Tag: backgrounds

  • “I’m not even supposed to be here today” — add a Clerk background to D&D

    “I’m not even supposed to be here today” — add a Clerk background to D&D

    Since Dungeons & Dragons is anachronistic, most people, and basically every player character, know how to write. But what about those that know how to write and count better? The late middle ages were a time when there was a rapid need for more writers, more accountants. Guilds needed to track the money they were bringing in.

    If your D&D world has many guilds it would have many clerks. Some of those clerks may get bored of quill and ink, or precisely measuring liquids, or whatever mundane task their employer has for them — so they head out on adventures, which is what happened in real life too. Lots of clerks got involved with murdering.

    Backlit by a candle, a hand holds a quill just prior to dipping it into a small jar of ink.
    Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

    Clerk

    You are someone who counts fast, keeps precise notes, reads for others, writes for others. You are meticulous and detailed. When

    Skill Proficiencies: Investigation, Insight
    Tool Proficiencies: Calligrapher’s Tools
    Languages: One language
    Equipment: Common clothes, tabard, abacus, merchant’s scale, jar (precisely 1 quart), pouch, signet ring, 10 gp

    Feature: Measure Twice

    You can rapidly and accurately account for large quantities of coins or other staples, assessing their value using just a single action. Clerks are also able to stretch large quantities of staples further than expected. If you need more than 50 of an item a Clerk needs 10% less of that item. For example, 900 ball bearings works just as well for a Clerk as 1000. Or if others would need 50′ of rope the Clerk can make do with 45′.

    Alternate Background: Tax Collector

    You are a representative of the government, collecting fees and taxes for the services they provide. Maybe you work at a toll bridge, a city gate, or you wander to various farms. Some pay in gold, most in silver or even copper. You’ll take barter too. The Barony needs the funds however it can get them.

    A just collector may go easy on a family in years of struggle. An unjust may continually take. Your character’s behavior and history is up to you.

    The Tax collector has the same skills, tools, and languages as the Clerk. The difference is in their Feature and in their role in society.

    Feature: Forgotten Refund

    Knowing the ways of governments you are able to assume the debts of a group that owe. You can also find a way to get a tax refund for yourself or others, or avoid paying the full amount. If normally the government takes 10% you would only pay 5%. If you are short gold, you may visit another tax collector, if one can be found, to get 5 times your proficiency bonus as a refund.

    Design Goals

    Clerks were so common in the late middle ages they killed a lot of people. Which sounds a lot like D&D adventurers, so why not have a Background based on them. Sure, they could be represented by Sages and Acolytes or other thinkers.

    But, I’ve watched too many Clerks movies, and so needed to honor the OG clerks in a special way. Don’t be murdered by clerks, be the clerks that murder.

    Custom Backgrounds for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons

  • Tea Master – a new Background for D&D

    Tea Master – a new Background for D&D

    Tea, tisanes, rooibos, herbal concoctions and other similar hot drinks are staples in many cultures of the real world and fit so many Dungeons & Dragons cultures as well. The sub-culture around ceremony and expertise makes sense as a Background in 5th edition.

    Why would a Tea Master go adventuring? They could be searching for a new supply; have run out of their own supply; know that there is a threat to the trade routes they depend upon; heard from the nobility of a need for the government; have a loyal customer that needs aid. A Tea Master like many service types develops a relationship with the people they serve. Those connections are easy to leverage into relationships that help power story — plus they have tea.

    Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

    Tea Master

    You are a server of fine teas. Maybe you worked in a tea shop, or were a tea merchant, or were the tea master for a noble estate. You prepare teas and small bites of food for the thinking peoples in the area. This can be as simple as a cuppa or an elaborate ritual.

    You may be an expert in particular types of tea (powders, fermented, naturals, or combination). These teas and tisanes may come from your local community or come from other lands far from your origin. Regardless, you start with 24 servings of your favorite tea or tisane (tisane=herbal tea). When creating your tea master consider the peoples you served tea to in the past, consider who taught you the ceremony(ies) you know. Use these flavor decisions to embrace your role as a Tea Master.

