2024 DnD’s New Backgrounds Encourage Builds With Weird Backstories

What’s Different With Backgrounds?

In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, backgrounds have been reworked to include two skills, one tool, one Origin Feat, three ability scores which you can increase, and up to 50 gp worth of gear. They’re all supposed to be thematically linked in a way that makes sense for the individual background.

For example: the Soldier background lets you increase Strength, Dexterity, and/or Constitution, which all make sense for a physically demanding job. The Origin Feat is Savage Attacker, which makes your damage rolls very slightly more reliable so that you’re more effective in combat. You gain proficiency in Athletics for marching and in Intimidation for looking imposing. You also gain proficiency in one gaming set because soldiers spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen, and fill that time with diversions like playing cards. The equipment includes some basic soldier equipment, including a spear, a bow, and a healer’s kit. All of this makes sense together.

With those options, the Soldier is a good fit for martial characters like the Barbarian and the Fighter, but can also work for classes like Paladin and Monk. The backstories aren’t even especially hard to justify.

What’s the Problem?

The Scribe is my favorite example. It supports Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom, which appeals to most classes in the game. The Scholar’s Origin Feat is Skilled, which works for literally any character.

This makes Scribe an easy go-to option for Artificers, Clerics, Druids, Fighters, Monks, Rangers, Rogues, and Wizards. That’s more than half of DnD’s classes, and it’s entirely possible to form an optimized party from nothing but scribes. A bunch of bookish scholars strap on swords and armor one day and wander out in the world to fight dragons and stuff but somehow all have wildly different skillsets. Sure, I expect that from a Wizard, but there’s a point where the suspension of disbelief gets a little hard.

The new backgrounds also mean that most classes have one go-to background which is clearly intended for the class, but then another background that’s mechanically much better but often wildly different in theme.

• Bard: Default pick is Entertainer, but with skills this bad they’re better off with almost anything else. Criminal and Noble are good examples.
• Cleric: Default pick is Acolyte for additional Cleric spells, but Guide and Sage both diversify your spellcasting options, which is much more powerful even though it doesn’t make thematic sense for most deities.
• Druid: Default pick is Guide or Hermit, but Acolyte and Sage diversify your spellcasting.
• Fighter: Default pick is Guard or Soldier, but almost any background is just as good. Charlatan, which makes absolutely no sense thematically, is one of their best options.
• Ranger: Default pick is something like Guide or Soldier, but they do really well with Charlatan, Criminal, and Scribe.
• Rogue: Default pick is Criminal or Wayfarer, and those options work great, but Scribe is weirdly appealing. All of these sneaky scribes running around doing mischief.
• Monk: Scribe and maybe Hermit are the obvious choices, but Sailor’s access to Tavern Brawler is so good that it’s basically the default. I expect that most Monks will be sailors.
• Paladin: Should take options similar to the Cleric and the Fighter, but Charlatan and Merchant are among their best options.
• Sorcerer: I’m honestly not sure which background is the go-to for Sorcerers, but their best options include Charlatan and Merchant. Because obviously when you’re naturally magical, you go around pretending to be… magical? I don’t know, what else would you want to pretend to be?
• Warlock: Basically the same as the Sorcerer. You build them the same way, so I guess that makes sense.
• Wizard: Default pick is Sage or Scribe, but does better with Criminal to get the Alert feat or with Acolyte or Guide to get more diverse spell options.

So with all of these charlatan paladins, scribe rogues, and sage druids running around, it feels like backgrounds have become really detached from the sorts of backstories that we might want for many of our characters. Without DM permission to customize or homebrew, we often can’t build optimized characters while also picking a background that tells the story that we want.

I’m mostly just salty that Sailor is such a good option for the Monk. We can’t all be Popeye.

What About Legacy Backgrounds?

Legacy Backgrounds are about as flexible as they were in the 2014 rules: You essentially pick the name, and fill in the rest with whatever you can convince your DM to allow. It’s basically homebrew with the 2014 background as inspiration.

Being able to pick options a la carte is also objectively more powerful than using the published backgrounds as-is. If you go this route, I recommend letting everyone at the table do it so that it feels fair. The DMG’s guidance for creating backgrounds suggests a process for this.

How Do We Fix This?

Volume. We need more Backgrounds. WotC has cut the amount of text for a background down to a very tiny format, so they’re easy to write once someone has a passable concept. They can pack the next splat book absolutely full of these things.

More backgrounds that share access to individual Origin Feats will offer more diversity in character options, but won’t actually make characters more powerful unless there’s power creep in Origin Feats. Just as we look at ability scores and say “I need Dexterity and Constitution, therefore my options are X and Y”, we can say “I want Tavern Brawler, so my options are A and B.”

Alternatively, we could partially or fully detach the mechanical parts of backgrounds, essentially letting players choose a la carte as the go-to option. Why does this Sage have Tavern Brawler? Well, they like to go to the local tavern on Friday nights and start trouble. Why does this Noble have the Poisoner feat? Because they’re from Menzoberranzan, where that’s not only normal, it’s encouraged.

Either way, we need more options. Xanathar’s came 3 years into 5e, and Tasha’s came 5 years in. I hope we don’t need to wait that long. The Forgotten Realm’s Player’s Guide is scheduled to release in late 2025, and I hope that it has a lot to offer.