This is my subjective opinion, of course. Whether you agree or not, what is your opinion?
I think WoTC did a lot of great things in the new PHB. But forcing players to choose from preassembled Background + ASI + Feat combinations... awful. Just a freaking awful decision.
The way they had it before was just fine. Under 2014 rules you can choose a background that gives you some minor flavor perks, plus whatever skills and languages are associated with that background. Under the newest revision, players choose the ASI's that works for their class, or whatever they intend to build. Even when ASI's were tied to races, that still gave the player way more flexibility.
Now it's like, "Hmmm.. I want this and that ability score increase, but now the background is not what I want, and the Feat sucks." Or, "Here's the background that suits my greatsword wielding Battle Master, but now I can only put points into constitution, intelligence, and wisdom." Etc.
Why did they think it would be a good idea pigeonhole us into 16 different cookie cutter Feat/ASI/Background combinations?
Its so the they can sell you the New D&D official backgrounds with the stat spread and origin feat you wanted!
In all seriousness this is just the same miss step they took with races that they fixed in Tasha's which everyone almost unanimously loved. Not to say I haven't met naysayers but they are few and far between. So they are purposefully choosing to walk down the same road they already found out was a dead end? This unironically screams creating you the problem so they can sell you the same solution in a book 2 years from now called "Tasha's Extra Cauldron of Otherthings".
Its so the they can sell you the New D&D official backgrounds with the stat spread and origin feat you wanted!
In all seriousness this is just the same miss step they took with races that they fixed in Tasha's which everyone almost unanimously loved. Not to say I haven't met naysayers but they are few and far between. So they are purposefully choosing to walk down the same road they already found out was a dead end? This unironically screams creating you the problem so they can sell you the same solution in a book 2 years from now called "Tasha's Extra Cauldron of Otherthings".
I agree with almost everything you said, and I hate this new background rule. However, the solution will not come in 2 years, but 2 months, in the DMG 2024. They already said that the way to customize your background will be there. Sure, it will be a variant rule, but so was the whole Tasha's book.
And in any case, they also sort of gave the solution in the PHB. Just take any background that's not in the book, and you can freely customize it. It's still dumb that we need a way around it, but at least the book itself lets you do it and tells you how.
The Player's Handbook could have been more flexible with ability score increase from your Background. There may be guidelines in the Dungeon Master Guide to allow this.
As I've posted elsewhere in the forums, the decision to tie ASIs to specific background after decoupling them from species is baffling. They did the latter in the name of giving players the most flexibility to create the character they wanted...and then turn around and essentially force characters to take certain backgrounds if they want the most bang for their buck out of characters and ability scores.
For me it's also very surprising that they playtested this, but making backgrounds fully customizable. Everyone was on board with that. And then, for some reason, they changed it to what it is in the PHB without any kind of playtesting. Then what was the point of the UA?
At least there is an easy, RAW, workaround --- adapt a 2014 background using the "Backgrounds and Species from Older Books" box from chapter 2. You end up with most of the flexibility you could want. You could mix in "Customizing a Background" from 2014 to basically get the full customization from the UA (oddly, a tiny bit better, actually).
As I've posted elsewhere in the forums, the decision to tie ASIs to specific background after decoupling them from species is baffling. They did the latter in the name of giving players the most flexibility to create the character they wanted...and then turn around and essentially force characters to take certain backgrounds if they want the most bang for their buck out of characters and ability scores.
It makes a lot more sense for your ASIs to come from your background than your species in my opinion. They should've just offered 2-3 feats per background or just leave it as a free choice and say "Alert is recommended" or whatever.
It's easy enough to work around this using a background from an older book (or the free 2014 Basic Rules), so I think there's bigger missed opportunities in the 2024 PHB. The Blind condition is still really wonky, TWF still lags behind heavy weapons for high level fighters, and Eldritch Knights/Arcane Trickers still get screwed if they multiclass into another spellcasting class. I'm also not sure why they made Savage Attacker even worse when it was already so weak in the 2014 rules that it wasn't worth picking over an ASI.
Don't get me wrong, for each one of those complaints there's like 20 other things that desperately needed fixing and got way better, so overall I'm very happy.
It makes a lot more sense for your ASIs to come from your background than your species in my opinion. They should've just offered 2-3 feats per background or just leave it as a free choice and say "Alert is recommended" or whatever.
