DDN Blog: Backgrounds and Themes

Backgrounds in 4th Edition were introduced in the Scales of War adventure path, as an option that gave characters a dash of flavor material as well as a small bonus (usually +2 to a skill or something similar…usually). Themes came about much later with Dark Sun Campaign Setting, and were also much more complicated; you got a bonus encounter power, and the option to swap out powers for theme powers and also nab theme-only feats. Later themes not only gave you the free power, but also minor bonuses at level 5 and 10. Basically they gave you variable mechanical benefits at no cost, with the side effect of potential flavor material if you wanted to bother with it.

5th Edition backgrounds and themes on the other hand, well…they sound like prepackaged skills and feats. Like, you pick soldier and theoretically gain skill training in four skills related to doing whatever it means to be a soldier (Athletics, Endurance, something knowledge of military hierarchy and tactics?), and a slayer theme and theoretically gain a damage-boosting feat (perhaps an encounter- or daily-based maneuver?). 

While I can kind of get behind the idea of grouping things together to speed up character creation/ease new players in, the fact that you can just ignore them anyway and pick whatever you want makes them feel kind of pointless. I mean I can already do the skill part by just letting my current players pick whatever skills they want, and the second would require lots of combing through feats looking for thematic packages (or just making up whatever I want).

The flexibility of any skills is nice. Certainly it will help players better make the characters they are looking for (though 4th Edition’s multiclassing and Skill Training mechanic made it stupid easy for minimal cost). I am wondering if the themes really will just be lists of feats, or if they will add in unique class features. If the former then I am pretty meh on the whole thing, and hope that books do not waste too much page space on them. I really enjoyed paragon paths and epic destinies as no-charge perks for focusing your character and mechanically justifying what you do, so hopefully they turn out more like that.

Edit: I just realized that these sound like more heavily encouraged “builds” from 3rd and 4th Edition. Again nice for players scoping out a class or looking for iconic styles, but unless there is something more to them I hope we don’t get too many pages devoted to them.

Slaves of Athas

Slaves of Athas is a Dark Sun article that adds the escaped slave theme (martial striker) that includes eight exploits, the freedom fighter paragon path, and three feats.

Taking the theme grants you free training in Bluff and hidden strike, an exploit that lets you make a Bluff check after hitting someone to be treated as invisible until the start of your next turn. The idea is that you make them think that the attack came from somewhere else, and I think a better idea might to have been to follow suit with misdirected mark (you hit an enemy and make them marked by someone else). Perhaps roll on combat advantage or receive concealment?

Other exploits from the theme let you do stuff like make saves-with-a-bonus against certain conditions (like immobilize and slow), make a reactive attack when creatures try to flank you, or even grabbing an enemy and making them beat up their allies. I just imagine a character grabbing onto a templar and saying, “Quit hitting yourself” over and over again. 

Freedom fighter works for anyone with the theme, or warlords if thats your bag. Burning action points lets you let allies make attacks to break grabs, grant increased Aid Another bonuses if the use is about “breaking bonds or escaping”, and self-sacrificing strike, which lets you move, push an ally out of the way of an attack, make your own attack, and take the damage of the attack instead of your ally. At level 11 you can use a minor action to make a save and if successful grant allies a free save, at level 16 you grant all allies initiative, Perception, and Insight bonuses automatically, and at level 20 you get a quad-damage attack that includes a save end mark effect (including making free attacks when they attack things that aren’t you).

As for feats, Master of Escape grants you a bonus on Thievery when using open lock or sleight of hand, as well as another bonus when using Acrobatics or Athletics to escape from a grab or restraints. Slave Sympathy grants a Streetwise bonus in areas with lots of slaves, as well as other skill bonuses when interacting with slaves. Finally, Slave to None grants a save bonus against dominated, immobilize, and slow.

Devotees of the Gibbous Moon

Devotees of the Gibbous Moon: Secrets of the Beast Form, aside from having an insanely long fucking title, is a focused druid article that contains roughly an equal mix of fluff and crunch pertaining to (what else) wild shape. This is the defining feature for the druid, and I’m hoping to see additional “official” content that allows players to make very thematic characters, since I love me my themes (damnit). I would also like to see added content that lets you take shapes that are not just animals, such as dragons and elementals…

…and if there already are, then let me know, cause I want to make an elemental druid that isnt broken or takes a bajillion fucking levels to do that. >_>;

It does ask some interesting questions of the player, such as how your character regards wild shape, do you retain any animal features in human form, do you have a favorite animal form, do you prefer a beast or human form, etc. Obviously a player can get away without answering shit, and I’m sure many players dont bother, but this is a prime case of a show-not-tell method of delivering character traits and quirks: you can describe your appearance and retain animal features, or you can spend much of your time in beast form to illustrate your preference.

