I remember I made a homebrew one. I was a farmer that became a wizard, but there was no farmer background in 5e (that I could find). Gave him proficiency in animal handling, wood carving tools, and vehicles (wagons). The feature was the ability to recognize most farm vegetation at glance and get to add proficiency to int/wis checks related to checking on them. Came up a couple times and never broke the game. Was cool. Edit: I never expected to see so many people agree with this and enjoy it. To those who agree and I spoke with, thank you! It has been lovely!
@@mousesteam7882 Thanks! Backgrounds are meant to be fun and balanced, a cool niche thing you can do. The criminal has a tie to the underground for a fence. The bounty hunter knows the secret paths of the city for chases. The soldier is experienced has knowledge of military tactics and sway with his country for his service. Cool stuff, nothing game breaking.
The first one made me think of a character that my friend made in a game I ran who is a personal favorite of mine. They were new to the game so they didn't know how to create a background for their character so we agreed on them just having amnesia, however they also chose charlatan as their background. So when their character woke up they looked in their bag to try and find an ID to identify themselves and found about 10 different ID's of wildly different people. It was so fun
I really love that the Abandoned background's feature accidentally contains an enormous nerf. Like you're supposed to be telekinetic, but as worded you need to pass a saving throw now to do LITERALLY ANYTHING. You turn your character into QWOP. It's kind of beautiful.
I like how Jacob shows he's not really seen any isekais. That background is pretty on point. Like 90% of isekais include "and you get a cheat ability which instantly makes you the strongest person in this new world".
Or he's used to traditional isekais. The newer ones seem to be more power fantasies than "let's explore this strange world and collect whatever macguffins to try to find a way back home".
The Isekai bit in the thumbnail is what made me watch. Instantly figured it could be an attempt to say something about the genre instead of a legit attempt to make something balanced and workable in 5e.
My personal favorite was one where they asked to just be average in the new world and so the god or whatever took the stats of a dragon and the stats of an ant and averaged them meaning this person was ridiculously op. Like it just had a dumb logic to it that I couldnt help but enjoy, feels like a DM abusing someone who used Wish in a poorly thought out way
To answer your question, yes! That is how isekai used to work, back in the older stories, now it's mostly just "random guy gets demi-god level powers and a harem".
I understand it, most isekai is dependent on a ROB of some kind to act as an explanation for universe hopping, and power fantasies are always popular. It's just weird how they started as a "your skills from your world make you OP here" and eventually turned into "I gave you godlike power for fun".
@@scragarThis is exactly the reason I love drifters so much. Yes the protagonists from our world are especially powerful, but it isn’t because of some weird latent ability, they are significant figures from our history who are geniuses in military strategy or at combat itself. They’re especially powerful not in spite of coming from our world but because they’re utilizing the skills in our much darker more violent world in a fantasy setting. A good watch if you haven’t seen it, made by the same people who did hellsing iirc.
Here's my totally epic homebrew background: Beholder Background. The character was a beholder, with a massive lair, piles of gold, and hoards of servants. One day, the beholder had a dream that they were a lesser species, like a human, and lost all of their awesome beholder abilities. Unfortunately, whatever a beholder dreams about becomes reality. Now they're just a normal person with the knowledge of a beholder. They have normal stats for their race.
The flaw is that the character also dreamed about a chicken waking them up before getting a good sleep. So now they cannot get a restful sleep dreaming about being a beholder again.
Exiled God actually sounds amazing as a character concept. If it was just a regular, non-overpowered background, it would be super cool to play a character who *used* to be omnipotent, but due to some circumstance is now trapped within the frail and powerless form of an ordinary mortal.
At one point I was actually making a character like that. I never finished them but the concept was they were a god that had been trapped and sealed inside a magical construct that was designed by several other gods. The construct had the ability to take on the traits of any race and class (only one at a time and no switching between them). Basically during character creation you would make a character select a class like normal and then the construct would become that. The construct could be destroyed (death) by design but it would reconstitute at a later point. The idea behind that was that the god would be subjected to dying over and over across thousands of years but never truly be free. I never decided whether I wanted that to be a dice on death or if I wanted it to be tied to character power and the trapped god regaining some power and thus being able to influence things in small ways. My main goal was to make it fun but not have it be overpowered. Definitely going to have to go back and finish this at some point.
maybe mix that with the who am i guy but im not sure how good of an idea that is at the very least it would sort of maybe possibly explain the amount of proficiencies that guy has
I like how a lot of these try to apply actual mechanics to backgrounds when like, the point of a background's feature is to give you an incredibly niche roleplay edge. Like sailors can easily secure passage by a boat, outlanders can find food and water without issue if it's around, and archaeologists can instantly ascertain who/when/why old ruins were originally built.
I can see how it'd make sense though to add more actual mechanics. For instance, a guy that was a farmer would be more likely to have a higher strength stat than a born noble, though the noble would have some natural charisma from osmosis if nothing else. And so it would make sense for a background to give you additional base stats along with skill and tool proficiencies. Also, depending on the background, having less edge case and more day to day effects to what you choose could make sense and help make the character stand out more from another of the same race and class.
@@marykateharmon In reality a noble would be better fed and if trained in armor since young age like was common for medieval nobles he would be on average stronger than the common farmer. Having bonus to stats linked backgrounds make no sense as your stat at level one should already rapresent that.
Outlander is actually one of the more broken backgrounds. There are spells that require spellslots to generate food and that background does it for free. Maybe mechanical wise not as broken like the new spelljammer backgrounds which grant you a feat but still very strong compared to the other ones.
@hamzamotara4304 I just whipp my hair back in slow motion and the mindflayer will slow down their incantation/thought in awe long enough for 6 seconds to pass.
What’s funny about the Exiled God background is that any character (with at least enough strength to hold the weight of a greatsword) can already hold a greatsword in one hand, RAW. You only need to hold it with two hands to make an attack with it. So as it is written, that part of the feature changes absolutely nothing.
I would allow an attack with disadvantage as an improvised weapon. So only a d4 of damage, no proficiency bonus (unless proficient with improvised weapons such as through Tavern Brawler), and the aforementioned disadvantage because it's so unwieldy.
@@theuncalledfor it is worth rereading the section on improvised weapons - they don't always deal 1d4. It specifically points out that something resembling a weapon would deal the comparable damage. A big sword held in one hand or two would probably best be treated like a longsword in one hand (1d8) without proficiency.
@@TehS3ANaSAURUS Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Not that D&D quite mirrors real life... but as someone who swordfights, even a proper longsword (as opposed to the a bastard sword, which is more accurate to what a D&D longsword is) in one hand is unwieldy and impractical. Trying to wield a greatsword or zwiehander in one hand would be a terrible idea, you'd be just as likely to hurt yourself as an enemy- the thing is just too damn big, not to mention it's not weighted to be used one-handed. I'd say treating it as a 1d4 improvised weapon is entirely appropriate, it's not functionally similar to a one-handed sword.
The raised by elves one made me think it'd be nice to have a generic "Raised by people of other ancestry" one. You pick who raised you, get their language for free and some bonus to checks relating to them.
I'm relatively casual with DnD so you probably hear HAT comparisons a lot but this reminds me of the half-tiefling druid. In that movie iirc it was mostly just background and motivation but I feel like there's a lot of really cool customization and contradictory gameplay to be had with the idea, probably a great vessel for creativity depending on the build.
The raised by others background is basically a different strategy to what the mixed parents background does. Except that mixed parents also give mixed physical abilities and appearance, but raised by others puts a difference between biology and culture. Now I want to see the dwarf and elf who got switched in hospital and life now in the other ones people
I remember someone doing it in Pathfinder, they decided it's stupid (and i agree) to have both physical and cultural bonuses from race, and separated it into the bonuses you gain by being the race, and bonuses you gain by growing up in a culture. And (from what we know) the idea will be used in Critical Role's Daggerheart, your Heritage is made of Ancestry and Community.
Isekai used to be about being a fish out of water and while some still do that, the genre, at least as far as mainstream is concerned, has transformed into that of power fantasies where you go to a new place to remake your life and also you're super awesome and you know everything or can figure it out easily and also everyone loves you except the mean guys but they're bad guys so you can beat them up.
Also everything is exactly like a bad RPG with summonable "in-game" screens for all the skills and levels, and often there's even an explicit "isekai'ed characters get huge bonuses". Not very creative. Try watching "I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too". Yes that is the actual title of an actual anime, as far as I can tell from watching only a few episodes, unironically so.
Rising of the Shield Hero almost in a nutshell. Anime is for the most part really not about telling interesting stories anymore, it's just supposed to appeal to lonely, insecure guys 🤷♂️ It's sad but then again, many people who make anime also are rather antisocial themselves, so how would they make convincing social constructs?
@@janelantestaverde2018 there is being antisocial and then there is being hacks at storytelling with little imagination. I think having some skill in those should be requirements.
The Who Am I background could be improved by the use of random tables. Random tables would take it from "WTF IS THIS!!?" to being actually pretty cool. Roll twice for random skill proficiencies. If you get the same skill twice, you only get the one skill, but you also get expertise in it. Roll once for a random tool proficiency and once for a random language proficiency. Nothing is off limits. Roll five times on a random equipment table. If you get the same thing multiple times, you only get it once, but it's somehow magical. You get 2d6 gold. I'm not going to make the random tables because that's the DM's job (i.e. I'm lazy). Oh, and hire a competent proofreader. That would help too.
You just described the character creation process of _Traveller_ RPG (1st Edition)... the one infamous for how characters can _die_ during character creation (which can take up to 3 hours of rolling dice on tables), or if you keep rolling on training and don't die, the character might end their professional career and become an "space adventurer" when they're already like 60 years old and segue right into retirement, LOL. I'm not making this up.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog I know about the Traveller character creation, and it's really not the same. I was just describing a background with a few random proficiencies, not an epic totally random character generation odyssey with multiple career paths that could kill your character.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog Think it was Battletech where we used roll tables for character creation and I high-rolled an obscenely wealthy military officer years into their career with their own 2-man 24H elite private security detail, assault class mech, extremely high-powered personal sniper rifle, and transport ship. The downsides being I was physically injured from a conflict early in my career and I was not-so-subtly strong armed into using my wealth and connections to execute covert ops with my crew in order to maintain my active duty status and access to military resources like intelligence. We blew up an island at one point.
Okay, an interesting way to get items with a character that has amnesia would be starting with a bag of holding. There is stuff in it, but you don't remember so you can't remove whatever it is.
@@KingofAllThatIsMostlyBlue GM could always give the threat/ limitation that either a. Something real bad or wanted really badly by the big bad is in there and if dumped catastrophe will follow, or b. You dump it and there's so much stuff you risk being crushed, or just so unable to deal with the amount of stuff, nothing useful can be found for a month
@@KingofAllThatIsMostlyBlue plot twist: there's a powerful hostile monster inside that can't escape the bag on its own or wants to stay in the bag but would wreck a low level party. It's the secret reason you got the bag at a huge discount and with a note to not turn it inside out.
I made a homebrew background that was like "You grew up in a stable household with two parents who loved you and didn't die horribly, and from whom you either picked up a few things here and there or straight up inherited a family trade or something" It was malleable, allowing the player to consider what their character's parents did for a living and to choose proficiencies based on that. Their background feature is that they have a family to fall back on if things get bad, to help them lay low for a while or recover from an adventure that went badly or something. I made it for a half-orc blood hunter whose grandfather was also a blood hunter, and whose parents were a giant mama bear orc lady and a retired postmaster with a woodworking hobby I was rather happy with how it turned out, you can search "Beloved Son/Daughter", that was the name of it
In Cultist’s defense, “I am a dark one who sacrifices others to my dark deity” follows with the greed/cruelty traits of other backgrounds. Though the most similar is easily “I am a monster who hunts monsters” (or something like that) from Haunted One.