It make more sense in terms of verisimilitude but since the goal when Tasha's came out was allow players maximum flexibility when creating a character, it remains an odd choice to simply couple ASIs with something else rather than just leave them free floating. A blanket +1/+1/+1 or +2/+1 for each new character, regardless of background or species, is what makes sense from a design standpoint if the goal really is maximum creativity and flexibility.
Making skills dependent on backgrounds in general is an incredibly dumb idea. This means that there's a very limited quantity of possible skill combinations and you'd have to pick a specific background that you might not want at all, so you end up ignoring its flavor just for the skills. Ridiculous. Now it's even worse, linking the ASI to this. I want to be a barbarian who learned to love books from his wife or something. Sure, I would need the "librarian" or "assistant to the regional manager" background. Are you *** kidding me?
I just play 3.5 whenever I can. You want to get better at medicine or acrobatics? You get some skill points to distribute to whatever the *** skills you want because it makes sense for your character and the story. Your class tells you which skills are easier for you to learn (let's say athletics for a fighter) so they cost 1 point per rank and the ones that would not be typical for your class (diplomacy for a barbarian) cost 2. Why the *** would they make it dumber and harder to play what you want? I just don't get it. The only way this could be somewhat acceptable is to have, like, 534267 possible backgrounds which defeats their purpose altogether.
The good thing is that right out of the box DnDBeyond comes with a Homebrew Background creator. Unlike with classes and species, to me it feels like this Background system was almost build to be homebrewed, and the list available in the PhB is but a selection of examples.
With a few clicks I can create a copy of the Farmer background where the Tough Feat is replaced with the Skilled Feat. I also expect DMs to be much more accepting of homebrew Backgrounds than other homebrew content in character creation.
IMO the issue is the lack of backgrounds in PHB 2024, not the rule itself. Just think about it, if a Wizard was a Soldier, I think is not rare s/he develop STR or CON, instead INT. Or a Fighter getting more time in library than training combat (i.e. Sage background) would develop the brain. But in both cases it part from the initial assignement, having the high values on respective primary stats. So could be less flexible but more realistic.
What backgrounds do is what in other games is the “level 0” o adolescence training, but all-in-one. That’s why what we need are more backgrounds, or rules for creating own customized, but I am afraid that could be something like “put the ability stats you want, put the feat you want, put the tool you want…”. So really that is just distributing all as you want with no real background at all, just distributing “points”.
I agree. I've always used the background as just a general archetype to free-build my character's backstory, it's never been a game mechanic that really matters to me, my players or my GMs. I don't like that the new rules railroad me into having my character fit into these very specific molds. I'm very much the type of player where flavor triumphs over practicality/combat.
IMO the issue is the lack of backgrounds in PHB 2024, not the rule itself. Just think about it, if a Wizard was a Soldier, I think is not rare s/he develop STR or CON, instead INT. Or a Fighter getting more time in library than training combat (i.e. Sage background) would develop the brain. But in both cases it part from the initial assignement, having the high values on respective primary stats. So could be less flexible but more realistic.
What backgrounds do is what in other games is the “level 0” o adolescence training, but all-in-one. That’s why what we need are more backgrounds, or rules for creating own customized, but I am afraid that could be something like “put the ability stats you want, put the feat you want, put the tool you want…”. So really that is just distributing all as you want with no real background at all, just distributing “points”.
It's my impression that a lot of people posting online want exactly that. Just assigning points and feats in the way that maximizes their "build".
It's my impression that a lot of people posting online want exactly that. Just assigning points and feats in the way that maximizes their "build".
Not my impression, and it's a reductive way to look at creating a character.
If I'm creating a wizard character, it's entirely reasonable that I'd want the INT to be as high as possible. You can want a high primary ability score without being a min/maxer or optimizer.
The problem the new background system presents is one of role-playing; what if I'd like my wizard character to have a soldier background...but the associated origin feat and ASI do my character no good? And before anyone screams OPTIMIZER, again I'll say: wanting a high primary ability score is entirely reasonable. Additionally, I can easily come up with a background story for a character who's rather brainy but gets forced into military service and finally escapes, none of which is about min/maxing or optimizing BUT does emphasize Intelligence (and perhaps Wisdom or Charisma).
Despite WOTC saying they decoupled ASIs from species to allow player to choose whatever species they wanted rather than feel obligated to choose them, they've created a system that just duplicates that for backgrounds rather than species.
It's my impression that a lot of people posting online want exactly that. Just assigning points and feats in the way that maximizes their "build".
Not my impression, and it's a reductive way to look at creating a character.
