Legends&Lore: Traits, Flaws, Bonds, and More

[Stray]

This week article (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140505) is about backgrounds and random tables for personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. Good news is this is all optional guidelines with no mechanical impact. Just some ideas for roleplaying quirks that you can roll for.

With all that being said, the tables themselves need work in my opinion. Example traits for acolyte include "I can find common ground between the fiercest enemies, empathizing with them and always working toward peace" which matches only a subset of D&D deities. Why follower of a wrathful and cruel sea god cares about making peace? Also, table of ideals is heavily slanted toward lawful good alignment (although I don't know if I fully agree that Faith ideal as described is necessarily lawful for example). It would be better in my opinion if tables were as broad and universal as possible, to match many character concepts instead of narrow interpretation of a given background.

[pribnow]

Agree with Stray on the weird combinations you can end up with, especially when you would randomly determine each trait, ideal, bond and flaw using the tables.

That being said, if for each background would provide 8 personality traits, 6 ideals, 6 bonds and 6 flaws are given to choose from (like in the acolyte example they gave), this would give ys a large amount of ideas for charachter personality in total, which I like a lot.

[obryn]

This week article (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140505) is about backgrounds and random tables for personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. Good news is this is all optional guidelines with no mechanical impact. Just some ideas for roleplaying quirks that you can roll for.

With all that being said, the tables themselves need work in my opinion. Example traits for acolyte include "I can find common ground between the fiercest enemies, empathizing with them and always working toward peace" which matches only a subset of D&D deities. Why follower of a wrathful and cruel sea god cares about making peace? Also, table of ideals is heavily slanted toward lawful good alignment (although I don't know if I fully agree that Faith ideal as described is necessarily lawful for example). It would be better in my opinion if tables were as broad and universal as possible, to match many character concepts instead of narrow interpretation of a given background.
I dunno, I think a few contradictory things make for an interesting character. :smallsmile:

At any rate, with all of this, why do we need alignment, again?

[Knaight]

This is about the first thing out of 5e that I'm actually liking.


I dunno, I think a few contradictory things make for an interesting character. :smallsmile:
I'd agree with this, and would consider the tables particularly useful for NPCs, at least for the high-prep GM types (so, not me). It's also useful for inspiration for new players, though I'd be inclined to steer them away from actual randomization.


At any rate, with all of this, why do we need alignment, again?
We don't. For that matter, we never did.

[Stray]

I dunno, I think a few contradictory things make for an interesting character. :smallsmile:

At any rate, with all of this, why do we need alignment, again?

What bugs me is not contradictions per se, for example "I will someday get revenge on the corrupt temple hierarch who branded me a heretic" and "I put too much trust in those who wield power within my temple’s hierarchy" creates interesting combination and some dilemmas. But if recommended background for a cleric defaults to Pelor, it leaves no content for players interested in clerics of other deities. Instead of inspiring players to create interesting clerics, it inspires them to play clerics of Pelor. I guess acolyte/priest background is hardest one to make right, since it's strongly connected with one from many ideology that quirks should more or less match. While jester background fits all regardless of what you put in it.

[Envyus]

What bugs me is not contradictions per se, for example "I will someday get revenge on the corrupt temple hierarch who branded me a heretic" and "I put too much trust in those who wield power within my temple’s hierarchy" creates interesting combination and some dilemmas. But if recommended background for a cleric defaults to Pelor, it leaves no content for players interested in clerics of other deities. Instead of inspiring players to create interesting clerics, it inspires them to play clerics of Pelor. I guess acolyte/priest background is hardest one to make right, since it's strongly connected with one from many ideology that quirks should more or less match. While jester background fits all regardless of what you put in it.

It never says Pelor it just says Your Deity.

[Stray]

It never says Pelor it just says Your Deity.

Yeeees... I used Pelor as a generic example of good deity in D&D pantheon popular with players. My point is that example tables focus on one narrow interpretation of an acolyte, leaving out personality traits for acolytes of religions that don't care about making peace or charity. "Everything I do is for the common people that my temple cares for" is a weird bond for a priest of Vecna (and I know it doesn't mention Vecna or any other specific deity, it's just a recognizable name of an evil deity). Just because they write "Your Deity" in a table doesn't make it match every deity. And personally I would prefer for game designers to work out how to make tables for acolytes of every deity.

[Kurald Galain]

Hm, I actually do think that traits/flaws that are purely roleplaying are better than t/f that give minor bonuses to whatever. The latter just makes a mess of character creation.

