I just want to throw this here to say that overall, I'm very positive about most of the changes to D&D in the new rules update. After speaking pretty glowingly about the system last week, this was just my one bone to pick and I wanted to discuss it. This video wasn't meant to spark outrage or anger, just wanted to point out why I disliked it. Cheers, and thanks for watching!
Well that is because picking the noble background for Bram and Arya is just stupid, they spent the most of their whole lifes completely away from nobility and the court doing other things, and those are exactly what you should pick for your character for your background, regardless of the family lineage. Your background reflects what your character has been doing for most of his life in order to justify his skills and capabilities, not just which family you were born into. Noble background is for very specific characters who are born in nobility and spent most of their life in politics and court. Bram spent much more of his life being a sage/acolyte/hermit in the north than being a noble, he probably has zero etiquette but know a lot of stuff about all the magical shenanigans he has been studying for so many years. Same goes for Arya, she spent most of her life being an urchin and assassin and it would be totally dumb to pick a noble background for her. Those reflect their characters, and ability scores, much more. If you want to have a farmer wizard he MUST have spent a lot of time somewhere studying, so just pick the sage background for him. Your musketeer must have spent some time training with someone or in battles in order to know how to use his sword, pick soldier for him. If you need some proficiencies outside your background you pick origin feats that reflect that. And if you want your character to be of a specific noble lineage, or a farmer or whatever just tell your DM that you want to roleplay that and that is it.
Here is an idea I had. What if you had a choice of abilities based on all three choices. Your species gives you two abilities choice, your background gives you two more choices and finally your class gives you two choices. You then have 3 points to boost any of those ability scores. Example: an orc has a choice of str and con, the fighter has a choice of str and dex, and the veteran gives you a choice of con and wis. In the end you have a choice of str, dex, con, and wis. Classic build with a bit of room for a unique build. If you chose a different background as an orc fighter you would still have a chose of str, dex, and con. If you chose sage you would get int and wis. This would be great for a eldritch knight and make sense. Does this sound good or am I off the mark.
I don't think you're off the Mark at all! There's a few systems that do this already, namely Pathfinder. I just don't think that's the direction WotC wants to take for D&D. But I also think this direction misses the mark.
@@RookiesAndRulebooks D&D Background Folk Hero is in the 2024 D&D Player's Handbook? I want to build your own background and I want my monk to be a Folk Hero as he existed now!! He is Variant Human Monk , The Way of the Ascending Dragon.
Origin Ability Scores should have always been tied to the Classes. Don’t know why they decided to choose Backgrounds, and then limit your choices in the same way they did in 5e.
Technically the ball was always in the DM’s court because the DM had to allow the optional rules from Tasha’s. Nothing has really changed here. You always had the option to either use the standard increases or ask for an alternative. And any reasonable DM will agree. It’s always been that way and it continues to be that way. They’re just in a different chapter of the book now.
Absolutely not, this just takes away choice. Strength rogue? Nah, no strength increase. Charismatic fighter? Nah, no charisma increase. The fun of building a character is combining stuff with your class, not picking a class and having a largely predetermined path before you
@teddux no need to abandon the whole system when you can homebrew and tweak the rules. Which you absolutely can unless you tie yourself into whatever limits D&D beyond or the vtt might impose. And your group doesn't have to do that. It's reasonable for the core rules to have limited options for new players and then every further campaign setting or adventure module can add additional options, Eberron lordling, Ravnica Elite, perhaps with new feats or just rejigged options. Any DM should approve a request for a player to play a nobble swashbuckler and swap the points to Dex it won't unbalance the game.
@@nicka3697 you are right but I have a job a life I have to care for not balancing a game that is broke. My job is to relax have fun with my friends. Balancing a game is creators job. Plus I genuinely feel like this edition is even worse than the 4th. Pf is making all of us much much more happy, my players feel that their characters are much more personal and customized. The core books help the dm so much more than the 5e. After playing it we all felt cheated from wotc. I hated myself for spending money in all those books I bought
In the Unearthed Arcana book for AD&D 1st edition, your species gave you a number of dice to roll for each attribute, and you take the best 3 dice. The best was 9 dice, the lowest was 3 dice. It made your race matter even when rolling up your character. There was also a version to roll by your class instead, which is what my group preferred out of the two options.
@@MrHighlander666 I used to photocopy articles out of my Dragon Magazine collection and keep them in a notebook. I also sometimes photocopied stuff from my D&D books and put them into the same notebook. It is legal, provided you still own the sources, and I did. It was great at the table, but makes some of my memories from the 80s/90s get a bit muddled.
The main problem is that "Backgrounds" are essentially nothing more than starter kits for creating a character by-the-numbers. Experienced players (And more creative inexperienced players) will automatically come up with their own backstories for their characters. So tying so much to the "Background" component of character creation as a part of the rules is silly, when it's arguably the most flexible and unnecessary part of the standard character creation process.
Why could they not just say, "Here you 3 ability points to add to whatever score you want however you want" so if we're playing a monk, we can put them in dex, wisdom and con, we can take the noble background and play the iron fist. Or be a fallen noble with the noble background playing Robin Hood as a ranger or as a rogue for Batman. This is the same problem I had with their first attempt at their 2024 dragonborn. Instead of using the most popular and used version from fizban's, they used the 2014 version with some tweeks that was still far worse than the Fizban's version. Now, the ability score is also being taken from the 2014 version instead of the far better, used and popular version from Tasha's.
As someone who was around when AD&D and 2nd edition players begged TSR to relax or do away with class and level restrictions for demi-humans, and when 3rd edition players applauded that they no longer needed to pretend they legally rolled three 15s, one 12, and a 10 on 3d6 in order to play as a bard, I find it funny that 5e players are outraged at the fact that no race/class combination will automatically be a suboptimal choice thanks to ability scores and 1st level feats being tied to backgrounds.
Your point with the fencing noble is the stronger point, the argument for the Starks is a poor one, because it assumes that characters are only one thing, when in fact, the Starks demonstrate this system incredibly well, because the old children are more engrained in their noble backgrounds while Aria and Bran are the youngest and have the most time to develop another aspect to their background that they gravitated to instead. Aria is still young and while she begins life as a noble, she didn't really take to it and as she gets older, she meets criminals and finds this background most appealing and so leans more heavily into that aspect of who she is. Likewise, Bran's depression made him into a hermit despite being a noble, and he leans more into that background.
This is the biggest bone to pick with because custom backgrounds now, the ball in the DM's court instead of the players. You make perfect points and sure, you can talk with your DM... but I don't want to ask for permission for an optional rule that what was & should've stayed a core rule.
Noble is a kinda the problem child from the backgrounds. Noble basically means, you had access to everything. GoT also makes a point that the Stark kids (or Jaime) not only had access to the best education, but they also had access to the best physical training. So nobles technically could have a bonus to all abilities. Noble is also problematic because just by definition (not as a game mechanic) Noble just describes who your parents are, you don't really have to do anything. Arya would not have the noble Background. You could make a case for Noble, urchin, acolyte, soldier/assassin/bounty hunter, outlander, but which one does she use?. If Arya would have learned from listening to Tywin and become a battle commander her background would be Courtier. Arya fled very early and missed out on a lot of education and later turned special agent. And yes, she can lie and act to infiltrate but I'd argue that's proficiency not high Charisma (above 15). Let me compare it to classes: If your character learned to fight in the army but later discovered Jesus+magic powers, you don't have to multiclass into Fighter. Clerics also need to learn how to fight. Arya is a noble by definitiion but her game-Background should besomething else. A character can have various experiences, but you should pick the one that influenced your Characters abilities. You don't have to pick Noble just because you are royalty. John and Rob could also have the Soldier or something else. I think I'll continue doing this: Yeah sure as a noble you might have the highest Cha score, but the DC to convince the authority and taxes hating Farmer will be higher for you than for the farmboy sorcerer (and I might give him adv. if he roleplays right and tries to establish realatable connection to the NPC.)
Hard agree on this. I had a character build idea that's effectively a fighter who also uses cleric spells (Shield of Faith, Guidance) to defend allies, so +2 Str, +1 Con or Wis, Magic Initiate (Cleric). However, that's no longer possible without custom rules. The Acolyte background concept fit my character well, but the stat bonuses are all wrong, even though a cleric of a War Domain god, especially Kord, would have reasonably trained in Str. The only way to get the stats and feat I want would be to pick a different background (not the one I envisioned for this character) and specifically the human species. So, for optimizers, we may be back to humans best species for another ten years.
At this point I just let my players pick whatever ability scores they want. Most of the time my players pick non optimal choices anyways because the flavor to them is more important. Some (flavors) aren’t options and it should be completely up to the player.
You can still customize your backgrounds... Same as always. The DMG has guidelines on how to do it, you can basically pick and choose skills, proficiencies, ability scores and your origin feat. These "standard" background choices have always exist as guidelines or to help newer players
Read the side-bar in the new PHB about adjusting backgrounds from older books, and then read the "Customizing a Background" section of P. 125 of the 2014 PHB. Custom backgrounds have always been RAW (just nobody cared because they weren't mechanically relevant aside from a couple of skill selections), and so the new book gives guidance on RAW backgrounds by referencing the old book. The way it's presented in the new book looks like it's there to not overwhelm new players with choices.
I still think there is a middle ground that was leaped over. How about a +1 from your race, +1 from your background, and +1 from your class, each with 2 options and a general rule of no +3.
So this is a non issue, and I'll explain a couple reasons why: 1: That Tasha's rule was already an optional one, and nothing about this book prevents you from using that opinional rule. Even if this is an optional rule its literally the same as the system you're saying is better. 2. Fifth Edition Backrounds were already examples, not gospel. If you read the rules for backgrounds in the 2014 PHB(yes 2014), you'll see that. These are functionally the same because they want you to work with your DM DIRECTLY(like you said in this video) 3. Not a lot of people are talking about this, because its legitimately not a problem that exists. This is borderline ragebait until we get to see whats actually written in the book, but even if the "worst case scenario" your describing is true, it's pretty easy to fix.
1 Okay, so because it is optional, your GM might not approve it. What if they don't have that book? 2 That's nice and all but doesn't change the fact I've never seen a DM change anything large about a background, nor do I see any guidence on what is okay or not as a background in the PHB, we need to keep new people in mind who don't understand D&D and don't know how much they can change. 3 strawman argument, a lot of people lost faith in WotC and most of those have no video's on the subject because they stopped caring about the company and are either looking at other systems or making their own OR making a video about another toppic since so much news is comming out The only "ragebait" in here is you my man, you said it yourself these things could change, then act like it.
@@travisdonaldstanley6420 LOL, they're giving books away or what 🤣🤣🤣 weird since it still costs money to buy it on d&d beyond 🤔. But nope a quick google shows no results for free books (unless you mean the high seas)
But I'd argue that Arya rejected the Noble background and wouldn't have that as her background. And it could be said that based on her age that her background didn't really become evident until after her father's death and when she began having to survive on her own. I'd give her the urchin or criminal background because those are the skills she used to survive.
Honestly, they should just let players choose whatever bonus they want like in Tasha's. I don't know why they felt the need to tie it to a specific aspect of character creation again.
I'm thinking this might just be so each player has to have a digital copy of the DMG to do custom backgrounds in the WotC/Hasbro virtual tabletop. It could literally be that simple and dumb of a reason.
Arya doesnt make sense to you because you incorrectly believe shes a noble background.....shes 8 years old when the story starts....she was out of type for a noble at that point, and basically from the start of the story onward lives as an urchin background. Youre watching her formative years in the show. Basically she has a noble birthright, but shes an urchin.
Yeah too many people assoiate certain backgrounds with birth when in reality they are about one's formative years which is why ability scores being based on backgrounds doe make sense to a degree, however certain ability scores also make sense to be based on species (STR for an Orc, CON for a Dwarf, WIS for an Elf, etc.)
Thank you for covering this. I agree with you they are kinda just remaking the same problems, they would have to go extremely abstract (and lose the compatibility) to really get away from it. Back when I ran a DnD 5e campaign, my players wanted to be 'heros' so i gave them an extra feat, and tweaked a class little but then upscaling the enemies. Half the time I just double enemy HP or something to make it feel like a challenge they were beating. 🤣
Important Note, the playtest had the option to build your own background, which I'm not sure isn't still in the player's handbook, which would eliminate all the problems because you get to decide your ability scores in the build your own background. I think backgrounds also have 3 options for ability score backgrounds. I'd imagine largely if you are playing a wizard you wouldn't really want a background for Fighting because the ability scores and feat isn't going to do you any good.
