Backgrounds

Ancestral Speaker

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Thri-kreen race

You have a strong tie to the Ancestral Khanate. You might have a particularly good memory and recall events that you did not witness. Occasionally, the ancestors could speak through you, imparting cryptic truths. It’s likely you have a magical power, whether arcane, divine, primal, or psionic. You are expected to be an exemplar and a teacher among your people, to honor and share your gifts. How do you take this duty? Why did you set out from your pack into the wider world? Did you anger the khan or another dominant pack mate? Have the ancestors given you a greater purpose? Can you share this goal with others or is it a secret you keep?

Associated Skills: History, Nature

Ancient

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Revenant

When you awoke as a revenant, you discovered centuries had passed. Everyone you knew, loved, and hated is now gone. Why did the Raven Queen call you from death? Do you have special knowledge? How do you see the world now? How do you look at the years you lost?

Associated Skills: Endurance, History

Arcane Agent

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You are a member of a secret arcane society. The public believes that your secret society is composed of thieves and assassins, and it has been outlawed. Your society believes that your particular tradition of magic is unduly prosecuted in the area where you reside. Whether this belief is correct or not, you are an avid supporter of your society, and you look forward to the rare times when you receive secret communiques from other members of your society. Sometimes these messages take the form of magical sendings; others are inked on parchments that are magically treated to flash into ash upon being read. Most are of the “keep the faith” variety, though a few instruct you to undertake minor quests for the society. So far, none of these missions have taxed you or put you in a precarious moral situation.

Associated Skills: Stealth, Streetwise

Arcane Mercenary

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You work for pay. You’ll take coin if that’s all your patron has to offer, but you prefer to be paid in magic. Magic items, magical lore, magical secrets—you value these more than gold.

More than any other form of payment, you want an artifact. Gaining an artifact is your goal. You might even have a specific artifact in mind.

You recognize that artifacts, as magical quasientities with temperaments and goals all their own, cannot be bought and sold by gold. That knowledge only stokes your burning desire to possess one.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Arcane Pariah

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warlock

You were a student to the finest wizard mentor. Yet, you grew bored with the old mage’s sermonizing. Impatiently, you sought shortcuts to power by making your pact. Breaking this arcane taboo, you were banished by your teacher. Do you revel in the powers and scoff at the dangers of your pact? Have you realized the mistake you’ve made and sought to reconcile with your old mentor?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Streetwise

Arcane Refugee

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

A great conflagration of magic enveloped your home when you were a child. Your family fled, and your parents became bitter, angry people who denounced spells and those who worked them.

Your family never explained to you the nature of the magical disaster that destroyed your home (and perhaps even the city or region where you lived as a child). This event stirred a great curiosity in you because of a strange red scar you have on the back of your hand—a remnant of your flight from the disaster. Some nights, the scar glimmers with its own light.

You began secretly exploring arcane magic. Your study was enhanced when you found an old locked chest in your surviving parents’ chamber. It was filled with dusty, old books describing arcane fields of study. Before long, you were working basic spells on your own—but then your parents found out. You were banished and commanded never to return.

You wander now, looking for ways to increase your arcane knowledge and trying to discover more about the magical disaster that overshadows your life.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Arcane Sentinel

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

A great secret has been entrusted to you, and you are that secret’s sentinel. Your secret might be your guardianship of a tome containing dire and wondrous prophecies, the location of a magical shrine or planar gate, or your identity as the heir of some arcane tradition hunted to extinction except for the last few who cling to their allegiance to the order.

You are not completely alone. A few others share your burden. Sometimes you note the secret sign of your sentinel affiliation scribed in magical runes on the side of a building, written on a dungeon wall, or whispered in a dream. Until the next gathering of your fellow sentinels, reading these secret signposts is the safest way to maintain contact with your fellows without betraying your secret trust.

Associated Skills: Arcana

Arcane Tracker

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You are on the trail of a wondrous thing. It might be a manifestation that appears only under a full moon or an eclipse, a spellwarped beast whose rampages lash into the world from another plane, a lich assassin who killed your master and stole relics meant for you, or a demon child who rides an albino serpent through the dreams of its hapless victims. You pledged yourself to this hunt, knowing full well that the nature of your quarry could lead you far across the world and perhaps even beyond it. You know that when you finally catch what you are chasing, a great trove of arcane knowledge will be yours for the taking.