If I'm creating a wizard character, it's entirely reasonable that I'd want the INT to be as high as possible. You can want a high primary ability score without being a min/maxer or optimizer.
The problem the new background system presents is one of role-playing; what if I'd like my wizard character to have a soldier background...but the associated origin feat and ASI do my character no good? And before anyone screams OPTIMIZER, again I'll say: wanting a high primary ability score is entirely reasonable. Additionally, I can easily come up with a background story for a character who's rather brainy but gets forced into military service and finally escapes, none of which is about min/maxing or optimizing BUT does emphasize Intelligence (and perhaps Wisdom or Charisma).
Despite WOTC saying they decoupled ASIs from species to allow player to choose whatever species they wanted rather than feel obligated to choose them, they've created a system that just duplicates that for backgrounds rather than species.
It’s reasonable, but sorry a Soldier does not work the brain much, how exactly it increases Intelligence?. Probably a Mercenary is what you mean, that would be more appropriate, as background more open to any ability, lesser for the feat. The background is what the character has been doing for training/learning. Then, sounds reasonable for me a Wizard who worked as a Soldier to have 15 Int instead 17, not having the same than a Sage in example, as are many years of learning so some difference there must be.
As reference, in other games I played there was similar like Training Packages which all the skill ranks and increases were fixed just like now in D&D.
That excessive flexibility ends being in nothing matters as all are just numbers to distribute, no need to put then names, unnecessary as we can just put those “role” things as text in the sheet. I didn’t like the Tasha version of those things, and IMO is dangerous to put them in books because then all players seems want to use them, if I as DM negate then they are annoyed because hey it’s in the book so why not using it.
If I'm creating a wizard character, it's entirely reasonable that I'd want the INT to be as high as possible.
You don't need to have INT as high as possible though. You can choose: optimize your stats/background feat and pick the generic background expected for that class, or you know... take a risk and play something not optimized and figure out how you can still be effective without an INT as high as possible on your Wizard. D&D isn't a hard game, you don't need to have a maximum INT on your wizard to not die.
That excessive flexibility ends being in nothing matters as all are just numbers to distribute, no need to put then names, unnecessary as we can just put those “role” things as text in the sheet. I didn’t like the Tasha version of those things, and IMO is dangerous to put them in books because then all players seems want to use them, if I as DM negate then they are annoyed because hey it’s in the book so why not using it.
Respectfully disagree. It only doesn't matter if you decide background information is pure fluff and unnecessary.
Again, I can very easily come up with a soldier background for a character with an 18 INT; real history and fiction is littered with stories like this. I find your designation of this stuff as "dangerous" to be odd. As the DM, it's your job at the outset of the campaign to communicate what species, backgrounds, etc. are allowed. The players can choose to participate or not. (I say this as a DM who does this very thing.) Rather than looking at it as dangerous, perhaps it's something you can view as helping people self-select out of a campaign with a limited (not meant pejoratively) set of species and background choices.
If I'm creating a wizard character, it's entirely reasonable that I'd want the INT to be as high as possible.
You don't need to have INT as high as possible though. You can choose: optimize your stats/background feat and pick the generic background expected for that class, or you know... take a risk and play something not optimized and figure out how you can still be effective without an INT as high as possible on your Wizard. D&D isn't a hard game, you don't need to have a maximum INT on your wizard to not die.
I never said it NEEDED to be as high as possible. I said it's very reasonable to want to to be as high as possible. I didn't cite numbers because that all depends on the method used to generate ability scores. It could be that 15 is the highest a character could have as a starting score for INT.
Please reread my posts. Nowhere did I say that every new character should have an 18+ score in their primary ability. All I said was that it's not unreasonable to want your primary ability score to be as high as possible. Apparently, it was foolish of me to not qualify that with a detailed breakdown of assumptions and contingencies.
"As high as possible" could be 20....or it could be 15. It all depends on what your base ability score rolls are, what your DM allows in terms of generation method, and so on.
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This is my subjective opinion, of course. Whether you agree or not, what is your opinion?
I think WoTC did a lot of great things in the new PHB. But forcing players to choose from preassembled Background + ASI + Feat combinations... awful. Just a freaking awful decision.
The way they had it before was just fine. Under 2014 rules you can choose a background that gives you some minor flavor perks, plus whatever skills and languages are associated with that background. Under the newest revision, players choose the ASI's that works for their class, or whatever they intend to build. Even when ASI's were tied to races, that still gave the player way more flexibility.