The thing I find odd about backgrounds is they give us 16, but there are 20 possible combinations of three ability scores. Why not just give us all 20 so we can have an example of each? I have to wonder if Crawford intended custom backgrounds as a default option in the new edition and the suits told him no because of how some of those out of control builds affected organized play, which I know should not be a factor in a perfect world.
Interesting, I didn't do the math on that, but I probably should have. I think most likely it was deemed too complex, or possibly, the UA feedback pushed against the custom backgrounds as the default. There are still a lot of Dungeon Masters that want their players to have more restricted options, or have a narrow view of which options should be available to players.
If I had to guess it is because you can really only select two of the three (or is +1 to all 3 an option?). There are some combinations that probably don't make sense. Like do you really Need Strength, Dex, and Int as options? I would also say maybe there are only 16 1st level feats? Either way I assume the missing options wouldn't be used that much.
@@bradleyhurley6755That would make sense, but; 1) im pretty sure they explicitly talk about having feats that repeat (maybe im missremembering) and 2) no one needs 2 of the 3 mental stats and they have shown a background with all 3
@@xadielplasencia3674 okay fair. I really can't keep track. I wish they would just have everything in one spot. I can not keep up with all the creators who get sneak peaks but don't really do a great job of them or can't show stuff that probably is essential.
I think even if an orc was raised as a salad-eating choir boy, he should be able to fly into a murderous rage and throw clerics through stained glass. Always thought of Ability Scores as "what you are" not "what you do". Meaning, if nature gave you 18 Strength might be easier to become a Barbarian, but not the other way around. Nobody in life get 18 Str because of "Barbarian Training".
Actually, a wizard probably want criminal to get alert, as his secondary abilities to increase are either DEX and CON anyway. Get ready to hear about how all wizard characters where raised as criminals. I don't have a problem with rogue being mostly criminals, and bard and warlock being mostly entertainers and merchants. Clerics and druids are really encouraged to go sage, which is not that terrible. So STR based fighters will usually be farmers, while DEX based fighters will usually be criminals, which is a little strange (though both could be entertainers in some cases if he party lack someone with the musician feat), as savage attacker is just a weaker feat than alert or tough so soldier is just a worse option.
I think the problem is "why"? All rules in DnD are technically optional. If the GM doesn't want it, they can change it but there is an assumption that, as a rule of thumb, the base rules are assured. There's a 99% chance that the GM won't ban the soldier background, there's an 80% chance the noble background won't be banned but DMG optional rules to build your own background will have a significantly lower rate of being accepted on the GM's part. So the question comes back to "why lock things so firmly?" It's certainly not because the origin backgrounds are balanced.
I think it makes sense to have classes sorta tied to certain backgrounds. I mean if I were a cleric I'd most like be working on a church or temple or something. And as a fighter I'd most likely start out as a soldier. And so on. Makes a little more sense than having certain species be better at certain classes cause I'm sure those species would have some variation of at least most of the classes in their society. There will always be exceptions of course.
Also, considering that there aren't a lot of different backgrounds - each background automatically coming with a specific feat means you will have each of these feats present a lot - every acolyte can now cast, every sage can now cast, every (i don't know) street urchin is now a brawler, etc. The idea of such broad RPGs like D&D is that every figure is unique in their own way. Such changes (and others I already know about) make things samey and repetitive.
In a game where you can literally do whatever you want, they fumble at character creation 🤦🏾 I will probably still use 5e custom background rules until they improve this, but I might mess around with some of these options too. It baffles me that with all the time constraints Wotc had to publish this book, they got lost in the weeds of a game element that needed little to no adjustment.
Setting aside the quirkiness of descending AC, Moldvay and 2nd edition are near perfect versions of the game and no new editions were needed. You can't milk gamers for more money that way, though. I guess we should all update our Monopoly sets every few years too? Old school for life, baby.
I’m pretty sure they said there’s a section at the end with instructions on building your own background so I don’t really see an issue with saying instead of strength I want a dex bonus Also with your examples you wouldn’t have to choose noble as a background for Ariya you could chosen urchin etc. by basing it off a more recent period in her life when she’s wandering after Ned’s killed. I see why they’ve gone for a halfway house option and provided more choice but still limited the options. It is a bit odd to say because I was a scholar who spent years sat in a library reading I now have a +2 to strength
Back in Gygax AD&D, it wasn't like picking a race usually modified your character (besides things like dark or low light vision). How it worked was that first you rolled up your stats and then you looked on the races and choose 1 within the parameters you rolled. Sure, there were racial and stat limits of some classes but your roll basically decided what character you would be playing (back then we usually rolled a single time and no rerolls so Pally's and worse, bards were rare). You could see it as the game forcing you to play certain classes, or you could see it as you getting to try something different most times you made a new character. Far too many players tend to pick basically the sane character every time they make a new character if they get total freedom which actually can get tiring for everyone after a few campaigns. I don't think focusing on the stats that you roll, race or background is better or worse but I admit I rather have the characters to roll for their background unless I as the DM want them from a specific background for a campaign. Having everyone start out as farmer from a small village who decides to be adventurers for instance could make a fun campaign. I do think the DM should be able to limit the background depending on the campaign, the barbarian campaign where all the players pick noble background would be a bit silly.
DM would have to bribe half of the players to play a fighter nowadays. It was considered to be the default character class in AD&D. Many players want to be unique these days instead of essential to winning battles as a group. Later editions made the demanding limitations of other classes less demanding. Less risk is more reward. There is no reason to play a fighter unless for personal preference.
@@josephpurdy8390 Back in AD&D (particularly 1st ed) you needed that fighter (or 2 fighters) in the group to survive. Yeah, you could do with a pally instead but you kinda had to roll very high to even be able to make one. Just hitting your opponent was a lot harder back then and for the first couple of levels, your wizard was pretty useless and needed to hide behind the fighter if you ever wanted him/her to survive. That is not how D&D have worked for a long time and it is also way easier to make another class now. Back in the day, we usually rolled 3D6 on the stats in order once and got stuck with whatever we rolled, some wussier DMs let you roll 3 different sets and choose the one you liked. No re-rolls or point based systems there. It was a different time and people played way more because they wanted to be challenged then today.
There are a few issues with what was said in this video, so with peace and love I'm just gonna go into some of the things said and why I believe they're not really that big of a deal. 1. The PHB states at the beginning that all of the rules in the book are up the DMs discretion. Even if it didn't, there's nothing stopping you from asking your DM to let you swap STR with DEX for a Noble, I'm sure most will oblige. 2. The Custom Lineage rule isn't just removed now, you can still use it in place of the Background ASI. Nothing about this new book prevents you from doing that. 3. Them saying that creating a new background would be a new default happened during the UA phase. Every UA is prefaced by the idea that these are changes which are currently in flux and open to change. Sure he should've worded it better and they should have clarified more, but stuff said during development and prefaced by the knowledge that this isn't final result material should be taken with a massive pinch of salt.
Hey! So, I agree with everything you've said here. But they're releasing a product, with a version of rules they've already fixed. And while GM discression can go a long way, not every GM and Every table is as forgiving or as experienced to know the bevy of options. This book is "Backwards" compatible, but it also should function as a core ruleset on its own, in the same way the 2014 version did. And you're right, UAs are not final. Nor should they be. But I still prefer the previous version, which is basically what you outline in your first option.
@@RookiesAndRulebooksI would argue the rules on lineages/backgrounds were NOT already fixed. In fact, I had to step in to stop one of my players abusing the custom lineage rules in Tasha's.
I translated the Octopath Traveler TTRPG, and what I liked about the background stuff is that it only added like, 1 point to skill *checks,* rather than actual main stats. It's a very small enhancement, but it's just enough for even a Farmer wizard to be, say, burly enough to get a guy in a chokehold a teensy bit easier than the Scientist background wizard, while still be powerful enough magically to do some insane spell damage. Something extremely slight that it won't be a problem, and *don't tie it to anything that will be used in the battles.* That makes players feel that their characters are unique, but not in a way that makes them feel "worse" than another character of the same class. The only difference is that OTRPG is a 2d6 based system, so +1 is a big enough enhancement to seem big with their skill checks. Since DND is a d20 based system, it can change it to be a +2 bonus in their backgrounds, and still have essentially the same thing without feeling like a player is stuck making "the correct background".
I agree with you. I wanted to do a way of mercy monk that came from a noble background. He wasn't interested in politics but chose to study this ancient fighting style. The noble background would not help this character at all. Then again, if he is choosing not to be an active ruler and let a brother rule instead, perhaps another background could be chosen since noble really doesn't fit his current role.
I absolutely love the backgrounds being tied to your ability scores, its only a soft tie, especially given the variety of combos of the scores given. Sure, its unlikely to see a sage barbarian - I think that makes sense - but you can still increase wisdom and con and make a unique character. It makes you choice even more uncommon and surprising. Edit: you actually make a fantastic argument FOR this system in trying to argue against it. A wizard could easily pick sage, acolyte, or noble, alongside I’m sure many other choices. But at the same time, Sage fits a sorcerer quite well, or a warlock, or a paladin, or an artificer, or an eldritch knight, or countless other options. There are 16 backgrounds iirc with directions on how to create a custom background being mentioned in the interviews with Crawford. I believe this will lead to some rather unique combinations. While I’m sure we’ll see a dozen soldier fighters, I’m rather excited that sage is actually a suboptimal choice for wizard. Its going to encourage people to branch out and those that don’t and continue to make their sage wizards are going to get an extra spell and cantrips. This system really interests me for this reason alone. If I’m a bard that wants the healer feat, I can take the hermit background - a seemingly strange choice, but one that leads to new and exciting character concepts - why is this hermit now a roving performer?! Edit 2: You have yet again made a great argument, I think its fantastic and clear that Bran is better represented by either something like the hermit background or perhaps acolyte or perhaps even wayfarer or guide. All of these are much better fits for him than noble, you know why? For the exact reason that noble better fits all of the characters who actually grew up and had their formative years affected by being nobles. Bran and Arya did not! Bran went on a grand odyssey and Arya became the greatest assassin in the lands. Just because Bran starts and ends in some capacity near a throne does not a noble make - so we ask ourselves, what are his formative years spent doing? Traveling? Becoming wise? Learning? Honing how abilities? And Arya? Is Arya spending her formative years being a noblewoman? No! She’s an urchin, clearly! This system asks you what your character was doing BEFORE level 1, not what they would have done if the adventure never happened.
this whole "disaster" could have been avoided if they left the customize your background in the PHB where it was in 2014 and where it belongs. now i see an even worse problem, i choose what class i want to play then i have to look up the backgrounds and check which combination of stats + feat fits my character after that i throw all the background story i had in mind into the garbage can ( most of the time ) and have to rethink what the character was doing before it's very likely i will end up with not matching stas and the feat the background grants and i will have to think do i run with stats that don't fit or a background that don't fits next i will be settled with 2 skills which might be duplicates of the ones i choose as my class skills, in 2014 no problem i could swap the duplicate, oh lets just do that .... args i can't because that would mean i have to modify the background which is in the dmg every character will be pigeonholed into the background provided by the book, so you don't get to play the character you had in your mind, but will need to play a character the rules forces you too .... also the feats you can choose as your background feat are very limited and also vary alot on what they do provide you with. going by UA here : MI might provide you with a nice bonus under certain circumstances ( e.g. Wizard, sorcerer MI for a hybrid or priest class to gain access to the shield spell ) Now to get the MI : Arcane you need to have a culthist background, sounds "good" for a Paladin of Tyr to be a former culthist of a demon or devil doesn't it ? now lets see as skill thats Religion (duplicate ) and Arcane ( for a paladin pretty useless ) language : abyssal .... ( no comment ) tool : disguise kit ( for this character also completly useless) stats : int & chr ( depends on what is presented as 3rd in the new phb, otherwise your +1 is useless)
Midway through 5.5s life, they'll change to 4e, and it'll be skills and abilities are completely disassociated with background, race, or class. All you'll need is prerequisite stats to pluck abilities from anywhere. "Be what you want to be," Everyone will choose the same optimized options
Well they want to give importance to the backgrounds, so I think they make sense... This sentence is not about making an optimazed character or class character, in sure they added some personalized background option as they did in 2014 even if people didn't use that rule often, the backgrounds are meant to be ready-to-go suggestions but they can always be revised... That's the cool thing about this rules, they let you chose something fast but if you want you can custom them
I can also see how this creates a system where every fighter has the same feat because they’re all noble or something because that’s optimal. And so there is less variety through that. I can see how it makes more sense that ability score increases being connected to what you did in your life (aka backgrounds) but it’s just more fun to have the freedom of a build your own option.