I love the idea of a game where everyone plays a character who has forgotten who they are, but it goes a little something like this: every player wrote their character, then gave the sheet to their DM, but then went on and lived their regular lives. 10 years later, the gang is back together, the DM pulls out their old character sheets, and they try to play while slowly and organically remembering all the wacky details they embedded into that character.
Nah... imagine you made a character when you were a teenager, oozing with edgy angst or power fantasies... and then someone drops that sheet in front of you when you're 30+ and asks you to play it. Okay, to be frank, I _have_ two characters I make when I was 19 or 20, and now I'm 49, but those characters actually got played for 10+ years and evolved and grew older themselves. One (an Old World of Darkness former Technocracy scientist turned/brainwashed into becoming a nature wizard) married a female werewolf and had kids. Another one (a Shadowrun 2nd Edition former coprorate combat mage) came out as gay to himself and to his troll best buddy -- who was a former Uban Brawl player turned Shadowrunner, a chubby middle-aged balding troll with STR 17 and INT 5(!) -- when he (the mage) was about 35 years old already and I'd been playing him for several years. I only then realized the reason this character had always felt _off_ somehow was, he simply didn't _work_ when played as a hetero guy. Ironically it happened due to a dream about him I had IRL during the weekend we played a lengthy homebrew campaign during which he had almost died due to a magical overload as he got possessed by some creature from the metaplanes, had been saved by his troll friend's medical intervention, was later undergoing his next Initiate trial and also an exorcism... it managed to stop the metaplanes spirit from taking over his mind, but it had latched onto his astral body, so the nun who exorcised him managed to incarcerate it in the mage's body so it would one day die with his body; similar to how Voudoun shamans in Shadowrun can let a spirit take over and "ride" their body for a while, except it was permanent, so his astral body now looked rather weird and supernatural creatures would react weird to him, but at least he was in control and weird stuff no longer happened whenever he slept.
Maybe you could write your backstory, it gets put through Google translate a couple times, edited by someone else to make sense, and given to the DM. And that's your official backstory. So you have an idea of what you IMAGINE your backstory to be, and maybe you're right about some of the details, but some other parts might be 'misremembered'.
I was in a low rut all day today, but your delivery on "I have this sword...and apparatus" had me choking and crying laughing. Thanks man, I needed that.
The only time I’ve used a homebrew background was for my bard who grew up as a mortician and that’s done me pretty well. I love backgrounds that are just jobs and livelihoods normal people would have, makes it feel like anyone could be an adventurer
I have a white necromancer (he fights the undead and lays them to rest) who by profession is a surgeon and apothecary and mortician, serving the (true neutral) God of the Balance of Life and Death who presides over the Underworld. (I made that god up, back in the days of AD&D 2nd edition, when I saw a "necromancer/healer wizard" build in n obscure necromancer splat-book, back when even Cleric healing spells fell into the Necromancy domain because they were both about channeling of life energy.) Then when Pathfinder rolled around, I found out by accident there's a Pathfinder Goddess of the Underworld who does the exact same thing. huh.
"Who am I?" (Also known as the Amnesiac background) Where did you come from? Who were you previously? Only the GM knows the answers to this question, but hopefully you'll find out soon! For any features listed that requires the GM to make a choice, they should keep the character's real background in mind. Skill Proficiencies: Your GM chooses any two skills or tools and you gain proficiency in them. Languages: You know one language chosen by the GM. Equipment: Your GM rolls on the trinket table or chooses one for you. You also have a pouch of 15gp. Feature: Memory Breakthrough You start the game with 3 Story Points. At any point during the game, you can spend a story point to remember something associated with the situation. For example, if you walk into a small town and speak to the bartender, you might spend a story point to have some history with the bartender that was trigger by seeing them again for the first time in years. GM has final say on what you remember
@Matthew Shaw as someone currently playing an amnesiac, there's a lot of interesting character development to come from a character who's lost their past. Maybe you used to be an arch-wizard who committed horrible atrocities and wiped your own memory to try to live a normal life, slowly discovering the monster you used to be, or something. In my case, I don't know my actual backstory yet, but I do know that the character I'm playing and his arc is only possible as an amnesiac. It can be powerful to play a character who's lost everything, but can't even fathom exactly what that means. It can be interesting to touch on how perhaps losing one's memory is the best thing that could happen to them, in some cases. And about giving the DM more work, I think it actually just gives the DM free reign to make your backstory as relevant or irrelevant as they need for the story they want to tell. If I've got this long backstory about my archnemesis who's been conspiring against me for years, that's cool, unfortunately we're playing Strahd, so he won't be showing up. Any good backstory has space for a dm to add intrigue or mystery, and at least in this case, they don't have to wrack their brains for answerd on just what evil being your father partnered with before you were born. They can make all the answers as they see fit. It's not as hard as working in some backstories.
On the Exiled God : they're actually rich, too. The gold you get from your background is on top of the equipment you get from your class, it's just extra stuff. Nobles get 25 GP, for comparison.
That dragon one at the end reminded of a reddit post. Someone has the idea of making a character that was a chair that was true polymorphed into a human. And because they weren't sentient until they were transformed they would have to learn basic things like walking, talking and how to eat food while being a grown man. And the best part is no one would know right up until he steps into a anti magic field and just suddenly turns into a chair XD
The Who Am I flaw could kill a character over several weeks through unlucky rolls, which is mildly terrifying. Add in external circumstances such as extreme temperatures, frenzied rage (if you're a frenzy barbarian), and other things I can't remember. This could be mild inconvenience or utterly lethal.
I think it would be fun to run a "who am I" campaign. Not like this though. Instead, each character would be made by the GM, mostly following fairly generic character templates, and then randomly assigned to players, but without letting them see the completed character sheets. They just get blank sheets. Then they all wake up somewhere with amnesia, and the only ways they can find out what abilities they have available would be trial and error, and doing various wisdom and other checks to try and discover things. For bonus fun, such checks could be done by the DM, and if they fail, they aren't told they fail, they are just told inaccurate stuff, like "you are apparently very smart" for someone with low INT. The unknowing Barbarian could be making Investigation checks and "discovering" that one of the other characters is probably a Wizard (he's actually a Paladin). Any time a character uses a skill or a stat, if they have no or inaccurate knowledge of that stat, the DM will tell them to adjust it to be closer to accuracy. Th point would be for them to have to constantly adapt to learning new things they are capable of, and for fun misunderstandings to occur based on what information is available.
Pretty sure I read a story of someone playing in a campaign with that mechanic.... In the rpghorror subreddit. It sounds amazing and like tons of fun AS LONG as the DM is not a power-hungry pervert.
I was in a campaign similar to this where we made our characters but we all had amnesia and didn't know our backstories and we slowly discovered things we did in the past or notes about our characters. Turns out we were all horrible people. Mad scientist who experimented on souls, a rogue who would bring the people to the scientist and get paid for it and other horrible people in the party.
@@mirrormimi Yeah the issue in the horror story wasn’t that the concept didn’t work or wasn’t fun(quite the contrary in fact), the issue was (iirc) that the dm was a pervert incel and forced one of the characters to flash a prison guard even when the player explicitly said they were uncomfortable with that happening and didn’t want to do it.
You know that story of a guy, that injected himself with venom, then bigger doses, eventualy forming immunity and his blood becoming the cure? Kind of reminds me of it And not only that its easy to wreck...
I made a concept once of a lich that continued to feed souls to his phylactery for so long he eroded into a conscious bone-dust cloud that could really inherit any form it wanted within reason. The catch was that it enjoyed its newfound form, and desperately avoided any conflict because it feared that being regenerated at said phylactery might revert it to its old form.
I had an idea for an Isekai charatcer who's actually just one of the players at a D&D table. The main draw for them is thay they have some kind of special artifact that's actually just an item from our world. So one of the items could be like the Stone of Infinite Probability and it's just a D20. Or a Monster Manual that lets you see the stats of certain monsters, but a lot of the pages are missing so you gotta find the rest of the pages. Maybe the villain could also get an item, and it's something like the miniature of the isekai charatcer's PC, which forces them to fights their own player charatcer.
I've had a isekai character idea for a while of a kenku who was transported to the real world but found his way back to the d&d world. The whole gimmick was that he was going to be a bard and be able to recreate real world songs in game.
I played an isekai-like character at one point, but my inspiration was closer to "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" in that it was a 19th century guy transported to Faerûn. I just used a slightly modified "Far Traveler" background.
There's actually an Isekai story where the Protag gets isekai'd after taking revenge on a bunch of people that killed his sister but in the process of being isekai'd he sees that his sis is in this world somewhere so he nabs the god's book of the world (Essentially a DMG to the world and a cursed object that forces him to only have 1 HP regardless of levels aside from feats) and so begins what is essentially a campaign taking place in like a 3.5e of 4e version of DnD. The guy is also just the typical Chaotic Evil rogue that just does what is necessary to achieve his goals, even convincing the paladin to change her diety so that she becomes more min maxed, even saying that his ultimate goal is to become like a lich so that he doesn't automatically die at 0HP. Otherworldly Munchkin: Let's Speedrun the Dungeon with Only 1 HP is the title.
The telepathic dominance one is insane - on a successful DC 13 save, the creature is frightened? So the higher level creature you’re fighting, the more likely you are to instantly frighten it. Plus, it’s apparently a free action, so you can run into combat with a half-dozen enemies, and in one round, talk to each of them, and give them all disadvantage on every attack roll.
I see it more the other way around: Every time the character tries to talk to people, they instantly try to run away. Good luck getting room, board, or equipment when everyone is too scared to talk to you.
What I think is hilarious is that even with these backgrounds... At level 1, a well-placed crit from a goblin is still enough to send you to the shadow realm. "I, Lord Vorakthoros, WEILD MY VORPAL BLADE AND CLEAVE THE GOBLIN'S HEAD CLEAN FROM HIS SHOULDERS!" "Okay, cool. So it's the other goblin's turn, and he uhhh... Oh. What's your max HP again?" "7." "Oh yeah, uh. He rolled a crit and rolled a 6, so 12 plus his proficiency mod of 2." Something else I'd love to see are the odds that the ??? straight up dies from sleep depravation in a given length of time.
The chances of ??? dying of sleep deprivation on any particular week are not that high. I'd estimate around 3%, without proficiency in Con saves and with average Con. *On any particular week!* The chance of dying from sleep deprivation eventually is quite high actually. With 3% every week, the MTTH would be 22.76 weeks.
I think the second person decised that it was less obvious that they were making a super OP character if they made their proficiency super powerful then if they gave themselves a 30 in every stat.
Uh.... yeah, sounds cool for a bit, but... I remember that Scifi short story from satirical Scifi writer Robert Sheckley, titled _"I see a man sitting on a chair, and the chair is biting his leg"._ No seriously, that's the literal title. About a guy who by some plot device gains the ability to converse with inanimate objects, but those inanimate objects also gain sentience and the ability to move in his presence and talk back (but only he can hear them). And they all _love_ him. Like, they worship him, serve him, want to rub up against him, get envious of each other. And he's creeped out by it. So one day he snaps and screams at them how much he hates them all. And the objects... fall silent, shocked, then offended. Yeah. You know the saying about how nothing is as dangerous as a lover spurned...?
Jacob, I want to thank you. I have been a DM for a long time. And I've been wanting to make my own system for a long time. And then one day on your channel "Arcane Arcade" I watched your game in "Fallout ZERO", where you told that you made the system yourself. And that inspired me to try it too. It took a little more time and effort than I thought, but recently my friends and I played on my home system. And everyone was happy. I am grateful to you for your inspiration! Oh, and thanks for reviewing the weird backstories, it's cool, we need more video reviews.
