BACKGROUNDS

The Player’s Handbook provides questions to help you think about your character’s background. The suggestions here are resources you can use when you create a character, offering a wider variety of story hooks and adding a game benefit that reflects your character’s history.

This section describes a number of background elements you can use as inspiration for fleshing out your character. You can choose any number of these background elements, but a good way to create a rich yet manageable background is to choose one element from each of three different categories. This book includes five categories: geography, society, birth, occupation, and racial backgrounds.

Regardless of how many background elements you use, when you create a character you can (with your DM’s consent) select one of the following background benefits:

Gain a +2 bonus to checks with a skill associated with your background.

Add a skill associated with your background to your class’s skills list before you choose your trained skills.

Choose one language connected to your background. You can speak, read, and write that language fluently.

If you are using a campaign setting that offers regional benefits (such as the FORGOTTEN REALMS setting), gain a regional benefit.

The background elements presented here are not the only ones possible. Use these ideas for inspiration in creating a background as unique as your character.

Above all, remember that a background is more than a game benefit. It forms the foundation of your character, provides hints of what lies ahead in the campaign, and informs your character’s personality.

Geography

This element describes the basic environment of the region in which you were raised.

Desert: You were raised in an arid wasteland, such as a sandy desert or rocky badlands. How did you and your family survive? Do you long for the simple life of the desert, or are you thankful to be free of its constant hardships? How do you cope with the overwhelming variety of sights and smells in urban environments?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Forest: You were raised in a wooded region, such as a forest or a jungle. Did you survive by foraging, or were you and your family hunters? Do you feel at one

C H A P T E R 3 | C h a r a c t e r O p t i o n s

with the forest, or is it merely a source of food to be harvested?

Associated Skills: Nature, Perception

Mountains: You were raised among the cold, craggy peaks of a mountain range. How often did you visit the lowlands as you were growing up? What brought you out of the mountains to become an adventurer?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Dungeoneering Urban: You were raised in a large city. What part

of the city did you grow up in? Did you stick to that area, or did you explore all the quarters of the city? Do you still have ties to your old neighborhood, or are you happy to forget your childhood?

Associated Skills: History, Streetwise Wetlands: You were raised in a swamp, a river

delta, or another marshy area. Which did you learn first—to walk or to swim? Do you distrust the feel of solid ground, or are you happy finally to have dry feet?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Nature

Society

This background element indicates your social and economic standing.

Poor: You grew up without a steady income. Were your family members peasants, servants, or unskilled laborers? Did you and your family have to beg in the streets to stay fed? What was the biggest sacrifice you or your family had to make to survive? How did you come to own your starting possessions?

Associated Skill: Streetwise

Wealthy: You grew up rich, never wanting for anything. What was the source of this wealth? Was it inherited, or did your family work for its riches? Was it obtained legitimately, or through underhanded methods? What kind of home did you live in? Was there ever a time when you knew what it was like to be hungry or desperate?

Associated Skill: History

Noble: You are a member of the aristocracy. Does your family have a noble rank? Are you the heir to a title, and if so, how many people stand between you and that title? Under what circumstances did you become an adventurer?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight

Birth

If one background element is common to many heroes, it is an unusual birth circumstance.

Among Another Race: You were born among a race other than your own. Did you grow up among the trees of an elven forest, deep in a dwarven

178

mountain fortress, or in a halfling caravan? Did your family live among that race when you were born, or did some other circumstance bring you there?

Associated Skill: A skill the other race gains a bonus to

Blessed: You received a great blessing from a complete stranger when you were born. What type of person blessed you? Was he or she associated with a particular religion? If so, are you a member of that faith? Did you stay in contact with this person, or do you distrust the motives behind the blessing? How does the blessing affect you?

Associated Skills: Insight, Religion

Cursed: You received a dire curse from a complete stranger when you were born. What type of person cursed you, and why? Did you ever see the stranger again? Were you shunned because of the curse? Do you carry an obvious mark of it? How does the curse affect you?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Religion

Omen: Your birth was marked by an unusual occurrence—perhaps a great storm, an eclipse, or the start or end of a battle. What was the omen? How was it interpreted? Were others born under the same omen, and if so, do you have any special relationships with them?

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

On Another Plane: You were not born in the world, but rather on another plane, such as the Feywild. What circumstances brought your ancestors to that plane? Were they natives of that plane, taken

there against their will, or just visitors? When did you leave that plane, and what did you have to accomplish to escape it? Do you miss your birth plane, or do you dread returning to it?

Associated Skill: Arcana

Prophecy: Your birth was foretold in a prophecy. What does the prophecy say about you and about your future? Who, if anyone, believes the prophecy? Are you trying to fulfill the prophecy or to thwart it? The details of the prophecy might suggest further adventures to the DM.

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Occupation

Before you became an adventurer, this was the way you earned your keep.

Artisan: You had a skilled occupation dedicated to a particular craft, such as baking, blacksmithing, carpentry, or cobbling. What did you make? Did you enjoy your work, or was it only a means of supporting yourself? What was your finest creation, and what happened to that item?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Diplomacy

Criminal: You lived on the wrong side of the law. What sorts of crimes did you commit? Did you enter a life of crime by necessity or by choice? Did you

	belong to a gang? Do you still engage in occasional	S
		D
	wrongdoing, or have you left that life behind? If the
		UN
	latter, what caused you to give up your criminal ways?
	Do you still have contacts among the criminal under-	RO
	world? Do your former associates now consider you	KG
	an enemy?
		BAC
	Associated Skills: Stealth, Thievery
	Entertainer: You were a dancer, a singer, an acro-
	bat, a storyteller, or another kind of performer. Were
	you a solo entertainer, or did you perform as part
	of a group? Were you well known? If so, do you still
	encounter admirers?
	Associated Skills: Bluff, History
	Farmer: You worked on a farm, learning the ways
	of the natural world. Did you raise livestock, crops, or
	both? Did your farm have a specialty? Did you or your
	family own the farm, or were you a hired hand? Do
	you miss those days, or were you eager to escape?
	Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

BACKGROUND EXAMPLES

Following are two examples of how to use the material in this section to craft a cohesive background for a character.

Born and raised in the grimy streets of a large city, Neris developed a knack for getting others to follow her lead. Once she was old enough to help support her family, this talent enabled her to rise to the rank of sergeant in the city militia. With her parents and younger siblings taken care of and a little extra copper for herself, Nerys was more comfortable than she ever thought she would be. But when one of her childhood friends needed a favor, Nerys found herself on the wrong side of one of the city’s smuggling syndicates. On the run from a crime boss with a grudge, Nerys has fallen in with a band of adventurers and is putting her street smarts to good use.

Nerys’s player chose three background elements: urban (geography), poor (society), and military (occupation). Nerys added Streetwise to her class skills list.

Jahan is the only child of a noble house and was his parents’ treasure from the day he was born. Indeed, at the moment of his birth, a pair of cranes appeared and circled the roof of his tower room three times. Jahan became a respected scholar while still young, focusing his studies on the history of his land. As dawn broke on the day when he would enter adulthood and become next in line for his family’s title, the rising sun revealed a terrible scene: thousands of dead cranes lay strewn over the countryside. Weeks later, their crops mysteriously failing and their wells gone dry, commoners have begun to whisper that Jahan is the cause. The time has come for him to abandon his books and search for answers in the outside world.

Jahan’s player chose three background elements: noble (society), omen (birth), and scholar (occupation). Jahan gains a +2 bonus to History checks.

C H A P T E R 3 | C h a r a c t e r O p t i o n s

179