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Nature

Arkhosian Totem Rager

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

The totem ragers of ancient Arkhosia were an elite warrior order that practiced primal traditions to become more ferocious in battle. The order was shattered before the fall of Arkhosia, after being infiltrated and corrupted by infernal spies loyal to Bael Turath. The imperial priests of Erathis declared the totem ragers to be in league with devils and the empire’s enemies, and the order was officially disbanded and outlawed. It survived only in small groups that continued to meet in secret.

In this form, the totem ragers survived the fall of the empire, and you are one of its few, scattered heirs. This tradition has long outlasted the imperial authority that declared it outlaw, so there is little need for secrecy—but the scattered members of your order have practiced secrecy for so long that it is a well-ingrained habit. What’s more, your primal connections are still greeted with suspicion by the clergy of the Imperial Arkhosian temples, though they lack any legal recourse to prosecute you.

Most Arkhosian totem rager characters are barbarians. You might choose to focus on daily rage attack powers that evoke draconic spirits, from rage drake’s frenzy at 1st level to blue dragon rage at 25th. If you can’t find an appropriate rage power at a given level, consider renaming and reflavoring an existing power, so frost wolf rage at 5th level might become white dragon rage in your hands. You might also choose this background element as a warden, applying some of the same cosmetic changes to your daily guardian form powers.

Associated Skills: History, Streetwise

Artist

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Corellon

You were a painter, a sculptor, a poet, a writer, or some other form of artist. What was your medium? Did you study under a master? Who was he or she? Were you well known in your trade? Have you come across any of your works?

Associated Quests: Retrieve an artifact of Corellon or a great work of eladrin art stolen by the drow and hidden in the Underdark; rediscover the fragments of eons-old epic poems and assemble them into a definitive retelling of the battle between Corellon and Gruumsh; locate and rededicate a shrine of Corellon that was destroyed during the Dawn War.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Aspirant of the Watcher

Campaign Setting: General

You were intrigued by Erak Cobb for a while, during which time you participated in the rites and ceremonies, communed with spirits and, in the end, had your eyes opened to a different world. You might have gone on to further your studies, becoming a druid or maybe even a shaman. Or, you might have abandoned that path to pursue some other destiny. What was your story?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Astronomer

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

Occultists claim that the stars in the night sky are windows into the Outside, and that to look upon them is to invite madness and physical corruption. Indeed, tales tell of mad warlocks who traffic with alien entities, securing power from the stars themselves. As your mind has opened to new possibilities, you search the heavens for answers regarding your internal wellspring of psionic energy. You examine celestial movements for clues about the world’s fate, and to perhaps catch a glimpse of the terrors that lurk between the twinkling lights.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Athlete

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You spent years earning your living as a competitive athlete. You might throw hammers, spears, or discs, or you could be a sprinter, a swimmer, a gymnast, or an equestrian. You have participated in athletic competitions, both in small settlements and in major cities. In your youth, you participated in athletic challenges for your own enjoyment or fitness, and you found you had a knack for them. Now, you are in top physical condition, and your athletic training has aided you in your martial prowess. Wherever you go, people recognize your name for the great acts of strength or dexterity you perform. Locals challenge you to arm wrestling, throwing, and running, just for a chance to compete against you. Perhaps now you seek to earn renown as a hero, gaining a new kind of glory, or maybe adventuring is just an excuse to continue training and improving your prowess.

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics

Awakened

Type: Birth

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

Your birth was unremarkable. You were healthy and seemingly normal. Your parents or caretakers quickly noticed, however, that something was amiss. Your newborn eyes gleamed with awareness, the first sign that you possessed the intellect of a full-grown adult. You learned to speak within hours, and you started walking as soon as your muscles could support your weight. You proved to be a prodigy in nearly every discipline.

