Why Backgrounds Are Useless For Your Character (And how to fix them!) | Dungeons and Dragons 5e

Why do Backgrounds feel so unimportant in 5th edition, and how do we fix them to feel more worth it?

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*** ABOUT ME ***
Hello! My name is Jay, and I am a long-time veteran of storytelling and a semi-seasoned DM! I began playing Dungeons and Dragons roughly 5 years ago and began my first ever game as the DM. I figured things out by watching online games and fumbling my way through the rules, and never looked back! I've fallen in love with TTRPG's in general and want to share my experience and thoughts with the world and community I love so much. I currently DM two separate games regularly, and continue to learn every day.

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Play Your Role is a project with the intention of helping inspire and coach players and DM’s alike to add story beats and dramatic moments into their games through basic writing concepts, interesting player character inspirations, and discussions on how to effectively roleplay in a way that helps (not hinders) everyone else's roleplay at the table!

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[douglasphillips]

I believe the background is made as much for the DM as the player. The character has personality and ideals, and bonds, and flaws, call them on it. The university where the sage trained in wizardry has been robbed. The wizard has a personal stake in this. Give inspiration for playing to their personality. Use features to lead to story arcs. The courtier knows court politics, give a clue about who the movers are, let them notice that the count has a lot more sway than his position warrants. I've only had one DM who looked at backgrounds and it made the game so much fuller.

[cortofmalk]

As I have started DMing, I have been leaning more into custom backgrounds because I think players lean into that more when they had a part in crafting the background. For example, one of my players took aspects of the hermit background, and turned it into a background called Dragon's Disciple to fit into how he became an ascendant dragon monk.

I think players can play into the flavor of the premade backgrounds, but custom backgrounds have helped increase engagement with them more.

[danieljohnson]

One of my favorite characters I've played as had the Spy background and was an Assassin Rogue. The background pulled minimal weight early on, but after quite a few sessions it dawned on everyone just how much she was able to get away with simply because people couldn't remember her appearance unless they made a note to remember her when they saw her. The amount of times she obtained crucial information for the party, or even just did a ton of damage out of nowhere to start a boss fight, was insane, and even when we got to higher levels, there were maybe five people who knew who and what she was. One of them was the king she was directly working for, and the other four were on her payroll.

I have never enjoyed a character out of combat that much before or since playing that Rogue. And I'm pretty sure I have my background and my DM to thank for that (and the fact that my Expertise was all in social skills, probably).

[LocalMaple]

I’ve never had a useless background. Then again, that’s because I incorporate it into my backstory and characterization, and both me and my DMs (sometimes collaboratively) make plot points out of my backstory.

My first character was… I think it was Outlander, the one that gets an extra language and can hunt enough food for 7 people. I made myself an escaped slave who fled alongside an Orc. That backstory was important for 4 of the 15-session campaign with 7 players.
_If you want to see Part 1, it’s on the channel All Things DnD: The Iron Golems._

[btsballin_n_cant_get_up]

Personally, I think this system works well. If you work your background in to your class it could always come up in the future in a way you'll never know. For instance, I made a half-orc barbarian with (Variant Entertainer) Gladiator as his background. His backstory isn't really important, but later on he became important while the party was hunting down a large criminal syndicate. It became his job to put on a great show and keep everyone distracted in an illegal fighting ring so the party could find clues and search for the mob leader

[Mary_Studios]

I did have a background translate into the class for my first character where she became a bard after the lost of one of her fellow criminals and took to learning because she liked music and helped her with the pain and would make her powerful against anyone that stopped her and adventuring would be a good way to provide for her family. Some of my backgrounds have bled into the character's class and why they went that way but they haven't been to the extent of what I did for my bard. Though that's going to change for my Rouge that I'll play next campaign.

[TheClericCorner]

As mainly a roleplay player, I often forget there are many who see backgrounds as just stats. Good reminder. Thanks Jay!

[t.b.cont.]

One of my favourite characters was a dwarf fighter. He was an artisan, a simple cook in a dwarf kingdom. He’s adventuring not because he left that behind him but because it’s the main motivator behind his travels. He wants to become the best chef in the world and is travelling the world to discover new ingredients, learn new recipes, and diversify his pallet. Because of his dwarven poison resilience he’s not afraid to try something that could potentially make him sick so he’s constantly experimenting with both edible and inedible materials

[JJJSmit]

I usually like to have the background be how the character makes a living, I often use the entertainer background, and it is usually what a character of mine would first think to do if money is needed.

[grammarmaid]

FYI: The music in this video was extremely distracting (because it's good!), making it difficult to listen to what you were saying. Maybe use something less punchy and upbeat next time?