[russdm]

I hope they include rules for giving out xp for players would make use of this material. An optional rule that DMs could use if they feel it matters. Aside from only a few cases, these kinds of concerns were essentially unimportant in the games of D&D 3.5 I played and there was never any kind of incentive to bother much with roleplaying unless you were into that way anyway. The XP rules suggested awarding 50 xp at most for roleplaying despite it being so important to the game apparently.

I know that oWoD give out xp for roleplaying your character in a session. That helped make it more enjoyable or more likely to happen. Its nice to see, D&D perhaps giving it a try.

[Sartharina]

Yeeees... I used Pelor as a generic example of good deity in D&D pantheon popular with players. My point is that example tables focus on one narrow interpretation of an acolyte, leaving out personality traits for acolytes of religions that don't care about making peace or charity. "Everything I do is for the common people that my temple cares for" is a weird bond for a priest of Vecna (and I know it doesn't mention Vecna or any other specific deity, it's just a recognizable name of an evil deity). Just because they write "Your Deity" in a table doesn't make it match every deity. And personally I would prefer for game designers to work out how to make tables for acolytes of every deity.For evil gods, you just greatly narrow the 'people they serve' to a narrow group at odds with greater society.

As for the suggestion for "Roleplaying XP"... I hope we can get action points as a mechanic instead. EXP is a problematic system when it gets uneven. Then again, D&D Next allows for a greater range of different character levels in the party than 3 or 4e.

[obryn]

Yeah, XP progression will be useless to my table since I'm not planning on using XP if I run Next.

However, a metagame token - like a Fate Point - would be just dandy.

[1of3]

I hope they include rules for giving out xp for players would make use of this material.

They explained, they will have it grant a resource, called Inspiration, that players can spend for Advantage. That's the way people have been doing it for the last decade because of the following advantages:

- It's immediate. The reinforcement isn't strong with XP, if you say at the end of the session: "Oh, and by the way, you did your Acolyte thing really well ... about 3 hours ago." With those Inspirations, you get them at once.

- It is tangible, if you use chips or tokens for it. That also allows other people to understand Inspiration grants and which player might need a little help or spotlight.

- It doesn't mess with character progression. That's especially important in D&D, because many groups don't even bother with XP but level up whenever. Other groups might use XP, but the GM does all the calculating and players don't know their XP meter.

[Felhammer]

This is really cool. I am DMing a game right now with people I only just met and three of the five players are really terrible at creating coherent characters. From my perspective they often seem like deer in the headlights. This kind of mechanic will help them hone in on who their characters are and how they would react in game.

[da_chicken]

Seems mostly fine to me.

There will be the people who use it to get sample ideas for making a character background.

There will be the people who like to roll randomly to see what they get and play what comes out of the RNG.

There will be the people who ignore the background concept completely and pick whatever gives them the most mechanical benefit and work backwards from there to make a character concept that confirms the mechanics they want.

And then there will be people who mistakenly believe that because a table exists in a printed book that they are The One True Way To Play and it Cannot Be Changed For Any Reason Or You're Cheating Because A Slightly Different Character Concept Than WotC Presents Is Blasphemy and You Must Roll Because Dice Are Holy or You're Not Playing D&D.

I only forsee a problem when my DM comes from group 4. Half of Group 3 was going to annoy me anyways, depending on the level of mental gymnastics they have to make to get the mechanics they want.

[Lokiare]

Seems mostly fine to me.

There will be the people who use it to get sample ideas for making a character background.

There will be the people who like to roll randomly to see what they get and play what comes out of the RNG.

There will be the people who ignore the background concept completely and pick whatever gives them the most mechanical benefit and work backwards from there to make a character concept that confirms the mechanics they want.

And then there will be people who mistakenly believe that because a table exists in a printed book that they are The One True Way To Play and it Cannot Be Changed For Any Reason Or You're Cheating Because A Slightly Different Character Concept Than WotC Presents Is Blasphemy and You Must Roll Because Dice Are Holy or You're Not Playing D&D.

I only forsee a problem when my DM comes from group 4. Half of Group 3 was going to annoy me anyways, depending on the level of mental gymnastics they have to make to get the mechanics they want.

Wait are you saying that my Rogue 5 / Bard 3 / Wizard 4 / Geomancer 7 / Eldritch Knight 1 is convoluted? He simply came from the streets then was caught by the city watch and forced to choose between a work camp and a music college, where he learned a little bit of magic, thinking he could gain lots of power he sought out an old wizard who taught him the ways of the arcane, before he could get very far the old wizard had a heart attack and die, for a while my character wandered around in the wilderness and discovered an affinity to the magic that infuses the stone and earth. He joined a war that was destroying the land and joined a group of elven knights that taught him how to combine magic and steel effectively. That's not convoluted is it?