6:19 😂😂😂 That moment with Jacob's hopeful demeanour when moving on from the first one being immediately crushed when reading the second name is wonderful. That pained sigh is powerful 😁
Let me give you a better amnesiac background. The main idea here is to give you a foundation to build on and splitting the work of figuring out your backstory between you and your DM instead of just making the DM do everything. Amnesiac Skill Proficiencies: Your skills may be hints at what you spent your time doing before you lost your memories. Roll twice on or choose two skills from the Amnesiac Skills table. If you roll the same number twice, reroll one of them. Amnesiac Skills (d20) # | Skill 1 | Acrobatics 2 | Animal Handling 3 | Arcana 4 | Athletics 5 | Deception 6 | History 7 | Insight 8 | Intimidation 9 | Investigation 10 | Medicine 11 | Nature 12 | Perception 13 | Performance 14 | Perception 15 | Religion 16 | Sleight of Hand 17 | Stealth 18 | Survival 19 | One artisan's tool of your choice 20 | One musical instrument of your choice Languages: One of your choice Equipment: An empty journal, one simple weapon of your choice, a trinket from your past (roll on the trinkets table found in the Player's Handbook), a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 10 gp. Feature: Returning Memories Whenever you're sound asleep or in a deep trance during a long rest, you may recall something from your past, if you or your DM wish it. If your DM doesn't specify a particular memory, determine the nature of the memory by rolling on the Memories table. Memories you determine this way may be vague or incomplete. You retain each memory when you wake up. Memories (1d4) # | Type 1 | A traumatizing event 2 | An unfamiliar place 3 | A fragment of a conversation 4 | Time spent with a loved one Feature: Nothing to Hide Your unassuming nature causes others to lower their guard around you. You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among ordinary folk, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They may be item open to helping you in other ways, but they will not risk their lives for you.
Consider: a dragon cursed into a human form that’s desperately trying to get stronger so they can get the revenge on the wizard who cursed them/retake the lair they took for themselves
That sounds epic! Or maybe, instead of a wizard, that dragon (or any other very powerful creature) tried to overthrow a literal god and their punishment was to walk the prime material plane as a mere mortal. Only, when they have proven themselves to be worthy enough, the god, who punished them, grants them a fraction of their former power in the form of a Level-Up.
@@Jordan-kq3qw ALSO goated idea. I just love the idea of a dragon/human having to learn how to work with mortals and the whole “no idea how society works” while being this level 2 fighter that talks WAY too much game for how scrawny they are lmao
What might be fun to do with an amnesiac character that forgot everything about themselves is that the background gives you absolutely nothing (and maybe even take away X proficiencies from what your class gives you) but then, up to let's say 5 times total in the campaign, when you roll at least a nat 18 or so on a skill check, you remember that that's one of the things you're good at and get proficiency in that, and then when you have "rediscovered" all your proficiencies you get to piece together (=come up with) what your backstory has been all along
At 6 levels of exhaustion you die, right? So technically a character with 'Who Am I" could die in one week. Chances are good that they would be worthless after only a few weeks of play, as it would be rare to get a full rest, and then they will likely die within a few months.
Honestly an Exiled God background might be an interesting background to make, or at the very least theorycraft. Maybe the skill proficiencies could be Religion and an option between either Arcana, Animal Handling, History, Medicine, Performance, or Nature, and what second option you choose is depending on your what your character was a god of. And you probably would have a subset of people who don't like you based on what you were exiled for. You probably would only regain your godhood in some sort of epilogue/ending credits part at the absolute end of the campaign. Of course, this would probably have to be in a setting and/or player group who are also insanely strong with equally crazy backgrounds. This feels it would be something more interesting to think about than actually play.
I actually played a Zealot Barbarian once whose lore was that he was once the god of combat, but all the people who worshipped his pantheon died out, and so he had no more divine power, functionally making him mortal
Oh god... I just realised that my character is an isekai. They were pulled from a different world into the DnD world, have no idea what's going on, have awesome magical powers they find out they're really proficient at using in combat and they have long pink hair.
Honestly, Who Am I would be fun if it's entirely random. You get 10 skill proficiencies and know 10 languages and 5 random items from level 2 to 6. None of these are told to you, they are all decided by the DM and are only revealed from the player's input or parts of your character's backstory that appear such as NPCs or intensely memetic objects. Good luck finding out who you are!
I was watching your old "Lowest rated X on D&D Beyond" videos a few days ago and I wanted to see another one! You granted my wish! Keep up the good content man!
honestly, the addition of inverting the search at the end and looking at the highest rated is very nice. doing just a quick look at the top rated makes the difference just way funnier.
For some reason, the most flabbergasting part of these homebrew isn't their OP nature, but the horribly broken English throughout that they decided was good enough to post for everone to see. I swear it makes part of my brain itch just reading it.
I like the theory of an exiled god who was punished. They might only get a tiny amount of equipment because they have been punished. It would have to be a certain type of campaign to work
Maybe some shit like the mark of cain where anyone part of that religion are immediately hostile if they see that mark, however those affiliated with it will see you as a tentative ally (not dying for you level, more like "you can sleep in the shed tonight")
I really like the idea too. I can imagine it being a minor god of something like lockpicking and instead of having proficiency you just automatically pass any lockpicking checks because you're the fricking god of lockpicking
There's already backgrounds that do these properly, though. Raised by Elves is Outlander, Cultist is Sage or Noble and Isekai Hero could be Far Traveller. The others are a bit trickier, maybe the Abandoned could be a Haunted One, Who Am I could be Reborn and Exiled God could be Polymorphed.
I imagine that to initiate the telepathy, you have to hit the target with a visible beam. This does no damage, but happens to look exactly like the beam of the Disintegrate spell.
The Exiled God has potential*, but needs a Lot of work and limitations. Like, you could pick two or three skills related to your former domain. Then you can pick one weapon and one armor to be proficient with which also reflect your former domain (as well as proficiency with shields if you only took two skills). For languages they should have Common and Celestial to understand their worshippers and other gods. For equipment, mostly just aesthetic things to reflect the lost domain or some vestments like a Cleric and/or Acolyte might wear. Still gonna workshop it more, but it definitely has some possibilities
@Fabio Varrà no, backgrounds include things like soldiers who would have been trained in some weapons and or armor just as part of their former life. It's crazy how common it is in homebrew backgrounds though, very few official backgrounds give these proficiencies. Also race has the least to do with proficiency overall, for what it's worth.
@@psychocomytic9778 Neither the soldier, mercenary or knight background give you any weapon or armor proficiencies, while some races does it: Dwarf: battle axe, hand axe, light hammer, warhammer Drow: rapier, shortsword, hand crossbow High and Wood Elf: longsword, shortsword, shortbow, longbow Hobgoblin: two martial weapons, light armor
Better idea. Lightly customize the acolyte background. Pick the Cleric class, but be your own deity, and pick a domain that fits the actual deity you were before. Optionally multiclass into another class, or pick Paladin instead. Bam, exiled god with most of your power locked off, reduced to what a mortal could achieve.
For the first one I would change how the whole remembering works and attach it with it's tons of proficiencies. (firstly you have your backstory or dm made it for you, it is just that in game your character doesn't know that and so that is his background 1. So each level you unlock certain part of your memory, you gain 1 skill proficiency (to max of 5 from this) per level and 1 tool proficiency per 2 levels rounded down (to max of 3) (this makes it so this background gives you 5 skill prof and 3 tool prof but slowly, you could extend so you would get every 2 level skill and 3 tool proficiency) 2. You start with magical bag that can store 5 mundane items and 1 fitting wonderous item and each item is locked with a password in form of the word. You have to spell the word while holding and thinking about bag. You unlock one word each level, rolling d6 for the item with 6 being wonderous one. Items that start in the bag have to be connected with you backstory so either you or dm decides what they are(depending on who decided your backstory After removing items with the password you can change what object is stored in the bag. (you get very nerfed magic bag that at first is close to useless as it can story only one item and special item you can get either by getting lucky or getting high enough level) IF your character happens to gets 2 failed death saving throws (at the same time) and and then stays alive you gain all the benefits of getting new level in terms of this background. (you are dying and have 2 death failed saves but got healed or just passed the rolls afterwards, then you immediately get the 1 memory, 1 password and 1 skill prof and maybe 1 tool depending on what you already got) This rule can be overwritten if GM believes that you are doing it on purpose.
Otaku.... you lose all item proficiencies accept for leather armor, sword and bow. Whenever you roll intelligence connected roll you can roll extra 1d4 and add it to the roll as you use your weeb knowledge to find stereotypes in this word. You can also chose 1 skill proficiencies and 1 master from this: survival, animal handling, perception, insight, sleight of hand You start with 1 any modern item(that is not a weapon), backpack, scribe tools(school supplies), 1 coffee (energy drink), and 3 rations
God... You have all skill proficiencies of the one of the attributes but you can not have any from outside of it (from class or feats) You can speak all languages but you roll is lowered by 5 when rolling any roll that uses them unless you gain proficiency of that language from other source. (you speak ancient, kids this days speak weirdly to you) You start with ragged clothes and golden jewelry worth 100 gp and broken weapon/item. if it weapon, it can be repaired for 200gp to become lvl 1 with good enough craftsmen. After wards it can be repaired again for 2000gp to become lvl 2 and lastly for 10000 gp it can become lvl 3 weapon. (you need good enough craftsmen for that, for player to fix it he needs to use half while having proficiency with tools to fix it and roll 15 for +1, 17 for +2 and 20 for +3) You can use lvl 1 smite once per day, at 5 lvl you gain extra 2 spell level smite, and 10 lvl 3, 15 lvl 4, 20 lvl 5.
Bad campaign idea: Everyone has poorly rated homebrew classes, backgrounds, races, etc. and the DM uses ChatGPT to write the campaign. 😂 That’d be so funny
The werewolf allergic to animal fur. The vampire afraid of darkness. The ninja cursed to glow in the dark and have very squeaky footsteps The bard who is completely tone-deaf but convinced he's the greatest singer ever (everyone disagrees), and while his bardic song magic does work, he makes everyone within hearing distance angry at him so they constantly beat him up.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog The werewolf abandoned his life as a farmer due to his allergy but became a sorcerer who casts spells with every sneeze (failed con save).
Modification for 'who am I'. Proficiencies: You have no starting proficiencies. When you make a skill check or saving throw for the first time in a skill, first roll a D20. If the outcome is 18 or higher, you gain proficiency in that skill. You can only make this check once per skill / saving throw. Languages: Common. When you hear a new language, roll a D20. If the outcome is 18 or higher, you gain understanding of the language. You can only make this check once per language. Starting items: You start with a standard loadout for your class (Allowing your character to infer what class they are) and a memento of your past that they do not recognize, but feel a connection to (Non magic item worth below 50GP). Essentially learning who your character is as they encounter the world.
I like this because it has the possibility of you just rolling terribly so instead of uncovering a tragic backstory you realise that you were just some loser thats good at nothing.
Speaking of not knowing your past, I heard about a cool concept for a party of amnesiatic characters. They all were handed blank character sheets, and every time they needed information about something to make a check or whatever, the DM would tell them the relevant information. So they slowly filled out the sheet as they went and attempted checks, learning more about their characters as they went. It would make for a pretty cool one shot I think.
There are definitely loads of fun ways to play an amnesiac-style character--my character had the whole 'I woke up buried in a grave and can't remember what came before' one. It was kind of funny to have a character that knew certain languages or was proficient in something and wasnt quite sure why or how. Made for great RP moments.
3:33 This is actually almost a feature built into Pathfinder 2e inside the mastermind rogue class, but it only applies to items that can be freely purchased at the past area that the party had the opportunity to buy or bring the wanted item and the mastermind rogue will need to spend the gold retroactively to buy said item as a mechanic to roleplay that the rogue was well prepared and predicted the exact tool that was needed for the job.
1:15 funny thing about random capital letters. Whoever wrote this background is most likely german/speaks german. In german you use capital letters throughout the sentences for nouns, if you don't know thats a specifically german thing you're probably gonna do this in other languages as well.
Imma be real, long hair and the partial goatee is jacobs best drip, it makes him look more mature and older, and it shapes his face really well. you are rocking it bro.
6:50 most isekai's nowadays are basically just power fantasies where the main character has the equivalent of cheat codes in a video game and is totally OP. Sure, you get fish out of water, but it's basically a Chosen One story with extra steps.
