I just want to throw this here to say that overall, I'm very positive about most of the changes to D&D in the new rules update. After speaking pretty glowingly about the system last week, this was just my one bone to pick and I wanted to discuss it. This video wasn't meant to spark outrage or anger, just wanted to point out why I disliked it. Cheers, and thanks for watching!

Here is an idea I had. What if you had a choice of abilities based on all three choices. Your species gives you two abilities choice, your background gives you two more choices and finally your class gives you two choices. You then have 3 points to boost any of those ability scores. Example: an orc has a choice of str and con, the fighter has a choice of str and dex, and the veteran gives you a choice of con and wis. In the end you have a choice of str, dex, con, and wis. Classic build with a bit of room for a unique build. If you chose a different background as an orc fighter you would still have a chose of str, dex, and con. If you chose sage you would get int and wis. This would be great for a eldritch knight and make sense. Does this sound good or am I off the mark.

In the Unearthed Arcana book for AD&D 1st edition, your species gave you a number of dice to roll for each attribute, and you take the best 3 dice. The best was 9 dice, the lowest was 3 dice. It made your race matter even when rolling up your character. There was also a version to roll by your class instead, which is what my group preferred out of the two options.

This is the biggest bone to pick with because custom backgrounds now, the ball in the DM's court instead of the players. You make perfect points and sure, you can talk with your DM... but I don't want to ask for permission for an optional rule that what was & should've stayed a core rule.

Arya doesnt make sense to you because you incorrectly believe shes a noble background.....shes 8 years old when the story starts....she was out of type for a noble at that point, and basically from the start of the story onward lives as an urchin background. Youre watching her formative years in the show. Basically she has a noble birthright, but shes an urchin.

Origin Ability Scores should have always been tied to the Classes. Don’t know why they decided to choose Backgrounds, and then limit your choices in the same way they did in 5e.

Custom background was a thing in 5e. When I discovered this option in D&DBeyond, I started using it regularly to better make the character I wanted. Hopefully something like this in the new version. In any event, I've learned to not let rulebooks dictate how to have fun.

I think something that is missing from Ability score bonuses in races is that it was also flavour and mechanically represented the lore. Like, oh Elves are dextris because of there more slim frame, but High elves gain a bonus too Intelligence not cause they are "born smarter" but because their culture valued educational and academics more, and wood elves get Wisdom because they are a culture of hunters and druids. And literally every race has this, the plus 2 bonus his related to their physical body and there plus 1 is tide to their culture. I hate how people just ignored this, kinda dismissing the effect of your culture and heritage has on your life.

You can still customize your backgrounds... Same as always. The DMG has guidelines on how to do it, you can basically pick and choose skills, proficiencies, ability scores and your origin feat. These "standard" background choices have always exist as guidelines or to help newer players

At this point I just let my players pick whatever ability scores they want. Most of the time my players pick non optimal choices anyways because the flavor to them is more important. Some (flavors) aren’t options and it should be completely up to the player.

Noble is a kinda the problem child from the backgrounds. Noble basically means, you had access to everything. GoT also makes a point that the Stark kids (or Jaime) not only had access to the best education, but they also had access to the best physical training. So nobles technically could have a bonus to all abilities. Noble is also problematic because just by definition (not as a game mechanic) Noble just describes who your parents are, you don't really have to do anything. Arya would not have the noble Background. You could make a case for Noble, urchin, acolyte, soldier/assassin/bounty hunter, outlander, but which one does she use?. If Arya would have learned from listening to Tywin and become a battle commander her background would be Courtier. Arya fled very early and missed out on a lot of education and later turned special agent. And yes, she can lie and act to infiltrate but I'd argue that's proficiency not high Charisma (above 15). Let me compare it to classes: If your character learned to fight in the army but later discovered Jesus+magic powers, you don't have to multiclass into Fighter. Clerics also need to learn how to fight. Arya is a noble by definitiion but her game-Background should besomething else. A character can have various experiences, but you should pick the one that influenced your Characters abilities. You don't have to pick Noble just because you are royalty. John and Rob could also have the Soldier or something else. I think I'll continue doing this: Yeah sure as a noble you might have the highest Cha score, but the DC to convince the authority and taxes hating Farmer will be higher for you than for the farmboy sorcerer (and I might give him adv. if he roleplays right and tries to establish realatable connection to the NPC.)

theatre kids want to be the main character, and really dont care about balance playing

The thing I find odd about backgrounds is they give us 16, but there are 20 possible combinations of three ability scores. Why not just give us all 20 so we can have an example of each? I have to wonder if Crawford intended custom backgrounds as a default option in the new edition and the suits told him no because of how some of those out of control builds affected organized play, which I know should not be a factor in a perfect world.

