A mechanic in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons that g🐻ets shu🍌nted in favor of the far more dynamic and engaging backstory is the humble background. You have players who have selected a background in alignment with their stories, but you have no way of making those pesky background mechanics of any use.

Perhaps you've played in campaigns that hardl🦩y utilized them—they were just words on the paper to fill up the sheet. Aside from occasionally glancing at your traits to remind yourself how to play your character, you may realize that you’ve not played in a game that uses your character's chosen background. So, how do you incorporate bac𒁃kgrounds into your own game?

Add Existing Feats To Backgrounds

The good news is that Wizards of the Coast knows people aren't using their background and recognizes that this is a problem. Space on the character sheet shouldn't be wasted in any TTRPG. That's valuable note ꦦspace.

With the release of Planescape: Adventures In The Multiverse, Wizards introduced easier ways to incorporate features into backgrounds to make them more relevant in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Planar Philosopher and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gate Warden. You can use these as a t﷽emplate to build your own backgrounds or to edit existing ones.

If you're up for some homebrew, you can simply go through the list of feats for 5e and group them up with matching backgrounds. Then, remove the background feature.

The background feature could potentially overpower the character, so it's better to get rid of it altogether if you're using this method for improving ba✅ckgrounds.

For instance, Mobile and Observant may go well with the Spy background; you can toss out the Criminal Contact feature, and lend one of those features to it instead. Folk Hero may receive Skilled or Tough, or perhaps the Outlander can! Wh൩at matters is that ♐it makes thematic sense, and if you can explain it, then try it.

Treat The Features As Actual Features

Not all backgrounds are created equal; The Haunted One's feature explicitly details commoners taking up arms to fight by your side due to their uncanny ability to sense your trauma by looking into your eyes, whereas Entertainer lets you stay the night for free as long as you perform for that same night. That's not even mentioning the healing an Acolyte's background can provide in comparison with the Fisher's ability to... t🦩ell a fishing story to a bunch of NPCs.

The Fisher's background is objectively hilarious, but to be fair, it can 📖be useful while trying to persuade a group of people to help you.

The Haunted One practically decimates the unhappy Entertainer mechanically, adding weapons and bodies to your player's fight against the ancient and powerful lich that's been tormenting their nation for years. Though the Entertainer is a great feature for roleplay and within cities, players may feel that it falls short in combat-heavy campai🔥gns.

And why should the poor bard suffer any more than she has to? Each feat has its place, but the Entertainer's background feature can shine if you let your players spend time in cities. So, as the Dungeon Master, make time for those cities or inns on the road, encourage the players to stop off and rest in areas where there's relative civilization, and encourage your players to ha🐲ve their roleplay ♉moment!

Ultimately, read the background features and create scenarios in which they may be useful.

Putting It In Practice

For easier understanding, try dividing your player's backgrounds into 'Frequent Use' and 'Every So Often.'

Ideally, in a balanced game, the Haunted One won't have scenarios where they'll be constantly having to recruit commoners to fight, and the Noble won't be securing audiences with local lords every other session; these are your 'Every So Often's.' They help massively,🐲 but they perhaps won't be features you can use every session.

That being said, you shouldn't punish your players for picking the background! Make sure they're getting those moments🐟 to shine as well, just regulate the ones that seem like they♌ could become mechanical issues.

Meanwhile, the Entertainer can work every night and save your party's coins. It may not be as impactful as conscripting a farmer because you're threatening, but it will be able to be used often and helpfully.

Let their features mean something! If an Outlander can find food and water, then having them make survival checks renders their feature moot. If you want to mitigate it for a survival campaign, let it be a short rest ability or have them roll with advantage permanently while doing𝓡 it. Or, outright ban the background from the game.

Utilizing Bonds And Flaws

In the same way that you may read a player's backstory, you need to go over the background portion o🦋f their character sheet. Not only do players sometimes tuck hidden things in there, but it's good to encourage your players to pull from the sourcebooks'ꦍ suggested traits, especially for new Dungeon Masters.

Bonds, Flaws, and Traits are more there for helping those new players build backstories anಞyway, but even seasoned players🅠 will use them as inspiration for their characters!

Traits are guidelines to help players roleplay, so while they are important, they're not going to be as fea🌞sible for you to incorporate them into your own game.

Bonds

As far as bonds go, a lot of the backgrounds have NPCs baked into them. Requiring players to select one option that gives them an NPC in their background can function just as well as a background feature, allow🐲ing you some ready-made characters to introduce into the campaign.

Flaws

Flaws are one of the best parts of the provided backgrounds; not only do they give your൲ characters thematic Achilles' Heels, but they can be used against the character at any time. In fact, as a Dungeon Master, you should make clear that you'll be using those flaws if you want to incorpor𓂃ate them into your game!

Set up encounters specifically meant to engage with those flaws, whether it's goading the players into a fight or taunting their character with ghosts of 💮their pastꦆ.