My two cents… the worst RPG system is one without mechanics. One without theme. One without tropes. You never let players make a completely custom character. (Not never, but most the time.) Now I want to make a well thought out video… 🤔
I think I agree with the intent behind that statement. But I also think that holds much more true for a system that is tied more strongly to a specific setting. I.e. Shadowrun, Edge of the Empire, Numenera. As it stands, D&D is split between 4-ish core settings (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk) with 2 sort of in-between settings (Spelljammer & Planescape). The system is slowly being designed as a generic catch-all, for better or worse. Because of this, the core needs to do a lot of things in a generic way, with restrictions put on by setting per the GM. But yeah, I largely agree. DM/GM oversight is sort of key to customization.
@@RookiesAndRulebooks I make the Statement from the #1 rule of game design. “Game needs to be fun to play.” I have no issue with DnD becoming generic. But it will lose market to games that are focused. I don’t think that’s good or bad. I don’t really care what happens to Wotc. 😀 I think about GMs and players having a great time RPing. What I think is lost on many gamers is that the “boundaries” the game mechanics are critical to fun. Certainly some players are so into RP that they don’t need dice and can just free form play. But most people aren’t that. The millions of DnD videos online are about character and mechanics. People LOVE those parts of the game. The ways you can assemble species, occupation and backstory are massive. It’s the fun of the game you can do alone, before the game. The part of the game you can play without playing.
I've certainly felt the pull as a Player towards more defined systems and stylized systems recently. As a GM, I have always appreciated the openness of D&D for the ability to hone it's broad options to specifics for world building & theme. But also, for a system that is the most conductive to in-store play, the Adventures League, and people joining games without full knowledge of table attitudes, I just worry about locking options behind a second book that should be (and were in 2014) standard options.
I think one plausible and quite simple solution is to give one more choice of attribute, skill and origin feat for each background. But custom backgrounds from UA were just perfect
Honestly im already thinking about modifications to the backgrounds to give depth and flavor such as noble with the family history having its roots in organized crime. Swap strength for dex and swap a skill proficiency to something appropriate. Simple just give flavor to the backgrounds so they remain similar, but not always the same between two characters
It’s funny everyone’s chasing their tails trying to homebrew around this, when the answer is so simple. Just add the primary ability score for a class to alternatively be selected by the background ability score bonus. This represents time the character had as that particular class to train up to now, which is in a way part of their background, just their more recent background.
I understand they just moved the issue around; instead of limiting species choices, they're limiting background choices for optimal builds. But if they just allowed players to put those +2, +1 bonuses to any ability scores (whether from background, lineage, or class), then it's the equivalent of just giving extra points to divide using point buy. i.e. the choice of +1/+2 becomes illusory. 🤷 At any rate, DMs are still free to accomodate their players however they want. You want that +2 DEX bonus as a noble? Sure. Just take a -1 penalty in another score. You were so busy developping your dexterity-based skills growing up that you neglected your physical strength or intellectual studies. Or just allow the +2 to be applied to any ability score. Whatever works for the group.
There's a 5E variant published by ENWorld called "Level Up (Advanced 5E)", and they did a LOT of this stuff a couple years ago. They changed terminology, going with "heritage" instead of "race". Your heritage determines strictly physical traits, like darkvision and movement speed, but your Culture determines learned abilities -- want to play a dwarf raised by elves? Take the dwarf heritage, and the wood elf culture (f'rinstance). Your background determines your ability bonus points, with one +1 being set, and a second +1 open to wherever you want. (Yes, you get 1 fewer stat point. The skill system makes up for this by giving out Expertise Dice, adding a d4 -- or bigger -- to specific uses of skills.) Plus, A5E gives you a way to play with the 5E rules without giving WotC a dime. Given their shenanigans over the past couple years, it's hard to justify giving them any more money.
I will still give WotC some of my dime. I don't think the designers and artists are responsible for the actions of their superiors. BUT, I do own A5e, just haven't had a good chance to sit down and pour through it yet. I think there's a lot of rules there that I do like. It sounds like A5e is using a the Pathfinder Ancestry/Heritage/Background system, or something very similar. I swapped to Pathfinder during the OGL crisis last year. I really dug that system, but I still love 5e as well.
Short answer. They can publish more backgrounds and could even introduce new origin feats this way. With only 16 backgrounds there is no way they got every magic initiate option in there (I bet we'll see Wizard, Cleric, and Druid) and we know they doubled up Alert and Skilled. I don't think there is any more room to double up after that which means feats like Lucky and Tough will be tied to one background. I'm curious if lightly armored made it in as an origin feat because it didn't appear in the same UA document as the others but was availbe at level one.
The best way of doing this was Tahsas where you can just put a +2 and +1 wherever, or three +1's. Idk why they changed that and tied it to backgrounds, and on my table I will absolutely ignore that change xd.
Arguably Bran and Arya would have been too young as nobles to be player characters and wouldn’t have their backgrounds until later. Bran would probably be a hermit I guess. He also gained his wisdom from the becoming the 3 eyed raven. Arya would most likely be an urchin. I get the point you are going for but those two didn’t become their “classes” until they left winterfell. The other three are sound.
You could even argue, that John Snow would be trained rather as a leader of soldiers =Soldiers Background, than as the politician and Diplomat that is the Noble Background.
I prefer the "build your own background", especially with the hybridizing of species/races. I don't typically do the min-max thing, going for thematic and fun, creative characters to play instead.
I have no issue with the concept of the background driving these stats, feat and proficiencies; however it was only after i put them all into a spreadsheet I realised how restrictive they became. Most classes now have a MAXIMUM of ONE choice that is even vaguely optimal/and thematic. It's insanely badly implemented.
The real issue is they added so many more mechanics solely to keep you from noticing that they destroyed the difference in Races. The limitations of each race is what made the unique styles fun. If u wanna min max for a ttrpg good for u. We had the ability to create unique characters only limited by ur imagination. It was much more realistic. In life if u excell in a field u are naturally going to lack in others. Thats what made it fun. Limitations are what makes epic moments of over coming them fun and special. This all inclusivewave has went n destroyed the best part about fantasy ttrpgs. The realism. No one wants to play a ttrpg that reminds them of thier actual life BUT even magic and was incredibly fun because of the basis in realism. A fireball doing massive damage was amazing to pull off. But having no ability or feat restriction based of race is like a dm saying oh 'well u did cast fireball BUT the fire doesnt hurt because it might offend other people, whom arent part of ur game or life, who are afraid of fire. Its gone to a point where ur race is nothing more than a skin and everyone's characters are all overpowered heros and no adversity is present. U need to struggle to enjoy the game otherwise lvling up means nothing more than stroking ur fantasy ego in a world full of paper targets.
I am so tired of the argument of "Abilities Scores shouldnt be tied to race/background". a +2 bonus is literally a 5% difference, it won't kill you to play an elf barbarian or any other character against trope. If you want to play against trope, then play with the consequences.
If you need really high stats to be successful in a class, you do not know how to play it well. Anyone with a Dex of 13+ can be a competent Swashbuckler. Take the +1 Str and +2 Cha, and be a noble. You'll be fine.
I think something that is missing from Ability score bonuses in races is that it was also flavour and mechanically represented the lore. Like, oh Elves are dextris because of there more slim frame, but High elves gain a bonus too Intelligence not cause they are "born smarter" but because their culture valued educational and academics more, and wood elves get Wisdom because they are a culture of hunters and druids. And literally every race has this, the plus 2 bonus his related to their physical body and there plus 1 is tide to their culture. I hate how people just ignored this, kinda dismissing the effect of your culture and heritage has on your life.
That is one of the main points for why they have changed it so if you are a high elf that grew up around humans you might not have the +1 int and if you are a human that grew up with high elfs you can now take the scollar back ground showing that you grew up with elf where learning is important for there culture get +1 int and magic initive wizard. So to show culture is important the new system is better.
@@esbenskovrasmussen9066 yeah, and that's why the rule in Tasha was great too. Allowing you to change states around to better fit your character. Like, instead of saying hey these are the states, you give a suggust and support it with the lore. Cause your job does not affect you at all. I did heavy construction work for years, and it never made me stronger. I was good at my job cause I was born as a 6 foot 4 inch shit brick house of a man.
Saying ability scores shouldn't be associated with species is wrong. First, they ARE "races". Species can't have offspring together so "custom lineages" wouldn't be possible. Saying that makes it possible for a halfling to be as strong as an orc. That's like saying a human can be as strong as a gorilla. Having it associated with background is ok but doesn't fix it either because the world's strongest man isn't stronger than a gorilla either. Babies can't crawl for 6 months but a foal can trot within hours of birth. And where does it stop? What about the other racial traits? How long before a human has tusks, lives 1500 yrs and can talk to fish? It is perfectly ok to have classes that a race is good at. There was nothing wrong with the system before Tasha's CoE. People forget that rolling for stats, point buy and standard array are what accounts for individual diversity. When you put that 15 in STR you are saying that your character spent their formative years doing rigorous physical labor or lifting weights etc. A better fix would have been for point buy to be 23 and get +2 in your class's primary ability and +1 where you choose, ALONG WITH racial bonuses. Cattle and horses can both pull wagons but a cow will never be faster than a horse and the horse will probably not be stronger than the cow.
There is a bit of a problem with your analogies though; none of the races in D&D demonstrate such a wide gap in abilities as humans and gorillas. Even when these bonuses did apply to the races, they were a difference at most of 2, something that can just as easily be explained by orcs having a warlike culture, rather than just all orcs are innately stronger. Either an average orc has a strength of 12, which is small enough of a factor that it's not really that important to keep (mathematically it's only 5% or 10% stronger, depending on if you're measuring lifting capacity or rate of success), or we were already dealing with atypical characters for game balance's sake. Plus no matter what race you play, you also share the same peaks, a max of 20 (with a few rare exceptions pushing it beyond like the Barbarian's lv 20 feature). The peak scores being the same imo send a much stronger message than a mere +2 bonus here or there, since as you know a gorilla's max strength is lot stronger than a human can ever hope to obtain. Since they're the same though, the implication is that all races are actually very similar in terms of all abilities. (there are also cases of different species producing offspring, it's rare but it happens. But I prefer the term race anyway.)
@@WolforNuva if that 5 or 10% isn't important to you, then don't take the bonus at all. Ever. That's the worst argument I've ever heard. I used human and gorilla because that's the kind of difference between gnomes and orcs. An orc would have more muscle in their thigh than a gnome would have in their whole body. Do you really think that a gnome would be able to lift as much as an orc, literally 5-10 times his size? How about a human genius having more knowledge than an average elf who can study everything that human can in his entire lifetime before she begins to remember her past lives, becoming an adult and an adventurer? The attribute cap is specifically for game balance. Personally I think it's as dumb as auto fails and auto success. The only cap a player should have is the amount of advancements they commit to a specific attribute. If you want to play an orc fighter, roll an 18 and assign it to STR, then put all (5?) of your ASIs in STR, then I think you should absolutely be able to have a STR of 30. And yes because humans are smaller than orcs (probably that same 5 - 10%), while still being Medium creatures, they would have a 28. I also think humans should NOT get ANY bonuses since they are the baseline that the other races are being compared to. They are our only familiar reference after all.
@@stevengrass6800 If the bonus for being an Orc over any other race is a 10% difference, then it's just not a big deal if it gets removed. We're also dealing with a system where a gorilla (Ape monster block) has 16 strength, equal to the typical knight. We're in a fantasy land, if humans can so easily catch up to Apes and even more powerful creatures, then it's not unusual for halflings and orcs to catch up in strength. That said, Orcs actually get a feature to double their carrying capacity, so you'd need a 20 str Gnome to match what a 10 str Orc can carry, isn't that the problem solved? I brought up the 20 cap because I see racial bonuses argued over constantly, but I never see anyone complain that there's an equal cap for all races (yes it's game balance, but so are the racial bonuses being replaced with background bonuses). I guess I just find it hypocritical that people so loudly complain about one and only mention the other when I point out that it's just as equal a problem to the verisimilitude. I am actually not very fond of 5e myself. I'm not arguing to defend the system (I currently prefer Pathfinder which does have both racial and background bonuses, or GURPS which is whatever the fuck the GM says), just I find this a weird hill to die on. There are much bigger issues in 5e than removing racial bonuses, especially when 5e opened the gate with a watered down version of them (no racial stat penalties), and your background does still make just as much sense for where you get your stats from - or at least where you will get a +2 or +1 from, if racial bonuses went as high as +6 or something normally, and that was being removed, I'd probably be with you.