The difference is that you can't use the bad design of 2014 to bully the DM into playing commander luke skywalker of the USS Enterprise as a permanent fixture in the B5 Nightwatch unit any longer and actually talk with the gm to see if you can work something out or need to choose between revise the concept/walk while admitting not the game for you for a change. We saw Pg33 ch2 Creating a character:"talk to your gm. Start by talking to youe DM about the type of d&d game *they* plan to run. If the DM draws inspiration from greek myth for example you might choose a different direction for your character than if the DM is planning for swashbuckling on the high seas. Think about the kind of adventurer you want to play in *this* game. If you don't know where to begin look at the character illustrations in this book" below that is a session zero sidebar that includes the text "session zero is a great opportunity to talk with other players *and the DM* and decide how your characters know one another, how they met, and what sorts of quests the group might undertake together"..

Honestly, they should just let players choose whatever bonus they want like in Tasha's. I don't know why they felt the need to tie it to a specific aspect of character creation again.

I’m pretty sure they said there’s a section at the end with instructions on building your own background so I don’t really see an issue with saying instead of strength I want a dex bonus Also with your examples you wouldn’t have to choose noble as a background for Ariya you could chosen urchin etc. by basing it off a more recent period in her life when she’s wandering after Ned’s killed. I see why they’ve gone for a halfway house option and provided more choice but still limited the options. It is a bit odd to say because I was a scholar who spent years sat in a library reading I now have a +2 to strength

I think it makes sense to have classes sorta tied to certain backgrounds. I mean if I were a cleric I'd most like be working on a church or temple or something. And as a fighter I'd most likely start out as a soldier. And so on. Makes a little more sense than having certain species be better at certain classes cause I'm sure those species would have some variation of at least most of the classes in their society. There will always be exceptions of course.

Your point with the fencing noble is the stronger point, the argument for the Starks is a poor one, because it assumes that characters are only one thing, when in fact, the Starks demonstrate this system incredibly well, because the old children are more engrained in their noble backgrounds while Aria and Bran are the youngest and have the most time to develop another aspect to their background that they gravitated to instead. Aria is still young and while she begins life as a noble, she didn't really take to it and as she gets older, she meets criminals and finds this background most appealing and so leans more heavily into that aspect of who she is. Likewise, Bran's depression made him into a hermit despite being a noble, and he leans more into that background.

I can also see how this creates a system where every fighter has the same feat because they’re all noble or something because that’s optimal. And so there is less variety through that. I can see how it makes more sense that ability score increases being connected to what you did in your life (aka backgrounds) but it’s just more fun to have the freedom of a build your own option.

So...build your own background with your DM, as Jerremy said.

Thank you for covering this. I agree with you they are kinda just remaking the same problems, they would have to go extremely abstract (and lose the compatibility) to really get away from it. Back when I ran a DnD 5e campaign, my players wanted to be 'heros' so i gave them an extra feat, and tweaked a class little but then upscaling the enemies. Half the time I just double enemy HP or something to make it feel like a challenge they were beating. 🤣

There's a 5E variant published by ENWorld called "Level Up (Advanced 5E)", and they did a LOT of this stuff a couple years ago. They changed terminology, going with "heritage" instead of "race". Your heritage determines strictly physical traits, like darkvision and movement speed, but your Culture determines learned abilities -- want to play a dwarf raised by elves? Take the dwarf heritage, and the wood elf culture (f'rinstance). Your background determines your ability bonus points, with one +1 being set, and a second +1 open to wherever you want. (Yes, you get 1 fewer stat point. The skill system makes up for this by giving out Expertise Dice, adding a d4 -- or bigger -- to specific uses of skills.) Plus, A5E gives you a way to play with the 5E rules without giving WotC a dime. Given their shenanigans over the past couple years, it's hard to justify giving them any more money.