Your awakened mind gave you advantages over your peers, but your incredible intelligence proved disconcerting to youngsters and adults alike. Did you try to fit in, or did you abandon your peers’ petty concerns and embrace your destiny? How have your childhood experiences influenced your interactions with others? What advantages did you gain from your early development? What events from that time still haunt you?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Intimidate

Back Alley Bravo

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Sorcerer

You have long settled scores at knifepoint. Did you work for a thieves’ guild as an enforcer, or did you fight to repel those same thugs from your neighborhood? How did you come across your fighting skills? Were you taught by an aging master, or did you learn it the hard way? How do you view these activities now? Do you have a grudge against criminals and take on quests to put bandits down? Or is there bad blood between you and your former associates? You have learned to remain unseen when pursued and to stand your ground when you have nowhere to turn.

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Stealth

Baernor Scion

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

You are a member of Everwatch’s noble family. You might be next in line to take the throne, or you could be a distant relation with few prospects. How do you get on with your family? With King Festrick? Are you a beloved member or a black sheep? How did the larger family respond when you chose to leave Everwatch and become an adventurer?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Banished from the Order

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Ioun

You were an excavator, trained by the Collectors to find a way into dangerous vaults and trapped tombs, recover precious artifacts, and escape. Unfortunately, one of your missions triggered a terrible curse, and the curator of your chapter cast you out, unwilling to risk the curse falling upon the rest of the order. What is the nature of your curse? Do you seek a cure, or are you resigned to live with the consequences? What artifact cursed you? Do you have it still, or is it in the hands of the Collectors? Perhaps you were part of a team prior to your current adventuring party. Were they also cursed, and if so, what happened to them?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Thievery

Associated Languages: Supernal

Barovian Escapee

Campaign Setting: General

Most of the time, you lived a pleasant life in Barovia. Simple rules guided your existence: Obey the burgomaster. Do not consort with the Vistani. Do not go out after sunset. And always do as Count Strahd von Zarovich commands.

Several times each year, some village residents receive invitations written in the count’s hand and bearing his seal pressed into crimson wax. Those who return tell of lavish banquets and parties that last through the night. Some do not return, though. They are afterward said to be “living with the count,” and they are never seen outside the castle again.

Or so you thought—until the night you saw your sweetheart for the last time.

You awoke to the sound of your name being called from the yard outside. Your love, who had answered an invitation from Strahd some time ago, and whom you had secretly grieved as lost to you ever since, stood beneath your window, pale in the moonlight. Her faint words warned you that your name was now on the guest list and that you must not come to the castle—in fact, you had to leave Barovia that night.

Of course you wavered, but nonetheless, fighting against everything you had been taught, you went out into the night and followed the one you loved most in the world down the road toward the gateway into the forest. She stood aside and implored you to pass through the gate. When you did so and turned back to look, no one stood behind you, but in the distance a pack of wolves crept out of the woods onto the road. You fled for your life into the forest.

You spent weeks wandering the mountains. Eventually you found a road, which led you to a new land. You’re still not certain you did the right thing in leaving your homeland, even though life is better in many ways beyond Barovia’s borders.

And . . . more than guilt haunts you. Recently you have heard stories of a black coach being pulled by exquisite black stallions. It appears from time to time, traveling the roads with no one driving it, and no passenger is glimpsed beyond its swaying velvet curtains. Its last reported location is always somewhere behind you, leading you to wonder if it is drawing closer.

It is, you fear, the same black coach that carries the count’s guests to his castle.

Associated Skills: Perception, Stealth

Barrister

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Bahamut

You worked within the legal system to uphold the law. Did you champion the innocent or punish wrongdoers? Was the legal system just or riddled with corruption? Did you ever defend someone who was guilty or prosecute the innocent? Did you leave your occupation with confidence in the laws you upheld or in disgust?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Intimidate

Battlefield Wonderworker

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Eladrin, artificer

Even at an early age, your aptitude for arcane magic differed from that of your peers. Instead of pouring over dusty tomes or practicing with your blade, you tinkered with constructs of your own design or experimented with alchemical reagents. After completing your studies, you joined the military to seek excitement and test your skills. However, you quickly became disillusioned with a military dominated by haughty wizards and swordmages, and you left to pursue a career as an adventurer.