Otherwise, great suggestions. Background was something that always troubled me as a new player of 5e years ago. Nowadays I find it easier to use background choice as a way to support my overall character concept. Charlatan Rogue is my current favorite combination! Having a rogue who can claim to be an entirely different person whenever it's convenient, and having an elaborate corroborative scheme to back that claim up is fun for roleplay in urban settings.

[srvfan]

My current character is a Ranger, I made a custom background to get the specific vibe I wanted but the feature I chose was from the Inheritor background, because his parents were adventurers who disappeared years ago (part of his personal arc is finding out what happened to them). The item he inherited is a journal that his parents used as a log and records book, it's the last one they left at home before they disappeared. So he spends a lot of down time trying to decode their writings, solve some puzzles, fill in some blanks, just get to know them better

[TheWiseMountainGoat]

I love this! Personally I feel character creation is being done almost backwards with 5e. When I make a new PC, I have two methods, and one is in this order: background, race, stats, class. When I think in this order about the character, each piece builds from the one before like sculpting. The usual order of race, class, stats, background gives me a mindset of having one shirt I like and just searching for clothes that don't clash with it

[EilonwyG]

I find most of the official WotC backgrounds are not overly descriptive or varied enough for most characters. I have a hard time choosing any as inevitably none of them really feel right to my character. So I've been looking into homebrew ones. We found a homebrew one for my friend's rogue who died and was brought back before the campaign ever started. She had the background Died, and the feature was that she was see and talk to ghosts. Perfect for a Curse of Strahd vampaign. Seeing and interacting with ghosts has become an integral part of the campaign now.

[nemonomen]

I feel like everyone already knew all this and the real reasons backgrounds are useless for most players are that DMs rarely incorporate them in the story and they’re often mechanically insubstantial.

[RIVERSRPGChannel]

Backgrounds should be part of the character and the DM should try to bring it into the game.

[Nonats]

This is a really solid analysis of something that's become an integral part of most Fantasy RPG systems, and something I haven't thought about too heavily.

The unfortunate aspect of backgrounds is that making them too mechanical would ultimately draw away from the flavor and lead to players picking the "best" background for their ideal character build rather than picking whichever one worked best with their backstory. Backgrounds are in a really awkward spot between flavor and mechanics, and seem to end up not impacting either one heavily enough. Even in a more crunchy system like Pathfinder 2e, players tend to pick the background that boosts the best ability scores and give the most useful feat, without really taking the background into account for their character.

It seems like backgrounds were added as a guide to assist new players in developing a deeper character alongside the Boons and Flaws system added in 5e, but were quickly deemed as a fairly unimportant aspect of character creation by experienced players.

[TheEmperorGulcasa]

I think more backgrounds could have somewhat more useful actual features.

[exturkconner]

I have a reluctant rogues who's life goal is being this worlds first "locksmith". Charges fees to open locks for people and what not. Now that skill gets him noticed and adventurers start to come calling. Sometimes they don't take no as an answer. So he learns to put his lock opening skills to work in adventuring. His perception and investigation of locks helping him find traps. His understanding of mechanics of locks helping him figuring out how to disarm. And as he wasn't a skilled fighter he learned how to hide. Eventually even learning a few tricks in a fight. It comes up still fairly often. If other characters want to go to a library to research something he's going and asking about records of security systems, or documents on how locks are made, and he's pouring over them and taking notes. He has a little journal describing and with crude sketches on how every type of lock he's ever encountered works alone with tips and tricks about how to circumvent or defeat them.

[AJ-whtw]

I like the “use your background to explain your class” and is how we’ve approached our characters at our table, especially in our current campaign. It’s especially interesting when those backgrounds are “mismatched” to your typical class groupings. For example, in our current campaign our bard has the background “folk hero”. She is not a performer of any type. She is the bard because she has a love of her community and a need for them to love her back, so she’s always trying to help and inspire them. My fighter spent years in the military, but his background is not as soldier but as a noble. His focus is leadership and honor, and one of his more badass moments in a recent session was in a prefight dialogue with a boss villain. It wasn’t a moment of big fighter damage dealing, but when the villain made a flippant comment and my fighter interrupted and said his full name, titles, accolades, and said “you will show your respect, you will understand who it is who stands before you, and you will know why you have already lost this fight”. A generic soldier wouldn’t be that person, but a noble who felt his duty to his people was to put his money where his mouth is a defend his people with his own two hands and to lead from the front would. Using your background to explain who your character is rather than their class is I think always more interesting, as is working on how that background establishes the values that made them pursue the skill set that becomes their class.

[brianvandenkerchove]

I really like the advanced backgrounds that grim hollow came up with in their campaign guide. It makes the backstory choice more important mechanicly but also rp wise it just gives way more. The fact you can level up in those background also motivates your players to rp it more too