How to Make Your D&D Character Background
Backgrounds are a part of character creation that can be quickly meta-gamed or elaborately customized to fit a character's story. It's your character's origin. And we want to share how to make it fantastic for your character, the DM, and your party.
What Are Backgrounds in D&D 5e?
Background reveals where your characters came from, how they became adventurers and their place in the world. What led your character up to this moment? How did they acquire their equipment, skills, habits, quirks?
Thoughtfully answer these questions, and you will create a rich personality that will be a joy to play. Gloss over them, and you could be left with a cookie-cutter avatar that's stiff and lacks character.
Where to Begin
Creating a compelling character isn't easy! Wizards of the Coast knows this, which is why they've added backgrounds as a feature in 5e and included prompts in the Player's Handbook (PHB) to help you answer these questions.
If you haven't tried it before, starting with your background can be a fun approach to building your character.
This method gives you a peek into the character's life before they were an adventurer.
What did they do for a living? What were they like? Then, what happened to make them take the mantle of the class they've chosen?
Other Ways to Use Backgrounds
Besides flavor, backgrounds also provide a range of in-game benefits, such as skill and tool proficiencies, languages known, and the gear they own.
They also grant background-specific features that give them some kind of unique ability or trait.
Some of these features can shape the game significantly.
The Noble/Knight background, for example, can have up to three retainers (vassals) assist them on their adventurers.
The Sage's Discovery feature builds a massive story hook right into your character's background.
Talk with your DM during your session zero about your background and how it will impact the game.
Picking the Right D&D Background for Your Character
Within the rules as written (RAW) publications, there are dozens of options.
And homebrew and Unearthed Arcana provide an overwhelming number of options that are too deep to fully explore.
Instead, we want to dive into frameworks you can use when browsing backgrounds to create a character you're excited to play.
Outside of roleplaying, backgrounds provide extra utility for your character.
A common approach to metagaming or optimizing your character is selecting a background that complements or builds on your class.
A Dwarven Fighter with the Soldier background isn't the most original character sheet ever written, but they will undoubtedly be effective!
You can also select a background to cover the weaknesses or gaps you might have on your character sheet.
Use Sub-Roles to Inform Your Background
Another fun way to look at backgrounds is through any sub-roles you want to take on in your party.
If you love to draw maps as you're exploring, taking the Cartographer background gives you fun mechanical ways to enjoy that in-game, too.
Whether it's map-making, crafting, collecting lore - tune into what excites you about the game and take on that role through your background.
Using Backgrounds as DM
That's not the only way backgrounds can be used.
Attentive DMs can look at any character's history to bait story hooks they can't refuse.
Use past events to create stories that are meaningful to the character and player. Remember, a story is only interesting when there's conflict, growth, or change.
How Backgrounds Impact the Party
Your character's history also provides material for your party to work with. For example, if you're playing a dark and brooding character, why?
Allow yourself to open up to the group, if only in brief moments. It will feel like a victory for your companions and shows character growth.
Learning each other's stories, especially through roleplaying, takes you from random awkward strangers to a tight-knight group of interesting people bound up in each other's stories.
Lean into your background and give more richness to your character!