Were you jealous of the advantages typically reserved for your wizard and swordmage peers? Did you wish to emulate them or did you defiantly pursue your own interests? How did your attitude affect your studies and subsequent career? What finally prompted you to leave the military? Did you leave of your own accord or in disgrace?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Athletics

Beggar

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You have spent time on the streets collecting coin from pedestrians. Successful beggars evoke compassion from onlookers, so you have become skillful at feigning signs of disfigurement and deprivation. Your experience as a beggar has taught you to read people. You can tell whether a stranger is kindhearted or suspicious. You have learned to judge the weight of a person’s purse by the way he or she walks, and you can detect the approach of a member of the watch long before the tip of the guard’s halberd comes into view. In cities where thieves and beggars form guilds, you have supplemented your income by serving as a lookout on street corners where you can loiter without drawing suspicion. Your time as a beggar has given you both skills and an unquenchable thirst for wealth and status. Now you search for a way to achieve these goals.

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Bestial

Type: Racial

Type: Racial

Prerequisite: Half-orc

The best thing that ever happened to your tribe was when your orc forefathers were slaughtered in a bloody but one-sided civil war. With them gone, the half-orcs of your tribe were freed from orc tyranny, and your people were able to prove themselves superior warriors. Even more impressive, your tribe has gained the reputation of skilled and reliable mercenaries.

Are you still a member of your mercenary tribe, searching for more opportunities to gain coin and prove your fighting prowess in the wider world, or did you decide to leave the mercenary life to take on new and different challenges? How would your tribal kin treat you if they saw you again? Did taking orders finally become too much, or are you still comfortable in a regimental unit?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Bloodtangle

Towering trees, savage carnivores, torrential rains mingling with debilitating swelter

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

Far to the south sprawls the Bloodtangle, a fecund expanse of rain forest sheltering an impassable landscape teeming with life. The trees grow tall and close together, their hundred-foot-high canopy blocking sunlight from the dank forest floor. Streams wind among the trunks, while bogs, quicksand, and flash floods take travelers by surprise. With hosts of poisonous wildlife, silent predators, and vicious natives, the Bloodtangle is no place for the unprepared. The people of the Bloodtangle are known for their use of venoms extracted from stinging insects, toxic amphibians, and venomous snakes.

You are at home in the unforgiving Bloodtangle. Human and elf are good racial choices for this homeland, but goblins, bugbears, hobgoblins, and kobolds are also appropriate if those are used as player races in your game. Barbarians and druids are excellent class choices, and you might consider multiclassing into ranger to reflect your superior hunting techniques.

Associated Skills: Heal, Nature

Associated Languages: Draconic, Goblin

Borderland Nobility

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

Your father or mother is a ruler of an obscure fiefdom along the frontier. The territory is small and out of the way. Nevertheless, your parents are nobility, and that status awards them and their family privileges. As the youngest of many children, you might have no chance of inheriting the realm, but your heritage has afforded you other opportunities, such as attending the best schools, receiving the best martial training, and meeting people of renown. You’ll never inherit your family’s estate, yet you can travel the world and do as you please, carousing, adventuring, and being a layabout. With the military talents your upbringing has provided you, you can succeed in whatever endeavors you undertake.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Born of Avandra's Presence

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Avandra

Avandra was present at your birth, though none knew that she was there. Hidden behind one of her many disguises, she was present for the moment your life began, and she touched you with a divine spark. Her touch imbues you with knowledge that you don’t truly understand, but this knowledge can guide you in your endeavors.

Associated Quests: Compose and perform an entertaining, inspiring epic poem about your exploits or those of another respected follower of Avandra; destroy a temple of Tiamat, Torog, or Zehir; bring freedom to people whose liberty has been stripped away by a tyrant or slave master.

