Hey.  If this has been brought up before I assure you I did do a search of the forums and saw nothing about it, so point me to the consensus or official response should they exist and I'll go to a shame corner.

Why isn't Farmer a background in D&D 5e?  Some absurd majority of the people farmed in medieval times and several famous heroes from fiction start their lives as farmers, from D'Artagnan to Superman.  Agriculture is drama!

Because there wasn’t room. There are tons of backgrounds that make sense and that aren’t in the PHB. There’s a limited amount of space and they went with what they found most interesting.

I have used the outlander background when I've created someone who was a farmer. One of the possible origins on the outlander background is "homesteader," which is normally considered to be farmers.

Folk hero is another good option.

"You previously pursued a simple profession among the peasantry, perhaps as a farmer, miner, servant, shepherd, woodcutter, or gravedigger. But something happened that set you on a different path and marked you for greater things. " (emphasis mine)

For a farmer to become an adventurer something needs to happen to seperate them from the commoners.

I just created Farmer, Fisherman, Miner, Shepherd, Wench, Ratcatcher, and Seamstress as basic backgrounds.

Because some folks like to just roll, when you do, you are likely to come up with one of the 7 basic backgrounds like that.

There are a bunch of others, but those are the most common ones. Because those were among the most common jobs (on the world we play in. Probably Earth, too, but I don't use earth as the guidelines).

Quote from MaverickO'Topgun >>

Hey.  If this has been brought up before I assure you I did do a search of the forums and saw nothing about it, so point me to the consensus or official response should they exist and I'll go to a shame corner.

Why isn't Farmer a background in D&D 5e?  Some absurd majority of the people farmed in medieval times and several famous heroes from fiction start their lives as farmers, from D'Artagnan to Superman.  Agriculture is drama!

Because the general premise of a level 1 character is not that you're the farm boy who just picked up a real sword for the first time a week ago; you've had a notable degree of prior training/experience of one kind or another. And the further out in levels you get at the start of the campaign, the more improbable it is that the most character-defining thing that has happened in the backstory was weathering a few rough years or pulling in a bumper crop. Plus, in design terms, some flavor of typical peseant and Folk Hero are basically interchangable, and Folk Hero both sounds more interesting to the typical player and neatly covers pretty much all "humble rural beginnings" possibilities with one entry. Superman, to use your example, is not recognized in his setting as a farmer; he's recognized as a hero.

No formal Farmer background but i think Folk Hero or Guild Artisan can work.

Not really the most relevant response for this channel because it's hard to point at a rules reason why something doesn't exist, but I'll say that if you feel that a farmer background would bring something to your D&D character that isn't already provided by another background, then by all means, come up with what the farmer background adds and just make it yourself for your game. I don't even mean that flippantly. I'm just saying that, in my opinion, the farmer background, if it was ever considered by the designers, was likely judged to be something that didn't have enough unique identity to merit its own entry.

Thanks for all the responses.  I agonized over making a post about the question.  I have indeed brewed up my own unique background, though it borrows from hermit and fisherman as other backgrounds that share a connection to the land.

I think that was more the part I found interesting; that the backgrounds, outside of maybe outlander, had few connections to the land itself and that struck me as odd since it's so crucial for the survival of everyone.  I also don't think of farmers as particularly humble or unskilled, not even in the medieval peasant sense, not compared to backgrounds like criminal and urchin or fisher.  

I definitely appreciate that folk hero and outlander both make references to agrarian lifestyles, but the emphasis of the background isn't that lifestyle or the trappings that come with it.  A strict work ethic, a hardworking mentality that starts and ends with the daylight, knowledge of animal husbandry, structure maintenance, crop rotation and the specific needs of different types of plants, this was the stuff I wanted to capture as a background for an adventurer.  

Quote from MaverickO'Topgun >>

Thanks for all the responses.  I agonized over making a post about the question.  I have indeed brewed up my own unique background, though it borrows from hermit and fisherman as other backgrounds that share a connection to the land.

I think that was more the part I found interesting; that the backgrounds, outside of maybe outlander, had few connections to the land itself and that struck me as odd since it's so crucial for the survival of everyone.  I also don't think of farmers as particularly humble or unskilled, not even in the medieval peasant sense, not compared to backgrounds like criminal and urchin or fisher.  

I definitely appreciate that folk hero and outlander both make references to agrarian lifestyles, but the emphasis of the background isn't that lifestyle or the trappings that come with it.  A strict work ethic, a hardworking mentality that starts and ends with the daylight, knowledge of animal husbandry, structure maintenance, crop rotation and the specific needs of different types of plants, this was the stuff I wanted to capture as a background for an adventurer.  

 You are 100% correct. The very first background that should have been created was a Farmer, for the reasons you gave. But 5e was not built around logic. That being said, the concept does present a good question. Though serfs outnumbered landowners maybe 100:1, and nobility 1000:1, how many serfs could even afford the basic adventuring gear? The economy in D&D, from the very beginning in the 70's, has been horribly designed and not thought out.

There is no way the 2nd son of a serf is going to have anything close to the amounts of GP allocated for 1st level PC's. Barbarians are the poorest at 2d4 x 10 GP, which on average = 50 GP. That would more money that a family of serfs could ever hope to accumulate.

So it stands to reason that it would have to be exceptional circumstances for a PC to have the Farmer background, unless that Farmer's family owned land.

If you looking for inspiration here's a quick mix from various backgrounds

The economy of starting suggests everyone had some extraordinary circumstance because as you stated, the starting gold for even the most poor classes is enough to keep a family comfortable for years.  Is it more believable that an Urchin saved up 50 gold?  or a Fisherman?  


SO THRILLED someone named JustaFarmer responded though.  Made my morning.

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

There is no way the 2nd son of a serf is going to have anything close to the amounts of GP allocated for 1st level PC's. Barbarians are the poorest at 2d4 x 10 GP, which on average = 50 GP. That would more money that a family of serfs could ever hope to accumulate.

So it stands to reason that it would have to be exceptional circumstances for a PC to have the Farmer background, unless that Farmer's family owned land.

Actually monks start with 5d4 GP average = 12.5gp but that isn't a typical class for a farmer. While the unskilled might have to get by on 2sp a day I woudld expect most "common folk" live closer to a modest lifestyle with an income of 1gp a day. 50gp would therefore be about 15% of annual income (per person) saving that amount of money would be quite a sacrifice but not incomparable to someone today saving up for a deposit on a house or to start up their own business.

The first 1D&D Unearthed Arcana actually includes Farmer as an example background. I used it (with a couple of modifications to fit my character) to create a Halfling Ranger. 

Quote from ThelenyiWhinlaw >>

The first 1D&D Unearthed Arcana actually includes Farmer as an example background. I used it (with a couple of modifications to fit my character) to create a Halfling Ranger. 

nice catch

oh sweet!  Issue resolved then!  I hadn't been following the playtest very closely.  Thanks for this!

I mean, "backgrounds" as a discrete concept aren't really a thing in 1D&D; you just pick your stat distributions, some extra profs, a feat, and spend some of your starting cash. Having the "Farmer" background doesn't grant anything that another option won't. Personally, I liked the soft bonuses from backgrounds, but I know they tended to be very spotty in how much play they saw, so I can understand why they've moved to something more fixed.

It's possible that they settle on a hybrid as they did wiith the Planescape backgrounds, which include feat + ribbon. Unfortunately, the only ribbon they can seem to imagine nowadays is free lodging.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

Because the general premise of a level 1 character is not that you're the farm boy who just picked up a real sword for the first time a week ago; you've had a notable degree of prior training/experience while the Dread Pirate Roberts threatens to kill you every night

FTFY