I still think there is a middle ground that was leaped over. How about a +1 from your race, +1 from your background, and +1 from your class, each with 2 options and a general rule of no +3.

Midway through 5.5s life, they'll change to 4e, and it'll be skills and abilities are completely disassociated with background, race, or class. All you'll need is prerequisite stats to pluck abilities from anywhere. "Be what you want to be," Everyone will choose the same optimized options

Is the option to customize your background in the character origins UA not in the new PHB?

I absolutely love the backgrounds being tied to your ability scores, its only a soft tie, especially given the variety of combos of the scores given. Sure, its unlikely to see a sage barbarian - I think that makes sense - but you can still increase wisdom and con and make a unique character. It makes you choice even more uncommon and surprising. Edit: you actually make a fantastic argument FOR this system in trying to argue against it. A wizard could easily pick sage, acolyte, or noble, alongside I’m sure many other choices. But at the same time, Sage fits a sorcerer quite well, or a warlock, or a paladin, or an artificer, or an eldritch knight, or countless other options. There are 16 backgrounds iirc with directions on how to create a custom background being mentioned in the interviews with Crawford. I believe this will lead to some rather unique combinations. While I’m sure we’ll see a dozen soldier fighters, I’m rather excited that sage is actually a suboptimal choice for wizard. Its going to encourage people to branch out and those that don’t and continue to make their sage wizards are going to get an extra spell and cantrips. This system really interests me for this reason alone. If I’m a bard that wants the healer feat, I can take the hermit background - a seemingly strange choice, but one that leads to new and exciting character concepts - why is this hermit now a roving performer?! Edit 2: You have yet again made a great argument, I think its fantastic and clear that Bran is better represented by either something like the hermit background or perhaps acolyte or perhaps even wayfarer or guide. All of these are much better fits for him than noble, you know why? For the exact reason that noble better fits all of the characters who actually grew up and had their formative years affected by being nobles. Bran and Arya did not! Bran went on a grand odyssey and Arya became the greatest assassin in the lands. Just because Bran starts and ends in some capacity near a throne does not a noble make - so we ask ourselves, what are his formative years spent doing? Traveling? Becoming wise? Learning? Honing how abilities? And Arya? Is Arya spending her formative years being a noblewoman? No! She’s an urchin, clearly! This system asks you what your character was doing BEFORE level 1, not what they would have done if the adventure never happened.

this whole "disaster" could have been avoided if they left the customize your background in the PHB where it was in 2014 and where it belongs. now i see an even worse problem, i choose what class i want to play then i have to look up the backgrounds and check which combination of stats + feat fits my character after that i throw all the background story i had in mind into the garbage can ( most of the time ) and have to rethink what the character was doing before it's very likely i will end up with not matching stas and the feat the background grants and i will have to think do i run with stats that don't fit or a background that don't fits next i will be settled with 2 skills which might be duplicates of the ones i choose as my class skills, in 2014 no problem i could swap the duplicate, oh lets just do that .... args i can't because that would mean i have to modify the background which is in the dmg every character will be pigeonholed into the background provided by the book, so you don't get to play the character you had in your mind, but will need to play a character the rules forces you too .... also the feats you can choose as your background feat are very limited and also vary alot on what they do provide you with. going by UA here : MI might provide you with a nice bonus under certain circumstances ( e.g. Wizard, sorcerer MI for a hybrid or priest class to gain access to the shield spell ) Now to get the MI : Arcane you need to have a culthist background, sounds "good" for a Paladin of Tyr to be a former culthist of a demon or devil doesn't it ? now lets see as skill thats Religion (duplicate ) and Arcane ( for a paladin pretty useless ) language : abyssal .... ( no comment ) tool : disguise kit ( for this character also completly useless) stats : int & chr ( depends on what is presented as 3rd in the new phb, otherwise your +1 is useless)

Back in Gygax AD&D, it wasn't like picking a race usually modified your character (besides things like dark or low light vision). How it worked was that first you rolled up your stats and then you looked on the races and choose 1 within the parameters you rolled. Sure, there were racial and stat limits of some classes but your roll basically decided what character you would be playing (back then we usually rolled a single time and no rerolls so Pally's and worse, bards were rare). You could see it as the game forcing you to play certain classes, or you could see it as you getting to try something different most times you made a new character. Far too many players tend to pick basically the sane character every time they make a new character if they get total freedom which actually can get tiring for everyone after a few campaigns. I don't think focusing on the stats that you roll, race or background is better or worse but I admit I rather have the characters to roll for their background unless I as the DM want them from a specific background for a campaign. Having everyone start out as farmer from a small village who decides to be adventurers for instance could make a fun campaign. I do think the DM should be able to limit the background depending on the campaign, the barbarian campaign where all the players pick noble background would be a bit silly.

