Hello I am making a homebrew background that should be reciving an instrument skill.  I looked at how they did it with the entertainer background but I cannot get my version to offer an instrument skill.  There is an instrument that I can offer in the equipment, but I cannot get the background builder to offer an instrument as a skill option.  How can I do this?

That’s because an instrument is not a Skill, it’s a Tool. You have to add it as a Tool Proficiency.

The tool options do not list all of the musical instruments, and strangely all of the ones it does list are listed twice for some reason?  Also in those other backgrounds (including the notes) instruments are listed as skills.

Quote from ExplorerSpirit >>

1. The tool options do not list all of the musical instruments, and strangely all of the ones it does list are listed twice for some reason?
2. Also in those other backgrounds (including the notes) instruments are listed as skills.

1. The ones that aren’t listed are the same instruments that are listed with different names. The reason those are all listed twice is because the duplicates are the instructions you don’t see listed.
   
   • Birdpipes = Pan Flute
   • Shawm = Songhorn
   • Thelarr = Whistle-Stick
   • etc.
2. The DDB Devs have Admin access, we only have User privledges. (They can do things in the content builder we cannot.) I guarantee you that musical instruments count as tool proficiencies.

Not only RAW:

 And for the official backgrounds:

 But I’ve done it myself on a number of homebrews.

I'll give it a shot. 

Well I listed all of the duplicates and only the nine showed up (Bagpipes, Drum, Dulcimer, Flute, Lute, Lyre, Horn, Pan Flute, Viol,) their duplicates (birdpipes, songhorn, etc.) do not.  I guess this background will just have to choose from the nine that actually work.

They are the exact same instruments, just with a different name. Interleaf it as Proficiency in the one equates to proficiency in both. The only difference is the name so they could add a description. Those original instruments all have the exact same (lack of) “description” as follows:

If you have proficiency with a given musical instrument, you can add your proficiency bonus to any ability checks you make to play music with the instrument. A bard can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus.

But that doesn’t tell us squat about the instrument itself. So, of those three pairs I referenced in my last post, the Pan Flute, Shawm, and Whistle-Stick all just say that.👆 If you don’t know what they are you have to Google it to have any idea.

People complained, so WotC released the exact same 9 instruments (more or less) with different names and actual descriptions. The Birdpipes’ weight and price are identical to the Pan Flute, and the description for the Birdpipes even mentions an alternate name for them, “Pan Pipes,” which is also another name for a Pan Flute. A Shawm is basically a wooden recorder, which is what the description for the Songhorn says it’s alternate name is, same price & weight as the Shawm. The Thelarr’s alt name is a “Whistle Cane,” and it has the same price & weight as the Whistle-Stick. The second set of instruments are items to provide more informative descriptions. 

So I would just treat it as if your player picks proficiency with a Shawm, it also counts for the Songhorn, etc., etc. Make sense? (Like how proficiency with a Javelin automatically includes the boomerang. Don’t ask me why.)

What you could do is recreate your background using the Entertainer as a template and then just piggyback off of the Admin level coding it already has that we can’t do ourselves. It’ll mean more work having to remake what you already made once, but the results will be precisely what you want.

I'll have to do this next time.  I already shared by background with the community and needed it for a starting character.

FYI, if they are in the same DDB campaign with you your homebrews will automatically get shared with them without publishing them first.

I have never been able to access any of their homebrew and they cannot access mine until I publish it and they search to find it.  No one knows why.

They have to be in a DDB campaign with you. They don’t have to add them to their collections to use them, any character in the same campaign with you will be able to add the, directly their sheet.