A neat idea for the amnesia background for a fix, (this is for the “suddenly gets item”” is that they always had the item but the sudden flashback allows them to remember how to use it
i think that the exiled god idea could be pretty cool actually. obviously not with all the busted stuff but maybe somewhere between disneys hercules and mcu thor where its like you were banished and your powers were sealed or stolen so youre only really slightly more powerful than the average human. youd just have to be careful cause it would be easy to fall into main character syndrome when your character was once a godly being
I love the idea of a group of players that normally play together and they decide to do a one shot, but the trick is that ALL homebrew is allowed... and most importantly, they make the characters FOR EACH OTHER. It's extremely amusing to me the idea of a player who normally plans the super weak but quirky characters. ex) Half-Orc Wizard, Strength Monk, etc etc. Then the one shot starts and they go "Hey everyone I'm.... Ugh...... An Aasimar Exiled God. I'm a Warlock Paladin with... W-What, why does it say I'm level 24?!?" DM: "I allowed it 😏"
honestly, Exiled God can work. first, change equipment to one legendary artifact which is broken and can not be repaired by you or any mortal being. next, the feature should be something more along the lines of "your former compatriots want nothing to do with you. the gods will not aid you, even indirectly through means such as clerics. some may even actively try to get you killed."
My favorite video series, please keep making these (although at this point idk what category you should do next, or if you should just circle back to old ones)
That first one just comes off as a "I don't want to do any of this stuff and I'll just make up claims at convenient points in the game in order to get free stuff" player to me.
The actual, physical one-sided die does exist. It's shaped in such a way as to roll to a stop with the same side facing away from gravity no matter how it landed. I've seen UA-cam ads of dice sets for a die of all numbers 1 through 10, prominently featuring the physics involved in rolling the d1.
That "who am i" background gave me an interesting idea. Your background is amnesiac. You as a player discover yourself as you go. The first 2 spoken languages you encounter, you gain proficiency in them. You start with common already as a proficient language. The same deal with the first 4 or 5 skills checks you need to make. Once more for weapons and armor types. Once you discover all your proficiencies you and your DM can deliberate and decide what your backstory is. That could then decide your alignment and overall goal now that you have discovered who you were before your amnesia. Another way of doing it would be, instead of it just being the first ones you encounter guaranteed, you could roll a die or flip a coin to decide if you are proficient with that skill/language when encountered. After finding out if you are or not proficient, that skill or language cant be flipped on again. Once you gain your 2 languages/4-5 skills/ and equipment profs then you stop rolling for any more. Make it more random rather than purely based on the location you are in and the first things encounter.
Wait, I saw that thumbnail and while obviously their implementation is bad and overpowered, I think Exiled God has potential as a really cool idea for a background, I haven't read it but I'm thinking Rick Riordan's Trials of Apollo
I had a similar idea for a high level campaign, where all the player charatcers are gods trying to get their status back, but they still keep a lot of their powers.
@@MythicMachina I would highly recommend Godbound instead of D&D, if that's what you're going for. It does a much better job of handling high power level play, and you get powers that actually are godly. Edit: I forgot to mention that the standard version is free!
@@MythicMachina I wouldn't call it crunchier than D&D 5e. In fact, it's rather similar in a lot of aspects (very intentionally so). Think of it as a version of D&D fine tuned for playing godlings, so, instead of creating a couple of berries to feed a group, you might create a lush field that can feed a village for generations.
A better Isakai Otaku: choose hobby proficiency/skill in an RPG equivalent of said hobby (I.E. tactics [chess, strategy games, etc.], Sleight of Hand [miniatures], weapon upkeep [weapon collector], smithcraft [smithing hobby], practice combat [LARPing], Lore [folklore and mythology hobbyist] etc.) bonus to communication with specialists related to hobby (but you have to roll to avoid amateurish statements as you are just a hobbyist) Isakai bonus: better acquainted to fantasy concepts but out of your element in terms of existing in such a world as yourself. cons: -2 charisma, poor social skills
what about this: Isekai person -Has been isekaied for at least 1 month so they could get a class and conceivably be able to pass knowledge checks. -Has negative proficiency in history, arcana, nature and religion. -Can choose 3 proficiencies(except those above) or choose 2 proficiencies and one custom proficiency that exists in real life, exp: Engineering, Design, Marksmanship. And with that custom proficiency get special actions like creating contraptions that only exist in real life like a revolver, or doing chemistry, create nuclear weapons, run a cult, advocate for democracy, etc.
Thought of one too Isekai MC: -You enter the world with a phone, a wallet containing money, your driver's license, keys and credit cards -You know 1 or 2 languages in the real world, 1 of them being English, for whatever reason you also know the common language of the world you were transported to -You have have vast knowledge relating to fictional media, even outside your own world because of your constant pointing out of (in the internet) cliches, plot holes and etc....(+4 to anything in checks relating to this) -You get +2 in a perception roll if you're in the darkness, because of your sedentary lifestyle with all your curtains and screen monitor -You get -1 on all stats, with exception to constitution, because of vaccines or whatever, you get +2 in that, you must also apply 2 -1's in a stat of your choosing -If ever you get a d1 on any roll, it will be counted as d20 with the caveat of you still blundering but that blunder somehow acheiving your goal to the consequence of your hitpoints (-2 hitpoints), because d1's are extremely funny and our God, Lord and savior the DM, appreciates good comedy (also cause anime comedy) -You have a proficiency at cooking and performance -(edit) -1 wisdom, -1 intelligence and +3 charisma rolls against the opposite sex, if you're character's bisexual, it applies to all sex's, if you're characters asexual, it applies to an object/concept of your choosing (a fetish), this feature of the class is optional
I like the fact that exiled god gets proficiencies with everything, but wildborn gets fricking expertise. Being raised by elves makes you stronger than bein a literall deity, apparently
With telepathic dominance feature you are just doing a backflip so sick that objects suddenly come to life for a moment and wish to do what you want :D
It's actually a fairly common trope in isekai stories for the protagonist to be ridiculously overpowered in some way. It's pretty much the norm, though there are plenty that go against this to be different.
For the isekai one, im actually starting a game like that as a player. I made my character a farmboy who got jacked from helping around the farm so much, and though hes slow to anger, if he becomes angry he becomes SCARY (barbarian). He also had to deal with a lot of rude people at bars and trespassing, so hes got tavern brawler and grappler as he learned to fight with his hands using whatever he had and holding them down till others could help or authorities could intervene. Hes gonna know absolutely nothing of this new world, but hes gonna still be a valuable member with a good moral compass. I hope he lives
Funny enough, with the right build, a Ranger *can* know up to 10 languages at level 1 - Variant Human (2), Linguist Feat (3), Language giving Background, like Acolyte (1 to 2), Deft Explorer (2), and Favored Enemy (possibly 1). Hey - New Party Face - especially with a bonus to Charisma, and using the Fey Wanderer subclass.
As a newbie DM, I would love hearing about the BEST HOMEBREWS rather than the worst homebrews not complaining of course, you do what you wana do, but if you do happen to make 1 about the best homebrews... ill be watching ;)
The exiled god homebrew is what you get when the player hears the idea of playing a god that got turned mortal and exiled without hearing the part of "you lose most of your godly power" kind of the most important part to play that idea well
I remember I made a homebrew one. I was a farmer that became a wizard, but there was no farmer background in 5e (that I could find). Gave him proficiency in animal handling, wood carving tools, and vehicles (wagons). The feature was the ability to recognize most farm vegetation at glance and get to add proficiency to int/wis checks related to checking on them. Came up a couple times and never broke the game. Was cool.
Edit: I never expected to see so many people agree with this and enjoy it. To those who agree and I spoke with, thank you! It has been lovely!
Wood caring sounds neat
@@loganmcgee18particularly useful in the morning
That's a great and balanced background
@@loganmcgee18 I meant carving, I just goofed lol.
@@mousesteam7882 Thanks! Backgrounds are meant to be fun and balanced, a cool niche thing you can do. The criminal has a tie to the underground for a fence. The bounty hunter knows the secret paths of the city for chases. The soldier is experienced has knowledge of military tactics and sway with his country for his service. Cool stuff, nothing game breaking.
The first one made me think of a character that my friend made in a game I ran who is a personal favorite of mine. They were new to the game so they didn't know how to create a background for their character so we agreed on them just having amnesia, however they also chose charlatan as their background. So when their character woke up they looked in their bag to try and find an ID to identify themselves and found about 10 different ID's of wildly different people. It was so fun
Oh, that's hilarious.
Jesus christ, its Jason Bourne!
Beautiful
OMG that is so fucking funny holy shit
When he talked about low-rated homebrews that turned out to be awesome, I kept thinking back to the “Garlic Bread Cleric.”
Garlic Bread Cleric is perfection.
That one was pretty good
We love Garlic Bread Domain Cleric
@@genericname2747 imagining making a vempire theme camping and then that class show upp
@@yuvalgabay1023 the final boss gets killed by 1 garlic bread
I really love that the Abandoned background's feature accidentally contains an enormous nerf. Like you're supposed to be telekinetic, but as worded you need to pass a saving throw now to do LITERALLY ANYTHING. You turn your character into QWOP. It's kind of beautiful.
I want to see a campaign where every character is exclusively made with poorly rated homebrew
Someone's going to roll up with athena
I love this XD
Nah bro im rollin up with “who am i”
Also that just sounds sort of dope, if it is ALL bad homebrew character creation then i know what im rocking with already if you want to party up
May I recommend an "Oath of Throwing it Back" paladin?
I like how Jacob shows he's not really seen any isekais. That background is pretty on point. Like 90% of isekais include "and you get a cheat ability which instantly makes you the strongest person in this new world".
Or he's used to traditional isekais. The newer ones seem to be more power fantasies than "let's explore this strange world and collect whatever macguffins to try to find a way back home".
The Isekai bit in the thumbnail is what made me watch. Instantly figured it could be an attempt to say something about the genre instead of a legit attempt to make something balanced and workable in 5e.
My personal favorite was one where they asked to just be average in the new world and so the god or whatever took the stats of a dragon and the stats of an ant and averaged them meaning this person was ridiculously op. Like it just had a dumb logic to it that I couldnt help but enjoy, feels like a DM abusing someone who used Wish in a poorly thought out way
i do enjoy the power fantasy isekai just as much if not more
The cheap ability obviously has to be properly implemented. It doesn't make for a good story by itself, but when used well can be really good.
To answer your question, yes! That is how isekai used to work, back in the older stories, now it's mostly just "random guy gets demi-god level powers and a harem".
I understand it, most isekai is dependent on a ROB of some kind to act as an explanation for universe hopping, and power fantasies are always popular.
It's just weird how they started as a "your skills from your world make you OP here" and eventually turned into "I gave you godlike power for fun".
Like befriending a Digimon. Classic Isekai.
@@scragarThis is exactly the reason I love drifters so much. Yes the protagonists from our world are especially powerful, but it isn’t because of some weird latent ability, they are significant figures from our history who are geniuses in military strategy or at combat itself. They’re especially powerful not in spite of coming from our world but because they’re utilizing the skills in our much darker more violent world in a fantasy setting.
A good watch if you haven’t seen it, made by the same people who did hellsing iirc.
I was going to say this. Isekai has now evolved to become, well basically the background listed here, with an added harem
Isekai used to also be a genre targeted at adolescent women and were often coming of age stories
"YOU ARE WELCOME TO CHANGE SUIT YOUR CHARACTER!!"
Dumbledore asked calmly.
Here's my totally epic homebrew background:
Beholder Background. The character was a beholder, with a massive lair, piles of gold, and hoards of servants. One day, the beholder had a dream that they were a lesser species, like a human, and lost all of their awesome beholder abilities. Unfortunately, whatever a beholder dreams about becomes reality.
Now they're just a normal person with the knowledge of a beholder. They have normal stats for their race.