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Bozak Draconian

Type: Racial

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

From the moment of your birth, you were a match for virtually any human soldier. Your natural aptitude for both magic and combat and your gift for command make you a force to be reckoned with.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Diplomacy, Intimidate

Great canyons and towering earth spires, spectacularly striated rock, dry and thirsty soil

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

The Broken Lands are an arid region marked by dramatic natural features: ravines, rock spires, and steep slopes with colorfully patterned striations. Vegetation is sparse, and rainfall is infrequent but intense. Drakes and lions hunt a variety of prey through the canyons. The cliffs, loose soil, and patches of slick clay make traversing the Broken Lands difficult, so travelers are rare and roads are unknown. The people of the Broken Lands, mostly dwarves and orcs, war with each other for what few resources the dry land has to offer.

You were born in the Broken Lands and grew up accustomed to hardship. The ways of the world beyond your homeland are strange to you, and you’re marked by a strong competitive streak. Barbarians are the most common primal characters from the Broken Lands, but druids and shamans are also good options.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Associated Languages: Dwarven, Giant

Burglar

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You specialize in breaking and entering. No lock’s going to stop you; no security can catch you. Why did you become a burglar? What treasures did you steal? Did you leave behind any calling cards? Did you ever find a safe too tough to crack? What was inside?

Give some thought to your role in the circus and take feats and other character elements that reinforce that role. An acrobat might take Long Jumper and Sure Climber. As an escape artist, you might be trained in Acrobatics and Thievery and take the Escape Artist feat. A knife thrower might have Far Throw and Quick Draw.

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics

Cerulean Adepts

Campaign Setting: General

You have received your training with an eye toward understanding the importance of the foretold champion. You vigilantly listen for rumors of the champion’s appearance and watch for Far Realm incursions.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Streetwise

Associated Languages: Deep Speech

Chameleon

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Foulborn Heritage feat

Your skin alters its coloring to blend in with your surroundings. Although clothing diminishes this effect somewhat, you still have a knack for escaping notice.

Associated Skills: Stealth

Champion of Bahamut

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Whatever your class, you are a servant of Bahamut and seek to emulate him in all your actions. You strive to be a living incarnation of his will in the world, an extension of his mighty claws. His principles of honor and justice, vigilance against evil, and protecting the weak guide every decision you make and inform your every action. Some might call you naive, blind to the harsh realities of life in this dark age, and perhaps you are—but that doesn’t make you wrong.

Most champions of Bahamut are paladins or clerics, espousing a particular ideal of Bahamut as a warrior deity. You might gird yourself in shining platinum-colored armor—or perhaps your scales are naturally that color, a sign of your god’s favor and calling. You might choose cold damage for your dragon breath and feats such as Frost Breath and Freezing Breath to emulate the Platinum Dragon’s frosty breath.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Intimidate

Changeling Imposter

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Changeling

You drift from place to place, borrowing identities to help you disappear into the communities to which you travel. Although you can assume any appearance you choose, you find yourself drawn to another’s identity so much that you replace the individual. What draws you to impersonation? What tricks have you developed to deflect suspicion? How long do you borrow this identity and are you responsible or reckless with the life you steal?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Streetwise

Channeled Fury

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Half-Orc

Anger burns in your heart but you are its master, having conquered it long ago. With this focus, you can call upon its strength to see you through any hardship and help you overcome any obstacle. What is the source of this rage? How did you master it? Were you taught or did enough tragedy strike that you finally found a way to overcome it?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Chaos Bound

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Genasi

You are untamed, passionate, and wild, as if you held the whole of the Elemental Chaos in your form. You are a force for destruction and you foment discord and upheaval wherever you go. Are you willful, doing as you please, consequences be damned? Or do you struggle against the impulses raging inside you?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Endurance

Child of Fate

Campaign Setting: General

You were born with a birthmark associated with a member of the Gloaming Court: a moon, a heart, or even the stylized loom shape of the Witch of Fate. Whatever form the mark takes, you were called at birth as a traveler on the Gloaming Path, whether you like it or not.

