Comments on: Dancing Monk Background

By: tribality

tribality — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 19:21:00 +0000

In reply to Jesse. Good stuff. Keep the idea factory running though.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 18:53:00 +0000

In reply to crimfan. Even though perform is generally a charisma based thing, because the purpose of doing so is for the purpose of improving one's mind and body which is why I shifted it to wisdom or dexterity respectively.

By: crimfan

crimfan — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 22:55:00 +0000

Cool idea, though as Brandes said you should be careful about adding combat-related features to a background.

I think the monk can get out of the Kung Fu ghetto by having it be other things, one interesting one being a dancer who’s taken things to a substantially different place than just art. I’d probably want to swap out Wisdom for Charisma in that case, and definitely want to switch out a number of fairly irrelevant abilities such as the one that lets monks know all languages, but still, it’s an interesting way to represent a mystic warrior built on special movements.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 20:24:00 +0000

Thank you everyone for your comments! I try to use them as ways to improve my writing and getting you content that you can use for your games.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:55:00 +0000

In reply to Colin McLaughlin. Looking through it the way of the fan, I quite agree!

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:54:00 +0000

In reply to tribality.

I’m actually going for people who are poorer than poor. Even with as much as we have in today’s society, there are still people who have literally nowhere to go. Basically the idea of someone living in a garbage heap because they have no shelter, or a shelter made of found things they pieced together, not to mention it seems far too similar to the bard’s “by popular demand” feature for me, which is why I avoided it.

Also social interaction(s) rely on charisma, which I was specifically wishing to avoid the need for.

By: Colin McLaughlin

Colin McLaughlin — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:17:00 +0000

This would be a neat background for the Way of the Feathered Fan monk mentioned here: http://www.tribality.com/2016/11/23/gobble-ins-centaurkeysand-thanksgiving-one-shots/

and then updated here:
https://standsinfire.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/way-of-the-feathered-fan-version-0-2/

By: tribality

tribality — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:27:00 +0000

In reply to Brandes Stoddard.

Lots of good ideas here! I really like the idea of a streewise language and would love to see a full article just on alternative languages that are like Druidic and Thieves’ Cant.

If you wanted to move from fast and loose – to something that follows the 5e background design guidelines… I think a quick rework of the feature to be something related to something social that is handy in urban environments would be great. This background offers a different take on aspects of the Urchin and Entertainer.

First things that comes to mind would be:

1) the ability to find a place to hide/train/sleep in the city.
2) using performance (dance) to gain some social benefit

By: Brandes Stoddard

Brandes Stoddard — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 13:55:00 +0000

I think you’ll find that 5e’s Backgrounds do not offer ANY combat-affecting features. Background features should affect social, investigative, or exploration scenes, preferably without requiring a die roll to exercise.