The flaw is that the character also dreamed about a chicken waking them up before getting a good sleep. So now they cannot get a restful sleep dreaming about being a beholder again.
@@yourineeven8457 you genius
I had something very similar. But instead they got so power hungry that they made a deal with the great old one, and got transformed into a Grung
@@Totasfunnynumber I'm going to steal that
@@genericname2747 his name is Dek'Ra'Um. He's a very Kuzco like character.
Grung G.O.O Warlock
Exiled God actually sounds amazing as a character concept. If it was just a regular, non-overpowered background, it would be super cool to play a character who *used* to be omnipotent, but due to some circumstance is now trapped within the frail and powerless form of an ordinary mortal.
At one point I was actually making a character like that. I never finished them but the concept was they were a god that had been trapped and sealed inside a magical construct that was designed by several other gods. The construct had the ability to take on the traits of any race and class (only one at a time and no switching between them). Basically during character creation you would make a character select a class like normal and then the construct would become that. The construct could be destroyed (death) by design but it would reconstitute at a later point. The idea behind that was that the god would be subjected to dying over and over across thousands of years but never truly be free. I never decided whether I wanted that to be a dice on death or if I wanted it to be tied to character power and the trapped god regaining some power and thus being able to influence things in small ways.
My main goal was to make it fun but not have it be overpowered. Definitely going to have to go back and finish this at some point.
Konosuba?
@@jackofsometrades5577 Exiled god and Isekai Otaku. Now we only need Darkness and Megumin lol
@@gabrielcossa5488 Lol, a paladin that gets hornier the more she gets hit in combat.
maybe mix that with the who am i guy but im not sure how good of an idea that is
at the very least it would sort of maybe possibly explain the amount of proficiencies that guy has
I like how a lot of these try to apply actual mechanics to backgrounds when like, the point of a background's feature is to give you an incredibly niche roleplay edge. Like sailors can easily secure passage by a boat, outlanders can find food and water without issue if it's around, and archaeologists can instantly ascertain who/when/why old ruins were originally built.
I can see how it'd make sense though to add more actual mechanics. For instance, a guy that was a farmer would be more likely to have a higher strength stat than a born noble, though the noble would have some natural charisma from osmosis if nothing else. And so it would make sense for a background to give you additional base stats along with skill and tool proficiencies. Also, depending on the background, having less edge case and more day to day effects to what you choose could make sense and help make the character stand out more from another of the same race and class.
@@marykateharmon In reality a noble would be better fed and if trained in armor since young age like was common for medieval nobles he would be on average stronger than the common farmer. Having bonus to stats linked backgrounds make no sense as your stat at level one should already rapresent that.
Those are all gameplay features, not roleplay edges.
Outlander is actually one of the more broken backgrounds. There are spells that require spellslots to generate food and that background does it for free. Maybe mechanical wise not as broken like the new spelljammer backgrounds which grant you a feat but still very strong compared to the other ones.
@@marykateharmon you'll like the new dnd rules, then! They base stats on backround a lot more
The abandoned one is just like:
"Oh no! The mindflayer is trying to dominate my mind!"
*Aggressively jumps to the side*
Well how do _you_ dodge mind flayers?
@@hamzamotara4304 intelligence save
@@Papyrus_Undertale07 meh. I prefer trying to jump real hard.
@hamzamotara4304 I just whipp my hair back in slow motion and the mindflayer will slow down their incantation/thought in awe long enough for 6 seconds to pass.
What’s funny about the Exiled God background is that any character (with at least enough strength to hold the weight of a greatsword) can already hold a greatsword in one hand, RAW. You only need to hold it with two hands to make an attack with it. So as it is written, that part of the feature changes absolutely nothing.
Well, it's just poorly made
I would allow an attack with disadvantage as an improvised weapon. So only a d4 of damage, no proficiency bonus (unless proficient with improvised weapons such as through Tavern Brawler), and the aforementioned disadvantage because it's so unwieldy.
@@theuncalledfor it is worth rereading the section on improvised weapons - they don't always deal 1d4. It specifically points out that something resembling a weapon would deal the comparable damage. A big sword held in one hand or two would probably best be treated like a longsword in one hand (1d8) without proficiency.
@@TehS3ANaSAURUS Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Not that D&D quite mirrors real life... but as someone who swordfights, even a proper longsword (as opposed to the a bastard sword, which is more accurate to what a D&D longsword is) in one hand is unwieldy and impractical. Trying to wield a greatsword or zwiehander in one hand would be a terrible idea, you'd be just as likely to hurt yourself as an enemy- the thing is just too damn big, not to mention it's not weighted to be used one-handed. I'd say treating it as a 1d4 improvised weapon is entirely appropriate, it's not functionally similar to a one-handed sword.
@@evanabney3659 You also arn't nearly as strong as literally any D&D character is. Fantasy for a reason. Learn to suspend your disbelief.
The raised by elves one made me think it'd be nice to have a generic "Raised by people of other ancestry" one. You pick who raised you, get their language for free and some bonus to checks relating to them.
I'm relatively casual with DnD so you probably hear HAT comparisons a lot but this reminds me of the half-tiefling druid. In that movie iirc it was mostly just background and motivation but I feel like there's a lot of really cool customization and contradictory gameplay to be had with the idea, probably a great vessel for creativity depending on the build.
The raised by others background is basically a different strategy to what the mixed parents background does. Except that mixed parents also give mixed physical abilities and appearance, but raised by others puts a difference between biology and culture. Now I want to see the dwarf and elf who got switched in hospital and life now in the other ones people
I pretty much did that with my halfelin sorcerer who was saved by Pixies and got his wild magic powers from it
Tomb of Annihilation has a background "Anthropologist" that is more or less this.
I remember someone doing it in Pathfinder, they decided it's stupid (and i agree) to have both physical and cultural bonuses from race, and separated it into the bonuses you gain by being the race, and bonuses you gain by growing up in a culture. And (from what we know) the idea will be used in Critical Role's Daggerheart, your Heritage is made of Ancestry and Community.
Isekai used to be about being a fish out of water and while some still do that, the genre, at least as far as mainstream is concerned, has transformed into that of power fantasies where you go to a new place to remake your life and also you're super awesome and you know everything or can figure it out easily and also everyone loves you except the mean guys but they're bad guys so you can beat them up.
And most of them buckle under praise because they were nobodies until a few hours ago.
Also everything is exactly like a bad RPG with summonable "in-game" screens for all the skills and levels, and often there's even an explicit "isekai'ed characters get huge bonuses". Not very creative.
Try watching "I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too". Yes that is the actual title of an actual anime, as far as I can tell from watching only a few episodes, unironically so.
Rising of the Shield Hero almost in a nutshell.
Anime is for the most part really not about telling interesting stories anymore, it's just supposed to appeal to lonely, insecure guys 🤷♂️ It's sad but then again, many people who make anime also are rather antisocial themselves, so how would they make convincing social constructs?
@@janelantestaverde2018 there is being antisocial and then there is being hacks at storytelling with little imagination. I think having some skill in those should be requirements.
Exactly. 8 out of 10 isekai nowadays are just self-insert power fantasies.
The Who Am I background could be improved by the use of random tables. Random tables would take it from "WTF IS THIS!!?" to being actually pretty cool.
Roll twice for random skill proficiencies. If you get the same skill twice, you only get the one skill, but you also get expertise in it.
Roll once for a random tool proficiency and once for a random language proficiency. Nothing is off limits.
Roll five times on a random equipment table. If you get the same thing multiple times, you only get it once, but it's somehow magical. You get 2d6 gold.
I'm not going to make the random tables because that's the DM's job (i.e. I'm lazy).
Oh, and hire a competent proofreader. That would help too.
You just described the character creation process of _Traveller_ RPG (1st Edition)... the one infamous for how characters can _die_ during character creation (which can take up to 3 hours of rolling dice on tables), or if you keep rolling on training and don't die, the character might end their professional career and become an "space adventurer" when they're already like 60 years old and segue right into retirement, LOL.
I'm not making this up.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog I know about the Traveller character creation, and it's really not the same. I was just describing a background with a few random proficiencies, not an epic totally random character generation odyssey with multiple career paths that could kill your character.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog Think it was Battletech where we used roll tables for character creation and I high-rolled an obscenely wealthy military officer years into their career with their own 2-man 24H elite private security detail, assault class mech, extremely high-powered personal sniper rifle, and transport ship. The downsides being I was physically injured from a conflict early in my career and I was not-so-subtly strong armed into using my wealth and connections to execute covert ops with my crew in order to maintain my active duty status and access to military resources like intelligence.
We blew up an island at one point.
Random tables would be hilarious. Get a random set of skills and items and be forced to make a compelling story out of it.
I could see a 1d100 table for that stuff, with more common things at multiple spots. Basically your own RNG loot table.
Okay, an interesting way to get items with a character that has amnesia would be starting with a bag of holding. There is stuff in it, but you don't remember so you can't remove whatever it is.
But then you could just turn it inside out
I would just roll randomly a few times. Maybe give the player 3 rolls they can use to remember an item or something.
@@KingofAllThatIsMostlyBlue GM could always give the threat/ limitation that either a. Something real bad or wanted really badly by the big bad is in there and if dumped catastrophe will follow, or b. You dump it and there's so much stuff you risk being crushed, or just so unable to deal with the amount of stuff, nothing useful can be found for a month
@@KingofAllThatIsMostlyBlue plot twist: there's a powerful hostile monster inside that can't escape the bag on its own or wants to stay in the bag but would wreck a low level party. It's the secret reason you got the bag at a huge discount and with a note to not turn it inside out.
@@StainlessHelena I feel like a player that starts with a label not to do something, will do everything in their power to do it.
I made a homebrew background that was like
"You grew up in a stable household with two parents who loved you and didn't die horribly, and from whom you either picked up a few things here and there or straight up inherited a family trade or something"
It was malleable, allowing the player to consider what their character's parents did for a living and to choose proficiencies based on that. Their background feature is that they have a family to fall back on if things get bad, to help them lay low for a while or recover from an adventure that went badly or something. I made it for a half-orc blood hunter whose grandfather was also a blood hunter, and whose parents were a giant mama bear orc lady and a retired postmaster with a woodworking hobby
I was rather happy with how it turned out, you can search "Beloved Son/Daughter", that was the name of it
I'm convinced that when the exiled god background says "plat armor," it's not a typo; he just means that you have armor made of platinum😂
Plot armor would be more on brand for those kind of background
@@lucamonticelli267 Truth
In Cultist’s defense, “I am a dark one who sacrifices others to my dark deity” follows with the greed/cruelty traits of other backgrounds. Though the most similar is easily “I am a monster who hunts monsters” (or something like that) from Haunted One.
I love the idea of a game where everyone plays a character who has forgotten who they are, but it goes a little something like this: every player wrote their character, then gave the sheet to their DM, but then went on and lived their regular lives. 10 years later, the gang is back together, the DM pulls out their old character sheets, and they try to play while slowly and organically remembering all the wacky details they embedded into that character.
Nah... imagine you made a character when you were a teenager, oozing with edgy angst or power fantasies... and then someone drops that sheet in front of you when you're 30+ and asks you to play it. Okay, to be frank, I _have_ two characters I make when I was 19 or 20, and now I'm 49, but those characters actually got played for 10+ years and evolved and grew older themselves.
One (an Old World of Darkness former Technocracy scientist turned/brainwashed into becoming a nature wizard) married a female werewolf and had kids.