In a game where you can literally do whatever you want, they fumble at character creation 🤦🏾 I will probably still use 5e custom background rules until they improve this, but I might mess around with some of these options too. It baffles me that with all the time constraints Wotc had to publish this book, they got lost in the weeds of a game element that needed little to no adjustment.

Hard agree on this. I had a character build idea that's effectively a fighter who also uses cleric spells (Shield of Faith, Guidance) to defend allies, so +2 Str, +1 Con or Wis, Magic Initiate (Cleric). However, that's no longer possible without custom rules. The Acolyte background concept fit my character well, but the stat bonuses are all wrong, even though a cleric of a War Domain god, especially Kord, would have reasonably trained in Str. The only way to get the stats and feat I want would be to pick a different background (not the one I envisioned for this character) and specifically the human species. So, for optimizers, we may be back to humans best species for another ten years.

Why could they not just say, "Here you 3 ability points to add to whatever score you want however you want" so if we're playing a monk, we can put them in dex, wisdom and con, we can take the noble background and play the iron fist. Or be a fallen noble with the noble background playing Robin Hood as a ranger or as a rogue for Batman. This is the same problem I had with their first attempt at their 2024 dragonborn. Instead of using the most popular and used version from fizban's, they used the 2014 version with some tweeks that was still far worse than the Fizban's version. Now, the ability score is also being taken from the 2014 version instead of the far better, used and popular version from Tasha's.

The best way of doing this was Tahsas where you can just put a +2 and +1 wherever, or three +1's. Idk why they changed that and tied it to backgrounds, and on my table I will absolutely ignore that change xd.

I agree with you. I wanted to do a way of mercy monk that came from a noble background. He wasn't interested in politics but chose to study this ancient fighting style. The noble background would not help this character at all. Then again, if he is choosing not to be an active ruler and let a brother rule instead, perhaps another background could be chosen since noble really doesn't fit his current role.

I'm thinking this might just be so each player has to have a digital copy of the DMG to do custom backgrounds in the WotC/Hasbro virtual tabletop. It could literally be that simple and dumb of a reason.

It’s funny everyone’s chasing their tails trying to homebrew around this, when the answer is so simple. Just add the primary ability score for a class to alternatively be selected by the background ability score bonus. This represents time the character had as that particular class to train up to now, which is in a way part of their background, just their more recent background.

I think they just should let you put the points where you want them. Baldurs gate 3 did a good Job with it.

Only take four? Damn good!

There are a few issues with what was said in this video, so with peace and love I'm just gonna go into some of the things said and why I believe they're not really that big of a deal. 1. The PHB states at the beginning that all of the rules in the book are up the DMs discretion. Even if it didn't, there's nothing stopping you from asking your DM to let you swap STR with DEX for a Noble, I'm sure most will oblige. 2. The Custom Lineage rule isn't just removed now, you can still use it in place of the Background ASI. Nothing about this new book prevents you from doing that. 3. Them saying that creating a new background would be a new default happened during the UA phase. Every UA is prefaced by the idea that these are changes which are currently in flux and open to change. Sure he should've worded it better and they should have clarified more, but stuff said during development and prefaced by the knowledge that this isn't final result material should be taken with a massive pinch of salt.

I think even if an orc was raised as a salad-eating choir boy, he should be able to fly into a murderous rage and throw clerics through stained glass. Always thought of Ability Scores as "what you are" not "what you do". Meaning, if nature gave you 18 Strength might be easier to become a Barbarian, but not the other way around. Nobody in life get 18 Str because of "Barbarian Training".

But I'd argue that Arya rejected the Noble background and wouldn't have that as her background. And it could be said that based on her age that her background didn't really become evident until after her father's death and when she began having to survive on her own. I'd give her the urchin or criminal background because those are the skills she used to survive.

If it's an optional rule in the book than it's offical, read the book, there is no reason why you can't find it online if you can't get one , things in the book are guides to make jumping in easier, optinal rules are often for more complex players.