[Craft (Cheese)]

Yeeees... I used Pelor as a generic example of good deity in D&D pantheon popular with players. My point is that example tables focus on one narrow interpretation of an acolyte, leaving out personality traits for acolytes of religions that don't care about making peace or charity. "Everything I do is for the common people that my temple cares for" is a weird bond for a priest of Vecna (and I know it doesn't mention Vecna or any other specific deity, it's just a recognizable name of an evil deity). Just because they write "Your Deity" in a table doesn't make it match every deity. And personally I would prefer for game designers to work out how to make tables for acolytes of every deity.

While I agree with you that there's a problem here, I have three points to make:

First, an inherent flaw with systems of this type is that the number of possible character concepts is infinite, but the number of possible combinations of items on a table is necessarily finite. No matter how many options you make or how carefully you create them, someone will always be able to complain "The character that I want to make isn't supported by these tables!" Designing such a system is necessarily an exercise in compromises, and the burden of making a character that falls outside the confines of the system rests on the creativity of the player and DM, not on the designer to be all-encompassing. The problem is that the options presented are too clustered around a particular area of the PC design space, possibly because WotC (falsely) assumes those are the only types of PCs anyone really cares about.

Second, the assumption is players pick their background, personality, and motivations *before* they pick their mechanical abilities to match them. You're supposed to choose/roll for the items on this table before you pick what deity you serve (or even what class you take levels in). If your complaint is "None of these items fit the deity I chose" then you're going against the system's design intention. Not to say that you're wrong for wanting to play the game that way, of course.

Third, the advantage of this system is that it's tied to backgrounds, not classes, and we can design new backgrounds rather easily. If you ask me, the entire idea of the Acolyte background, someone who lives and works in a temple praying and healing people who come to the temple for help, is utterly inappropriate to many deities: I think the solution is to make new Cleric-oriented backgrounds to fill in these gaps, like Cultist, Witch-hunter, Hermit, Heretic, or Diabolist.

[Stray]

While I agree with you that there's a problem here, I have three points to make:

First, an inherent flaw with systems of this type is that the number of possible character concepts is infinite, but the number of possible combinations of items on a table is necessarily finite. No matter how many options you make or how carefully you create them, someone will always be able to complain "The character that I want to make isn't supported by these tables!" Designing such a system is necessarily an exercise in compromises, and the burden of making a character that falls outside the confines of the system rests on the creativity of the player and DM, not on the designer to be all-encompassing. The problem is that the options presented are too clustered around a particular area of the PC design space, possibly because WotC (falsely) assumes those are the only types of PCs anyone really cares about.

Second, the assumption is players pick their background, personality, and motivations *before* they pick their mechanical abilities to match them. You're supposed to choose/roll for the items on this table before you pick what deity you serve (or even what class you take levels in). If your complaint is "None of these items fit the deity I chose" then you're going against the system's design intention. Not to say that you're wrong for wanting to play the game that way, of course.

Third, the advantage of this system is that it's tied to backgrounds, not classes, and we can design new backgrounds rather easily. If you ask me, the entire idea of the Acolyte background, someone who lives and works in a temple praying and healing people who come to the temple for help, is utterly inappropriate to many deities: I think the solution is to make new Cleric-oriented backgrounds to fill in these gaps, like Cultist, Witch-hunter, Hermit, Heretic, or Diabolist.

Last sentence of your first point neatly describes my issues with those tables. And your third point would absolutely solve my issues here. If there were as many cleric-ish backgrounds as there are rouge-ish ones (charlatan/spy/guild thief/thug just from playtest materials, bounty hunter could also fit that broad archetype) I wouldn't complain.

As for your second point, so far character creation puts choice of class before background. Yes, I might pick a background I want before deciding which class fits it best, if I have specific concept for a character in mind. If I don't have anything beyond race and class, this when those tables become most useful.

[Craft (Cheese)]

As for your second point, so far character creation puts choice of class before background. Yes, I might pick a background I want before deciding which class fits it best, if I have specific concept for a character in mind. If I don't have anything beyond race and class, this when those tables become most useful.

Really? My bad; I haven't read the playtest materials since the playtest ended, and I was certain the order was Ability scores > Race > Background > Class