Mike Mearls Games
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Background Check
🕑 Added 2025-06-17 13:54:56 +0000 UTCI mostly like backgrounds as they exist in 5e. They're simple and allow any character to take any skill. For Odyssey, I want to hit two main design points:
First, backgrounds are optional. If you want a streamlined game, on old school experience, or simple characters (especially for a one shot or a con game) you can drop them. None of the load-bearing elements of the game require them. However, backgrounds are all or nothing. If one player wants to use them, all players in a game should get one.
Second, I wanted backgrounds to have a little more spice. In addition to skills, they come with a few more elements.
Features. A background provides you with special features that aid you in adventures. Unlike the 5e features, this benefit is similar to a feat and is designed to scale throughout your entire adventuring career. These aim at a power level where they are useful but no so strong that they unbalance the game.
Specialist Skill. Each background comes with a special skill that only it has access to. Think of a specialist skill as a specific, trained ability check. Specialist skills are narrow, specific slices of broader skills. They serve as a call out for specific tricks your character has learned.
Fork in the Road. This element adds a layer of customization to a background by allowing you to pick one of three options. It allows a background to mesh with any class. For instance, the soldier background might give weapon and armor proficiencies. A fighter, having already received those from their class, doesn't need them. By placing that benefit as one option among three, I can ensure that fighter players aren't stuck with a dud.
Here's an example background. The final ones will include tables to generate personality traits and a backstory.
Cabalist
You were once a member of a cult that worshipped demons or worse entities. You’ve left that life behind. Or have you?
Cabalist Traits
As a cabalist, you have the following special features.
Skills. Arcana, Intimidation, Religion
Dark Dealings. You can invoke the dark spirits you once served to gain advantage on a d20 roll. In return, you gain a failed death save. You make this decision before rolling (the dark gods are fickle).
Specialist Skill: One of the Crowd. You have a knack for fitting in with organizations that rely on masses of faceless, disposable minions. You can make a trained Charisma check to blend in as a faceless peon within an organization. A successful check allows you to discern the expected behavior, dress, and activities of such a group. The DM determines the DC of this check.
Fork in the Road. Pick one of the following benefits.
Ritualist. You learn two languages of your choice and gain proficiency with the Medicine skill.
Thug. You gain proficiency with light and medium armor.
Skill. You gain proficiency with one skill of your choice.
Comments
Great Diviner Games
I like the presentation of choice and the mechanical weight of it. Lots of games these days treat it as a “justify background in this skill roll for a boon to the roll”. I also like that approach.
d20fanclub
Rereading Cabalist, the fork in the road is what's making it feel overloaded. I question whether that's necessary to make it "work with any class"; if you don't like the feature, the background is already not a good choice for you. And mechanically, having the background also give armor proficiency or whatever feels like an overstuffed stocking. Skills, a special skill use, and a feature feel like plenty. A-or-b choices could be folded into those as needed. Armor proficiency seems strong enough to be a feature.
d20fanclub
fork in the road is a good idea. 2 options is probably enough for it. 3 feels possibly too taxing wrt design novelty burden. I *really* like the specialist skill - bonus to a specific use of a skill is so much more interesting than a straight up skill bonus, encourages more unique play while leaving more design space open for other bonuses. as a 3.5head I usually love complexity but since backgrounds are supplemental I think they should not take up too much complexity/design space, and in this example, 3 things feels like too much to process -- especially when one is multiple choice. Could you condense to just feature + specialist skill and add the fork in the road to one or the other? alternatively, could you sacrifice the feature so that background does not become yet another axis of game ability to incorporate into your charbuild? IIRC you are already making racials scale better and this would be yet another thing. Maybe background really should stay "in the background" mechanically. Part of my concern here is that every new charbuild axis is also upping the design novelty burden from the dev side. The background feature means you have to think of a cool and unique ability idea for each background in addition to thinking of cool ideas for races, classes, items, etc (and any cool mechanical ideas you use for backgrounds are ideas you can't use for other charbuild axes without redundancy).