Another one (a Shadowrun 2nd Edition former coprorate combat mage) came out as gay to himself and to his troll best buddy -- who was a former Uban Brawl player turned Shadowrunner, a chubby middle-aged balding troll with STR 17 and INT 5(!) -- when he (the mage) was about 35 years old already and I'd been playing him for several years. I only then realized the reason this character had always felt _off_ somehow was, he simply didn't _work_ when played as a hetero guy. Ironically it happened due to a dream about him I had IRL during the weekend we played a lengthy homebrew campaign during which he had almost died due to a magical overload as he got possessed by some creature from the metaplanes, had been saved by his troll friend's medical intervention, was later undergoing his next Initiate trial and also an exorcism... it managed to stop the metaplanes spirit from taking over his mind, but it had latched onto his astral body, so the nun who exorcised him managed to incarcerate it in the mage's body so it would one day die with his body; similar to how Voudoun shamans in Shadowrun can let a spirit take over and "ride" their body for a while, except it was permanent, so his astral body now looked rather weird and supernatural creatures would react weird to him, but at least he was in control and weird stuff no longer happened whenever he slept.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog you had me until i hit read more and you slapped me in the face with a wall of text.
Maybe you could write your backstory, it gets put through Google translate a couple times, edited by someone else to make sense, and given to the DM. And that's your official backstory. So you have an idea of what you IMAGINE your backstory to be, and maybe you're right about some of the details, but some other parts might be 'misremembered'.
I was in a low rut all day today, but your delivery on "I have this sword...and apparatus" had me choking and crying laughing. Thanks man, I needed that.
You know you've made it in life when your homebrew makes it into one of these videos
Don’t be shy… tell us which one
@@joneatsbagels7239 Agreed. Tell us!
Tell us
Tell us
Tell us
The only time I’ve used a homebrew background was for my bard who grew up as a mortician and that’s done me pretty well. I love backgrounds that are just jobs and livelihoods normal people would have, makes it feel like anyone could be an adventurer
I have a white necromancer (he fights the undead and lays them to rest) who by profession is a surgeon and apothecary and mortician, serving the (true neutral) God of the Balance of Life and Death who presides over the Underworld. (I made that god up, back in the days of AD&D 2nd edition, when I saw a "necromancer/healer wizard" build in n obscure necromancer splat-book, back when even Cleric healing spells fell into the Necromancy domain because they were both about channeling of life energy.) Then when Pathfinder rolled around, I found out by accident there's a Pathfinder Goddess of the Underworld who does the exact same thing. huh.
"Who am I?" (Also known as the Amnesiac background)
Where did you come from? Who were you previously? Only the GM knows the answers to this question, but hopefully you'll find out soon!
For any features listed that requires the GM to make a choice, they should keep the character's real background in mind.
Skill Proficiencies: Your GM chooses any two skills or tools and you gain proficiency in them.
Languages: You know one language chosen by the GM.
Equipment: Your GM rolls on the trinket table or chooses one for you. You also have a pouch of 15gp.
Feature: Memory Breakthrough
You start the game with 3 Story Points. At any point during the game, you can spend a story point to remember something associated with the situation. For example, if you walk into a small town and speak to the bartender, you might spend a story point to have some history with the bartender that was trigger by seeing them again for the first time in years. GM has final say on what you remember
Also known as "no, I don't want to make an interesting character, I want to give the GM more work"
I mean, they polished this turd until it got as shiny as it could.
@Matthew Shaw as someone currently playing an amnesiac, there's a lot of interesting character development to come from a character who's lost their past. Maybe you used to be an arch-wizard who committed horrible atrocities and wiped your own memory to try to live a normal life, slowly discovering the monster you used to be, or something. In my case, I don't know my actual backstory yet, but I do know that the character I'm playing and his arc is only possible as an amnesiac. It can be powerful to play a character who's lost everything, but can't even fathom exactly what that means. It can be interesting to touch on how perhaps losing one's memory is the best thing that could happen to them, in some cases. And about giving the DM more work, I think it actually just gives the DM free reign to make your backstory as relevant or irrelevant as they need for the story they want to tell. If I've got this long backstory about my archnemesis who's been conspiring against me for years, that's cool, unfortunately we're playing Strahd, so he won't be showing up. Any good backstory has space for a dm to add intrigue or mystery, and at least in this case, they don't have to wrack their brains for answerd on just what evil being your father partnered with before you were born. They can make all the answers as they see fit. It's not as hard as working in some backstories.
nice
i know it was typed out bad (English might not be first language, little kid, etc.) but i feel like this was shit on a bit too hard in the vid.
I love how Jacob’s first instinct was to become the BBEG when the “Raised by Elves” background gave any equipment you want.
On the Exiled God : they're actually rich, too. The gold you get from your background is on top of the equipment you get from your class, it's just extra stuff. Nobles get 25 GP, for comparison.
Would a god even have a need for money?
Or would that be a share of whatever offerings were made to them before being exiled?
That cultist feature would be a pretty great ability for a boss. He just ... has cultists hidden nearby.
That dragon one at the end reminded of a reddit post.
Someone has the idea of making a character that was a chair that was true polymorphed into a human. And because they weren't sentient until they were transformed they would have to learn basic things like walking, talking and how to eat food while being a grown man.
And the best part is no one would know right up until he steps into a anti magic field and just suddenly turns into a chair XD
Give the chair an instinctive aversion to anti magic fields that they don't understand
Or until they hit 0 hit points or someone casts high enough dispel magic on them.
One could say this character was the.. chairman. 🥁
That homebrew is actually pretty cool tho
The Who Am I flaw could kill a character over several weeks through unlucky rolls, which is mildly terrifying. Add in external circumstances such as extreme temperatures, frenzied rage (if you're a frenzy barbarian), and other things I can't remember. This could be mild inconvenience or utterly lethal.
I think it would be fun to run a "who am I" campaign. Not like this though. Instead, each character would be made by the GM, mostly following fairly generic character templates, and then randomly assigned to players, but without letting them see the completed character sheets. They just get blank sheets. Then they all wake up somewhere with amnesia, and the only ways they can find out what abilities they have available would be trial and error, and doing various wisdom and other checks to try and discover things. For bonus fun, such checks could be done by the DM, and if they fail, they aren't told they fail, they are just told inaccurate stuff, like "you are apparently very smart" for someone with low INT. The unknowing Barbarian could be making Investigation checks and "discovering" that one of the other characters is probably a Wizard (he's actually a Paladin).
Any time a character uses a skill or a stat, if they have no or inaccurate knowledge of that stat, the DM will tell them to adjust it to be closer to accuracy. Th point would be for them to have to constantly adapt to learning new things they are capable of, and for fun misunderstandings to occur based on what information is available.
Pretty sure I read a story of someone playing in a campaign with that mechanic.... In the rpghorror subreddit.
It sounds amazing and like tons of fun AS LONG as the DM is not a power-hungry pervert.
I was in a campaign similar to this where we made our characters but we all had amnesia and didn't know our backstories and we slowly discovered things we did in the past or notes about our characters. Turns out we were all horrible people. Mad scientist who experimented on souls, a rogue who would bring the people to the scientist and get paid for it and other horrible people in the party.
@@mirrormimi Yeah the issue in the horror story wasn’t that the concept didn’t work or wasn’t fun(quite the contrary in fact), the issue was (iirc) that the dm was a pervert incel and forced one of the characters to flash a prison guard even when the player explicitly said they were uncomfortable with that happening and didn’t want to do it.
You know that story of a guy, that injected himself with venom, then bigger doses, eventualy forming immunity and his blood becoming the cure?
Kind of reminds me of it
And not only that its easy to wreck...
@@elainasynranelt eugh. Creepy DMs are the worst. Unfortunately, half of the fanbase properly familiar with the game uses 4chan/reddit...
I made a concept once of a lich that continued to feed souls to his phylactery for so long he eroded into a conscious bone-dust cloud that could really inherit any form it wanted within reason. The catch was that it enjoyed its newfound form, and desperately avoided any conflict because it feared that being regenerated at said phylactery might revert it to its old form.
I had an idea for an Isekai charatcer who's actually just one of the players at a D&D table. The main draw for them is thay they have some kind of special artifact that's actually just an item from our world. So one of the items could be like the Stone of Infinite Probability and it's just a D20. Or a Monster Manual that lets you see the stats of certain monsters, but a lot of the pages are missing so you gotta find the rest of the pages. Maybe the villain could also get an item, and it's something like the miniature of the isekai charatcer's PC, which forces them to fights their own player charatcer.
I've had a isekai character idea for a while of a kenku who was transported to the real world but found his way back to the d&d world. The whole gimmick was that he was going to be a bard and be able to recreate real world songs in game.
I played an isekai-like character at one point, but my inspiration was closer to "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" in that it was a 19th century guy transported to Faerûn. I just used a slightly modified "Far Traveler" background.
There's actually an Isekai story where the Protag gets isekai'd after taking revenge on a bunch of people that killed his sister but in the process of being isekai'd he sees that his sis is in this world somewhere so he nabs the god's book of the world (Essentially a DMG to the world and a cursed object that forces him to only have 1 HP regardless of levels aside from feats) and so begins what is essentially a campaign taking place in like a 3.5e of 4e version of DnD. The guy is also just the typical Chaotic Evil rogue that just does what is necessary to achieve his goals, even convincing the paladin to change her diety so that she becomes more min maxed, even saying that his ultimate goal is to become like a lich so that he doesn't automatically die at 0HP.
Otherworldly Munchkin: Let's Speedrun the Dungeon with Only 1 HP is the title.
I feel like at some point getting Banished would become a goal for this character.
@@Jwilhoftstg The huge battle happens and he plays the Trooper?
The telepathic dominance one is insane - on a successful DC 13 save, the creature is frightened? So the higher level creature you’re fighting, the more likely you are to instantly frighten it. Plus, it’s apparently a free action, so you can run into combat with a half-dozen enemies, and in one round, talk to each of them, and give them all disadvantage on every attack roll.
Also, frightened for... How long? Forever? Yeah balanced
Soynds like a cool mechanic for a monster to have, kind of like If you understand too much you become afraid
I see it more the other way around: Every time the character tries to talk to people, they instantly try to run away. Good luck getting room, board, or equipment when everyone is too scared to talk to you.
What I think is hilarious is that even with these backgrounds... At level 1, a well-placed crit from a goblin is still enough to send you to the shadow realm.
"I, Lord Vorakthoros, WEILD MY VORPAL BLADE AND CLEAVE THE GOBLIN'S HEAD CLEAN FROM HIS SHOULDERS!"
"Okay, cool. So it's the other goblin's turn, and he uhhh... Oh. What's your max HP again?"
"7."
"Oh yeah, uh. He rolled a crit and rolled a 6, so 12 plus his proficiency mod of 2."
Something else I'd love to see are the odds that the ??? straight up dies from sleep depravation in a given length of time.
You don't add Prof to damage, and any vorpal sword wielding character should have at least 10 hp
Just make your race a Half Dragon and get resistance to everything and a d12 bonus to your AC 👍
@@thijmenhielkema6797You're not ready for my patented 8 CON war cleric build
5e RAW has you roll twice for crit damage, and prof only goes to attacks, not damage. Str or Dex are used for damage.
The chances of ??? dying of sleep deprivation on any particular week are not that high.
I'd estimate around 3%, without proficiency in Con saves and with average Con.
*On any particular week!*
The chance of dying from sleep deprivation eventually is quite high actually. With 3% every week, the MTTH would be 22.76 weeks.
The first person was confused, the second person knew EXACTLY how to break a bounded accuracy game
I think the second person decised that it was less obvious that they were making a super OP character if they made their proficiency super powerful then if they gave themselves a 30 in every stat.
Telepathic Dominance should be re-branded as rule of super-cool. If you do a cool thing inanimate objects just kinda listen to you for a bit.
Uh.... yeah, sounds cool for a bit, but... I remember that Scifi short story from satirical Scifi writer Robert Sheckley, titled _"I see a man sitting on a chair, and the chair is biting his leg"._ No seriously, that's the literal title. About a guy who by some plot device gains the ability to converse with inanimate objects, but those inanimate objects also gain sentience and the ability to move in his presence and talk back (but only he can hear them). And they all _love_ him. Like, they worship him, serve him, want to rub up against him, get envious of each other. And he's creeped out by it. So one day he snaps and screams at them how much he hates them all. And the objects... fall silent, shocked, then offended.
Yeah. You know the saying about how nothing is as dangerous as a lover spurned...?