Associated Skills: Nature, Insight

Child of the Wildlands

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

Many human children are born to a far-flung homestead in a wilderness claimed and somewhat tamed by their parents or extended family. As a child, you did not know the safety of walls, but only the semblance of civilization your family brought to a stretch of wilderness. Maybe that homestead still exists as a bastion of light that survives or thrives in the dark wild lands. Maybe your home was swallowed up by the savagery around it. Whatever the case, you have an understanding of the dangers of the wilderness and how to survive them that will never leave you.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Chimera Tribe Champion

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

In the dark age after the falls of Bael Turath and Arkhosia, tieflings spread throughout the ruined settlements of the post-apocalyptic chaos. Many tieflings survived by clinging to the guttering lights of civilization, but others plunged with their human cousins into the darkness of a world gone savage. Wild tribes of humanity carved out places for themselves in the untamed wilderness and lost all contact with their civilized history.

Your people, the proud nomads of the Chimera tribe, come from such stock. They see your strange physical features as gifts from your tribe’s totem beast. Your horns are those of the ram. Your tail and resistance to fire come from its dragon soul. Finally, your bloodlust is born of the lion’s heart.

How did you learn the truth of your tiefling heritage? How did it change your self-image? Do you still hold the chimera as your totem? How were you treated in your tribe? Did you belong to a bloodline of leadership? Did you leave your tribe or were you forced away? Do you seek to return to them or do they seek you?

This is a great background for a tiefling of any primal class. As a barbarian you might ascribe your strength and rage to the chimera. As a druid, you could use wild shape to assume ram or lion form. If you play a shaman, your spirit companion might look like a small chimera. A tiefling seeker might desire a flying chimera mount from which to rain down attacks. And as a warden you should of course aspire to attain the 29th-level power, form of the chimera.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Chosen of the Spirit Drake

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

From the moment you emerged from your egg, it’s been clear that you were chosen to be the mouthpiece of a primal drake spirit. It might be a furious spirit that has fueled a powerful inner rage in you for your whole life, or a loyal guard drake spirit that chose you to protect your family or clan. Or it could be something more akin to a fang titan drake, a beast of tremendous power that wants you for some great purpose that you’re not yet aware of or prepared for.

What manifestation of the spirit drake at your birth made the spirit’s choice clear to those around you? Perhaps it sent a living drake to brood your egg. Maybe you erupted with fury as you hatched, hurling the fragments of your shell around the room. How were you raised in accordance with the drake spirit’s wishes? Were you segregated from other children as a mark of your special calling? Did you grow up in the wilderness with the drake that hatched your egg? Or did your parent simply watch you carefully but otherwise allow you to lead a normal childhood?

This is a particularly appropriate background for a dragonborn shaman—your spirit companion can be the spirit drake who chose you. However, it works equally well for any other primal class, with a less direct relationship to that drake spirit.

Associated Skills: Insight, Religion

Circus Performer

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You were born into the circus and grew up among acrobats, performers, magicians, and animals. In your formative years, you showed a knack for feats of strength or dexterity, so you began learning from the performers. Living among the members of the circus made you tolerant of people who had alternative lifestyles. Although you never received a formal education, you learned many useful skills from the motley members of the circus. Your upbringing has left you with wanderlust, and it is this feeling that has driven you to explore a life as an adventurer.

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Minotaur

Your clan is honored to carry the name of Kranos the Uncrowned King. Kranos was a bold and unswerving hero who bowed to none. Indeed, Kranos gained infamy for his dread belt of crowns: a collection of the severed heads of leaders who sought to enslave or manipulate him.

Your tribe stems from those Kranos fathered and those who sought to serve him while he lived. Yet Kranos kicked lapdogs away from him. If others followed him and his example, so be it, but Kranos would have no one lick his hooves clean. Thus, your clan accepts only those who can stand on their own and who have the will and strength to take what they want from life. You have leaders among your clan, but they earn their role by proving they are worth following. You might already be one of these leaders, or you might be seeking to prove your worth through adventure.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Intimidate

Clan Sentune

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Minotaur

Your clan takes its name from Sentune, a famous philosopher who emphasized exploring paths. One cannot take every option, but neither should one choose blindly. By Sentune’s way of thinking, experimentation and exploration should be at the root of every minotaur’s life.