    Skill Proficiencies: History and Insight. If you are using cultures rather than languages, then replace history as per those rules.
    Tool Proficiencies: None
    Languages: Two languages
    Equipment: Alms box with 25 silver, bell or whistle or hand drum, tea set for 6 including tea for 4 ceremonies for 6 (10 pounds and 25 gp value), fine clothes, waterskin

    Feature: Tea Ceremony

    Performing a 1 hour ritualistic ceremony you serve tea often with small plates of food, but that is not required. The ceremony is patient and calming, shifting NPC attitude from hostile to indifferent or indifferent to friendly, if the NPC can be convinced to partake in the full ceremony. PCs partaking in a tea ceremony can use Hit Dice to heal as if the time was spent on a Short Rest.

    Personality Traits that make sense for the Tea Master could be from the Acolyte, the Guild Artisan, the Hermit, or the Sage. Mix and match these as necessary.

    Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com

    Design Goals

    There are a few reasons I wanted to make the Tea Master. During my time in the Middle East I experienced a couple versions of tea ceremonies. These were done as a welcome to a home or to a camp. In my personal life I have also experienced the elaborate high tea that used to be part of the nobility of England. These seemed to fit the social portion of D&D, especially as they stretch back in time to the days which inspire our stories.

    Within fiction there are two tea ceremonies that stand out in my mind — both from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Tumnus uses a tea ceremony to distract and then poison Lucy. The Witch uses a tea ceremony and foods to make Edmund think that she is not a threat. Both examples fit the literature that inspires our game.

    There was also a desire to make the tea ‘rules’ different than coffee ‘rules.’ The two are similar in that they are water with vegetation that often provides stimulation as well as being from locales far from the founding cultures of the game. Both belong in D&D, because they were in Europe in the era that inspired the game AND because D&D is about much more than Europe.

    Another goal was to remove specificity of culture from the tea ceremony. Tea ceremonies do not have the direct lineage that coffee does (coffee houses have a direct lineage to Ottoman cafes). Tea is a more widespread crop with various cultures celebrating the leaf. So make your tea ceremony your own. Celebrate a real culture, create a pastiche, or invent a new one — do it honoring real cultures that you are a member of or that you’ve studied.

    Custom Backgrounds for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons

  • Neither darkness, nor snow, nor wyverns – the Message must be delivered

    Neither darkness, nor snow, nor wyverns – the Message must be delivered

    Worlds of points of light in a wilderness, or fallen empires, or warring kingdoms, or with merchant guilds that control trade need ways for far-ranging communities to stay in touch. In the real world this meant messenger pigeons, in Game of Thrones there were crows and ravens to communicate. Other fictions use dogs, or just a hearty human that trudges through awful conditions to keep the ties of society together — The Postman by David Brin, or the Pony Express in reality.

    Your Dungeons & Dragons worlds also need these messengers. They make sense and fit the fiction so well. A Messenger in D&D also doesn’t need to be confined to the animals of the real world. A Ravnica or Eberron game might use a tiny ornithopter. Fastieths fit in Eberron and parts of the Six Kingdoms. Spiders or bats fit in Ravenloft. There’s a flavor of messenger companion for every world.

    Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

    Messenger

    You are the connection between disparate homesteads, towns, or cities. Conveying the messages and scrolls between the communities rapidly without magic you bring news, warning, and joy to peoples who often struggle to keep in touch or that would take weeks to travel and deliver the message themselves. Often welcomed in strange towns, a messenger sometimes wears an official uniform of a ruling power and at others is a freelancer working without direction from above. You and your messenger companion are a symbol of civilization even in the furthest outposts.

    Skill Proficiencies: Animal Handling, Nature
    Tool Proficiencies: None
    Languages: Two Languages
    Equipment: One animal messenger companion, travelers clothes, a scroll case with a dozen pages, a quill, an ink pot, a whistle or bell or other command device, a pouch with 5 gp

    Choose an animal that is your messenger’s companion and conveyance, and discuss with the DM how the companion will fit into the adventure. These come in four primary groups, and a few examples are provided. Don’t feel limited to the specific animals listed, but use them for guidance regarding their abilities, if, gods forbid, they enter combat.

    • Small land animals — cats, dogs, iguanas, otters, monkeys, not-quite-giant spiders
    • Medium land animals — axe beaks, ponies, fastieths, antelopes
    • Small flying animals — pigeons, crows, ravens, owls, bats
    • Fantastic animals — enchanted paper airplanes, clockwork machines, not-quite-giant dragonflys, flying snakes, stirges, not-quite-giant wasps

    Feature: Rivers and Roads

    Your messenger companion begins the game with a network of three destinations and the ability to find its way back to you where you sent it from. When delivering a message to a known destination on the network it travels at a fast pace and does so with no penalty to a stealth check (your messenger companion add your proficiency bonus and your Wisdom bonus to their stealth at all times). If you plan to move from your location when you send a message you can instruct your messenger companion to deliver the message and then go to a different destination. You and your messenger companions have a number of network destinations of proficiency bonus +1. If your companion perishes you must train a new one. This takes several weeks of downtime.