Great coverage. I noticed you have some inconsistent audio. My hot-take suggestion is to even out all your audio (whatever you use for editor should have a way to do this), then add basic compression and, if you have a master function add some subtle clarity. No disrespect, just trying to help a follow creator.
i dont mind the background system all too much. but if we're tlaking wish fulfillment, removing the ability to attack with two longswords in each hand is a direct middlefinger to mine.
as a player, i just say split the ability score between race and background but then it just create the same problem as to min/max as before so just remove those and buff up the point score or whatever. those people complaint about that problem and yet i never saw or hear of a scrany orc or goliat wizard or a giant gnome or hafling barbarian before.
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this to be honest. Overall I really like most of the changes in the new PHB, but they really took a massive step back with the backgrounds. In the campaign that my friends and I are playing right now we made our characters using the unearthed arcana custom backgrounds and everyone loved it for the imense flexability. Really scummy idea to put custom backgrounds in the DMG, HATE that. D&D is all about choice, let players CHOOSE.
Agree, the locked in ability scores based on my background is trash. Let it just be generic scores wherever you want them and build our own backgrounds since we can't have "races" that are or are not good at anything in particular.. Orcs are literally equal strong as Halflings, or less so because the Halfling was a Noble and the Orc was a Scribe? It makes no sense.
If it's an optional rule in the book than it's offical, read the book, there is no reason why you can't find it online if you can't get one , things in the book are guides to make jumping in easier, optinal rules are often for more complex players.
I like to make characters first, background second, and backstory third. For example, I made a noble elven warlock, with a sage background. At that point is when I make a backstory.
Character origins sucks.. how does a Noble and scribe have the same skeleton. They should’ve given more options for feats you can choose is just one small thing they looked over (among many) Example; guards can choose one from alert, observant, or tavern brawler. A criminal should be alert, skilled or skulker etc locking down 1 feat that overlaps a few times is cheap. They spent more time worrying about making the book pretty, and inclusive they promised this would make more unique characters and it really made it worse.
As both DM and player, ever since Tasha's challenged the idea of where ability score improvements come from, I've treated it as somewhat malleable. A lot of the stat blocks and things like that are suggestions all the way around. It's to help people spark their creativity or to balance certain things out. If they followed a formula to make a background or a subclass, we could also do the same thing if we took the time to put it together and balance it out. That said, I don't know if this was recorded before the Druid was discussed on the official channel, but I got attached to that part of your House Stark example. Jeremy mentioned that in this new PHB, there will be a branching path option for a Druid that is more melee and less dirt wizard. That feels like pretty strong wish fulfillment to me. There's a chance that we should be considering the book as a whole once its all said and done rather than assessing each piece separate from the rest of its parts in addition to using the preconstructed backgrounds as options that we're more than welcome to tweak if something RAW isn't satisfying our builds. I also understand that there are some players out there who have never owned a DMG and they don't have to own the new one either, but they've also been referring to the entire core rulebook set as a collection of tomes that are also parts of a bigger whole. They are thousands of pages written and illustrated with each other in mind. Not every person needs all three, but all three coexist as a single unit. Knowing the contents or intentions offered within each one wouldn't be a bad idea and I'd imagine that's what some of the videos they've been dropping are for. Giving the details to promote the material, but also to let people know what they might want to know what the book is capable of - or what to inquire of someone with access to the book.
Players also want the background to matter. A wizard farmer should be overcoming their lack of education. If you can have the same Int as a farmer as you can as a Sage, the background becomes just backstory, with no mechanical impact. Also the same thing can be said for the origin feats. Why limit what background gets what feat, doesn't it make it so there is a "correct" background for every class?
I'm using the system on a game I'm starting now, and I'll create customized a background for each player according to their character history. More work for the DM, but it's fun to jam with the player as they flesh out their character. I think there's nothing impeding anyone from doing this, and the rules are straightforward: give the player a feat, a couple skills, a tool, a language and some social advantage in a particular group, then let them decide which scores make sense. Done! Honestly I think the rules will be there in a simplified form, and expanded in the DMG. It doesn't make sense to force players to use static backgrounds
This is the problem with class based systems like DnD and it always will be. Instead of chosing whatever skills, attributes and proficiencies you want to based on experience points as a resource you will always have to rely on premade stuff or homebrew. Homebrewing will make the system incompatible with other groups, so you might not want to use that path. In short: I prefer experience points as a resource for everything over any other system. I saw that done best in The Dark Eye 5.0. In that system you can calculate your character at any point in time by the experience points gained and the abilities you have. You could even go so far and re-skill some time later just by adding the experience points from skills you lower to your pool and subtracting the experience points from the pool of free experience points when you add new skills or get better in one. This is quite helpful when you have a group of new players, because more often than not new players are not as deep in the game mechanics and it makes the game for them less frustrating.
Wotc- "we have taken ability scores away from races/species. We wanted ppl to be able to play any race/species regardless of stats. So we moved them (almost a copy paste) to your backgrounds taking away ur customizability that we said we wanted to give u originally... see we fixed it!!!" Me- "so floating stats are gone... cool, cool, cool... (not cool)"
I thought the idea to put some ability scores on backgrounds a good idea, as it makes sense in a narrative way; however the cost of removing ability scores from races, yeah no, does not. The defense that it is for balancing reasons, well the obvious answer is no. 100% is not, i just need to look at the utterly stupid skill split in 5e. After splitting social skills into three offensive and one defensive skill, nobody can tell me anything is done for balancing reason. I could rant about the skill system for hours. The minor rework of other things made magic even more common place in the 2024 ruleset than in the 2014 ruleset, which is quite a detriment in case you want to run a low magic world, meaning you now need to spend more time homebrewing. 2014 was already not good for that, 2024 is worse, while it streamlines it removes a lot of the flexibility you had.
I'm good with ability points being tied to background. the optimal time being in the dmg. No one but he dm willl need to buy the dmg, and i imagine it will be simple to make new ones. Just in this case, the dm has the ability to determine whether the custom background fits the campaign. I think this video is an overreaction, but to be fair, we won't know until we get the new phb and give it a tryout.
Character should just have 2 "background" bonus, one should be from how the character was raised, their cultural heritage if you will, while the other should be more specific to the character such as their initial career or in other words, what they would have done if they didn't become an adventurer (street urchin, noble, sage, etc...). This would also lead to a rework of racial features since a lot of races have cultural bonus as racial features such as elf and dwarf that have weapon training.
They need to take more rules away and make creation more flexible, as opposed to piling on rules on top of every concept ever thought of. This creates the illusion of freedom, when in reality they’re actually restrictions.
The whole book has abandoned character concept. The weapon rules completely shut out most iconic weapon combos. Paired long swords or battle axes aren't even possible. Paired Scimitars is possible but gimped since your main hand weapon will have no effective mastery as Nick doesn't do anything. Paired short swords won't have Nick. So many characters are just nonsensical now. Scimitar and shield, a staple of desert fantasy, is useless with no effective mastery. At least it's easy to house rule custom backgrounds. I have no idea how I am going to house rule these weapon rules.
I love Tasha's book, but this free choice on ability bonus is plain stupid. The new background options are slightly better, but in the end the best thing is still the traditional method. Is the one that makes more sense and translates better the lore of the game.
Although I agree with your overall comments on this issue. I will make the point in your game of thrones example that just because the Starks were born into nobility and that played a huge party in that book/movie. There is no reason to say that their background is tied to “birth”… Arya’s background could easily be criminal or urchin from her time In braavos. Bran’s could be hermit, acolyte or even outlander from the trip up to the three eyed raven. My point is I don’t think you have to set your background with the family you were born into (and it’s probably later in their lifetimes that matter more say early teen years - and maybe that is why Robb, Jon and Sansa character fit noble reasonably well). That being said your point is well taken that if the feat isn’t flexible and the stats are particularly rigid - it does take away from customization and flavor! Final comment is does a slightly or even moderate suboptimal choice in background really cause your group to suffer? Probably not, there are so many other places you make choices if you get those right it probably doesn’t matter (or you get them wrong and those choices make it worse). Honestly, DMs should be able to adjust difficulty for their players, what is hard is a mixed group w half highly optimized and half not optimized at all and that leads to “main characters” and “sidekicks” but even that can work depending on the table it’s just not ideal.
Last video i saw, I'm sure it was said that the book gives clear instructions on how to build a custom background if you want to. Don't get the problem, this being the case. Couple people mentioned that it's a problem having to talk to your DM about it but: A) why wouldn't you be working with your DM at every step of creation anyway to make sure it fits with the world, even with standard choices- "Actually being a noble in this world would be a biy odd as there was recently a revolution in which all nobility was beheaded or imprisoned." is a valid comment for a DM to make about even a standard background. B) if you have a DM that you feel won't give fair consideration to your ideas for a custom background, get a new DM cos he's an arse.
I hate Tasha's, not that they added an optional rule that you could just change out the stats on races if you wanted to power game but that they removed the stats from the races as a whole, the remade and new races all are now completely blank slates, they even removed flavor things like how long they live and things. Some people want the option to put the stats bonuses wherever they want, I want the option not to do that, if I play an Orc wizard I will be physically stronger than other wizards, that can be very fun, sure I could chose to put my stats unoptimally if the race is a blank slate but nobody will do that. I played a tiefling rogue and charisma and dex was my top highest scores, this made me play in to that, also that the rest of the party was 2 warlocks and a paladin meant that we were a high charisma party and that was very fun. Because WOTC forced this change I will most likely not allow the put your stats anywhere and the remade races at my table as a protest, good thing the people I play with are not the biggest fans of these changes either. I will most likely keep away from this new edition 5.5e, 6e or 1e or whatever they are calling it, if I tire of 5e there are other systems.
I think your assertion that “most players” will be out off by building something sub optimal is an overestimation. It’s been my experience that optimizers are a vocal subset rather than a majority. Also, you don’t have to choose any of the premade backgrounds, you can always make a custom background with custom ability increases and feats. That’s always been and option in 5e and continues to be. And that’s not homebrew because it’s baked into the rules. So you’re there really isn’t a reason to pick a sub-optimal choice if you don’t want to.
I think that backgrounds were a terrible idea to begin with. There are many professions that people in a fantasy world can have. Backgrounds can never have all those options. Whole D&D 5 made building your own background rather easy, that was a patch to an unnecessary problem - and with the origin feats, that just became a bit harder. What feat do I give a former ratcatcher? For that matter, why does a zoologist learn wizard spells? Those probably all are problems that can be solved without much hassle. I just don't think that backgrounds really add something. D&D is not simulationist enough to make a lifepath system work. So why doesnt it treat background like traits, bonds and flaws? Or D&D could go the 20 questions route.
I mean... just customize it...? it might not say that in the PHB and instead in the DMG for some reason but people will do before hand, why would now be any different?
I just want to throw this here to say that overall, I'm very positive about most of the changes to D&D in the new rules update.
After speaking pretty glowingly about the system last week, this was just my one bone to pick and I wanted to discuss it.
This video wasn't meant to spark outrage or anger, just wanted to point out why I disliked it. Cheers, and thanks for watching!
Idk I feel like a optimizer can work with anything that’s given if you know what you’re looking for. But that’s just my optimizer mentality
Well that is because picking the noble background for Bram and Arya is just stupid, they spent the most of their whole lifes completely away from nobility and the court doing other things, and those are exactly what you should pick for your character for your background, regardless of the family lineage. Your background reflects what your character has been doing for most of his life in order to justify his skills and capabilities, not just which family you were born into. Noble background is for very specific characters who are born in nobility and spent most of their life in politics and court.
Bram spent much more of his life being a sage/acolyte/hermit in the north than being a noble, he probably has zero etiquette but know a lot of stuff about all the magical shenanigans he has been studying for so many years. Same goes for Arya, she spent most of her life being an urchin and assassin and it would be totally dumb to pick a noble background for her. Those reflect their characters, and ability scores, much more.
If you want to have a farmer wizard he MUST have spent a lot of time somewhere studying, so just pick the sage background for him. Your musketeer must have spent some time training with someone or in battles in order to know how to use his sword, pick soldier for him. If you need some proficiencies outside your background you pick origin feats that reflect that. And if you want your character to be of a specific noble lineage, or a farmer or whatever just tell your DM that you want to roleplay that and that is it.
Here is an idea I had. What if you had a choice of abilities based on all three choices. Your species gives you two abilities choice, your background gives you two more choices and finally your class gives you two choices. You then have 3 points to boost any of those ability scores.
Example: an orc has a choice of str and con, the fighter has a choice of str and dex, and the veteran gives you a choice of con and wis. In the end you have a choice of str, dex, con, and wis. Classic build with a bit of room for a unique build. If you chose a different background as an orc fighter you would still have a chose of str, dex, and con. If you chose sage you would get int and wis. This would be great for a eldritch knight and make sense.
Does this sound good or am I off the mark.
