Choose a Background
Your choice of background helps define your character’s personal history (also called backstory) prior to taking up the mantle of an adventurer. When choosing a background, consider how it plays into your heritage and your choice of class. Did your life as a soldier naturally pave the way for you to become a fighter? Did a religious experience pull you away from a community that holds a different faith?
Your choice of background gives you access to additional proficiencies, talents, equipment, and other benefits like additional languages.
Elements of a Background
This section breaks down the various components of a background.
Skill Proficiencies
Each background gives a character Proficiency in two skills. If your character would already gain the same skill Proficiency from their class, lineage, or heritage features, you can choose a different skill Proficiency instead.
Additional Proficiences or Language
Most backgrounds grant Proficiency with one or more tools (detailed in “Equipment & Magic Items”) or allow a character to learn additional languages (see “Languages”).
Equipment
Each background provides a package of starting equipment. If you use the optional rule to spend coin on gear, you do not receive the starting equipment from your background.
Talent
Each background allows a character to choose one talent from a short list of options. These options are typically a mix from all three talent lists, so they represent a unique opportunity to grab a talent from a list your class may not have access to in the future.
Adventuring Motivation
A background contains suggested adventuring motivations based on your background. These motivations help inform your reasons for becoming an adventurer. You can pick a motivation, roll dice to determine it randomly, or use the suggestions as inspiration for creating your own motivation.
Customizing a Background
You might want to tweak some of the features of a background so it better fits your character or campaign setting. To customize a background, you can replace one Talent list with any other, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds. You can either use the equipment package from your background or spend coins on gear as described in the Equipment section. If you spend coin, you can’t also take the equipment package suggested for your class. Finally, choose one adventuring motivation. If you can’t find a feature that matches your desired background, work with your GM to create one.
Talents
Talents represent the specific ways an adventurer has improved over the course of their adventures. Talents are divided into three categories: magic talents, martial talents, and technical talents. Your class typically determines which talent lists you have access to. Talents are gained in two main ways:
- When a character chooses their background during character creation, they select one talent from a list of options provided in the background.
- When a character class grants an Improvement,theycanchoose to increase a single ability score by 2, two different ability scores by 1, or choose a talent from the list their class has access to, assuming the character meets any necessary prerequisites.