    Natural weather has less impact on your own travels. Survival and/or Constitution checks made due to harsh natural weather are made with advantage.

    Traits, Ideals, Bonds, Flaws: At this time use the Sage, Outlander, or Folk Hero for inspiration.

    Messenger Design Goals

    Starting with the idea that greyhounds would be perfect canine versions of messenger pigeons, this background just kept growing and growing in its scope. Eventually I spun out the Far Talker as a similar but different role in the world.

    One of the difficulties was coming up with the dual features. I wanted cover the US Postal Service’s unofficial motto which actually dates back to 500-449 B.C.E.

    Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of
    their appointed rounds.

    Emulating those words was vital, but needed to not be game breaking.

    The non-magically empowered companion couldn’t be built out of Find Familiar, which was considered. My world’s bonded companions are meant to be non-magical. While the phrasing of the ability is a bit long, it’s mostly an ability that adds flavor. The messenger companion is not going to change a D&D party’s combat power.

    Other Custom Backgrounds

  • Far Talkers – Converse over miles with this D&D Background

    Far Talkers – Converse over miles with this D&D Background

    As a horde of humans riding guard drakes crests the Blue Hills, the chappe telegraph operator builds the signal that will reach the Larton Keep now that war has returned to the range. Using whistles, a youngster tells the village miles away that four sheep are lost so they’ll be home late, could his family please have tea ready for when they return.

    A thrumming beat injects itself into the air as an owlbear stalks a deer. Knowing the bear is nearing a sacred vale a group of druids and rangers work to separate hunter and prey, for there will be no killing in Frannet’s vale.

    The drawing is signed “Keith Thomas” in lower right corner – Retrieved June 11, 2014 from Radio News magazine, Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., Inc., New York, Vol. 32, No. 5, November 1944, p. 71 archived on http://www.americanradiohistory.com/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39352497

    Sure, a spell caster might be able to use Message, or two people may have Sending Stone for magical cell phones. But, the Far Talkers converse over a distance of miles, not feet. They speak with many, not one, signaling a warning or just chattering about the weather. Far Talkers and Messengers help societies that stretch over leagues communicate and maintain a culture.

    Far Talker

    You have the ability to converse over miles, sending messages for a government, faction, or some other organization. In war societies seek your aid to help units communicate. In peace you and other Far Talkers help connect towns and cities, or just keep two distant wizard towers in touch.

    Familiar with how the weather impacts your mode of speech you have learned the winds and rains of many lands. Expected to see or hear things at a great distance your senses are strong. You may be an expert at the drums, but you have heard of others who use whistles, tree beating, smoke, flags, or other instruments. No matter what tool is used your messages are simultaneously public and semi-secret.

    Skill Proficiencies: Perception, Nature
    Tool Proficiencies: One musical instrument
    Languages: One additional, plus the ability to Far Talk in Intelligence bonus languages (minimum 1)
    Equipment: A symbol of service to a government or large church, a gaming set, a spyglass or musical instrument, traveler’s clothes, a notebook with notation for your type of far talk, 1 day rations, pouch with 2 gold

    Feature: Far Talking

    Using your chosen tool you can communicate over a distance of 6 miles when outdoors, and twice normal speaking distance when indoors, in a number of languages equal to your Intelligence bonus (minimum 1). Extreme weather may make those long-distance conversations more difficult.

    When you meet another practitioner of the Far Talking arts they are always one step friendlier than their companions or social situation would indicate. For example if two scout groups from warring nations met their far talkers would be indifferent while everyone else was hostile. This is true even when the far talkers in question use different languages and tools to talk.

    Learning Far Talking

    A character without the background can learn Far Talking per the rules to learn a new language. They would then learn one method of Far Talking for a single language.

    Some groups of druids, rangers, and their allies might spend time learning Druidic spoken via Whistle Cant. A fleet of pirates could all know Yodeling. Have fun with this.