Thats what Pathfinder 2e does
I don't think you're off the Mark at all! There's a few systems that do this already, namely Pathfinder.
I just don't think that's the direction WotC wants to take for D&D. But I also think this direction misses the mark.
@@RookiesAndRulebooks D&D Background Folk Hero is in the 2024 D&D Player's Handbook? I want to build your own background and I want my monk to be a Folk Hero as he existed now!! He is Variant Human Monk , The Way of the Ascending Dragon.
@@Shop_S-mart Sounds like you’d enjoy Pathfinder 2e.
TPK Games made this suggestion in Players' Options 5e, and I love it. I've been using it ever since.
Origin Ability Scores should have always been tied to the Classes. Don’t know why they decided to choose Backgrounds, and then limit your choices in the same way they did in 5e.
Technically the ball was always in the DM’s court because the DM had to allow the optional rules from Tasha’s.
Nothing has really changed here. You always had the option to either use the standard increases or ask for an alternative. And any reasonable DM will agree. It’s always been that way and it continues to be that way.
They’re just in a different chapter of the book now.
Absolutely not, this just takes away choice. Strength rogue? Nah, no strength increase. Charismatic fighter? Nah, no charisma increase.
The fun of building a character is combining stuff with your class, not picking a class and having a largely predetermined path before you
@@ilyaterk110 than you should stop playing the 5e cause is limited in everything in that aspect
@teddux no need to abandon the whole system when you can homebrew and tweak the rules. Which you absolutely can unless you tie yourself into whatever limits D&D beyond or the vtt might impose. And your group doesn't have to do that.
It's reasonable for the core rules to have limited options for new players and then every further campaign setting or adventure module can add additional options, Eberron lordling, Ravnica Elite, perhaps with new feats or just rejigged options.
Any DM should approve a request for a player to play a nobble swashbuckler and swap the points to Dex it won't unbalance the game.
@@nicka3697 you are right but I have a job a life I have to care for not balancing a game that is broke. My job is to relax have fun with my friends. Balancing a game is creators job. Plus I genuinely feel like this edition is even worse than the 4th. Pf is making all of us much much more happy, my players feel that their characters are much more personal and customized. The core books help the dm so much more than the 5e. After playing it we all felt cheated from wotc. I hated myself for spending money in all those books I bought
In the Unearthed Arcana book for AD&D 1st edition, your species gave you a number of dice to roll for each attribute, and you take the best 3 dice. The best was 9 dice, the lowest was 3 dice. It made your race matter even when rolling up your character. There was also a version to roll by your class instead, which is what my group preferred out of the two options.
I don't remember the table for stat rolling based on species, but I do remember the table for rolling by class (this was only for humans though).
@@MrHighlander666 Thinking about, we might have gotten those from Dragon Magazine articles.
@@grr-OUCH ok cool, no worries. Just thought I was losing it for a second there! Flipping through UA for it as I couldn't remember using it ever. 😂
@@MrHighlander666 I used to photocopy articles out of my Dragon Magazine collection and keep them in a notebook. I also sometimes photocopied stuff from my D&D books and put them into the same notebook. It is legal, provided you still own the sources, and I did. It was great at the table, but makes some of my memories from the 80s/90s get a bit muddled.
The main problem is that "Backgrounds" are essentially nothing more than starter kits for creating a character by-the-numbers. Experienced players (And more creative inexperienced players) will automatically come up with their own backstories for their characters. So tying so much to the "Background" component of character creation as a part of the rules is silly, when it's arguably the most flexible and unnecessary part of the standard character creation process.
Why could they not just say, "Here you 3 ability points to add to whatever score you want however you want" so if we're playing a monk, we can put them in dex, wisdom and con, we can take the noble background and play the iron fist. Or be a fallen noble with the noble background playing Robin Hood as a ranger or as a rogue for Batman.
This is the same problem I had with their first attempt at their 2024 dragonborn. Instead of using the most popular and used version from fizban's, they used the 2014 version with some tweeks that was still far worse than the Fizban's version. Now, the ability score is also being taken from the 2014 version instead of the far better, used and popular version from Tasha's.
As someone who was around when AD&D and 2nd edition players begged TSR to relax or do away with class and level restrictions for demi-humans, and when 3rd edition players applauded that they no longer needed to pretend they legally rolled three 15s, one 12, and a 10 on 3d6 in order to play as a bard, I find it funny that 5e players are outraged at the fact that no race/class combination will automatically be a suboptimal choice thanks to ability scores and 1st level feats being tied to backgrounds.
Your point with the fencing noble is the stronger point, the argument for the Starks is a poor one, because it assumes that characters are only one thing, when in fact, the Starks demonstrate this system incredibly well, because the old children are more engrained in their noble backgrounds while Aria and Bran are the youngest and have the most time to develop another aspect to their background that they gravitated to instead. Aria is still young and while she begins life as a noble, she didn't really take to it and as she gets older, she meets criminals and finds this background most appealing and so leans more heavily into that aspect of who she is. Likewise, Bran's depression made him into a hermit despite being a noble, and he leans more into that background.
This is the biggest bone to pick with because custom backgrounds now, the ball in the DM's court instead of the players. You make perfect points and sure, you can talk with your DM... but I don't want to ask for permission for an optional rule that what was & should've stayed a core rule.
I like it being a DM option. This makes sure it fits the campaign. I understand why others prefer it being a player choice.
All rules are DM optional. Even the core ones.
@@quillogist2875 "should've stayed a core rule." when was this ever a core rule?
Noble is a kinda the problem child from the backgrounds. Noble basically means, you had access to everything. GoT also makes a point that the Stark kids (or Jaime) not only had access to the best education, but they also had access to the best physical training. So nobles technically could have a bonus to all abilities.
Noble is also problematic because just by definition (not as a game mechanic) Noble just describes who your parents are, you don't really have to do anything. Arya would not have the noble Background. You could make a case for Noble, urchin, acolyte, soldier/assassin/bounty hunter, outlander, but which one does she use?. If Arya would have learned from listening to Tywin and become a battle commander her background would be Courtier.
Arya fled very early and missed out on a lot of education and later turned special agent. And yes, she can lie and act to infiltrate but I'd argue that's proficiency not high Charisma (above 15).
Let me compare it to classes: If your character learned to fight in the army but later discovered Jesus+magic powers, you don't have to multiclass into Fighter. Clerics also need to learn how to fight. Arya is a noble by definitiion but her game-Background should besomething else.
A character can have various experiences, but you should pick the one that influenced your Characters abilities. You don't have to pick Noble just because you are royalty. John and Rob could also have the Soldier or something else.
I think I'll continue doing this: Yeah sure as a noble you might have the highest Cha score, but the DC to convince the authority and taxes hating Farmer will be higher for you than for the farmboy sorcerer (and I might give him adv. if he roleplays right and tries to establish realatable connection to the NPC.)
Hard agree on this. I had a character build idea that's effectively a fighter who also uses cleric spells (Shield of Faith, Guidance) to defend allies, so +2 Str, +1 Con or Wis, Magic Initiate (Cleric). However, that's no longer possible without custom rules. The Acolyte background concept fit my character well, but the stat bonuses are all wrong, even though a cleric of a War Domain god, especially Kord, would have reasonably trained in Str. The only way to get the stats and feat I want would be to pick a different background (not the one I envisioned for this character) and specifically the human species. So, for optimizers, we may be back to humans best species for another ten years.
At this point I just let my players pick whatever ability scores they want. Most of the time my players pick non optimal choices anyways because the flavor to them is more important. Some (flavors) aren’t options and it should be completely up to the player.
You can still customize your backgrounds... Same as always.
The DMG has guidelines on how to do it, you can basically pick and choose skills, proficiencies, ability scores and your origin feat.
These "standard" background choices have always exist as guidelines or to help newer players
Read the side-bar in the new PHB about adjusting backgrounds from older books, and then read the "Customizing a Background" section of P. 125 of the 2014 PHB.
Custom backgrounds have always been RAW (just nobody cared because they weren't mechanically relevant aside from a couple of skill selections), and so the new book gives guidance on RAW backgrounds by referencing the old book.
The way it's presented in the new book looks like it's there to not overwhelm new players with choices.
I still think there is a middle ground that was leaped over. How about a +1 from your race, +1 from your background, and +1 from your class, each with 2 options and a general rule of no +3.
So this is a non issue, and I'll explain a couple reasons why:
1: That Tasha's rule was already an optional one, and nothing about this book prevents you from using that opinional rule. Even if this is an optional rule its literally the same as the system you're saying is better.
2. Fifth Edition Backrounds were already examples, not gospel. If you read the rules for backgrounds in the 2014 PHB(yes 2014), you'll see that. These are functionally the same because they want you to work with your DM DIRECTLY(like you said in this video)
3. Not a lot of people are talking about this, because its legitimately not a problem that exists.
This is borderline ragebait until we get to see whats actually written in the book, but even if the "worst case scenario" your describing is true, it's pretty easy to fix.
Thank you for being the voice of logic.
Carry on.
1 Okay, so because it is optional, your GM might not approve it. What if they don't have that book?
2 That's nice and all but doesn't change the fact I've never seen a DM change anything large about a background, nor do I see any guidence on what is okay or not as a background in the PHB, we need to keep new people in mind who don't understand D&D and don't know how much they can change.
3 strawman argument, a lot of people lost faith in WotC and most of those have no video's on the subject because they stopped caring about the company and are either looking at other systems or making their own OR making a video about another toppic since so much news is comming out
The only "ragebait" in here is you my man, you said it yourself these things could change, then act like it.
@@draakgast
What if they don't have that book?
😆
It's all free, bro.
@@travisdonaldstanley6420 LOL, they're giving books away or what 🤣🤣🤣 weird since it still costs money to buy it on d&d beyond 🤔.
But nope a quick google shows no results for free books (unless you mean the high seas)
But I'd argue that Arya rejected the Noble background and wouldn't have that as her background. And it could be said that based on her age that her background didn't really become evident until after her father's death and when she began having to survive on her own. I'd give her the urchin or criminal background because those are the skills she used to survive.
Honestly, they should just let players choose whatever bonus they want like in Tasha's. I don't know why they felt the need to tie it to a specific aspect of character creation again.
So that the choice of specie is not just a skin you put on to look cute .
I'm thinking this might just be so each player has to have a digital copy of the DMG to do custom backgrounds in the WotC/Hasbro virtual tabletop. It could literally be that simple and dumb of a reason.
You only need one player to have the book on dndbeyond for all players to have access to it
Arya doesnt make sense to you because you incorrectly believe shes a noble background.....shes 8 years old when the story starts....she was out of type for a noble at that point, and basically from the start of the story onward lives as an urchin background. Youre watching her formative years in the show. Basically she has a noble birthright, but shes an urchin.
I had the same thought
Yeah too many people assoiate certain backgrounds with birth when in reality they are about one's formative years which is why ability scores being based on backgrounds doe make sense to a degree, however certain ability scores also make sense to be based on species (STR for an Orc, CON for a Dwarf, WIS for an Elf, etc.)
Yeah this guy (in the video) doesn't get Arya.
Background is about your life, not your birth, totally.
Thank you for covering this.
I agree with you they are kinda just remaking the same problems, they would have to go extremely abstract (and lose the compatibility) to really get away from it.
Back when I ran a DnD 5e campaign, my players wanted to be 'heros' so i gave them an extra feat, and tweaked a class little but then upscaling the enemies.
Half the time I just double enemy HP or something to make it feel like a challenge they were beating. 🤣
Important Note, the playtest had the option to build your own background, which I'm not sure isn't still in the player's handbook, which would eliminate all the problems because you get to decide your ability scores in the build your own background. I think backgrounds also have 3 options for ability score backgrounds. I'd imagine largely if you are playing a wizard you wouldn't really want a background for Fighting because the ability scores and feat isn't going to do you any good.
The thing I find odd about backgrounds is they give us 16, but there are 20 possible combinations of three ability scores. Why not just give us all 20 so we can have an example of each? I have to wonder if Crawford intended custom backgrounds as a default option in the new edition and the suits told him no because of how some of those out of control builds affected organized play, which I know should not be a factor in a perfect world.
Interesting, I didn't do the math on that, but I probably should have.
I think most likely it was deemed too complex, or possibly, the UA feedback pushed against the custom backgrounds as the default. There are still a lot of Dungeon Masters that want their players to have more restricted options, or have a narrow view of which options should be available to players.
If I had to guess it is because you can really only select two of the three (or is +1 to all 3 an option?). There are some combinations that probably don't make sense. Like do you really Need Strength, Dex, and Int as options? I would also say maybe there are only 16 1st level feats? Either way I assume the missing options wouldn't be used that much.
