By: Peter Martin

Peter Martin — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 04:31:51 +0000

I think one of the reasons D&D has me so excited is that those cliches don’t seem to apply to our group as much, if at all. I do like your insights about backgrounds and trinkets in 5e, though – I’ve been so busy looking at class variants and thinking about the possibilities that I hadn’t even started digging into that part of the book until you said something. (I just got my 5e PHB this week.)

By: Ivan Clark

Ivan Clark — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 22:47:01 +0000

My pet peeve with D&D is that character classes have too often defined the characters in the eyes of many DMs and many players. I remember once an NPC asking if my character was a fighter. I immediately started placating him, saying that I wasn’t there to fight, just to talk. Words like Paladin, Monk, Ranger, Druid have a lot of cultural baggage that they can unintentionally carry and which may not suit the campaign setting.
However what 5th ed brings as far as character creation are backgrounds and trinkets. I’ve found that backgrounds define a character much more than class. In your examples, the backgrounds of acolyte, outlander, scholar, mercenary, or sailor actually speak more about the character than the class names. In introducing characters to each other, the backgrounds are a great way to refer to one another.
As for the trinkets, I’ve now hit the point where I roll a trinket to begin with and let that start the back story. Why does the character have a large red egg and carry it with him/her everywhere? For example, it might be a preserved dragon egg; I might start the character creation process with a concept of someone fascinated with dragons, and in game, he might refer to himself as a dracologist. That’s a much more interesting way to introduce a character.

Comments on: The Classics are Classic for a Reason

By: Peter Martin

By: Ivan Clark