On the Discord server, the mods with access to early copies of the books have been kind enough to answer direct questions and I found out that the 2024 PHB no longer uses the Personality, Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws system. Of all the things this seems like a minor one, but I've found myself pretty saddened about this because I feel like the system doesn't care to encourage thinking very deeply about the inner life or motivations of one's character. I don't feel like something so player facing would be moved into the DMG, either, but I suppose there's an outside possibility that's where we will find it. What do you all think about this?

I agree, should not be ignored.  It's a barebones way to make a decision, because these are the things that help someone make a decision for that character, not for YOU the player.

Like alignment, PBIF could be a useful tool that prompts investigation or a millstone that restrains creativity.

Apparently, WotC felt that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze in this case. I can't say I'm particularly attached to it, I'll judge whether it's good or bad when I see the new character sheet layout and how the space has been utilised.

Quote from Linklite>>

Like alignment, PBIF could be a useful tool that prompts investigation or a millstone that restrains creativity.

Wait, how is PBIF restraining to creativity?

Apparently, WotC felt that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze in this case. I can't say I'm particularly attached to it, I'll judge whether it's good or bad when I see the new character sheet layout and how the space has been utilised.

Yeah a decision was apparently made, but I at least think that PBIF might have been one of the best things 2014 PHB brought to D&D.

I only ever used the PBIF suggestions as a springboard to help get the creative juices flowing, and honestly, I end up erasing them later on when I had a much more defined understanding of who my PC is. It helped get the ball rolling in some cases, but, in my opinion, loses relevance pretty quickly.

They're fine for springboarding ideas, but sometimes people would get trapped by defining their characters with them...same with most prompts for character personality creation. I'm entirely happy with them not being on the character sheet - I've never seen them used after character creation in a good way. People who used them well would use them when forming their mental image during creation...then they'd leave them behind and never refer to them again.

Can't say they were stand-out good, but they had uses. Have they definitely gotten rid of them, or just not included them in the sheets?

Quote from Erik_Soong >>

I only ever used the PBIF suggestions as a springboard to help get the creative juices flowing, and honestly, I end up erasing them later on when I had a much more defined understanding of who my PC is. It helped get the ball rolling in some cases, but, in my opinion, loses relevance pretty quickly.

Rewriting them as a character changed always felt like a good exercise in character development, to me.

Quote from Linklite>>

They're fine for springboarding ideas, but sometimes people would get trapped by defining their characters with them...same with most prompts for character personality creation.

The big difference, to me, was that these were write-your-own, unlike Alignment which was previously the only inner character motivation system D&D had before.

I'm entirely happy with them not being on the character sheet - I've never seen them used after character creation in a good way. People who used them well would use them when forming their mental image during creation...then they'd leave them behind and never refer to them again.

Can't say they were stand-out good, but they had uses. Have they definitely gotten rid of them, or just not included them in the sheets?

People with advance copies have told me that the system is absent from the book entirely. I just felt like it was the best inner psychology character system D&D has had yet. Leagues better than Alignment which were preset and not defined by the player or customized to the character.

So just keep using it. 

All it did was give someone a prefabricated way of generating a character in terms of motivation. The issue became that some DMs are strict by the book and required it for character creation.

If you liked it, go for it. 

Quote from Spideycloned>>

So just keep using it. 

Well obviously I can do that, but what makes me sad is that this is an indication that the devs don't think it was valuable for the character creation process, something with which I disagree heartily. Especially since they are still using Alignment, a system which I think is far far inferior for the purposes of a roleplaying aid or as questions to help someone think of the inner psychology and motivations of a character.

All it did was give someone a prefabricated way of generating a character in terms of motivation. The issue became that some DMs are strict by the book and required it for character creation.

It did more than that, since the prefab tables were explicitly just samples and these were meant to be created and written yourself. So it left blank spots for players to be creative on their own, within certain suggested parameters. It was a point where the mechanical system intersected with the creative writing and acting part of roleplaying, in a light enough way that it wasn't intrusive. True, the mechanical support could have been better integrated, but I still think it was the only spot in the game where this kind of creative freedom was encouraged, inspiring players to truly get into their character's mindset.

I totally get where you are coming from, Ophidimancer. It is just that, from my perspective, it wasn't necessary and as Linklite said, could be as limiting as it could be helpful because some people feel that these options are it and just end up staying in a box. Or they just ignore them entirely once they had them written down and DMs who used them might call out players for not remaining consistent with the text.

For me, it is meh. Personally, I have found more value from doing little exercises in the Three-Sentence Backstory thread than I ever did from the PBIF options.

I suppose I should also describe how I used PBIF, which I think might be slightly different from how they are described in the PHB, but which I found to be immensely helpful as roleplaying touchstones. Because we can't always live in the heads of our characters, having a little reminder guide would help on those days when the roleplaying muscles were weak.

Personality - The default emotional “stance” of your character or their standing animation at the character select screen, if you will. This is how your character generally behaves when nothing else is going on.
Bonds - The people, places, and things that are important to your character, either good or bad. These are the connection points between your character and the game world, very important for integrating the character and the plot.
Ideals - These are your character’s ethics. This is where you state how your character believes people should behave.
Flaws - These are your character’s blind spots or things that plague your character in a way that drives the story forward and makes the plot more interesting.  Usually they will be a kind of weakness in your mindset, but it can be anything else that consistently obstructs your character’s life.

