The Lowest Rated Homebrew BACKGROUNDS on D&D Beyond

i often wake up with only the memory of basket weaving

[sunbreakerqueenofbronze]

When he talked about low-rated homebrews that turned out to be awesome, I kept thinking back to the “Garlic Bread Cleric.”

[mainmarco]

I remember I made a homebrew one. I was a farmer that became a wizard, but there was no farmer background in 5e (that I could find). Gave him proficiency in animal handling, wood carving tools, and vehicles (wagons). The feature was the ability to recognize most farm vegetation at glance and get to add proficiency to int/wis checks related to checking on them. Came up a couple times and never broke the game. Was cool.

Edit: I never expected to see so many people agree with this and enjoy it. To those who agree and I spoke with, thank you! It has been lovely!

[bicclizer]

"YOU ARE WELCOME TO CHANGE SUIT YOUR CHARACTER!!"

Dumbledore asked calmly.

[cleo]

The first one made me think of a character that my friend made in a game I ran who is a personal favorite of mine. They were new to the game so they didn't know how to create a background for their character so we agreed on them just having amnesia, however they also chose charlatan as their background. So when their character woke up they looked in their bag to try and find an ID to identify themselves and found about 10 different ID's of wildly different people. It was so fun

[suprevadak]

I want to see a campaign where every character is exclusively made with poorly rated homebrew

[thesterlingking]

To answer your question, yes! That is how isekai used to work, back in the older stories, now it's mostly just "random guy gets demi-god level powers and a harem".

[Aerowind]

I like how Jacob shows he's not really seen any isekais. That background is pretty on point. Like 90% of isekais include "and you get a cheat ability which instantly makes you the strongest person in this new world".

[iconmaster]

I really love that the Abandoned background's feature accidentally contains an enormous nerf. Like you're supposed to be telekinetic, but as worded you need to pass a saving throw now to do LITERALLY ANYTHING. You turn your character into QWOP. It's kind of beautiful.

[CM-rypt]

What’s funny about the Exiled God background is that any character (with at least enough strength to hold the weight of a greatsword) can already hold a greatsword in one hand, RAW. You only need to hold it with two hands to make an attack with it. So as it is written, that part of the feature changes absolutely nothing.

[genericname]

Here's my totally epic homebrew background:
Beholder Background. The character was a beholder, with a massive lair, piles of gold, and hoards of servants. One day, the beholder had a dream that they were a lesser species, like a human, and lost all of their awesome beholder abilities. Unfortunately, whatever a beholder dreams about becomes reality.
Now they're just a normal person with the knowledge of a beholder. They have normal stats for their race.

[FatedHandJonathon]

Exiled God actually sounds amazing as a character concept. If it was just a regular, non-overpowered background, it would be super cool to play a character who *used* to be omnipotent, but due to some circumstance is now trapped within the frail and powerless form of an ordinary mortal.

[Clinically_Insanee]

The abandoned one is just like:
"Oh no! The mindflayer is trying to dominate my mind!"
*Aggressively jumps to the side*

[BiggestGal]

I like how a lot of these try to apply actual mechanics to backgrounds when like, the point of a background's feature is to give you an incredibly niche roleplay edge. Like sailors can easily secure passage by a boat, outlanders can find food and water without issue if it's around, and archaeologists can instantly ascertain who/when/why old ruins were originally built.

[permixtg]

Okay, an interesting way to get items with a character that has amnesia would be starting with a bag of holding. There is stuff in it, but you don't remember so you can't remove whatever it is.

[CharlesGriswold]

The Who Am I background could be improved by the use of random tables. Random tables would take it from "WTF IS THIS!!?" to being actually pretty cool.

Roll twice for random skill proficiencies. If you get the same skill twice, you only get the one skill, but you also get expertise in it.

Roll once for a random tool proficiency and once for a random language proficiency. Nothing is off limits.

Roll five times on a random equipment table. If you get the same thing multiple times, you only get it once, but it's somehow magical. You get 2d6 gold.

I'm not going to make the random tables because that's the DM's job (i.e. I'm lazy).

Oh, and hire a competent proofreader. That would help too.

[Kiloku]

The raised by elves one made me think it'd be nice to have a generic "Raised by people of other ancestry" one. You pick who raised you, get their language for free and some bonus to checks relating to them.

[glaba]

Isekai used to be about being a fish out of water and while some still do that, the genre, at least as far as mainstream is concerned, has transformed into that of power fantasies where you go to a new place to remake your life and also you're super awesome and you know everything or can figure it out easily and also everyone loves you except the mean guys but they're bad guys so you can beat them up.

[trainheartnet]

I'm convinced that when the exiled god background says "plat armor, " it's not a typo; he just means that you have armor made of platinum😂

[archdiangelo]

I made a homebrew background that was like
"You grew up in a stable household with two parents who loved you and didn't die horribly, and from whom you either picked up a few things here and there or straight up inherited a family trade or something"
It was malleable, allowing the player to consider what their character's parents did for a living and to choose proficiencies based on that. Their background feature is that they have a family to fall back on if things get bad, to help them lay low for a while or recover from an adventure that went badly or something. I made it for a half-orc blood hunter whose grandfather was also a blood hunter, and whose parents were a giant mama bear orc lady and a retired postmaster with a woodworking hobby
I was rather happy with how it turned out, you can search "Beloved Son/Daughter", that was the name of it

[RhysticTutor]

In Cultist’s defense, “I am a dark one who sacrifices others to my dark deity” follows with the greed/cruelty traits of other backgrounds. Though the most similar is easily “I am a monster who hunts monsters” (or something like that) from Haunted One.