@@bradleyhurley6755That would make sense, but; 1) im pretty sure they explicitly talk about having feats that repeat (maybe im missremembering) and 2) no one needs 2 of the 3 mental stats and they have shown a background with all 3
@@xadielplasencia3674 okay fair. I really can't keep track. I wish they would just have everything in one spot. I can not keep up with all the creators who get sneak peaks but don't really do a great job of them or can't show stuff that probably is essential.
theatre kids want to be the main character, and really dont care about balance playing
I think even if an orc was raised as a salad-eating choir boy, he should be able to fly into a murderous rage and throw clerics through stained glass.
Always thought of Ability Scores as "what you are" not "what you do". Meaning, if nature gave you 18 Strength might be easier to become a Barbarian, but not the other way around.
Nobody in life get 18 Str because of "Barbarian Training".
I look at it like ASI almost. Through any class progression you could get to 18 strength, so it is not only what you are.
Actually, a wizard probably want criminal to get alert, as his secondary abilities to increase are either DEX and CON anyway. Get ready to hear about how all wizard characters where raised as criminals.
I don't have a problem with rogue being mostly criminals, and bard and warlock being mostly entertainers and merchants. Clerics and druids are really encouraged to go sage, which is not that terrible.
So STR based fighters will usually be farmers, while DEX based fighters will usually be criminals, which is a little strange (though both could be entertainers in some cases if he party lack someone with the musician feat), as savage attacker is just a weaker feat than alert or tough so soldier is just a worse option.
So...build your own background with your DM, as Jerremy said.
I think the problem is "why"? All rules in DnD are technically optional. If the GM doesn't want it, they can change it but there is an assumption that, as a rule of thumb, the base rules are assured. There's a 99% chance that the GM won't ban the soldier background, there's an 80% chance the noble background won't be banned but DMG optional rules to build your own background will have a significantly lower rate of being accepted on the GM's part. So the question comes back to "why lock things so firmly?" It's certainly not because the origin backgrounds are balanced.
So... at 9:30... He has the sage background? "Comes from arich enough family to afford a proper education ". Don't see a problem
I think it makes sense to have classes sorta tied to certain backgrounds. I mean if I were a cleric I'd most like be working on a church or temple or something. And as a fighter I'd most likely start out as a soldier. And so on. Makes a little more sense than having certain species be better at certain classes cause I'm sure those species would have some variation of at least most of the classes in their society. There will always be exceptions of course.
Also, considering that there aren't a lot of different backgrounds - each background automatically coming with a specific feat means you will have each of these feats present a lot - every acolyte can now cast, every sage can now cast, every (i don't know) street urchin is now a brawler, etc. The idea of such broad RPGs like D&D is that every figure is unique in their own way. Such changes (and others I already know about) make things samey and repetitive.
In a game where you can literally do whatever you want, they fumble at character creation 🤦🏾 I will probably still use 5e custom background rules until they improve this, but I might mess around with some of these options too. It baffles me that with all the time constraints Wotc had to publish this book, they got lost in the weeds of a game element that needed little to no adjustment.
Setting aside the quirkiness of descending AC, Moldvay and 2nd edition are near perfect versions of the game and no new editions were needed. You can't milk gamers for more money that way, though. I guess we should all update our Monopoly sets every few years too? Old school for life, baby.
@@rayortiz3132nd edition is abismal for new players
I’m pretty sure they said there’s a section at the end with instructions on building your own background so I don’t really see an issue with saying instead of strength I want a dex bonus
Also with your examples you wouldn’t have to choose noble as a background for Ariya you could chosen urchin etc. by basing it off a more recent period in her life when she’s wandering after Ned’s killed.
I see why they’ve gone for a halfway house option and provided more choice but still limited the options. It is a bit odd to say because I was a scholar who spent years sat in a library reading I now have a +2 to strength
If I were to run the new version I would tell my players to pick a background from 2014 book. apply the +2 ,+1 wherever they want and done :P
Back in Gygax AD&D, it wasn't like picking a race usually modified your character (besides things like dark or low light vision). How it worked was that first you rolled up your stats and then you looked on the races and choose 1 within the parameters you rolled. Sure, there were racial and stat limits of some classes but your roll basically decided what character you would be playing (back then we usually rolled a single time and no rerolls so Pally's and worse, bards were rare).
You could see it as the game forcing you to play certain classes, or you could see it as you getting to try something different most times you made a new character.
Far too many players tend to pick basically the sane character every time they make a new character if they get total freedom which actually can get tiring for everyone after a few campaigns.
I don't think focusing on the stats that you roll, race or background is better or worse but I admit I rather have the characters to roll for their background unless I as the DM want them from a specific background for a campaign. Having everyone start out as farmer from a small village who decides to be adventurers for instance could make a fun campaign.
I do think the DM should be able to limit the background depending on the campaign, the barbarian campaign where all the players pick noble background would be a bit silly.
DM would have to bribe half of the players to play a fighter nowadays. It was considered to be the default character class in AD&D. Many players want to be unique these days instead of essential to winning battles as a group. Later editions made the demanding limitations of other classes less demanding. Less risk is more reward. There is no reason to play a fighter unless for personal preference.
@@josephpurdy8390 Back in AD&D (particularly 1st ed) you needed that fighter (or 2 fighters) in the group to survive. Yeah, you could do with a pally instead but you kinda had to roll very high to even be able to make one.
Just hitting your opponent was a lot harder back then and for the first couple of levels, your wizard was pretty useless and needed to hide behind the fighter if you ever wanted him/her to survive.
That is not how D&D have worked for a long time and it is also way easier to make another class now. Back in the day, we usually rolled 3D6 on the stats in order once and got stuck with whatever we rolled, some wussier DMs let you roll 3 different sets and choose the one you liked. No re-rolls or point based systems there.
It was a different time and people played way more because they wanted to be challenged then today.
There are a few issues with what was said in this video, so with peace and love I'm just gonna go into some of the things said and why I believe they're not really that big of a deal.
1. The PHB states at the beginning that all of the rules in the book are up the DMs discretion. Even if it didn't, there's nothing stopping you from asking your DM to let you swap STR with DEX for a Noble, I'm sure most will oblige.
2. The Custom Lineage rule isn't just removed now, you can still use it in place of the Background ASI. Nothing about this new book prevents you from doing that.
3. Them saying that creating a new background would be a new default happened during the UA phase. Every UA is prefaced by the idea that these are changes which are currently in flux and open to change. Sure he should've worded it better and they should have clarified more, but stuff said during development and prefaced by the knowledge that this isn't final result material should be taken with a massive pinch of salt.
Hey! So, I agree with everything you've said here.
But they're releasing a product, with a version of rules they've already fixed. And while GM discression can go a long way, not every GM and Every table is as forgiving or as experienced to know the bevy of options.
This book is "Backwards" compatible, but it also should function as a core ruleset on its own, in the same way the 2014 version did.
And you're right, UAs are not final. Nor should they be. But I still prefer the previous version, which is basically what you outline in your first option.
@@RookiesAndRulebooksI would argue the rules on lineages/backgrounds were NOT already fixed. In fact, I had to step in to stop one of my players abusing the custom lineage rules in Tasha's.
@@simonfernandes6809 let me guess: it involved Elven Accuracy.
I translated the Octopath Traveler TTRPG, and what I liked about the background stuff is that it only added like, 1 point to skill *checks,* rather than actual main stats. It's a very small enhancement, but it's just enough for even a Farmer wizard to be, say, burly enough to get a guy in a chokehold a teensy bit easier than the Scientist background wizard, while still be powerful enough magically to do some insane spell damage. Something extremely slight that it won't be a problem, and *don't tie it to anything that will be used in the battles.* That makes players feel that their characters are unique, but not in a way that makes them feel "worse" than another character of the same class.
The only difference is that OTRPG is a 2d6 based system, so +1 is a big enough enhancement to seem big with their skill checks. Since DND is a d20 based system, it can change it to be a +2 bonus in their backgrounds, and still have essentially the same thing without feeling like a player is stuck making "the correct background".
I agree with you. I wanted to do a way of mercy monk that came from a noble background. He wasn't interested in politics but chose to study this ancient fighting style. The noble background would not help this character at all. Then again, if he is choosing not to be an active ruler and let a brother rule instead, perhaps another background could be chosen since noble really doesn't fit his current role.
Call me Buddha …
All of these steps are disguising the fact that everyone has the standard array plus a bit more. Why not just boost the standard array?
I absolutely love the backgrounds being tied to your ability scores, its only a soft tie, especially given the variety of combos of the scores given.
Sure, its unlikely to see a sage barbarian - I think that makes sense - but you can still increase wisdom and con and make a unique character.
It makes you choice even more uncommon and surprising.
Edit: you actually make a fantastic argument FOR this system in trying to argue against it.
A wizard could easily pick sage, acolyte, or noble, alongside I’m sure many other choices. But at the same time, Sage fits a sorcerer quite well, or a warlock, or a paladin, or an artificer, or an eldritch knight, or countless other options.
There are 16 backgrounds iirc with directions on how to create a custom background being mentioned in the interviews with Crawford. I believe this will lead to some rather unique combinations. While I’m sure we’ll see a dozen soldier fighters, I’m rather excited that sage is actually a suboptimal choice for wizard. Its going to encourage people to branch out and those that don’t and continue to make their sage wizards are going to get an extra spell and cantrips.
This system really interests me for this reason alone. If I’m a bard that wants the healer feat, I can take the hermit background - a seemingly strange choice, but one that leads to new and exciting character concepts - why is this hermit now a roving performer?!
Edit 2: You have yet again made a great argument, I think its fantastic and clear that Bran is better represented by either something like the hermit background or perhaps acolyte or perhaps even wayfarer or guide. All of these are much better fits for him than noble, you know why?
For the exact reason that noble better fits all of the characters who actually grew up and had their formative years affected by being nobles.
Bran and Arya did not! Bran went on a grand odyssey and Arya became the greatest assassin in the lands.
Just because Bran starts and ends in some capacity near a throne does not a noble make - so we ask ourselves, what are his formative years spent doing? Traveling? Becoming wise? Learning? Honing how abilities?
And Arya? Is Arya spending her formative years being a noblewoman? No! She’s an urchin, clearly!
This system asks you what your character was doing BEFORE level 1, not what they would have done if the adventure never happened.
this whole "disaster" could have been avoided if they left the customize your background in the PHB where it was in 2014 and where it belongs.
now i see an even worse problem, i choose what class i want to play
then i have to look up the backgrounds and check which combination of stats + feat fits my character
after that i throw all the background story i had in mind into the garbage can ( most of the time ) and have to rethink what the character was doing before
it's very likely i will end up with not matching stas and the feat the background grants and i will have to think do i run with stats that don't fit or a background that don't fits
next i will be settled with 2 skills which might be duplicates of the ones i choose as my class skills, in 2014 no problem i could swap the duplicate, oh lets just do that .... args i can't because that would mean i have to modify the background which is in the dmg
every character will be pigeonholed into the background provided by the book, so you don't get to play the character you had in your mind, but will need to play a character the rules forces you too ....
also the feats you can choose as your background feat are very limited and also vary alot on what they do provide you with.
going by UA here : MI might provide you with a nice bonus under certain circumstances ( e.g. Wizard, sorcerer MI for a hybrid or priest class to gain access to the shield spell )
Now to get the MI : Arcane you need to have a culthist background, sounds "good" for a Paladin of Tyr to be a former culthist of a demon or devil doesn't it ?
now lets see as skill thats Religion (duplicate ) and Arcane ( for a paladin pretty useless )
language : abyssal .... ( no comment )
tool : disguise kit ( for this character also completly useless)
stats : int & chr ( depends on what is presented as 3rd in the new phb, otherwise your +1 is useless)
Midway through 5.5s life, they'll change to 4e, and it'll be skills and abilities are completely disassociated with background, race, or class.
All you'll need is prerequisite stats to pluck abilities from anywhere.
"Be what you want to be,"
Everyone will choose the same optimized options
Just using the 2014 background, giving everyone and the Tasha's species. And then giving everyone a free Origin feat.
Well they want to give importance to the backgrounds, so I think they make sense... This sentence is not about making an optimazed character or class character, in sure they added some personalized background option as they did in 2014 even if people didn't use that rule often, the backgrounds are meant to be ready-to-go suggestions but they can always be revised... That's the cool thing about this rules, they let you chose something fast but if you want you can custom them
I can also see how this creates a system where every fighter has the same feat because they’re all noble or something because that’s optimal. And so there is less variety through that. I can see how it makes more sense that ability score increases being connected to what you did in your life (aka backgrounds) but it’s just more fun to have the freedom of a build your own option.