And I would also tweak them as the character grew and developed so it acted as kind of an internal character journal as well. And yes, I am also an advocate of the three sentence backstory, I found that that worked well in tandem with PBIF, since a streamlines three sentence story often doesn't leave room for a lot of the fiddlier details that you can put into Bonds, for instance.

PBIF was tied in to the Inspiration system, so once they redesigned Inspiration it no longer served any direct game purpose.

There is somewhat of a replacement for that during character creation. During Step 3: Determining Ability Scores, you have a d4 tables for each attribute for high and low values.  Giving things like "Fidgety, Frivalous, Wary", and a similar table for Step 4: Choose an Alignment, which has things like "Impulsive, Honest, Greedy, Selfish". While it is not the same, it ticks some boxes that would have been provided by PBIF.

I actually found alignment (specifically chaos v law, not really good v evil) to be a better prompt than PBIF. I usually had a good idea of my character by that point and just picked whatever was closest to my concept anyway. Thinking about how my character felt about the rules, how they approached problema and so forth was more instrumental in developing a 3d character and helping me understand how they viewed other people and the world around them than "I protect those than cannot help themselves".

I'm not a fan of either being in a character sheet to be honest, for previously explained reasons (plus others). The big difference I think that meant that they could get rid of PBIF but had to keep alignment is this: beyond character creation and acting as a form of notes, they served no mechanical purpose. In 5e, alignment still has mechanical significance (granted not necessarily large one, many campaigns can run and complete without it ever coming up unless the table chooses to, but there are some items etc where it does matter). They just couldn't get rid of it. Perhaps in 6e they will because they can remove alignment from those aspects, but they can't while they maintain 5e as current.

Quote from Ophidimancer >>

On the Discord server, the mods with access to early copies of the books have been kind enough to answer direct questions and I found out that the 2024 PHB no longer uses the Personality, Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws system. Of all the things this seems like a minor one, but I've found myself pretty saddened about this because I feel like the system doesn't care to encourage thinking very deeply about the inner life or motivations of one's character. I don't feel like something so player facing would be moved into the DMG, either, but I suppose there's an outside possibility that's where we will find it. What do you all think about this?

 not surprised really, it's been missing for a couple of years honestly, just  build a new subclass... very seldomly do they include anything in those for random rolls. As a DM, I encourage people to consider those anyway and to make their own. And if people need a random roll for it (looking at one of my players who's a servant of the dice goddess and has to randomly roll everything from species, gender, class, backgrounds... they even roll to see if they multiclass and if so what multiclass.) There are some excellent online tables, and random generators for these. 

I recommend all DMs should encourage players to make an in-depth background for characters. But at the same time, don't force it either, as at the same table we have a player who always chooses Male Human Wizard... Male Human (adject) Wizard (adject) every game. (Right now is his most radical character in 4 years ... a Tiefling Bard. The tiefling is an Aasimar Tiefling who looks mostly human eloquence bard. This is also his best Role Played Character yet, he's really selling the I'm in Avernus and loosing my sanity, on our Decent adventure. Times like this I really wish I had a CoC 5e book. 

I've only ever heard people complain about that section of the phb, saying it forced people into only certain ways of roleplaying. 

Now, I'm not one of those people because I know you don't *have* to use the ones from the backgrounds-- or any book at all for that matter-- but I've known enough of those people not to be surprised that it's not in the book. 

I agree with you OP, I'm definitely sad to see this removed and nothing to prompt people for how to build a rounded character concept added.  I'm all for not making it seem like you NEEDED to accept roll results or necessarily use anything else listed, but for the PHB that is intended to teach people the game to not give some space to building RP character concepts other than just optimized combat bots seems like a big missed opportunity to me.

I think the big thing is that the developers of D&D aren't saying that backgrounds aren't important.  They just aren't offering choices that sometimes pigeon holed people into choosing it.

D&D is a roleplaying fantasy game.  The roleplaying is a big part of it.  The rules are there to facilitate the mechanical backbone of the game itself, but the RP is and has always been done at the table. 

The idea that people think that the developers of D&D don't find character stories important is silly.

Quote from Linklite >>

I actually found alignment (specifically chaos v law, not really good v evil) to be a better prompt than PBIF.

Whereas not only do I think it's not useful in that aspect, I also think it's actively harmful to the hobby.

Alignment is so badly explained in 5E that new players have to go online to find out how to actually use the system. Online they find that there is a different opinion for each "veteran" player out there. Leading the new player to have to basically do a mini research paper sifting through the various essays online to hammer out their own understanding. This time would be better spent playing. Furthermore, Alignment has led to so many game breaking and table ending fights that it's value as a system is in the negative in my opinion. I think it's actively harmful to the hobby.

Quote from Spideycloned >>

 

The idea that people think that the developers of D&D don't find character stories important is silly.

For me I think PBIF represents specifically an intersection of  1) systematic exploration of 2) a character's inner psychology and motivations. Which I think is helpful to the roleplaying experience. The absence of it, at least to me, feels like the devs want this process to be more of a handwave. Which might be more popular, but is disappointing to me who would like that specific intersection of aspects.

Absent mechanical effects, the natural place for something like PBIF is in a section on creating a character personality and backstory, and they'd be suggested questions to answer. Does anyone have information on what the 2024 book has to say about that topic?