What I really DON'T LIKE about backgrounds in D&D 2024

so we are seeing a lot of previews from stuff from the new 2024 version of dunge and Dragons whatever you're going to call it and one thing that I think was particularly interesting aside from the specifics of the fighter and the padin and the various classes is the way that they're going to handle backgrounds and what they call species now races before and feeds there's a video out on it that I want to just maybe skim through with you uh leave some comments because I think they're doing some very fun things but I also think they're doing some very weird things and maybe some paradoxical kind of self-contradicting things anyway let's just jump into it um the video that I'm watching is new feeds background species 2024 players handbook D and D from the official dungeon dragons Channel which you can also find a link to in the description down below and we'll be watching it at a higher speed so when you're making your character now you will first choose your class the most important choice you make for your character and then you will flesh out your character's origin and so we like to think of it as you might decide I want to be a fighter or I want to be a rogue or a cleric or a wizard and then you think well how did I get there what did I do before I was a member of that class and what do I know about my character's childhood and so it's when you start pondering those questions that you turn toward the character Origins chapter and you will essentially be going back in time in your character's backstory so again you start with your class then you'll Ponder what was my character's background and background is all about not only what you did okay so one thing he's going through here is that you'll be going backwards through it so you pick your class then you pick your background and you pick your species for me it's just it's the opposite way around than what I would do necessarily but it does make sense that you want to maybe have thought about what class you're going to take before you choose your species and your background because you're going to stick with yeah there's some choices that affect others but it does make it sound like it's a really genius way to do it I'm not sure that I necessarily agree with that another thing we do see here and uh I just want to pause here because it's actually high enough quality that we can easily make it out is how backgrounds are going to look you're going to have a scene of a background and then you're going to have some information about the background a little uh blur up here that says uh what life would have been as a person of that background and then and this is the interesting part which he'll also get into and we'll see how much we uh we're going to show off that video uh but that you get ability scores strength intelligence Charisma is tied to being a noble why nobles are strong we'll hopefully find out feet skilled so there's a feet tied to the noble background you have some skill proficiencies history and persuasion you have a tool proficiency choose one kind of gaming set and then you have some equipment that you get you get some fine close perfume and 29 uh GP for some reason probably because these two together cost 21 or you just get uh 50 TP so um so yeah those are the things you get and that is also what Jim C is going to be talking about I think we're going to skip here bit a feat at first level they also determine ability score bonuses for you when you make your character and these are ability score bonuses that really are rising up out of how your characters spent their time prior to embarking on the Wilds of Adventure and those two things in particular the ability score adjustments that backgrounds bring as well as the feet mean your background will have an effect on your character for your entire career and that was something that was not necessarily the case in 2014 backgrounds except for perhaps the proficiencies you got you would still enjoy those throughout your career but now there are just paing here to uh to say that these El covers are absolutely gorgeous and uh and I think I'll be getting those uh when we pick up the 2024 rules throughout your career but now there are more parts of your character that are forever affected by your character's background now to support the use of Feats at first level we have now divided Feats up into categories because we don't want a first level character to be plunged into the deep end of feet pool we want you to be able to sample Feats uh and to have that sampling be curated so that the Fe you get from your background is from a special selection of feets that are appropriate for a starting character and yeah so this is something they also showcased in the unearth Cana series that we have some feeds now designated as origin feeds that you can pick up early uh skilled we could see is one of them I think you'll mention locky is another uh probably tough could be one as well and I think it's a nice approach to have that we're going to say okay some of these feeds we we want to put some generally applicable good feeds in here not something that will make or break a build skilled isn't needed for any like optimized build lucky is just good on any character uh tough is just good on any character but it's not your gra Mastery or your spell it could be spell initiate initiate of course or magic initiate um but but just the fact that you have something that isn't probably necessary for a build and that is just generally a good feed to have makes sense to put in that origin feed category now those ability score adjustments to me are really juicy because of the flexibility that we provide and this is a flexibility that goes beyond anything that we previewed in on Arcana so what we now do in each background is we provide three ability options and then you as a player decide am I going to put plus two in one of those three and you choose which of the three or and then plus one in one of the other two or am I going to do plus one in all three so here's an example the ooly if you decided your character whatever class you're a part of spent their formative years serving in a temple in some capacity you could choose ooly and the aoly background tells you that the three abilities that you have the the option to adjust are intelligence wisdom and Charisma and you have total freedom in which of those You decide gets the plus two which one gets a plus one or if you maybe don't want to make that choice and just give plus one to all three right we did this because we want backgrounds to interlock with as many appropriate classes as possible previously when we previewed this approach to backgrounds of them providing ability score adjustments one of the downsides of the the play test version is it kind of hard