As both DM and player, ever since Tasha's challenged the idea of where ability score improvements come from, I've treated it as somewhat malleable. A lot of the stat blocks and things like that are suggestions all the way around. It's to help people spark their creativity or to balance certain things out. If they followed a formula to make a background or a subclass, we could also do the same thing if we took the time to put it together and balance it out. That said, I don't know if this was recorded before the Druid was discussed on the official channel, but I got attached to that part of your House Stark example. Jeremy mentioned that in this new PHB, there will be a branching path option for a Druid that is more melee and less dirt wizard. That feels like pretty strong wish fulfillment to me. There's a chance that we should be considering the book as a whole once its all said and done rather than assessing each piece separate from the rest of its parts in addition to using the preconstructed backgrounds as options that we're more than welcome to tweak if something RAW isn't satisfying our builds. I also understand that there are some players out there who have never owned a DMG and they don't have to own the new one either, but they've also been referring to the entire core rulebook set as a collection of tomes that are also parts of a bigger whole. They are thousands of pages written and illustrated with each other in mind. Not every person needs all three, but all three coexist as a single unit. Knowing the contents or intentions offered within each one wouldn't be a bad idea and I'd imagine that's what some of the videos they've been dropping are for. Giving the details to promote the material, but also to let people know what they might want to know what the book is capable of - or what to inquire of someone with access to the book.

Just stumbled across your channel. Great video. Informative and engaging. I like your energy.

Well they want to give importance to the backgrounds, so I think they make sense... This sentence is not about making an optimazed character or class character, in sure they added some personalized background option as they did in 2014 even if people didn't use that rule often, the backgrounds are meant to be ready-to-go suggestions but they can always be revised... That's the cool thing about this rules, they let you chose something fast but if you want you can custom them

as a player, i just say split the ability score between race and background but then it just create the same problem as to min/max as before so just remove those and buff up the point score or whatever. those people complaint about that problem and yet i never saw or hear of a scrany orc or goliat wizard or a giant gnome or hafling barbarian before.

I translated the Octopath Traveler TTRPG, and what I liked about the background stuff is that it only added like, 1 point to skill *checks,* rather than actual main stats. It's a very small enhancement, but it's just enough for even a Farmer wizard to be, say, burly enough to get a guy in a chokehold a teensy bit easier than the Scientist background wizard, while still be powerful enough magically to do some insane spell damage. Something extremely slight that it won't be a problem, and *don't tie it to anything that will be used in the battles.* That makes players feel that their characters are unique, but not in a way that makes them feel "worse" than another character of the same class. The only difference is that OTRPG is a 2d6 based system, so +1 is a big enough enhancement to seem big with their skill checks. Since DND is a d20 based system, it can change it to be a +2 bonus in their backgrounds, and still have essentially the same thing without feeling like a player is stuck making "the correct background".

I understand they just moved the issue around; instead of limiting species choices, they're limiting background choices for optimal builds. But if they just allowed players to put those +2, +1 bonuses to any ability scores (whether from background, lineage, or class), then it's the equivalent of just giving extra points to divide using point buy. i.e. the choice of +1/+2 becomes illusory. 🤷 At any rate, DMs are still free to accomodate their players however they want. You want that +2 DEX bonus as a noble? Sure. Just take a -1 penalty in another score. You were so busy developping your dexterity-based skills growing up that you neglected your physical strength or intellectual studies. Or just allow the +2 to be applied to any ability score. Whatever works for the group.

Well that is because picking the noble background for Bram and Arya is just stupid, they spent the most of their whole lifes completely away from nobility and the court doing other things, and those are exactly what you should pick for your character for your background, regardless of the family lineage. Your background reflects what your character has been doing for most of his life in order to justify his skills and capabilities, not just which family you were born into. Noble background is for very specific characters who are born in nobility and spent most of their life in politics and court. Bram spent much more of his life being a sage/acolyte/hermit in the north than being a noble, he probably has zero etiquette but know a lot of stuff about all the magical shenanigans he has been studying for so many years. Same goes for Arya, she spent most of her life being an urchin and assassin and it would be totally dumb to pick a noble background for her. Those reflect their characters, and ability scores, much more. If you want to have a farmer wizard he MUST have spent a lot of time somewhere studying, so just pick the sage background for him. Your musketeer must have spent some time training with someone or in battles in order to know how to use his sword, pick soldier for him. If you need some proficiencies outside your background you pick origin feats that reflect that. And if you want your character to be of a specific noble lineage, or a farmer or whatever just tell your DM that you want to roleplay that and that is it.

