previously most powerful backgrounds, the ravnica ones which added spells to your class spell list if you had one. Below that is Celebrity Adventurer's Scion from Acquisitions Inc because it gives you a tool AND 2 languages. Whilst the other backgrounds just give you either 2 languages, 2 tools, or 1 and 1 of both. Anthropologist is below/equal to that because its feature is that you can spend time observing humanoids for 1 day and then learn enough gestures/words/etc for rudimentary communication if you don't speak their language.
Fluff/favorite-wise: Idk, I try to not pick the same background too many times, but I am partial to urchin, outlander, and acolyte.
Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda.
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It depends on the character of course, but I usually gravitate towards one of two types: Acolyte/Faction Agent/Noble/Soldier, because you're immediately part of a group that can plausibly help you out almost anywhere in civilized areas; or Investigator/Urban Bounty Hunter, because reliable ways of digging up information shady stuff currently going on can be incredibly useful. Both can be very convenient for your DM too, when they want to give the party a nudge in the right direction when things bog down.
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Hello Pangurjan,
I had a DM who hated allowing us to use background features and for the life of me, I did not understand why. Maybe this was just an isolated case, but I had chosen my background (Faction Agent in this case) specifically for the safe haven feature. Have you encountered this reluctance to allow the use of features or any restrictions placed on them? It certainly influenced future games I played, both with this DM and others.
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At a guess, I'd say it's because the coin has two sides: background features offer great advantages if the DM wants to avail themselves of them, but only if they put in the work. Safe Haven is wonderful, but it's also a bunch of NPCs the DM has to create, an organization to set up, heck, a codebook and a secret handshake to come up with. It's more stuff to do, and some DMs feel their plate is full enough already (they might have a point, at that, though if you're not up for a really heaped plate you'd better have streamlining your DMing process down to a T). Keep in mind, when new DMs ask for advice one of the first tips they get is invariably not to do any unnecessary work: prepare what you need now, not what you might want in six months. Tacking on background features for every PC may sound like it clashes with that notion.
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I do enjoy far traveler and have used it a few time, but I haven't really been able to play much the last couple of year and when I did I was the DM.
1) it's not one or the other, it's both. And you basically get what you give: the more effort that goes into fleshing out that background the more interesting it will be during the game; if you decide to do as little as necessary for it to be used though, chances are it's not going to mean much to anyone.
2) eeehh... The issue then becomes that the player can try this approach as often as they like, and might resent it if it rarely results in anything helpful, especially if you let them do most of the work. There's still going to be decisions to be made about what you'll allow the feature to accomplish, you're still going to be playing one or more extra NPCs, you're still going to have come up with answers for whatever questions your player comes up with (and players come up with crazy stuff sometimes). Not all DMs enjoy improvising a whole lot, some like to be as prepared as possible. And allowing something and then making it much less interesting than what the player was expecting is in some ways worse than just not allowing it at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for backgrounds both from a DM POV and from a player POV. Backgrounds are great. I'm just trying to give an answer to a question, that's all.
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Well… yeah,it could certainly involve secret handshakes and codebooks etc… but those don’t necessarily have to mean more work for the DM. I mean, it’s not like a DM needs to actually invent a secret handshake to teach a player because when their PC uses that handshake with an NPC, no actual physical hands are involved. And a secret codebook need not actually be created, it can simply be handled the same as Thieves’ Cant or Druidic. When was the last time you actually invented all of those double entendres and finger wiggles for a Rogue? Do your Druid players and your Druid NPCs talk to each other in Druidic? In almost 30 years of D&D across 3 & ½ editions I never have.