Bring back weapon speed, weapon length, "to hit" armor type, and the weapon space requirement. Weapons have been massively simplified since AD&D.
My two cents… the worst RPG system is one without mechanics. One without theme. One without tropes.
You never let players make a completely custom character. (Not never, but most the time.)
Now I want to make a well thought out video… 🤔
I think I agree with the intent behind that statement.
But I also think that holds much more true for a system that is tied more strongly to a specific setting. I.e. Shadowrun, Edge of the Empire, Numenera.
As it stands, D&D is split between 4-ish core settings (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk) with 2 sort of in-between settings (Spelljammer & Planescape).
The system is slowly being designed as a generic catch-all, for better or worse. Because of this, the core needs to do a lot of things in a generic way, with restrictions put on by setting per the GM.
But yeah, I largely agree. DM/GM oversight is sort of key to customization.
@@RookiesAndRulebooks I make the Statement from the #1 rule of game design. “Game needs to be fun to play.”
I have no issue with DnD becoming generic. But it will lose market to games that are focused. I don’t think that’s good or bad. I don’t really care what happens to Wotc. 😀
I think about GMs and players having a great time RPing. What I think is lost on many gamers is that the “boundaries” the game mechanics are critical to fun.
Certainly some players are so into RP that they don’t need dice and can just free form play. But most people aren’t that.
The millions of DnD videos online are about character and mechanics. People LOVE those parts of the game. The ways you can assemble species, occupation and backstory are massive. It’s the fun of the game you can do alone, before the game. The part of the game you can play without playing.
FYI - I’m not arguing with you. I love your video and takes. I fully agree with you.
@homebrewfeverdreams I dont think you are at all. I think you bring up a really good point.
I've certainly felt the pull as a Player towards more defined systems and stylized systems recently.
As a GM, I have always appreciated the openness of D&D for the ability to hone it's broad options to specifics for world building & theme.
But also, for a system that is the most conductive to in-store play, the Adventures League, and people joining games without full knowledge of table attitudes, I just worry about locking options behind a second book that should be (and were in 2014) standard options.
I think one plausible and quite simple solution is to give one more choice of attribute, skill and origin feat for each background. But custom backgrounds from UA were just perfect
Is the option to customize your background in the character origins UA not in the new PHB?
Sadly it won't be. It's been moved to the DMG per Jeremy in the "Origins" video.
I dig your example of the farmer wizard!
Honestly im already thinking about modifications to the backgrounds to give depth and flavor such as noble with the family history having its roots in organized crime. Swap strength for dex and swap a skill proficiency to something appropriate. Simple just give flavor to the backgrounds so they remain similar, but not always the same between two characters
Like the case for Arya. Take from urchin and take from noble.
It’s funny everyone’s chasing their tails trying to homebrew around this, when the answer is so simple.
Just add the primary ability score for a class to alternatively be selected by the background ability score bonus.
This represents time the character had as that particular class to train up to now, which is in a way part of their background, just their more recent background.
easier would be to let players put the ability boosts to any ability score they want.
I liked Tasha's customization, just let people custom-build their character.
I mean, you can also just ignore the flavor of the backgrounds
I understand they just moved the issue around; instead of limiting species choices, they're limiting background choices for optimal builds.
But if they just allowed players to put those +2, +1 bonuses to any ability scores (whether from background, lineage, or class), then it's the equivalent of just giving extra points to divide using point buy. i.e. the choice of +1/+2 becomes illusory. 🤷
At any rate, DMs are still free to accomodate their players however they want. You want that +2 DEX bonus as a noble? Sure. Just take a -1 penalty in another score. You were so busy developping your dexterity-based skills growing up that you neglected your physical strength or intellectual studies.
Or just allow the +2 to be applied to any ability score. Whatever works for the group.
There's a 5E variant published by ENWorld called "Level Up (Advanced 5E)", and they did a LOT of this stuff a couple years ago. They changed terminology, going with "heritage" instead of "race". Your heritage determines strictly physical traits, like darkvision and movement speed, but your Culture determines learned abilities -- want to play a dwarf raised by elves? Take the dwarf heritage, and the wood elf culture (f'rinstance). Your background determines your ability bonus points, with one +1 being set, and a second +1 open to wherever you want. (Yes, you get 1 fewer stat point. The skill system makes up for this by giving out Expertise Dice, adding a d4 -- or bigger -- to specific uses of skills.)
Plus, A5E gives you a way to play with the 5E rules without giving WotC a dime. Given their shenanigans over the past couple years, it's hard to justify giving them any more money.
I will still give WotC some of my dime. I don't think the designers and artists are responsible for the actions of their superiors.
BUT, I do own A5e, just haven't had a good chance to sit down and pour through it yet. I think there's a lot of rules there that I do like.
It sounds like A5e is using a the Pathfinder Ancestry/Heritage/Background system, or something very similar. I swapped to Pathfinder during the OGL crisis last year. I really dug that system, but I still love 5e as well.
Short answer. They can publish more backgrounds and could even introduce new origin feats this way.
With only 16 backgrounds there is no way they got every magic initiate option in there (I bet we'll see Wizard, Cleric, and Druid) and we know they doubled up Alert and Skilled. I don't think there is any more room to double up after that which means feats like Lucky and Tough will be tied to one background.
I'm curious if lightly armored made it in as an origin feat because it didn't appear in the same UA document as the others but was availbe at level one.
yeah idk why they didnt keep the UA. list bunch of backgrounds with suggested stats and feats but make the custom background the default.
The best way of doing this was Tahsas where you can just put a +2 and +1 wherever, or three +1's. Idk why they changed that and tied it to backgrounds, and on my table I will absolutely ignore that change xd.
Arguably Bran and Arya would have been too young as nobles to be player characters and wouldn’t have their backgrounds until later. Bran would probably be a hermit I guess. He also gained his wisdom from the becoming the 3 eyed raven. Arya would most likely be an urchin. I get the point you are going for but those two didn’t become their “classes” until they left winterfell. The other three are sound.
You could even argue, that John Snow would be trained rather as a leader of soldiers =Soldiers Background, than as the politician and Diplomat that is the Noble Background.
I prefer the "build your own background", especially with the hybridizing of species/races. I don't typically do the min-max thing, going for thematic and fun, creative characters to play instead.
I have no issue with the concept of the background driving these stats, feat and proficiencies; however it was only after i put them all into a spreadsheet I realised how restrictive they became. Most classes now have a MAXIMUM of ONE choice that is even vaguely optimal/and thematic. It's insanely badly implemented.
The real issue is they added so many more mechanics solely to keep you from noticing that they destroyed the difference in Races. The limitations of each race is what made the unique styles fun. If u wanna min max for a ttrpg good for u. We had the ability to create unique characters only limited by ur imagination. It was much more realistic. In life if u excell in a field u are naturally going to lack in others. Thats what made it fun. Limitations are what makes epic moments of over coming them fun and special. This all inclusivewave has went n destroyed the best part about fantasy ttrpgs. The realism.
No one wants to play a ttrpg that reminds them of thier actual life BUT even magic and was incredibly fun because of the basis in realism. A fireball doing massive damage was amazing to pull off. But having no ability or feat restriction based of race is like a dm saying oh 'well u did cast fireball BUT the fire doesnt hurt because it might offend other people, whom arent part of ur game or life, who are afraid of fire.
Its gone to a point where ur race is nothing more than a skin and everyone's characters are all overpowered heros and no adversity is present. U need to struggle to enjoy the game otherwise lvling up means nothing more than stroking ur fantasy ego in a world full of paper targets.
I am so tired of the argument of "Abilities Scores shouldnt be tied to race/background". a +2 bonus is literally a 5% difference, it won't kill you to play an elf barbarian or any other character against trope. If you want to play against trope, then play with the consequences.
If you need really high stats to be successful in a class, you do not know how to play it well. Anyone with a Dex of 13+ can be a competent Swashbuckler. Take the +1 Str and +2 Cha, and be a noble. You'll be fine.
I think something that is missing from Ability score bonuses in races is that it was also flavour and mechanically represented the lore. Like, oh Elves are dextris because of there more slim frame, but High elves gain a bonus too Intelligence not cause they are "born smarter" but because their culture valued educational and academics more, and wood elves get Wisdom because they are a culture of hunters and druids. And literally every race has this, the plus 2 bonus his related to their physical body and there plus 1 is tide to their culture.
I hate how people just ignored this, kinda dismissing the effect of your culture and heritage has on your life.
Exactly! The traditional method is by far the best and the one which makes more sense.
That is one of the main points for why they have changed it so if you are a high elf that grew up around humans you might not have the +1 int and if you are a human that grew up with high elfs you can now take the scollar back ground showing that you grew up with elf where learning is important for there culture get +1 int and magic initive wizard. So to show culture is important the new system is better.
@@esbenskovrasmussen9066 yeah, and that's why the rule in Tasha was great too. Allowing you to change states around to better fit your character.
Like, instead of saying hey these are the states, you give a suggust and support it with the lore. Cause your job does not affect you at all. I did heavy construction work for years, and it never made me stronger. I was good at my job cause I was born as a 6 foot 4 inch shit brick house of a man.
Just stumbled across your channel. Great video. Informative and engaging. I like your energy.
Saying ability scores shouldn't be associated with species is wrong. First, they ARE "races". Species can't have offspring together so "custom lineages" wouldn't be possible. Saying that makes it possible for a halfling to be as strong as an orc. That's like saying a human can be as strong as a gorilla. Having it associated with background is ok but doesn't fix it either because the world's strongest man isn't stronger than a gorilla either. Babies can't crawl for 6 months but a foal can trot within hours of birth.
And where does it stop? What about the other racial traits? How long before a human has tusks, lives 1500 yrs and can talk to fish?
It is perfectly ok to have classes that a race is good at. There was nothing wrong with the system before Tasha's CoE. People forget that rolling for stats, point buy and standard array are what accounts for individual diversity. When you put that 15 in STR you are saying that your character spent their formative years doing rigorous physical labor or lifting weights etc.
A better fix would have been for point buy to be 23 and get +2 in your class's primary ability and +1 where you choose, ALONG WITH racial bonuses.
Cattle and horses can both pull wagons but a cow will never be faster than a horse and the horse will probably not be stronger than the cow.
There is a bit of a problem with your analogies though; none of the races in D&D demonstrate such a wide gap in abilities as humans and gorillas. Even when these bonuses did apply to the races, they were a difference at most of 2, something that can just as easily be explained by orcs having a warlike culture, rather than just all orcs are innately stronger. Either an average orc has a strength of 12, which is small enough of a factor that it's not really that important to keep (mathematically it's only 5% or 10% stronger, depending on if you're measuring lifting capacity or rate of success), or we were already dealing with atypical characters for game balance's sake.
Plus no matter what race you play, you also share the same peaks, a max of 20 (with a few rare exceptions pushing it beyond like the Barbarian's lv 20 feature). The peak scores being the same imo send a much stronger message than a mere +2 bonus here or there, since as you know a gorilla's max strength is lot stronger than a human can ever hope to obtain. Since they're the same though, the implication is that all races are actually very similar in terms of all abilities.
(there are also cases of different species producing offspring, it's rare but it happens. But I prefer the term race anyway.)
@@WolforNuva if that 5 or 10% isn't important to you, then don't take the bonus at all. Ever. That's the worst argument I've ever heard.
I used human and gorilla because that's the kind of difference between gnomes and orcs. An orc would have more muscle in their thigh than a gnome would have in their whole body. Do you really think that a gnome would be able to lift as much as an orc, literally 5-10 times his size? How about a human genius having more knowledge than an average elf who can study everything that human can in his entire lifetime before she begins to remember her past lives, becoming an adult and an adventurer?
The attribute cap is specifically for game balance. Personally I think it's as dumb as auto fails and auto success. The only cap a player should have is the amount of advancements they commit to a specific attribute. If you want to play an orc fighter, roll an 18 and assign it to STR, then put all (5?) of your ASIs in STR, then I think you should absolutely be able to have a STR of 30. And yes because humans are smaller than orcs (probably that same 5 - 10%), while still being Medium creatures, they would have a 28. I also think humans should NOT get ANY bonuses since they are the baseline that the other races are being compared to. They are our only familiar reference after all.
@@stevengrass6800 If the bonus for being an Orc over any other race is a 10% difference, then it's just not a big deal if it gets removed.
We're also dealing with a system where a gorilla (Ape monster block) has 16 strength, equal to the typical knight. We're in a fantasy land, if humans can so easily catch up to Apes and even more powerful creatures, then it's not unusual for halflings and orcs to catch up in strength.