Jacob, I want to thank you. I have been a DM for a long time. And I've been wanting to make my own system for a long time. And then one day on your channel "Arcane Arcade" I watched your game in "Fallout ZERO", where you told that you made the system yourself. And that inspired me to try it too. It took a little more time and effort than I thought, but recently my friends and I played on my home system. And everyone was happy. I am grateful to you for your inspiration!
Oh, and thanks for reviewing the weird backstories, it's cool, we need more video reviews.
6:19
😂😂😂
That moment with Jacob's hopeful demeanour when moving on from the first one being immediately crushed when reading the second name is wonderful.
That pained sigh is powerful 😁
Let me give you a better amnesiac background. The main idea here is to give you a foundation to build on and splitting the work of figuring out your backstory between you and your DM instead of just making the DM do everything.
Amnesiac
Skill Proficiencies: Your skills may be hints at what you spent your time doing before you lost your memories. Roll twice on or choose two skills from the Amnesiac Skills table. If you roll the same number twice, reroll one of them.
Amnesiac Skills (d20)
# | Skill
1 | Acrobatics
2 | Animal Handling
3 | Arcana
4 | Athletics
5 | Deception
6 | History
7 | Insight
8 | Intimidation
9 | Investigation
10 | Medicine
11 | Nature
12 | Perception
13 | Performance
14 | Perception
15 | Religion
16 | Sleight of Hand
17 | Stealth
18 | Survival
19 | One artisan's tool of your choice
20 | One musical instrument of your choice
Languages: One of your choice
Equipment: An empty journal, one simple weapon of your choice, a trinket from your past (roll on the trinkets table found in the Player's Handbook), a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 10 gp.
Feature: Returning Memories
Whenever you're sound asleep or in a deep trance during a long rest, you may recall something from your past, if you or your DM wish it. If your DM doesn't specify a particular memory, determine the nature of the memory by rolling on the Memories table. Memories you determine this way may be vague or incomplete. You retain each memory when you wake up.
Memories (1d4)
# | Type
1 | A traumatizing event
2 | An unfamiliar place
3 | A fragment of a conversation
4 | Time spent with a loved one
Feature: Nothing to Hide
Your unassuming nature causes others to lower their guard around you. You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among ordinary folk, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They may be item open to helping you in other ways, but they will not risk their lives for you.
My favorite part was when Jacob Backed the Ground.
Pain.
Consider: a dragon cursed into a human form that’s desperately trying to get stronger so they can get the revenge on the wizard who cursed them/retake the lair they took for themselves
Dragon, turned into a Kobold.
That sounds epic! Or maybe, instead of a wizard, that dragon (or any other very powerful creature) tried to overthrow a literal god and their punishment was to walk the prime material plane as a mere mortal. Only, when they have proven themselves to be worthy enough, the god, who punished them, grants them a fraction of their former power in the form of a Level-Up.
This is literally an anime/manga plot. Not a specific one either.
@@Jordan-kq3qw ALSO goated idea. I just love the idea of a dragon/human having to learn how to work with mortals and the whole “no idea how society works” while being this level 2 fighter that talks WAY too much game for how scrawny they are lmao
@@Jordan-kq3qw
A kobold, turned into a dragon, lived for hundreds of years as a dragon, and then got turned back into a kobold.
What might be fun to do with an amnesiac character that forgot everything about themselves is that the background gives you absolutely nothing (and maybe even take away X proficiencies from what your class gives you) but then, up to let's say 5 times total in the campaign, when you roll at least a nat 18 or so on a skill check, you remember that that's one of the things you're good at and get proficiency in that, and then when you have "rediscovered" all your proficiencies you get to piece together (=come up with) what your backstory has been all along
At 6 levels of exhaustion you die, right? So technically a character with 'Who Am I" could die in one week. Chances are good that they would be worthless after only a few weeks of play, as it would be rare to get a full rest, and then they will likely die within a few months.
i mean you only get the nightmares some nights and a dc13 isnt rough it really depends how unlucky you are
@@donb7519 I thought it was 1d6 times per week with a save each time?
Technically I think you recover your exhaustion at the end of a long rest, so that exhaustion you gained would be gone in the next couple of hours
@@auricmerciless7307 yes but that means you can get a week with only 1 save then 6 days of guaranteed exhaustion going down
@@xogdo5260 its only 1 point per long rest
Honestly an Exiled God background might be an interesting background to make, or at the very least theorycraft. Maybe the skill proficiencies could be Religion and an option between either Arcana, Animal Handling, History, Medicine, Performance, or Nature, and what second option you choose is depending on your what your character was a god of. And you probably would have a subset of people who don't like you based on what you were exiled for. You probably would only regain your godhood in some sort of epilogue/ending credits part at the absolute end of the campaign.
Of course, this would probably have to be in a setting and/or player group who are also insanely strong with equally crazy backgrounds. This feels it would be something more interesting to think about than actually play.
I love that someone raised by elves is somehow twice as good at using their skills, and tools than a literal (exiled) God
2:50 "yeah my past involves having the hammer of thunderbolts, sword of cas, luck sword, amulet of the planes, and an Anzio 20mm anti material rifle
I actually played a Zealot Barbarian once whose lore was that he was once the god of combat, but all the people who worshipped his pantheon died out, and so he had no more divine power, functionally making him mortal
That's brilliant!
And his arc could be recruiting people to worship him, giving him small buffs at various intervals
Zealot gets a lot of love at my table. So many great character ideas have came from it.
Oh god... I just realised that my character is an isekai. They were pulled from a different world into the DnD world, have no idea what's going on, have awesome magical powers they find out they're really proficient at using in combat and they have long pink hair.
Honestly, Who Am I would be fun if it's entirely random.
You get 10 skill proficiencies and know 10 languages and 5 random items from level 2 to 6.
None of these are told to you, they are all decided by the DM and are only revealed from the player's input or parts of your character's backstory that appear such as NPCs or intensely memetic objects.
Good luck finding out who you are!
I was watching your old "Lowest rated X on D&D Beyond" videos a few days ago and I wanted to see another one! You granted my wish! Keep up the good content man!
honestly, the addition of inverting the search at the end and looking at the highest rated is very nice. doing just a quick look at the top rated makes the difference just way funnier.
For some reason, the most flabbergasting part of these homebrew isn't their OP nature, but the horribly broken English throughout that they decided was good enough to post for everone to see.
I swear it makes part of my brain itch just reading it.
I like the theory of an exiled god who was punished. They might only get a tiny amount of equipment because they have been punished. It would have to be a certain type of campaign to work
Maybe some shit like the mark of cain where anyone part of that religion are immediately hostile if they see that mark, however those affiliated with it will see you as a tentative ally (not dying for you level, more like "you can sleep in the shed tonight")
I really like the idea too. I can imagine it being a minor god of something like lockpicking and instead of having proficiency you just automatically pass any lockpicking checks because you're the fricking god of lockpicking
4:50
You would roll it so you can finally have a use for that random mobius strip 1 sided die you bought for fun
I kind of want to see Jacob take some of these worst rated home brews and fix/balance them.
He did see a lot of promise in that Abandoned Background.
There's already backgrounds that do these properly, though. Raised by Elves is Outlander, Cultist is Sage or Noble and Isekai Hero could be Far Traveller. The others are a bit trickier, maybe the Abandoned could be a Haunted One, Who Am I could be Reborn and Exiled God could be Polymorphed.
I imagine that to initiate the telepathy, you have to hit the target with a visible beam. This does no damage, but happens to look exactly like the beam of the Disintegrate spell.
The Exiled God has potential*, but needs a Lot of work and limitations. Like, you could pick two or three skills related to your former domain. Then you can pick one weapon and one armor to be proficient with which also reflect your former domain (as well as proficiency with shields if you only took two skills). For languages they should have Common and Celestial to understand their worshippers and other gods. For equipment, mostly just aesthetic things to reflect the lost domain or some vestments like a Cleric and/or Acolyte might wear. Still gonna workshop it more, but it definitely has some possibilities
shouldn't you get proficiency in weapons and armors only from your class or race?
@Fabio Varrà no, backgrounds include things like soldiers who would have been trained in some weapons and or armor just as part of their former life. It's crazy how common it is in homebrew backgrounds though, very few official backgrounds give these proficiencies. Also race has the least to do with proficiency overall, for what it's worth.
@@psychocomytic9778 Neither the soldier, mercenary or knight background give you any weapon or armor proficiencies, while some races does it:
Dwarf: battle axe, hand axe, light hammer, warhammer
Drow: rapier, shortsword, hand crossbow
High and Wood Elf: longsword, shortsword, shortbow, longbow
Hobgoblin: two martial weapons, light armor
Better idea. Lightly customize the acolyte background. Pick the Cleric class, but be your own deity, and pick a domain that fits the actual deity you were before. Optionally multiclass into another class, or pick Paladin instead. Bam, exiled god with most of your power locked off, reduced to what a mortal could achieve.
@@theuncalledfor yeah, that’s probably the best way to handle it. Thanks, bro 💜
For the first one I would change how the whole remembering works and attach it with it's tons of proficiencies.
(firstly you have your backstory or dm made it for you, it is just that in game your character doesn't know that and so that is his background
1. So each level you unlock certain part of your memory, you gain 1 skill proficiency (to max of 5 from this) per level and 1 tool proficiency per 2 levels rounded down (to max of 3)
(this makes it so this background gives you 5 skill prof and 3 tool prof but slowly, you could extend so you would get every 2 level skill and 3 tool proficiency)
2. You start with magical bag that can store 5 mundane items and 1 fitting wonderous item and each item is locked with a password in form of the word.
You have to spell the word while holding and thinking about bag. You unlock one word each level, rolling d6 for the item with 6 being wonderous one.
Items that start in the bag have to be connected with you backstory so either you or dm decides what they are(depending on who decided your backstory
After removing items with the password you can change what object is stored in the bag.
(you get very nerfed magic bag that at first is close to useless as it can story only one item and special item you can get either by getting lucky or getting high enough level)
IF your character happens to gets 2 failed death saving throws (at the same time) and and then stays alive you gain all the benefits of getting new level in terms of this background.
(you are dying and have 2 death failed saves but got healed or just passed the rolls afterwards, then you immediately get the 1 memory, 1 password and 1 skill prof and maybe 1 tool depending on what you already got)
This rule can be overwritten if GM believes that you are doing it on purpose.
Otaku....
you lose all item proficiencies accept for leather armor, sword and bow.
Whenever you roll intelligence connected roll you can roll extra 1d4 and add it to the roll as you use your weeb knowledge to find stereotypes in this word.
You can also chose 1 skill proficiencies and 1 master from this:
survival, animal handling, perception, insight, sleight of hand
You start with 1 any modern item(that is not a weapon), backpack, scribe tools(school supplies), 1 coffee (energy drink), and 3 rations
God...
You have all skill proficiencies of the one of the attributes but you can not have any from outside of it (from class or feats)
You can speak all languages but you roll is lowered by 5 when rolling any roll that uses them unless you gain proficiency of that language from other source.
(you speak ancient, kids this days speak weirdly to you)
You start with ragged clothes and golden jewelry worth 100 gp and broken weapon/item.
if it weapon, it can be repaired for 200gp to become lvl 1 with good enough craftsmen.
After wards it can be repaired again for 2000gp to become lvl 2 and lastly for 10000 gp it can become lvl 3 weapon.
(you need good enough craftsmen for that, for player to fix it he needs to use half while having proficiency with tools to fix it and roll 15 for +1, 17 for +2 and 20 for +3)
You can use lvl 1 smite once per day, at 5 lvl you gain extra 2 spell level smite, and 10 lvl 3, 15 lvl 4, 20 lvl 5.
Bad campaign idea: Everyone has poorly rated homebrew classes, backgrounds, races, etc. and the DM uses ChatGPT to write the campaign. 😂 That’d be so funny
Yes.
