Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please Enhance Backgrounds

The fact hte palyer is shoehorned into being Baldurian is somewhat unfortunate.

But what is more unfortunate, is that we cannot chose which skills we have with each background. 5e rules as written allows players to take any background with any two skills... this is not a variant rule, this is just a basic PHB rule.

That's not entirely true though.

We SHOULD be able to select different skills when we already have the ones given by our background (I'm not sure why Larian chose to deny us that). Then there's the OPTIONAL rule that a player, with the DM's consent, can change skills or tool proficiencies to better fit the character (along with other background features, but those aren't part of BG 3 anyway) or the campaign world.

I'd love to see duplicate skills handled according to the PHB, but I somehow doubt that will happen.

Custom Backgrounds arent an optional rule, I literally just explained this.

Its a completely rules as written rule, that does not need the DM's consent (at least not more than anything else in teh game)

skills for your background can be any two skills

https://online.anyflip.com/dkneq/yerq/files/mobile/126.jpg

Looks like you're correct, I apologize. I don't know why I remembered it as an optional rule, maybe because we have it as a house rule.

The standard for backgrounds are two pre-defined skills though, even if we can customize them in PnP. I suspect Larian didn't implement it, because they somehow assumed everybody and their dog would take perception or persuasion...

I think Larian probably did it so the Backgrounds felt more substantial. If you can choose any Background with any skill, it kind of makes the Background selection irrelevant. However, as it is now, choosing Half-Orc and Soldier is just suboptimal because you lose a Proficiency (Soldier and Half-Orc both grant Intimidation). To fix it, I think you could choose a Background that has 2 Proficiencies and allow the player to change one of them either to anything (if Larian wants to leave it in the player's hands) or to a subset that matches the background somehow. I think it is easier to just let the player swap one of the Background proficiencies for anything else and easy is important when they have so many other things they are probably working on.

They could also go the route of making Background Skills into Expertise if you make a class choice that matches the Background skills. That deviates more from the 5e rules, but it certainly makes the Background selection an important one, if that is the goal. I'd personally prefer that because I think Expertise is underutilized and the way it is now, players are discouraged from making choices that seem appropriate (like Shield Dwarf + Fighter is a suboptimal choice). It also gives Wizards an avenue for getting Expertise in Arcana, which makes sense to me.

You renember it as an optional rule because it is an optional rule. It says 'customize' a background. To customise something you need to change it.bor make up your own. Which means you need DM approval to do it. If not they would just say 'pick 2 skills, this many languages, this many tools for each class and not even bother with listing backgrounds to choose from.

Its not used overall because custlmizing to such a degree is generally only done by metagamers or people who otherwise inconveince the other people at the table. People who just MUST have a specific skill for example but dont get acces to it via their race and class alone. And dont want to spend a feat to get it either.

Its a fine option for a video game though. Dont see the harm in it. But mind you also that the custom backgrounds dont get any background features. At all. And some are VERY usefull.

Rules as Written, and Rules as intended, in the tabletop game... proficiencies of backgrouns can be swapped to any two skills the plaer desires. Your fix is overly complicated, and is ignoring the fact that there is a much better solution, one that was pre-includedi n the original tabletop game.

It is not an optional rule, its a regular rule. You dont have to like it, but that is the way it is... nowhere does it say you need DM approval.

Urktheturt.
If you take 5 minutes out of your life to actually investigate standard raw 5e dnd, you will see that backgrounds come with a predetermined set of proficiencies they can give you, the player not having the choice to swap in whatever they want.
Indeed, most of them only have the 2 preset skills and no customization, and a few particular backgrounds let you make a choice of 1 or 2 off a list of like, 4 options.
The extent to which you are wrong when claiming standard raw 5e lets you take any two skills really just makes you look ridiculous.
At least take the one minute of your life neccessary to hop on DnDBeyond.com's character builder, which is built to match raw, and see that you can't do the customization you're claiming.
In any case, customized or not, a character having any given proficiency should be narratively justified, which means they absolutely should be dependent on the narrative implications of the chosen background.

I took 15 seconds out of my life to google "D&DBeyond Backgrounds"

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/personality-and-background#CustomizingaBackground

Page 14 top left when discussing backgrounds the start of the sentance is on the page before it: Your DM might offer additional backgrounds beyond the ones included in chapter 4, and might be willing to work with you to craft a background that's a more precise fit for your character concept.

You need to work with your dm for this feature. End of story.

Yes, it is. I try to roleplay a barbarian. In my book, barbarians by definition do not grow up in a city.

You dont need to have grown up in the city at all. Your background is what you did before you became an adventurer. So if you were an outlander for example you grew up outside of the city. You could have moved to baldurs gate relativly shortly before beeing snagged by the nautiloid. Or you could have been there for years.

Given how everyone is back to lvl 1 its hard to tell how powerfull our characters were prior to the kidnapping. And how long they were in the city.

Characters like druids generally avoid big cities as well. So maybe they were visiting for some special mission?

Thats a completely different rule and section from the "customizing a background" section. Customizing a background is not an optional rule, and has nothing to do with making a new background, its solely about modifying existing backgrounds.

I a
I am not hte first person to say this, but I need to do it to...

ITS RIGHT THERE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

https://online.anyflip.com/dkneq/yerq/files/mobile/126.jpg

“If a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead.”

Why bother with that rule if it’s standard to just pick whatever you want anyway? Incidentally, not a bad idea for BG3. It’s a bit vague and open to interpretation, but looks to me like the custom background thing is more of an optional rule as it talks about suiting the campaign.

Either way, in BG3, backgrounds in BG3 don’t do a fat lot
else.

It would be a pretty easy fix if they just let you swap out both Background skills when you choose the Background to anything else (as you can in 5e rules) or split the baby and only allow you to swap out one of them (between 5e and BG3 rules). I think either of those is better than the current BG3 rules, but I would prefer to split the baby so the Background choice actually has some meaning, even if it is minor.

Why bother with that rule, if its standard to just pick whatever you want anyway?

Simple... its the same basic rule stated in two different ways.