That said, Orcs actually get a feature to double their carrying capacity, so you'd need a 20 str Gnome to match what a 10 str Orc can carry, isn't that the problem solved?
I brought up the 20 cap because I see racial bonuses argued over constantly, but I never see anyone complain that there's an equal cap for all races (yes it's game balance, but so are the racial bonuses being replaced with background bonuses). I guess I just find it hypocritical that people so loudly complain about one and only mention the other when I point out that it's just as equal a problem to the verisimilitude.
I am actually not very fond of 5e myself. I'm not arguing to defend the system (I currently prefer Pathfinder which does have both racial and background bonuses, or GURPS which is whatever the fuck the GM says), just I find this a weird hill to die on. There are much bigger issues in 5e than removing racial bonuses, especially when 5e opened the gate with a watered down version of them (no racial stat penalties), and your background does still make just as much sense for where you get your stats from - or at least where you will get a +2 or +1 from, if racial bonuses went as high as +6 or something normally, and that was being removed, I'd probably be with you.
Great coverage. I noticed you have some inconsistent audio. My hot-take suggestion is to even out all your audio (whatever you use for editor should have a way to do this), then add basic compression and, if you have a master function add some subtle clarity. No disrespect, just trying to help a follow creator.
What's the difference between two "B/X" fighters? It's the players heroic choices not the fighter already being a "Hero".
i dont mind the background system all too much.
but if we're tlaking wish fulfillment,
removing the ability to attack with two longswords in each hand is a direct middlefinger to mine.
DnD players making "builds" instead of characters is where the brain rot begins
as a player, i just say split the ability score between race and background but then it just create the same problem as to min/max as before so just remove those and buff up the point score or whatever.
those people complaint about that problem and yet i never saw or hear of a scrany orc or goliat wizard or a giant gnome or hafling barbarian before.
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this to be honest. Overall I really like most of the changes in the new PHB, but they really took a massive step back with the backgrounds. In the campaign that my friends and I are playing right now we made our characters using the unearthed arcana custom backgrounds and everyone loved it for the imense flexability. Really scummy idea to put custom backgrounds in the DMG, HATE that. D&D is all about choice, let players CHOOSE.
Things like stats and the like should never be lick to story elements but for large things like race.
Agree, the locked in ability scores based on my background is trash. Let it just be generic scores wherever you want them and build our own backgrounds since we can't have "races" that are or are not good at anything in particular.. Orcs are literally equal strong as Halflings, or less so because the Halfling was a Noble and the Orc was a Scribe? It makes no sense.
If it's an optional rule in the book than it's offical, read the book, there is no reason why you can't find it online if you can't get one , things in the book are guides to make jumping in easier, optinal rules are often for more complex players.
I like to make characters first, background second, and backstory third. For example, I made a noble elven warlock, with a sage background. At that point is when I make a backstory.
Interesting. I usually go for background story first and things develop from there.
@@doomhippie6673 I guess it is each their own.
Character origins sucks.. how does a Noble and scribe have the same skeleton. They should’ve given more options for feats you can choose is just one small thing they looked over (among many) Example; guards can choose one from alert, observant, or tavern brawler. A criminal should be alert, skilled or skulker etc locking down 1 feat that overlaps a few times is cheap. They spent more time worrying about making the book pretty, and inclusive they promised this would make more unique characters and it really made it worse.
As both DM and player, ever since Tasha's challenged the idea of where ability score improvements come from, I've treated it as somewhat malleable. A lot of the stat blocks and things like that are suggestions all the way around. It's to help people spark their creativity or to balance certain things out. If they followed a formula to make a background or a subclass, we could also do the same thing if we took the time to put it together and balance it out.
That said, I don't know if this was recorded before the Druid was discussed on the official channel, but I got attached to that part of your House Stark example. Jeremy mentioned that in this new PHB, there will be a branching path option for a Druid that is more melee and less dirt wizard. That feels like pretty strong wish fulfillment to me. There's a chance that we should be considering the book as a whole once its all said and done rather than assessing each piece separate from the rest of its parts in addition to using the preconstructed backgrounds as options that we're more than welcome to tweak if something RAW isn't satisfying our builds.
I also understand that there are some players out there who have never owned a DMG and they don't have to own the new one either, but they've also been referring to the entire core rulebook set as a collection of tomes that are also parts of a bigger whole. They are thousands of pages written and illustrated with each other in mind. Not every person needs all three, but all three coexist as a single unit. Knowing the contents or intentions offered within each one wouldn't be a bad idea and I'd imagine that's what some of the videos they've been dropping are for. Giving the details to promote the material, but also to let people know what they might want to know what the book is capable of - or what to inquire of someone with access to the book.
Players also want the background to matter. A wizard farmer should be overcoming their lack of education. If you can have the same Int as a farmer as you can as a Sage, the background becomes just backstory, with no mechanical impact.
Also the same thing can be said for the origin feats. Why limit what background gets what feat, doesn't it make it so there is a "correct" background for every class?
I'm using the system on a game I'm starting now, and I'll create customized a background for each player according to their character history. More work for the DM, but it's fun to jam with the player as they flesh out their character. I think there's nothing impeding anyone from doing this, and the rules are straightforward: give the player a feat, a couple skills, a tool, a language and some social advantage in a particular group, then let them decide which scores make sense. Done!
Honestly I think the rules will be there in a simplified form, and expanded in the DMG. It doesn't make sense to force players to use static backgrounds
This is the problem with class based systems like DnD and it always will be. Instead of chosing whatever skills, attributes and proficiencies you want to based on experience points as a resource you will always have to rely on premade stuff or homebrew. Homebrewing will make the system incompatible with other groups, so you might not want to use that path. In short: I prefer experience points as a resource for everything over any other system. I saw that done best in The Dark Eye 5.0. In that system you can calculate your character at any point in time by the experience points gained and the abilities you have. You could even go so far and re-skill some time later just by adding the experience points from skills you lower to your pool and subtracting the experience points from the pool of free experience points when you add new skills or get better in one. This is quite helpful when you have a group of new players, because more often than not new players are not as deep in the game mechanics and it makes the game for them less frustrating.
Wotc- "we have taken ability scores away from races/species. We wanted ppl to be able to play any race/species regardless of stats. So we moved them (almost a copy paste) to your backgrounds taking away ur customizability that we said we wanted to give u originally... see we fixed it!!!"
Me- "so floating stats are gone... cool, cool, cool... (not cool)"
i know its fantasy but its a bit friggin silly a 3ft skinny gnome could be stronger than a 6ft beefy orc
Split the difference between species and background. Luxodons are big and strong. But give your lux rouge dex too.
I thought the idea to put some ability scores on backgrounds a good idea, as it makes sense in a narrative way; however the cost of removing ability scores from races, yeah no, does not.
The defense that it is for balancing reasons, well the obvious answer is no. 100% is not, i just need to look at the utterly stupid skill split in 5e. After splitting social skills into three offensive and one defensive skill, nobody can tell me anything is done for balancing reason. I could rant about the skill system for hours.
The minor rework of other things made magic even more common place in the 2024 ruleset than in the 2014 ruleset, which is quite a detriment in case you want to run a low magic world, meaning you now need to spend more time homebrewing. 2014 was already not good for that, 2024 is worse, while it streamlines it removes a lot of the flexibility you had.
I'm good with ability points being tied to background. the optimal time being in the dmg. No one but he dm willl need to buy the dmg, and i imagine it will be simple to make new ones. Just in this case, the dm has the ability to determine whether the custom background fits the campaign. I think this video is an overreaction, but to be fair, we won't know until we get the new phb and give it a tryout.
Character should just have 2 "background" bonus, one should be from how the character was raised, their cultural heritage if you will, while the other should be more specific to the character such as their initial career or in other words, what they would have done if they didn't become an adventurer (street urchin, noble, sage, etc...). This would also lead to a rework of racial features since a lot of races have cultural bonus as racial features such as elf and dwarf that have weapon training.
If they care about the ASI not conflicting with the classes, they should just add the ASI to the character class and be done with it.
They need to take more rules away and make creation more flexible, as opposed to piling on rules on top of every concept ever thought of. This creates the illusion of freedom, when in reality they’re actually restrictions.
The whole book has abandoned character concept. The weapon rules completely shut out most iconic weapon combos. Paired long swords or battle axes aren't even possible. Paired Scimitars is possible but gimped since your main hand weapon will have no effective mastery as Nick doesn't do anything. Paired short swords won't have Nick. So many characters are just nonsensical now. Scimitar and shield, a staple of desert fantasy, is useless with no effective mastery.
At least it's easy to house rule custom backgrounds. I have no idea how I am going to house rule these weapon rules.
I love Tasha's book, but this free choice on ability bonus is plain stupid. The new background options are slightly better, but in the end the best thing is still the traditional method. Is the one that makes more sense and translates better the lore of the game.
Although I agree with your overall comments on this issue.
I will make the point in your game of thrones example that just because the Starks were born into nobility and that played a huge party in that book/movie. There is no reason to say that their background is tied to “birth”… Arya’s background could easily be criminal or urchin from her time In braavos. Bran’s could be hermit, acolyte or even outlander from the trip up to the three eyed raven. My point is I don’t think you have to set your background with the family you were born into (and it’s probably later in their lifetimes that matter more say early teen years - and maybe that is why Robb, Jon and Sansa character fit noble reasonably well).
That being said your point is well taken that if the feat isn’t flexible and the stats are particularly rigid - it does take away from customization and flavor!
Final comment is does a slightly or even moderate suboptimal choice in background really cause your group to suffer? Probably not, there are so many other places you make choices if you get those right it probably doesn’t matter (or you get them wrong and those choices make it worse). Honestly, DMs should be able to adjust difficulty for their players, what is hard is a mixed group w half highly optimized and half not optimized at all and that leads to “main characters” and “sidekicks” but even that can work depending on the table it’s just not ideal.
Last video i saw, I'm sure it was said that the book gives clear instructions on how to build a custom background if you want to. Don't get the problem, this being the case.
Couple people mentioned that it's a problem having to talk to your DM about it but:
A) why wouldn't you be working with your DM at every step of creation anyway to make sure it fits with the world, even with standard choices- "Actually being a noble in this world would be a biy odd as there was recently a revolution in which all nobility was beheaded or imprisoned." is a valid comment for a DM to make about even a standard background.
B) if you have a DM that you feel won't give fair consideration to your ideas for a custom background, get a new DM cos he's an arse.
I hate Tasha's, not that they added an optional rule that you could just change out the stats on races if you wanted to power game but that they removed the stats from the races as a whole, the remade and new races all are now completely blank slates, they even removed flavor things like how long they live and things. Some people want the option to put the stats bonuses wherever they want, I want the option not to do that, if I play an Orc wizard I will be physically stronger than other wizards, that can be very fun, sure I could chose to put my stats unoptimally if the race is a blank slate but nobody will do that.
I played a tiefling rogue and charisma and dex was my top highest scores, this made me play in to that, also that the rest of the party was 2 warlocks and a paladin meant that we were a high charisma party and that was very fun.
Because WOTC forced this change I will most likely not allow the put your stats anywhere and the remade races at my table as a protest, good thing the people I play with are not the biggest fans of these changes either. I will most likely keep away from this new edition 5.5e, 6e or 1e or whatever they are calling it, if I tire of 5e there are other systems.
I think your assertion that “most players” will be out off by building something sub optimal is an overestimation. It’s been my experience that optimizers are a vocal subset rather than a majority.
Also, you don’t have to choose any of the premade backgrounds, you can always make a custom background with custom ability increases and feats. That’s always been and option in 5e and continues to be. And that’s not homebrew because it’s baked into the rules. So you’re there really isn’t a reason to pick a sub-optimal choice if you don’t want to.
I think they just should let you put the points where you want them. Baldurs gate 3 did a good Job with it.
So build your own background isn't in the PHB?
Only take four? Damn good!
Still a lot to learn on my end, and a lot to improve. But it's certainly been a lot of fun learning how to film and edit these videos.
I think that backgrounds were a terrible idea to begin with.
There are many professions that people in a fantasy world can have. Backgrounds can never have all those options. Whole D&D 5 made building your own background rather easy, that was a patch to an unnecessary problem - and with the origin feats, that just became a bit harder. What feat do I give a former ratcatcher? For that matter, why does a zoologist learn wizard spells?
Those probably all are problems that can be solved without much hassle. I just don't think that backgrounds really add something.
D&D is not simulationist enough to make a lifepath system work. So why doesnt it treat background like traits, bonds and flaws? Or D&D could go the 20 questions route.
I mean... just customize it...? it might not say that in the PHB and instead in the DMG for some reason but people will do before hand, why would now be any different?