Players also want the background to matter. A wizard farmer should be overcoming their lack of education. If you can have the same Int as a farmer as you can as a Sage, the background becomes just backstory, with no mechanical impact. Also the same thing can be said for the origin feats. Why limit what background gets what feat, doesn't it make it so there is a "correct" background for every class?

I mean, you can also just ignore the flavor of the backgrounds

Last video i saw, I'm sure it was said that the book gives clear instructions on how to build a custom background if you want to. Don't get the problem, this being the case. Couple people mentioned that it's a problem having to talk to your DM about it but: A) why wouldn't you be working with your DM at every step of creation anyway to make sure it fits with the world, even with standard choices- "Actually being a noble in this world would be a biy odd as there was recently a revolution in which all nobility was beheaded or imprisoned." is a valid comment for a DM to make about even a standard background. B) if you have a DM that you feel won't give fair consideration to your ideas for a custom background, get a new DM cos he's an arse.

Things like stats and the like should never be lick to story elements but for large things like race.

This is the problem with class based systems like DnD and it always will be. Instead of chosing whatever skills, attributes and proficiencies you want to based on experience points as a resource you will always have to rely on premade stuff or homebrew. Homebrewing will make the system incompatible with other groups, so you might not want to use that path. In short: I prefer experience points as a resource for everything over any other system. I saw that done best in The Dark Eye 5.0. In that system you can calculate your character at any point in time by the experience points gained and the abilities you have. You could even go so far and re-skill some time later just by adding the experience points from skills you lower to your pool and subtracting the experience points from the pool of free experience points when you add new skills or get better in one. This is quite helpful when you have a group of new players, because more often than not new players are not as deep in the game mechanics and it makes the game for them less frustrating.

I think one plausible and quite simple solution is to give one more choice of attribute, skill and origin feat for each background. But custom backgrounds from UA were just perfect

I thought John was a Targarian?

Honestly im already thinking about modifications to the backgrounds to give depth and flavor such as noble with the family history having its roots in organized crime. Swap strength for dex and swap a skill proficiency to something appropriate. Simple just give flavor to the backgrounds so they remain similar, but not always the same between two characters

yeah idk why they didnt keep the UA. list bunch of backgrounds with suggested stats and feats but make the custom background the default.

Short answer. They can publish more backgrounds and could even introduce new origin feats this way. With only 16 backgrounds there is no way they got every magic initiate option in there (I bet we'll see Wizard, Cleric, and Druid) and we know they doubled up Alert and Skilled. I don't think there is any more room to double up after that which means feats like Lucky and Tough will be tied to one background. I'm curious if lightly armored made it in as an origin feat because it didn't appear in the same UA document as the others but was availbe at level one.

So build your own background isn't in the PHB?

They need to take more rules away and make creation more flexible, as opposed to piling on rules on top of every concept ever thought of. This creates the illusion of freedom, when in reality they’re actually restrictions.

So... at 9:30... He has the sage background? "Comes from arich enough family to afford a proper education ". Don't see a problem

I think your assertion that “most players” will be out off by building something sub optimal is an overestimation. It’s been my experience that optimizers are a vocal subset rather than a majority. Also, you don’t have to choose any of the premade backgrounds, you can always make a custom background with custom ability increases and feats. That’s always been and option in 5e and continues to be. And that’s not homebrew because it’s baked into the rules. So you’re there really isn’t a reason to pick a sub-optimal choice if you don’t want to.

Although I agree with your overall comments on this issue. I will make the point in your game of thrones example that just because the Starks were born into nobility and that played a huge party in that book/movie. There is no reason to say that their background is tied to “birth”… Arya’s background could easily be criminal or urchin from her time In braavos. Bran’s could be hermit, acolyte or even outlander from the trip up to the three eyed raven. My point is I don’t think you have to set your background with the family you were born into (and it’s probably later in their lifetimes that matter more say early teen years - and maybe that is why Robb, Jon and Sansa character fit noble reasonably well). That being said your point is well taken that if the feat isn’t flexible and the stats are particularly rigid - it does take away from customization and flavor! Final comment is does a slightly or even moderate suboptimal choice in background really cause your group to suffer? Probably not, there are so many other places you make choices if you get those right it probably doesn’t matter (or you get them wrong and those choices make it worse). Honestly, DMs should be able to adjust difficulty for their players, what is hard is a mixed group w half highly optimized and half not optimized at all and that leads to “main characters” and “sidekicks” but even that can work depending on the table it’s just not ideal.