Now it's like, "Hmmm.. I want this and that ability score increase, but now the background is not what I want, and the Feat sucks." Or, "Here's the background that suits my greatsword wielding Battle Master, but now I can only put points into constitution, intelligence, and wisdom." Etc.
Why did they think it would be a good idea pigeonhole us into 16 different cookie cutter Feat/ASI/Background combinations?
Its so the they can sell you the New D&D official backgrounds with the stat spread and origin feat you wanted!
In all seriousness this is just the same miss step they took with races that they fixed in Tasha's which everyone almost unanimously loved. Not to say I haven't met naysayers but they are few and far between. So they are purposefully choosing to walk down the same road they already found out was a dead end? This unironically screams creating you the problem so they can sell you the same solution in a book 2 years from now called "Tasha's Extra Cauldron of Otherthings".
I agree with almost everything you said, and I hate this new background rule. However, the solution will not come in 2 years, but 2 months, in the DMG 2024. They already said that the way to customize your background will be there. Sure, it will be a variant rule, but so was the whole Tasha's book.
And in any case, they also sort of gave the solution in the PHB. Just take any background that's not in the book, and you can freely customize it. It's still dumb that we need a way around it, but at least the book itself lets you do it and tells you how.
The Player's Handbook could have been more flexible with ability score increase from your Background. There may be guidelines in the Dungeon Master Guide to allow this.
As I've posted elsewhere in the forums, the decision to tie ASIs to specific background after decoupling them from species is baffling. They did the latter in the name of giving players the most flexibility to create the character they wanted...and then turn around and essentially force characters to take certain backgrounds if they want the most bang for their buck out of characters and ability scores.
For me it's also very surprising that they playtested this, but making backgrounds fully customizable. Everyone was on board with that. And then, for some reason, they changed it to what it is in the PHB without any kind of playtesting. Then what was the point of the UA?
At least there is an easy, RAW, workaround --- adapt a 2014 background using the "Backgrounds and Species from Older Books" box from chapter 2. You end up with most of the flexibility you could want. You could mix in "Customizing a Background" from 2014 to basically get the full customization from the UA (oddly, a tiny bit better, actually).
It makes a lot more sense for your ASIs to come from your background than your species in my opinion. They should've just offered 2-3 feats per background or just leave it as a free choice and say "Alert is recommended" or whatever.
It's easy enough to work around this using a background from an older book (or the free 2014 Basic Rules), so I think there's bigger missed opportunities in the 2024 PHB. The Blind condition is still really wonky, TWF still lags behind heavy weapons for high level fighters, and Eldritch Knights/Arcane Trickers still get screwed if they multiclass into another spellcasting class. I'm also not sure why they made Savage Attacker even worse when it was already so weak in the 2014 rules that it wasn't worth picking over an ASI.
Don't get me wrong, for each one of those complaints there's like 20 other things that desperately needed fixing and got way better, so overall I'm very happy.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
It make more sense in terms of verisimilitude but since the goal when Tasha's came out was allow players maximum flexibility when creating a character, it remains an odd choice to simply couple ASIs with something else rather than just leave them free floating. A blanket +1/+1/+1 or +2/+1 for each new character, regardless of background or species, is what makes sense from a design standpoint if the goal really is maximum creativity and flexibility.
Making skills dependent on backgrounds in general is an incredibly dumb idea. This means that there's a very limited quantity of possible skill combinations and you'd have to pick a specific background that you might not want at all, so you end up ignoring its flavor just for the skills. Ridiculous. Now it's even worse, linking the ASI to this. I want to be a barbarian who learned to love books from his wife or something. Sure, I would need the "librarian" or "assistant to the regional manager" background. Are you *** kidding me?
I just play 3.5 whenever I can. You want to get better at medicine or acrobatics? You get some skill points to distribute to whatever the *** skills you want because it makes sense for your character and the story. Your class tells you which skills are easier for you to learn (let's say athletics for a fighter) so they cost 1 point per rank and the ones that would not be typical for your class (diplomacy for a barbarian) cost 2. Why the *** would they make it dumber and harder to play what you want? I just don't get it. The only way this could be somewhat acceptable is to have, like, 534267 possible backgrounds which defeats their purpose altogether.
The good thing is that right out of the box DnDBeyond comes with a Homebrew Background creator. Unlike with classes and species, to me it feels like this Background system was almost build to be homebrewed, and the list available in the PhB is but a selection of examples.
