Backgrounds

Every story has a beginning. Your character’s background reveals where you came from, how you became an adventurer, and your place in the world. Your fighter might have been a courageous knight or a grizzled soldier. Your wizard could have been a sage or an artisan. Your rogue might have gotten by as a guild thief or commanded audiences as a jester.

Your background roughly describes what class of society you belonged to before you struck out adventuring. Choosing a background provides you with important story cues about your character. The most important question to ask about your background is what changed? Why did you stop doing whatever your background describes and start adventuring? Where did you get the money to purchase your starting gear, or, if you come from a wealthy background, why don’t you have more money? How did you learn the skills of your class? What sets you apart from ordinary people who share your background?

Proficiencies
Each background gives a character some proficiency in a set of skills. In addition, most backgrounds give a character proficiency with one or more tools. If a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose to increase the proficiency level with that skill or tool.

Languages
Some backgrounds also allow characters to learn additional languages beyond those given by race. 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.

Social Class
Most medieval fantasy settings operate with some degree of social class structure, based on the feudal society of the age. These backgrounds broadly reflect these social classes, but aside from the various features, they do not automatically confer any other benefits – such as automatic wealth or property. A character with the noble background may be from a noble house, and will be recognised as such among her peers, but that does not automatically grant access to property, land or wealth. Maybe the character is far back in the line of inheritance, has been disinherited by their family, or the family has fallen on hard times. Regardless of class and background, adventurers tend to be outsiders from society as a whole, and no-one cares about your birthright in the bowel of a deep dungeon.