The feats are also really cool, and reinforce a preferred animal theme that I initially saw in Silent7Seven’s Favored Forms supplement (which is like, one fucking dollar). Ape’s Reach gives you an Athletics bonus, as well as increased Reach when you are bloodied and in beast form (which I assume to be some kind of monkey). Monkey Rush also grants a typed Athletics bonus, but lets you slide instead of push on a bull rush. The only shitter is that they are both feat bonuses…

Aside from that, there’s two feats for snakes and then about six others that pertain to their own animal. I particularly like Turtle’s Shell, which gives you resistance to all damage types when you take a total defense action or burn your second wind. Logically, each feat demands that you be in beast form (and often bloodied), so that should allay much multiclassing abuses. Hopefully. ^_^;

The last few pages have nine daily evocations ranging from levels 1-9 that let you assume the form of some primeval animal. These are exactly like warden daily attacks mechanically, except you can use wild shape to end them: you get an effect that lasts the entire encounter as well as a one-shot attack form. I think that these are also great for effecting a theme, allowing a player that really likes wolves to just take a bunch of shit that mechanically enforces the flavor.

Here’s Your Genre

Awhile back I did a kind of mostly mock “review” of 3rd Edition, where I went through the ropes and described its numerous faults in a positive light. To be absolutely clear, I enjoyed playing 3rd Edition quite a bit, otherwise I wouldnt have played it for about eight-fucking-years. This does not mean that it didnt have its faults, which in turn doesnt mean that it wasnt a fun ride while it lasted. We had good times but in light of better games that fulfill the same genre, its not nearly as fun.

Really, my problem with 3rd Edition wasnt even necessarily the fact that the rules didnt support the genre but the rules themselves. In fact with the exception of some clunky subsystems like Craft and Profession, I think more or less did a pretty good job. All editions were action-adventure fantasy role-playing games at heart. Fantasy because they have magic and supernatural creatures as major elements, action games since they emphasize lots of physical challenges, but also adventure games because they contain puzzles and challenges that are not necessarily solved by brute force.

In my review, d7 made a comment that action-adventure is only one of many genres that Dungeons & Dragons inherently caters to, citing dark fantasy, exploration, and “sweeping politcal epics” as examples, all of which I disagree with. I dont think of either dark fantasy or exploration as true genres, but more like themes or styles, and I dont think that editions before 4th support political games very well at all because of how skills (if they even existed) worked.

Dark fantasy is really just fantasy with some horror typically added to the mix (most often high fantasy or swords and sorcery). We saw a lot of this in Elric and stuff by H.P. Lovecraft, and its really easy to do to the point where DMs might do it and not even realize it. Its very popular to the point where there is plenty of advice online on how to make your game scary, as well as more official support.

As for exploration? I’m not sure what the criteria is to categorize a game as “exploration,” but that seems like it would inherently be a part of many games by definition, as often the party is touring around in some forgotten or unknown location, so…yeah. Its not listed under any genre, whether you check literature, film, or game.

A political game is one such theme that I dont think worked well at all before given the mechanics, but can be pulled off a lot more readily in 4th Edition thanks to skill challenges and the way skills function. It is because of this that more people can get involved with this process than they ever could before and provide actual assistance if not success, and with XP rewards built into the mechanics players can improve their characters without ever making an attack roll. You probably wont use many, if any powers (except for utilities), but if you absolutely must use this game in this fashion it would work out well enough.

The best games are those that pick a focus and work on emphasizing that. They dont try to spread themselves too thin or entertain everyone regardless of the games they like. A lot of people enjoyed God of War, but disliked the few spots where you had to pause the action and have Kratos manipulate what amounted to a tetris-puzzle in order to proceed. It made for a rather unsatisfying anti-climax, where Kratos rips the heads off a bunch of minotaurs, and then starts to reassemble wall-space in a slow and precise manner (this is why in the sequel they removed a lot of the ones that ground the game to a halt).

Note: This not to say that I’m opposed to intellectual puzzles, I just dont want them in a game where it seems shoehorned in.

So, yeah. In a nutshell: D&D is an action-adventure fantasy game. Always has, and likely always will be. Action-adventure games are incredibly popular, so it makes sense, but note that action and adventure often go hand-in-hand and are very open to including other genre elements. I think that D&D as written can shift perspectives to easily cater to either extreme, but the rules didnt lend themselves well to other genres that fall outside of the scope. This isnt a flaw, mind you. There are other fantasy games that cater to other genres and styles. My opinions in my review still stand, given that it wasnt even really about the genre. I mentioned it at the start, but the game falls flat because of mechanics and execution.