With a few clicks I can create a copy of the Farmer background where the Tough Feat is replaced with the Skilled Feat. I also expect DMs to be much more accepting of homebrew Backgrounds than other homebrew content in character creation.
IMO the issue is the lack of backgrounds in PHB 2024, not the rule itself. Just think about it, if a Wizard was a Soldier, I think is not rare s/he develop STR or CON, instead INT. Or a Fighter getting more time in library than training combat (i.e. Sage background) would develop the brain. But in both cases it part from the initial assignement, having the high values on respective primary stats. So could be less flexible but more realistic.
What backgrounds do is what in other games is the “level 0” o adolescence training, but all-in-one. That’s why what we need are more backgrounds, or rules for creating own customized, but I am afraid that could be something like “put the ability stats you want, put the feat you want, put the tool you want…”. So really that is just distributing all as you want with no real background at all, just distributing “points”.
I agree. I've always used the background as just a general archetype to free-build my character's backstory, it's never been a game mechanic that really matters to me, my players or my GMs. I don't like that the new rules railroad me into having my character fit into these very specific molds. I'm very much the type of player where flavor triumphs over practicality/combat.
It's my impression that a lot of people posting online want exactly that. Just assigning points and feats in the way that maximizes their "build".
Not my impression, and it's a reductive way to look at creating a character.
If I'm creating a wizard character, it's entirely reasonable that I'd want the INT to be as high as possible. You can want a high primary ability score without being a min/maxer or optimizer.
The problem the new background system presents is one of role-playing; what if I'd like my wizard character to have a soldier background...but the associated origin feat and ASI do my character no good? And before anyone screams OPTIMIZER, again I'll say: wanting a high primary ability score is entirely reasonable. Additionally, I can easily come up with a background story for a character who's rather brainy but gets forced into military service and finally escapes, none of which is about min/maxing or optimizing BUT does emphasize Intelligence (and perhaps Wisdom or Charisma).
Despite WOTC saying they decoupled ASIs from species to allow player to choose whatever species they wanted rather than feel obligated to choose them, they've created a system that just duplicates that for backgrounds rather than species.
It’s reasonable, but sorry a Soldier does not work the brain much, how exactly it increases Intelligence?. Probably a Mercenary is what you mean, that would be more appropriate, as background more open to any ability, lesser for the feat. The background is what the character has been doing for training/learning. Then, sounds reasonable for me a Wizard who worked as a Soldier to have 15 Int instead 17, not having the same than a Sage in example, as are many years of learning so some difference there must be.
As reference, in other games I played there was similar like Training Packages which all the skill ranks and increases were fixed just like now in D&D.
That excessive flexibility ends being in nothing matters as all are just numbers to distribute, no need to put then names, unnecessary as we can just put those “role” things as text in the sheet. I didn’t like the Tasha version of those things, and IMO is dangerous to put them in books because then all players seems want to use them, if I as DM negate then they are annoyed because hey it’s in the book so why not using it.
You don't need to have INT as high as possible though. You can choose: optimize your stats/background feat and pick the generic background expected for that class, or you know... take a risk and play something not optimized and figure out how you can still be effective without an INT as high as possible on your Wizard. D&D isn't a hard game, you don't need to have a maximum INT on your wizard to not die.
Respectfully disagree. It only doesn't matter if you decide background information is pure fluff and unnecessary.
Again, I can very easily come up with a soldier background for a character with an 18 INT; real history and fiction is littered with stories like this. I find your designation of this stuff as "dangerous" to be odd. As the DM, it's your job at the outset of the campaign to communicate what species, backgrounds, etc. are allowed. The players can choose to participate or not. (I say this as a DM who does this very thing.) Rather than looking at it as dangerous, perhaps it's something you can view as helping people self-select out of a campaign with a limited (not meant pejoratively) set of species and background choices.
I never said it NEEDED to be as high as possible. I said it's very reasonable to want to to be as high as possible. I didn't cite numbers because that all depends on the method used to generate ability scores. It could be that 15 is the highest a character could have as a starting score for INT.
So? What's the problem with that?
Sigh.
I didn't say it was a problem in and of itself.
Please reread my posts. Nowhere did I say that every new character should have an 18+ score in their primary ability. All I said was that it's not unreasonable to want your primary ability score to be as high as possible. Apparently, it was foolish of me to not qualify that with a detailed breakdown of assumptions and contingencies.
"As high as possible" could be 20....or it could be 15. It all depends on what your base ability score rolls are, what your DM allows in terms of generation method, and so on.