‘One D&D’ Playtest – Backgrounds Complete Your Character
In One D&D’s new playtest rules pack, Backgrounds play a much bigger role in defining your character than ever before.
We’re back with another batch of the Character Origins playtest for One D&D. This time we’re looking at how One D&D handles backgrounds. In One D&D, Backgrounds play a much more important role in character creation than in 5E.
WotC has been steadily foregrounding them more and more over the last few books. They’ve made special campaign-focused backgrounds that grant access to feats. Spelljammer has them. Strixhaven has them. But now Backgrounds do much more than give you a Feat.
One D&D Backgrounds – Playtest Edition
Let’s start with a look at what Backgrounds are in One D&D:
Your character’s Background is a collection of characteristics that represent the place and occupation that were most formative for the character before they embarked on a life of adventure.
There are three options for picking a Background. You can either build your own (the new default), select one of the “sample backgrounds”, or pick a pre-made background and customize it.
What do they give you? In One D&D, Backgrounds are a lot more unified than the sort of vaguely narrative features you got before. Backgrounds like Acolyte which gave you shelter in churches, or Outlander which meant you never had to forage for food or shelter, have been changed. This is something of a bummer, but it also makes sense. Since Backgrounds gave such vague (and varyingly powerful) benefits, they often didn’t matter.
Now all Backgrounds give the same benefits:
- Ability Score Increases – These are the standard increase by +2/+1 or +1/+1/_1
- Skill Proficiencies – Pick two
- Tool Proficiency – Pick one
- Language – Pick one
- Feat – Gain a 1st Level Feat (so Humans gain two, take note)
- Equipment worth 50 GP
So right away we see the first big change. Ability score increases are now tied to Backgrounds instead of race. There’s a nice little sidebar that outlines the fact that if you get an ability score increase from multiple sources (such as playing with older books like the PHB or Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything) you only pick one.
Backgrounds giving a Feat is another big one. It’s mostly just the canonization of a trend we’ve seen in recent books. But now you get to pick whatever you want.
Of course, you can pick from pre-made backgrounds as well. There are a few familiar ones like:
- Acolyte
- Artisan
- Charlatan
- Entertainer
- Farmer
Which gives you different ability score increases and various feats. Farmer gives you +2 Con/+1 Wis, as well as Animal Handling and Nature and the Tough feat. Though you could just as easily be a Farmer with +2 Str/+1 Cha if you built it exactly the same way.
It’s interesting to see what D&D suggests. But at this point, one has to wonder, why even have ability score increases? If they’re already universal, why not just start with a slightly higher standard array? Or make for a more flexible point buy?
It might be that “increasing ability scores” is part of D&D character creation. But. Now more than ever WotC will be monitoring their feedback.
Check out the One D&D Playtest Rules
What do you think of the new Background rules? Let us know in the comments
