Help needed to find a suitable background for my Van Helsing wannabe characther

[dambros]

New D&D player here: I am trying to build something close to Van Helsing and will be using a dex based fighter with a handcrossbow and a shield. I know the character itself doesn't use a shield, but for the sake of being able to soak up some hits for my caster party, I decided to add the shield.

What would you guys think would be a good background for him? By looking through the PHB, the best I could think of is the Hermit... the Acolyte sounds good as well, but the suggested characteristics are awful. (talking about the ideals, bonds, flaws). Any tips for those?

Do you guys think Van Helsing would be lawful good? It seems he kills for the church and to protect others after all.

Thanks.

[AmbientRaven]

Acolyte
Cross bow feat using a rapier and hand crossbow. This way he melee attacks using dex and can fire hand crossbow as bonus action
I would go Chaottic Good as his alighnment

[stitchlipped]

New D&D player here: I am trying to build something close to Van Helsing and will be using a dex based fighter with a handcrossbow and a shield. I know the character itself doesn't use a shield, but for the sake of being able to soak up some hits for my caster party, I decided to add the shield.

What would you guys think would be a good background for him? By looking through the PHB, the best I could think of is the Hermit... the Acolyte sounds good as well, but the suggested characteristics are awful. (talking about the ideals, bonds, flaws). Any tips for those?

Do you guys think Van Helsing would be lawful good? It seems he kills for the church and to protect others after all.

Thanks.

If no one background seems to suit, mix and match. See Mike Mearls' commentary on the subject. I've quoted the key part of the original article which can be found here: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/here-comes-players-handbook


To start with, there’s no specific balance in the proficiencies that a background grants. You can swap out one tool or skill for another without messing anything up. Features are a little trickier, and it’s best to mix and match the ones given in the Player’s Handbook. However, if you want to make your own features, here are a few guidelines.

Background features should avoid strict mechanical benefits, such as a bonus to a check or to attacks. Instead, the best features are ones that open up new options for roleplaying, exploring, and otherwise interacting with the world.

As an example, the sage background’s benefit is a DM’s best friend for sending the characters off on adventures. It doesn’t provide information or an automatic success for a check. Instead, if a character fails to recall information, she instead knows where she can go to learn it. That might be a pointer to a more knowledgeable sage back in town—or it might send the party to a library long lost within the ruins of an ancient tomb.

The best features give characters a reason to strike out on quests of their own creation, to make contacts with NPCs, and to develop ties and bonds to the setting or campaign you’ve devised. As an example, let’s say you create a Guild Assassin background. The benefit might be access to safe houses and contacts that the guild has established in major cities. The contacts aren’t guaranteed to be friendly, but the character knows they can be counted on.

A character with that background now has a good reason to travel to a city and mingle with the folk there. But more interestingly, you might decide in your campaign that the priests of the god of death have declared war on the guild. When the character arrives in a safe house to find its occupants slain by the death god’s clerics, you have the makings of an instant adventure hook.


You'll have to talk to your DM about it and get their approval on any changes but there's basically no reason not to swap out skills and proficiencies or take the feature from another background if you think it makes more sense.

[infinitetech]

i would say lawful nuetral, if you know his stories, he has dark times, but he always follows his code, also never assume a church is good, ever, irl or in game, try asking the dm if instead of a sheild you could have the ring Van stole from Drac that could be a soul bound trinket, it could give you 1 dam res, +1 holy damage, gain advantage when planning against, planning with, attacking, or negotiating with creatures of myth, but make you twice as likely to get random encounters, crit fail on 2s(d20), and get dis-advantage against mundane people/tasks and illness/curses(he gets hit with everything at least once), and pacifism against good aligned people and blood rage against evil aligned people(though when/if you are cursed/sick this reverses)