Blog (A5E) Character Origins: Backgrounds

[Morrus]

Backgrounds in Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition form part of your Origin, which consists of heritage, culture, background, and destiny. They fulfill the same role as in O5E, but they work slightly differently. Below is an example background!

Character Origins: Backgrounds — Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E)

Backgrounds in Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition form part of your Origin, which consists of heritage, culture, background, and destiny.

www.levelup5e.com

 

[Faolyn]

How do you define "more than your fair share"?

 

[Morrus]

How do you define "more than your fair share"?

I'd defer to @duneguy on this, but the advancement part of backgrounds are guidelines/suggestions to the Narrator for how to keep the background relevant later in the game. It's up to the Narrator when the conditions are met. It's very much a roleplaying hook -- as you can see, the guard's is possibly finding yourself embroiled in local disputes.

 

[Vampersan]

Yes!! I love this!

 

[duneguy]

Yep Morrus is right. In my first draft, I had a more precise trigger - it might have been the first time you roll a 6 on your lucky roll - but changed it to leave it more in the Narrator's hands. Maybe the Narrator plans to run a Minnesota Fats-style side plot at a time of their choosing instead of when the dice dictate it.

 

[Faolyn]

Thanks for the info. I really like these backgrounds a lot (amusingly, in one game I'm in, one player is a gambler, and in a second game I'm DMing, the same player is an ex-guard).

Re: "one type of dice/card set," a lot of these teasers you've been putting up have indicated a very expansive and interesting equipment list. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the whole thing.

 

[lichmaster]

I like most of what I see, especially if there's a mechanic to keep backgrounds relevant at higher level.
The only thing I'm not completely sold on is the ASI associated to the backgrounds (why being a guild member should improve my con?)
Similarly, I'd rather have ASI related to the origin as well, at least for what concerns physical characteristics: Str, Dex and Con should be at least partially related to size. I really don't see how an average 20kg halfling can be as strong as an average 80kg Half orc.

 

[Waller]

Similarly, I'd rather have ASI related to the origin as well, at least for what concerns physical characteristics: Str, Dex and Con should be at least partially related to size. I really don't see how an average 20kg halfling can be as strong as an average 80kg Half orc.

Ship has well and truly sailed on that one.

 

[lichmaster]

Ship has well and truly sailed on that one.

At this point to me it just makes more sense to give anyone 2 ASI to spend however they see fit on their characters, instead of linking some ASI to some backgroungs: what if instead of a grunt guard a player wanted to be a detective? Surely Int, wis or cha would make more sense than a mandatory Str increase.
It's in the same spirit of not enforcing a description, or a stereotype (heavens forbid if it comes from physical characteristics of an origin!): just make your character however you like it.
Also, this allows for greater freedom, as normally you'd really want some ASI but only a few backgrounds will give you the ones you want. Most fighters will then tend to be guards, and so on. Let's get rid of all this entirely at this point.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

One of the things that has frustrated me with O5e's move to separate ability score increases from, well anything, is that all of the species just become humans in funny suits. I do like removing the incentive to take a race just for mechanical synergy and encouraging people to play what they want. But I view non-humans as aliens. Even beyond the physical distinctions, they shouldn't see the world the same way. It's kind of funny because I realized why there is some newer 5e art (like in TCoE, look at p. 103 for a great example) that I artistically like but conceptually dislike. The reason is because non-humans are shown with very human expressions and reactions--humans in funny suits.

I expect WotC mostly removed racial ability scores reactively because they believe people want it that way for some reason (maybe the increasingly casual player base prefers humans in funny suits over role-playing aliens), with little detailed analysis of it. I'm assuming the Level Up designers put a lot more thought into it, so I'm curious as to what their reasons were. Is the intention to make everyone be humans in funny suits, or is that a side effect?

One way that could allow heritage/race/lineage to retain significance (ie, you're an alien) while still removing the gaming pressure to play the optimal combinations just occurred to me. What might work is if each race had racial features that clearly expressed their natural strengths. If a race is physically powerful, then it should have something like Powerful Build to indicate that. If they are especially Dextrous, or Intelligent, or whatever, they need some sort of trait that clearly spells that out. If all races had such traits, then ability score improvements could just be phased out in favor of a different form of stat generation.