The werewolf allergic to animal fur. The vampire afraid of darkness. The ninja cursed to glow in the dark and have very squeaky footsteps The bard who is completely tone-deaf but convinced he's the greatest singer ever (everyone disagrees), and while his bardic song magic does work, he makes everyone within hearing distance angry at him so they constantly beat him up.
I read this in JohnnyRazer's voice when I saw "Bad Campaign Idea"
@@TF2CrunchyFrog
The werewolf abandoned his life as a farmer due to his allergy but became a sorcerer who casts spells with every sneeze (failed con save).
ono, ONO
Modification for 'who am I'.
Proficiencies: You have no starting proficiencies. When you make a skill check or saving throw for the first time in a skill, first roll a D20. If the outcome is 18 or higher, you gain proficiency in that skill. You can only make this check once per skill / saving throw.
Languages: Common. When you hear a new language, roll a D20. If the outcome is 18 or higher, you gain understanding of the language. You can only make this check once per language.
Starting items: You start with a standard loadout for your class (Allowing your character to infer what class they are) and a memento of your past that they do not recognize, but feel a connection to (Non magic item worth below 50GP).
Essentially learning who your character is as they encounter the world.
I like this because it has the possibility of you just rolling terribly so instead of uncovering a tragic backstory you realise that you were just some loser thats good at nothing.
Speaking of not knowing your past, I heard about a cool concept for a party of amnesiatic characters. They all were handed blank character sheets, and every time they needed information about something to make a check or whatever, the DM would tell them the relevant information. So they slowly filled out the sheet as they went and attempted checks, learning more about their characters as they went. It would make for a pretty cool one shot I think.
When the DM is done with your groups shit and just creates the balanced characters he wants you to play as anyway 😂
There are definitely loads of fun ways to play an amnesiac-style character--my character had the whole 'I woke up buried in a grave and can't remember what came before' one. It was kind of funny to have a character that knew certain languages or was proficient in something and wasnt quite sure why or how. Made for great RP moments.
"Truth is, the game was rigged from the start."
8:23 when the DM says you are not the main character but want plot armor.
Plat Armor has got to be Plate Armor + Plot Armor. Best Freudian Slip I've seen in a long time. :D
3:33 This is actually almost a feature built into Pathfinder 2e inside the mastermind rogue class, but it only applies to items that can be freely purchased at the past area that the party had the opportunity to buy or bring the wanted item and the mastermind rogue will need to spend the gold retroactively to buy said item as a mechanic to roleplay that the rogue was well prepared and predicted the exact tool that was needed for the job.
The exiled god guy just misspelled "plot armor"
1:15 funny thing about random capital letters. Whoever wrote this background is most likely german/speaks german. In german you use capital letters throughout the sentences for nouns, if you don't know thats a specifically german thing you're probably gonna do this in other languages as well.
Imma be real, long hair and the partial goatee is jacobs best drip, it makes him look more mature and older, and it shapes his face really well. you are rocking it bro.
6:50 most isekai's nowadays are basically just power fantasies where the main character has the equivalent of cheat codes in a video game and is totally OP. Sure, you get fish out of water, but it's basically a Chosen One story with extra steps.
A neat idea for the amnesia background for a fix, (this is for the “suddenly gets item”” is that they always had the item but the sudden flashback allows them to remember how to use it
4:08 I remember now a huge part of my backstory. I have another apparatus of kwalish.
i think that the exiled god idea could be pretty cool actually. obviously not with all the busted stuff but maybe somewhere between disneys hercules and mcu thor where its like you were banished and your powers were sealed or stolen so youre only really slightly more powerful than the average human. youd just have to be careful cause it would be easy to fall into main character syndrome when your character was once a godly being
2:27 What five _things?_ Five random trinkets? Five weapons? Five artifacts? Can I start with the Eye and Hand of Vecna and three Orbs of Dragonkind?
Jacob assumed that the typo was "Plate Armor," but I'm pretty sure that an Exiled God receives "PLOT Armor"
I love the idea of a group of players that normally play together and they decide to do a one shot, but the trick is that ALL homebrew is allowed... and most importantly, they make the characters FOR EACH OTHER.
It's extremely amusing to me the idea of a player who normally plans the super weak but quirky characters. ex) Half-Orc Wizard, Strength Monk, etc etc.
Then the one shot starts and they go "Hey everyone I'm.... Ugh...... An Aasimar Exiled God. I'm a Warlock Paladin with... W-What, why does it say I'm level 24?!?"
DM: "I allowed it 😏"
honestly, Exiled God can work.
first, change equipment to one legendary artifact which is broken and can not be repaired by you or any mortal being.
next, the feature should be something more along the lines of "your former compatriots want nothing to do with you. the gods will not aid you, even indirectly through means such as clerics. some may even actively try to get you killed."
4:00 kaim recalls a memory deep within his heart, cool a sword!
I live in constant fear of my old homebrew creations
14:05 I was distracted and read that as "dark daddy"
My favorite video series, please keep making these (although at this point idk what category you should do next, or if you should just circle back to old ones)
14:25 LMAO that caught me off guard
That first one just comes off as a "I don't want to do any of this stuff and I'll just make up claims at convenient points in the game in order to get free stuff" player to me.
4:45 I genuinely broke out into a fit at the concept of a 1-sided die
The actual, physical one-sided die does exist. It's shaped in such a way as to roll to a stop with the same side facing away from gravity no matter how it landed. I've seen UA-cam ads of dice sets for a die of all numbers 1 through 10, prominently featuring the physics involved in rolling the d1.
A one sided die is just a marble lol
@@Shalakor The thing I find funny is the idea of someone being like :"What happens? Let me roll a d1... Ah, a 1!"
D1 is actually a thing, since Mobius strips have only one side they will always land on a 1
6:45 you’ve not read/seen many Isekai? 😂 The otaku has totally played this game to death
That "who am i" background gave me an interesting idea. Your background is amnesiac. You as a player discover yourself as you go. The first 2 spoken languages you encounter, you gain proficiency in them. You start with common already as a proficient language. The same deal with the first 4 or 5 skills checks you need to make. Once more for weapons and armor types. Once you discover all your proficiencies you and your DM can deliberate and decide what your backstory is. That could then decide your alignment and overall goal now that you have discovered who you were before your amnesia.
Another way of doing it would be, instead of it just being the first ones you encounter guaranteed, you could roll a die or flip a coin to decide if you are proficient with that skill/language when encountered. After finding out if you are or not proficient, that skill or language cant be flipped on again. Once you gain your 2 languages/4-5 skills/ and equipment profs then you stop rolling for any more. Make it more random rather than purely based on the location you are in and the first things encounter.
0:13 Baby of Darkness.
I have not laughed so much for a long time. 3:19 broke me XD
Wait, I saw that thumbnail and while obviously their implementation is bad and overpowered, I think Exiled God has potential as a really cool idea for a background, I haven't read it but I'm thinking Rick Riordan's Trials of Apollo
You could combine it with the "Who am I" background with some adjustments, but then it would essentially be Tyrael from Diablo 3.
I had a similar idea for a high level campaign, where all the player charatcers are gods trying to get their status back, but they still keep a lot of their powers.
@@MythicMachina I would highly recommend Godbound instead of D&D, if that's what you're going for. It does a much better job of handling high power level play, and you get powers that actually are godly.
Edit: I forgot to mention that the standard version is free!
@@15PaperSpearsProtectTheWise how crunchy is it? So I know what i'd be getting myself into.
@@MythicMachina I wouldn't call it crunchier than D&D 5e. In fact, it's rather similar in a lot of aspects (very intentionally so). Think of it as a version of D&D fine tuned for playing godlings, so, instead of creating a couple of berries to feed a group, you might create a lush field that can feed a village for generations.
3:01 that hmm reverberated within my soul
A better Isakai Otaku:
choose hobby
proficiency/skill in an RPG equivalent of said hobby (I.E. tactics [chess, strategy games, etc.], Sleight of Hand [miniatures], weapon upkeep [weapon collector], smithcraft [smithing hobby], practice combat [LARPing], Lore [folklore and mythology hobbyist] etc.)
bonus to communication with specialists related to hobby (but you have to roll to avoid amateurish statements as you are just a hobbyist)
Isakai bonus: better acquainted to fantasy concepts but out of your element in terms of existing in such a world as yourself.
cons: -2 charisma, poor social skills
This seems fun and actually more realistic
what about this:
Isekai person
-Has been isekaied for at least 1 month so they could get a class and conceivably be able to pass knowledge checks.
-Has negative proficiency in history, arcana, nature and religion.
-Can choose 3 proficiencies(except those above) or choose 2 proficiencies and one custom proficiency that exists in real life, exp: Engineering, Design, Marksmanship. And with that custom proficiency get special actions like creating contraptions that only exist in real life like a revolver, or doing chemistry, create nuclear weapons, run a cult, advocate for democracy, etc.
Thought of one too
Isekai MC:
-You enter the world with a phone, a wallet containing money, your driver's license, keys and credit cards
-You know 1 or 2 languages in the real world, 1 of them being English, for whatever reason you also know the common language of the world you were transported to
-You have have vast knowledge relating to fictional media, even outside your own world because of your constant pointing out of (in the internet) cliches, plot holes and etc....(+4 to anything in checks relating to this)
-You get +2 in a perception roll if you're in the darkness, because of your sedentary lifestyle with all your curtains and screen monitor
-You get -1 on all stats, with exception to constitution, because of vaccines or whatever, you get +2 in that, you must also apply 2 -1's in a stat of your choosing
-If ever you get a d1 on any roll, it will be counted as d20 with the caveat of you still blundering but that blunder somehow acheiving your goal to the consequence of your hitpoints (-2 hitpoints), because d1's are extremely funny and our God, Lord and savior the DM, appreciates good comedy (also cause anime comedy)
-You have a proficiency at cooking and performance
-(edit) -1 wisdom, -1 intelligence and +3 charisma rolls against the opposite sex, if you're character's bisexual, it applies to all sex's, if you're characters asexual, it applies to an object/concept of your choosing (a fetish), this feature of the class is optional
@@yaman9463oh he's kinda like a "yankee in king Arthur's court" type of protagonist
Isekai Otakus in modern anime get a +10 to Charisma
"wildborn"
proficiencies:gaming sets LMAO
I like the fact that exiled god gets proficiencies with everything, but wildborn gets fricking expertise. Being raised by elves makes you stronger than bein a literall deity, apparently
With telepathic dominance feature you are just doing a backflip so sick that objects suddenly come to life for a moment and wish to do what you want :D
It's actually a fairly common trope in isekai stories for the protagonist to be ridiculously overpowered in some way. It's pretty much the norm, though there are plenty that go against this to be different.
The Dex save to dodge telepathic greeting got me XD
For the isekai one, im actually starting a game like that as a player. I made my character a farmboy who got jacked from helping around the farm so much, and though hes slow to anger, if he becomes angry he becomes SCARY (barbarian). He also had to deal with a lot of rude people at bars and trespassing, so hes got tavern brawler and grappler as he learned to fight with his hands using whatever he had and holding them down till others could help or authorities could intervene. Hes gonna know absolutely nothing of this new world, but hes gonna still be a valuable member with a good moral compass. I hope he lives
Did you just describe Clark Kent/Superman.
Funny enough, with the right build, a Ranger *can* know up to 10 languages at level 1 - Variant Human (2), Linguist Feat (3), Language giving Background, like Acolyte (1 to 2), Deft Explorer (2), and Favored Enemy (possibly 1).
Hey - New Party Face - especially with a bonus to Charisma, and using the Fey Wanderer subclass.
As a newbie DM, I would love hearing about the BEST HOMEBREWS rather than the worst homebrews
not complaining of course, you do what you wana do, but if you do happen to make 1 about the best homebrews... ill be watching ;)
You can always looks them up yourself
The exiled god homebrew is what you get when the player hears the idea of playing a god that got turned mortal and exiled without hearing the part of "you lose most of your godly power" kind of the most important part to play that idea well
And with the godly power is how you get a comedy light novel/anime