I prefer the "build your own background", especially with the hybridizing of species/races. I don't typically do the min-max thing, going for thematic and fun, creative characters to play instead.

Don’t be so narrow minded. You can be a Noble without taking the Noble background. Several of the characters you mentioned are Nobles in name only

I like to make characters first, background second, and backstory third. For example, I made a noble elven warlock, with a sage background. At that point is when I make a backstory.

Split the difference between species and background. Luxodons are big and strong. But give your lux rouge dex too.

I dig your example of the farmer wizard!

Arguably Bran and Arya would have been too young as nobles to be player characters and wouldn’t have their backgrounds until later. Bran would probably be a hermit I guess. He also gained his wisdom from the becoming the 3 eyed raven. Arya would most likely be an urchin. I get the point you are going for but those two didn’t become their “classes” until they left winterfell. The other three are sound.

Wotc- "we have taken ability scores away from races/species. We wanted ppl to be able to play any race/species regardless of stats. So we moved them (almost a copy paste) to your backgrounds taking away ur customizability that we said we wanted to give u originally... see we fixed it!!!" Me- "so floating stats are gone... cool, cool, cool... (not cool)"

So this is a non issue, and I'll explain a couple reasons why: 1: That Tasha's rule was already an optional one, and nothing about this book prevents you from using that opinional rule. Even if this is an optional rule its literally the same as the system you're saying is better. 2. Fifth Edition Backrounds were already examples, not gospel. If you read the rules for backgrounds in the 2014 PHB(yes 2014), you'll see that. These are functionally the same because they want you to work with your DM DIRECTLY(like you said in this video) 3. Not a lot of people are talking about this, because its legitimately not a problem that exists. This is borderline ragebait until we get to see whats actually written in the book, but even if the "worst case scenario" your describing is true, it's pretty easy to fix.

I'm using the system on a game I'm starting now, and I'll create customized a background for each player according to their character history. More work for the DM, but it's fun to jam with the player as they flesh out their character. I think there's nothing impeding anyone from doing this, and the rules are straightforward: give the player a feat, a couple skills, a tool, a language and some social advantage in a particular group, then let them decide which scores make sense. Done! Honestly I think the rules will be there in a simplified form, and expanded in the DMG. It doesn't make sense to force players to use static backgrounds

I'm good with ability points being tied to background. the optimal time being in the dmg. No one but he dm willl need to buy the dmg, and i imagine it will be simple to make new ones. Just in this case, the dm has the ability to determine whether the custom background fits the campaign. I think this video is an overreaction, but to be fair, we won't know until we get the new phb and give it a tryout.

You can make custom backgrounds. so i dont see why is that a problem really

easiest solution: Hero System 😎

As a dm i would allow just about anything

If you need really high stats to be successful in a class, you do not know how to play it well. Anyone with a Dex of 13+ can be a competent Swashbuckler. Take the +1 Str and +2 Cha, and be a noble. You'll be fine.

SO the rule of cool is just look at what gives you the best stat scores to be the best you can and then screw the spirit of the game. One can always optimize in a game if you are willing to go off script

Isnt it John Tagarian?

Great coverage. I noticed you have some inconsistent audio. My hot-take suggestion is to even out all your audio (whatever you use for editor should have a way to do this), then add basic compression and, if you have a master function add some subtle clarity. No disrespect, just trying to help a follow creator.

How do you know that the Player's Handbook doesn't have custom backgrounds as a core option?

I'm mixed on this. It seems silly to put custom in the DMG if they were trying to make this change. That being said I think if you want to go outside the box it should include worse stats. It is not outside the box if it is still optimized. You are not playing something unique and different when playing the orc wizard if you get the stats you want, it just turns everyone into humans with pointy ears.

THere will be even fewer options, once it all goes digital. Just try and deviate from the rules then.