    Types of Far Talkers

    Roll on the table below or pick your favorite

    1. Whistle Cant
    2. Talking Drums
    3. Smoke Signals
    4. Signal Flags
    5. Tree Drumming
    6. Yodeling/Throat Singing
    7. Bugle
    8. Optical Telegraph

    As always, seek ways that cantrips would enhance these. Those that rely on sound would be amplified by Minor Illusion, Thaumaturgy, and can you imagine Thunder Clap sent through a massive bugle-like device. Those that need light can be made more useful by Prestidigitation, Dancing Lights, Light, and Minor Illusion. A world of magic would have Far Talkers that can speak across many miles.

    Personality: Use the Soldier or Folk Hero personality traits for now. When the Background project is done each new Background will have traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws that are unique to the Background.

    Design Goals

    The Far Talker started out from two different ideas — I wanted to create Whistle Cant as a kind of alt-Druidic and my desire for the Messenger Background. The Messenger became two different Backgrounds. That Messenger will focus on the people who deliver physical messages by walking, running, riding, etc. The Far Talker is the other version. Rather than become Druidic, Whistle Cant became a type of Far Talking, and one of several examples of alt-languages that a Far Talker might specialize in.

    Custom Backgrounds for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons

  • The Hunter should be among your D&D Backgrounds

    The Hunter should be among your D&D Backgrounds

    Myth, legend and story energize Dungeons & Dragons. The game, especially in its 5th edition circles back and amplifies itself. So many of the tales which helped create the game are those of the zero who becomes a hero. A small town X becomes greater than life, saving kingdoms and worlds.

    These zeroes have so many professions. In 5th edition these preheroic roles are captured in Backgrounds. The game does a decent job of offering several. But some are missing — like the Hunter. A Hunter may be chasing a stag and stumble upon a sleeping woman. Or they set traps for furs, travelling to the city later.

    Currently you could use an Outlander or a Folk Hero. But you aren’t a hero yet. That’s going to happen at the table. The Outlander ignores many of the stories of a hunter who is part of the community from which the tale starts. That’s why you need a Hunter. So here it is.

    Photo by Vincent M.A. Janssen on Pexels.com

    Hunter

    Whether for your lone homestead or for a large city you hunt for your people’s food. You may do this with a bow, or a sling, or traps. You do this swiftly and effectively, honoring the prey for what they provide your family, friends, and neighbors. You may be a pseudo-noble authorized to hunt on the Queen’s lands or a trapper out in the wilds.

    Some hunters are expert trackers, others can stalk their prey for miles, while others still use snares. A hunter may focus on specific beasts, or not. No matter their preferred protein when they are on the trail they are completely dedicated to success.

    Skill Proficiencies: Survival, Stealth
    Tool Proficiencies: Leatherworker’s or Woodcarver’s Tools
    Languages: None
    Equipment: A non-magical ranged (w/ 10 pieces of ammunition) or 3 thrown weapons or 2 hunting traps, traveler’s clothes, waterskin, knife, whetstone

    Feature: Provider

    During a long rest you are able to find enough food for yourself and your proficiency bonus number of people for a day. You can do so and still gain the benefits of a rest, but still must sleep or trance as appropriate to your race or lineage. Additionally, you have twice your proficiency bonus for your Stealth or Survival skill gained from this Background when in natural surroundings. This bonus does not stack with Expertise or similar rules at any time.

    You are not proficient with the weapons that are starting equipment.

    For personality use the Folk Hero or Outlander, for now. When the Before We Were Heroes project is available for purchase every Background will have their own traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws.

    The Hunter can also be played as a Trapper without any changes beyond the name. Just choose the hunting traps for your equipment.

    Hunter Design Goals

    As usual this design started with the massive hole in the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook not having many mundane backgrounds and trying to shoehorn them into the Folk Hero. But being a hero is what playing the game is about, not the story in your past.

    With the Hunter I wanted to explore a way to grant Expertise, under a different name, to any character at 1st level. But, this is as pricey as the cantrip granted by the Drudge. There must be a cost. That cost isn’t just dropping a single skill, but dropping a skill and one language/tool/etc. That didn’t seem to be enough though. So, the rule is that a Hunter must choose one of two skills and cannot have the other at 1st level. Our mundane hunter is either good at tracking/trapping or good at sneaking — not both.

    The inspiration has to start with Artemis, Orion, and the Huntsman. But there are more, so many more. Missing this trope is glaring. Crockett, Boone, Ishi, and others can guide you to your own character.

    Other Custom Backgrounds