locked the backgrounds to specific classes and we did not want to proceed with that because in some ways that was recreating the we were getting away from 2014 species because in 2014 these ability score adjusts existed the playable species and one of the reasons we moved it out of there is we didn't like how that drove certain species to be combined with certain classes we wanted people to feel more free to mix and match what he's saying right here to me just doesn't make sense at all he's even acknowledging the fact that species kind of hard locked you into something you get a half or that has plus two to strength and plus one to Constitution or however it was and you're kind of locked into being a martial class who else wants a plus two to strength um assuming that is still something where you can't get that 16 in an ability score to begin with unless you have a bonus from your background um because if you if that's not the case then those bonuses hardly even matter you could put them anywhere and just like raise the ability scores you want so assuming that the ability scores you get from your background actually do matter they help you reach a higher cap then they're doing the exact same thing as was the case with species even if cowford doesn't want to acknowledge it because he just mentioned himself the acolyte which has Intelligence wisdom and Charisma so if I'm not playing a wizard a sorcerer a warlock or uh a cleric or characters that really need these three ability scores if I'm playing any character who has a primary primary ability score in strength or dexterity which would be almost all martial classes then the acolyte background is not for me I can't pick up the acolyte background I would never pick up the acolyte background on a martial character because it doesn't give me the stat bonuses that I need to be most optimized at first level of course it's not always about being the most optimized sometimes you just want to have fun great have fun uh I I I could do that myself but saying that they haven't pitching whole characters into some backgrounds anymore because they're giving three options that is just uh that's just not true there'll be plenty of backgrounds where the options it provides just like the noble we saw which was strength intelligence Charisma I to recall if I'm a DEX based character if I'm a Rog I might want some intelligence I might want some Charisma but I want some decks I need to have a plus two in my decks if I want to be the best rogue Straight Out The Gate uh so for me it's really really weird choice I think it makes sense to have feed in that background section give it a background feed that is generally useful for all characters makes a lot of sense but tying ability scores to it makes even less sense than tying it to the race of species where you could always say that okay but halfs are just on average generally stronger than humans or elves are generally on average more charismatic or more dextrous or whatever than humans and humans are just on average very different so they get to pick that that sort of made sense uh even if it had some I don't know maybe racist or or overgeneralizations attached to it that people didn't like but the main thing that people didn't like was being pitching hold into picking a race that was was the most optimal for the build and now they're just pitch and hold into picking a background that is most optimized for the build which in some cases have even more to do with what your character or who your character even is hey yeah I wanted to make like a cler aoly type uh Warrior that that struck out from the monastery and picked up an X and learned how to be a barbarian after the money was burned down whatever I wanted to be an aoly background no I can't do that because you're not going to get strength you're not going to get uity you're not going to get Constitution uh and that just doesn't fit the build that I have in mind uh so for me this this just misses the mark and it's kind of I'm kind of mythed to see it uh in in the like you're doing a lot of things right the new 2024 version of the rules are definitely going to be better than the 2020 or 2014 uh I think but this two steps forward one step back kind of thing which I think this is a step back why not just let uh ability scores be free don't pigeon hold anything just just give more ability points or a better role or a better standard array and let people choose the ability scores they want regardless of the rise background uh class all that just let them pick the ability scores they want if you want to make a system where ability scores are tied to these choices whether it's the species or the race or the background that's fine but you can't have it both ways you can't tie these things you can't limit the choices and then say we want un limited choices you want people to be able to do any background Ed in class because those things just just fundamentally do not align uh so yeah sorry if I'm getting almost heated about this but it's just really weird for me to see him defend that choice instead of just saying okay hey we want some background to just only make sense for some characters or or make better sense for some characters fine let's just's do that but don't tell me that I have a freedom of choice that is clearly not there because some backgrounds are just more optimal than other choices um so we could watch the rest of the video but I think you probably up to date with it um basically he's also talking about now that of course species aren't tied to ability scores anymore that's all over in backgrounds your backgrounds is much more important species still get the racial traits and and we'll have a lot of species that were also present in uh the unearth Arcana play test so uh so nothing especially new there he I think he also does mention that backgrounds there will be an option to customize backgrounds uh but it'll be in the dungeon master guide so we can assume that it's not going to be the uh call rule it's going to be an optional rule that the TM can allow characters to do or players to do uh which means of course that we are tied into this um ability scores are tied to backgrounds so yeah just a bit of a rant for me about how ability scores and backgrounds are going to work in uh 5 dungeon dragons um that aside I am excited to see more about what they've done with that uh and and also of course the new classes so there may be some more videos coming out this week or uh yeah just some comments on the stuff that I find interesting in in these videos yeah aside from that thanks for watching and I hope that I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Eventyr Games

Views: 3,228

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Id: qyKAtl6eK_8

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2024