Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Backgrounds

Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game where we role-play a character and faces the challenges posed by the Dungeon Master and all of this process involves the art of storytelling. DM is the one who poses challenges to the, and DM is the person who steers the whole campaign.

Players are required to have a character, character of a player is not just an imaginary entity but it is a complete person in itself, as thing involves for the creation of a character are a selection of a Race to which your character belongs, class, and your character also has its complete personality.

Among many other things involved in the creation of a character, background, is one of the important things that need players’ consideration.

Backgrounds are like the back story of a character; like, what your character was before he embarks upon an adventure. What does he do in his past? In which skills he is proficient? How does he decide to go on an adventure? Any turning point in his/her life that made him/her go on an adventure? 

And the most important among these questions is that anything has changed?

All these questions that enshrine a background provide important cues for a character’s identity. These questions help us to comprehend our character and have a better understanding of it as a person.

In the player’s handbook of DnD 5e, there are officially 13 sample backgrounds described.

• Acolyte background
• Charlatan background
• Criminal background
• Entertainer background
• Folk hero background
• Guild artisan background
• Hermit background
• Nobel background
• Outlander background
• Sage background
• Sailor background
• Soldier background
• Urchin background

These are the sample d&d 5e backgrounds that are provided for the assistance of the new players and each background is described with greater details. Players are given complete independence to select backgrounds which they found fascinating or sparking their interest.

Each background has its own complete back story which tells what you were before you decide to go on an adventure. Areas like skill proficiencies, languages, and equipment give an idea about what things or skills your character is good at.

Suggested characteristics help to define your character’s Personality traits, Ideal, Bond, and flaws.

There is also one noticeable thing regarding backgrounds is that each background has a feature and it differs from background to background. Like an Acolyte has a feature: Shelter of the faithful which has its own benefits and the feature that of a Charlatan is a false identity. So, each background has its own feature and does not share it with the rest of the others.

Another noticeable thing that one might found in not all but some of the backgrounds that they have some variant background in them, like; a Criminal background has a variant of SPY, which implies that you can either choose to be a Criminal or you could be a SPY. Nobel has a variant too and that is the knight.

So, the backgrounds are like a story in itself that describes what your character is.