I refuse to say species, it's RACE!!!

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this to be honest. Overall I really like most of the changes in the new PHB, but they really took a massive step back with the backgrounds. In the campaign that my friends and I are playing right now we made our characters using the unearthed arcana custom backgrounds and everyone loved it for the imense flexability. Really scummy idea to put custom backgrounds in the DMG, HATE that. D&D is all about choice, let players CHOOSE.

All of the characters you mentioned are humans, and the default human works great for building any of those characters. +1 to all ability scores is solid for any class. Are you forgetting that the variant rule in Tasha's was also optional? Maybe you and your group preferred it, and that's fine for you, but there are other groups who didn't and choose to ignore it. The whole point of having a rules system at all is to have underlying mechanics to represent how the world works, and racial modifiers do that. A half-orc should usually be stronger than a halfling, and a halfling more nimble than a dwarf, and a dwarf more hardy than an elf, etc. This is not a bad thing. It's the system working as intended. If you instead let players pick any modifiers they want, then that defeats the whole point of the modifiers existing in the first place. You can argue that this restricts optimal build options, but I don't think that's a problem. Restrictions like these force you to be more creative with your character building. Some of my favorite character backstories only came about because we felt beholden to the racial modifiers, and if we wanted anything different then we needed to work with the DM and come up with a good way to justify it in the backstory. Saying, "My gnome has the strength of an orc because he's a fighter and I want an optimal build," is boring. But "My gnome has the strength of an orc because of alchemical experiment gone awry." is much more interesting. It leads to more questions that become story telling opportunities, and answering those gives you a much richer and interesting character backstory. These new rules, just like the rules in Tasha's, and the rules in the 2014 PHB are just going to be another example of how character creation could work. In the end it's going to be up to the DM which ones get used, or if some alternative homebrew system is used instead. Just as with every other rule in the book, if DMs don't like them then they'll come up with an alternative to use instead, just as they've always done. Homebrew and houserules have always been a part of the game, and there's no core rulebook that could change that.

DnD players making "builds" instead of characters is where the brain rot begins

So WotC lied to us. *AGAIN.* Gee, what a shocker ... 🤣

I’d like to hear your opinion on the changes to divine smite. Taking it into account that as a spell now the barbarian Paladin is a poor multi-class option now since you can’t smite raging. Along with that, the requirement of a bonus action relegates polearm master and adds even more bonus action bloat with an abundance of multi-class options and class abilities.

I was looking forward to making a Psi Warrior with the Noble background. I was hoping I could take Magic Initiate and re-flavor it as psionics since you most likely get the Telekinetic feat until lvl 4. Nevermind, I guess.

So... we see a few blurry snapshots of the official PHB that only show a few default backgrounds, and that suddenly means the "build your own" option isn't there anymore? Did they directly state in a later video that they removed it, because I don't recall that. Seems like a jump to assume it's not there.

I have done this so many times and it is so frustrating!

I think that backgrounds were a terrible idea to begin with. There are many professions that people in a fantasy world can have. Backgrounds can never have all those options. Whole D&D 5 made building your own background rather easy, that was a patch to an unnecessary problem - and with the origin feats, that just became a bit harder. What feat do I give a former ratcatcher? For that matter, why does a zoologist learn wizard spells? Those probably all are problems that can be solved without much hassle. I just don't think that backgrounds really add something. D&D is not simulationist enough to make a lifepath system work. So why doesnt it treat background like traits, bonds and flaws? Or D&D could go the 20 questions route.

Personally I always thought "backgrounds" as per 5e were bullshit. Write your background and THEN the DM can add bonuses or not.This is why I moved to DC20

I completely disagree. I believe the build your own is in the players handbook and the noble and the others that we've seen are examples of backgrounds. So you'll be able to build whatever background you need to make your min/Max character

Uh, why not use the custom background in the DMs guide if none of the backgrounds are what you want? Nothing stops you, doubly so if you are that DM.

VERY GOOD

What Crawford lie. Never. He just rewrites history and forgets what he said in his last post.

I’ll stick to 1e, a more elegant system for a more elegant time.

My two cents… the worst RPG system is one without mechanics. One without theme. One without tropes. You never let players make a completely custom character. (Not never, but most the time.) Now I want to make a well thought out video… 🤔