Did you manifest your powers randomly? Are you carrying on a family tradition? Were your clerical powers awakened by a holy ritual? Gods have many followers but only a few are gifted with the powers of a cleric. How did you know you were called to serve your god? Players can answer these questions ahead of the first session, or DMs can facilitate this character building exercise with a session zero.
This series of articles offers five background questions for each class that a player can answer with a few short sentences whenever they want ( yes, we’ll be doing one for each class). Sometimes it makes more sense to leave specific elements open so that they can be filled in by information informed by what happens in the game.
Most serial stories take their time to spool out juicy bits of background info as the story unfolds. A character with a good background can give a Dungeon Master several wonderful ways to hook a character into dashing into danger.Ī useful background doesn’t have to be a full-fledged biography about a character’s life before 1st level. But what about the fictional side of the character? In D&D, the Background choice offers some mechanical support for what a character as before they became an adventurer, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Spell choices, weapon choices and where to put ability scores influence how a character comes together mechanically. I’m looking forward to my Aarakocra Wizard, y’all.Players have a lot of decisions to make when they put together a Dungeons & Dragons character. There’s a lot more to love about Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything but the sheer control it puts in the player’s hands for their character is absolutely one of its best features.
There are rules for how to do that, letting you trade in a subclass that no longer works for your character with one that does. Or you took a subclass - you were a Warlock with a Archfey pact and now you’ve decided you’d rather follow this new Genie patron. Now you can, whenever your character gets a new Ability Score Increase from the class features. Maybe you expected your Rogue to be the party’s Investigator, but now you find that the other Rogue is handling all of that and you want to focus on Perception. You could design your own completely variant form of Human who grew up in a cave and thus has Darkvision instead of the usual Human skills.įurthermore, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything also has rules for how to change things for characters you’ve been playing for a while. A custom lineage is a humanoid, but within that, you can choose a +2 Ability Score Increase of your designation, whether or not you’re small or medium, one feat of your choice, you can even decide between 60 feet of Darkvision or, if you’d rather, a skill of your choice.
Well, Tasha‘s allows you to go further, with a custom lineage designed to match your idea of what your character is all about. You want an Elf who, instead of knowing how to use a Longsword, has studied a Greataxe instead? You can do that. Your starting languages and proficiencies can be changed to more accurately suit your idea for what your character can and can’t do.
Who you are and where you’re from is in your hands nowīut it’s not just Ability Score Increases that are under player control with Tasha’s.
You want a Halfling Sorcerer? A Dragonborn Wizard? You’re free to put your Ability Score Bonuses anywhere that will serve your idea for the character. It removes the old idea that some races were simply worse at certain jobs by dint of their ancestry. All well and good for that Rogue or Bard, but what if you want to play a heavy plate wearing Paladin? You simply ended up playing an Elf Paladin with a +2 to Dexterity, ultimately, even though Dex is a bit of a dump class for Paladins who want Strength or Charisma to fuel their melee attacks or spells and smites.īut with Tasha’s new rules, your Elf can simply take that +2 to Dex and put the bonus in any stat they want, such as Charisma, Strength, Constitution or what have you. If you’re playing an Elf, for example, your Ability Score Modifier is a +2 to Dexterity. Up until now, the way Ability Score Increases have worked in 5th Edition D&D has been pretty restrictive. Your ability scores can go where you want them
You can absolutely do this using Tasha’s, and the new rules it provides for character options. As a result, you can finally play that notorious seafaring Gnome Barbarian pirate with a passion for craft beers. One of the ways Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything changes up character creation in Dungeons and Dragons is by providing more options - ways to create that origin you really want for your character, with custom ability score modifiers, background details, and even skills and subclasses.