For Cant I drew from gangster/spy movies and movies about shady dealings by an organized group, like the classic “finger swipe across the nose” as an inconspicuous shibboleth. Druids talk about and interact with “the spirits,” and express themselves using concepts derived from nature, stuff like ”all seasons pass into the next in their own time,” or “the fire burns, yes, but from the forest’s ashes new life always follows.” But I haven’t ever actually designed the whole Cant or Druidic. Or any other language for that matter. I come up with some few, specific touches just enough to have things “feel” like they are part of a larger whole to hopefully enhance verisimilitude, and leave it at that.*s I only ever develop anything more substantive if the players steer their PC’s stories towards situations in which I need more so I can “show” it to them when they arrive.
The most development I have put into anything that only really exists between the characters instead of players that would come close to “actively adding work to myself” is how I spell Dwarf and Orc names for the players to write down. Dwarven and Orcish both use the Dwarven runic alphabet for written language. Right? So I provide both a representation of the runic spelling, and a “translation” into Common script for NPCs so that it alludes to a depth and breadth to things (at least enough to satisfy my player’s).
One of the NPCs in the campaign I am currently DMing is a Dwarven woman who’s name is spelled as “PRNH KRLL” in Dwarven and “Prinnah Krül” in common, pronounced the same either way. There’s also an Orc sea Captain named “MGRL (aka Yimgarl),” a Half-Orc Reeve named “MMSH (Imsha in common) Tanner,” he was named after his Orc mother’s father, but his surname comes from his Human father; and a female Half-Dwarf Reeve named “Sharra BlDRK (Balderk in Common, the Bl representing a single rune). Note that they are all exactly four runes long when spelled runicly. Dwarven names sound kinda pretty and the mouth shapes required to make adjacent sounds are easier to flow through. Conversely, Orcish names have adjacent sounds that are more awkward to shape, and sound stranger to local ears.
I didn’t really put much work into it, I just named a Dwarf back in 2e, did the imitation rune thing “por sabor.” All the rest just grew organically one name at a time. I still do the same thing now: I give them whatever name sounds right for them to me, chop out all the vowels and as many consonants as I can get away with (just like the shorthand I eventually used as a waiter). Then I capitalized the remaining ones to act as Latin-alphabet representations of the Runes for the sounds. That meant I had inadvertently established it a phonetic alphabet. And the first two names both just happened to be four “runes” long, so on a whim I decided to stick with it as a convention. That’s it, I mostly made it up as I went, 1 phonetic runs at a time and (usually) manage to keep things consistent enough that nobody has ever called me out on anything. Heck, I didn’t even decide on the four runes/name thing until after I named my first Dwarf way back in 2e. That little extra touch is usually quicker for me to do than thinkin’ up good names in the first place. (I suck at names.)
For everyone who’s thinking that my system conflicts with the lore, my table doesn’t use the FR, so we are not obligated to comply with that setting’s lore.
For all of those NPC you mentioned that need to be created, Commoner + Race + Background + realistic walkin’ around equipment (sometimes including a basic Trinket) is the simplified version of my system for “NPCs made easy.” (So easy hat I have occasionally done it behind the DM screen while I’m speaking as an NPC that didn’t exist until they suddenly did.
So, while I agree that there can be some additional steps associated with some Background features, they don’t need to be burdensome or anything. In terms of any “time costs,” there are ways to do things on a budget and still make them impactful. Na mean?
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For backgrounds with "connections" I usually work it like this:
Party enters town, PC asks, "DM would [insert cool character name] have any contacts here from the Convivial Machinists Over Non?"
DM replies, "Mmm, sure" and sorta like 'Sposta I think I gotta enough mojo to improv something. I mean these folks are like the Felix Leiters to the PC's James Bonds. They're sorta there, I mean you could do a whole plot with them, but mostly they're there, give the PCs the lay of the land, maybe an important message, keys to a safehouse and then they're sorta gone doing the Adventures of Felix Leiter or maybe actually wandering into Westworld, it's not going to make an iota of difference to the narrative more often than not.
Sometimes a character's background fits really well into the campaign and I do run with a lot of prep work, more often it's part of their backstory and gives them a minor "help" card to play when it makes sense to the DM and the player asks for it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.