Clan Sentune is thus a nomadic clan. Small groups and individuals wander separately for long periods only to gather for seasonal celebrations at spots decided upon at the previous celebration. Other minotaurs consider members of your clan permissive and idle vagabonds. In fact, many members of your clan become involved with strange gods or take up odd professions, and when the clan gathers you have the opportunity to discuss the choices individuals have made and to learn from others’ successes and mistakes.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Streetwise

Clan Thavok

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Minotaur

Your clan traces its history back to the founding of the Labyrinth City of Leng. Thavok chose as his battleground the confusing volcanic landscape of canyons where Leng would be built, and his victory there over a force that outnumbered his a hundredfold would make the site hallowed ground for centuries. Members of your clan defended Leng for all those many years, building and using the labyrinth of tunnels, causeways, and paths to outmaneuver foes time and time again. Eventually, doom came to Leng, and your clan was powerless to stop it because the enemy was within and knew the labyrinth as well as any in the clan.

Clan Thavok was betrayed. Wrongfully accused of treachery, your ancestors fled the city lest their blood soak the stones they had labored so long to protect. No member of your clan has looked upon the Labyrinth City’s walls for generations, but it continues the old traditions. You have learned all the tricks of ambush and you possess knowledge of the hazards of dungeonscapes and tunnels.

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Stealth

Con Artist (Psionic)

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

Your talent for reading people proved invaluable to your criminal career. You have always been able to assess others’ emotions, anticipating their actions and compelling them to do your bidding with subtle manipulation. But as your skill grew, you realized you were engaging in more than guesswork and misdirection. You could hear people’s thoughts. Faced with the knowledge of your burgeoning psionic abilities, did you change course? Did you see yourself as having an unfair advantage or violating others with your power? Or did you embrace your abilities and use them to their fullest?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Type: Birth

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

You look like a typical member of your race, indistinguishable from others of your kind. But you are not truly what you appear to be. You are a creation—a child born not of body but of mind. You might have been formed to serve a greater purpose, or you could have been an experiment. Regardless of why you were made, the unnatural circumstances of your birth instilled you with unusual power.

When did you learn that you were different? How have you come to terms with your existence? Do you count yourself as a genuine member of your people? Have you told anyone what you believe? Have you uncovered incontrovertible truth that connects you to your presumed maker? And if not, how do you truly know what you are?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Crimson Curse

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

You have the curse of a tiefling bloodline, but you bear a heavier burden than most. You suffer from the crimson curse of the House of Zannifer. Unless you wear something red, your skin oozes blood like sweat. This process has killed others when left unchecked, and it’s

a horror to behold—one you would rather not experience yourself. Fortunately, there is a kind of cure: All you need to do is kill a criminal once a month to keep the bleeding at bay. The curse is weirdly discriminating, however. Only those convicted of crimes by some authority serve its strange purpose, although even a pickpocket or tax evader will do.How rapidly does your curse manifest? What red object do you wear to prevent bleeding? Have you ever purposely gone without wearing red and killed someone to stave off the curse? Have you or your relatives acted as an executioner or bounty hunter?

Associated Skills: Heal, Streetwise

Crystalbrooker

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

You grew up in Crystalbrook, a small agricultural community on the plains near the Sildaine Forest and the town's namesake, the stream known as the Crystalbrook. Familiar with the town and its troubles, you're also known as a capable individual there. You know the town's ruler, Lady Anya Tamora, and her son, Orlando, to some degree. Lady Tamora is fair but stern, sanctioning retaliation against fey incursions and doing her best to protect her people. Orlando is brave and honest, but he had shown no interest in rulership since his father died a decade ago. he has refused involvement in any action against the Sildaine fey.

Do you know the Tamora family well? What was your job in Crystalbrook before you answered Count Varis's call? What was your reputation beyond your known competence? Do you think badly of the fey in the nearby woods? Have you or your family had trouble with the Sildaine fey? What about others you know? Have you harmed the fey in some way?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Cult Survivor

Campaign Setting: General

You were young when the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye held sway over all the surrounding lands, but not too young to remember. How could you forget? Your parents were taken during the last days before the war.

When the armies of the surrounding lands rode through the streets of your village, pennants flying as they drove your oppressors before them, you were swept up in their wake and ready to spill blood. But your uncle held you back. He took the dagger from your hand and bade you stay still. You were not ready to fight, and he would not allow you to die so soon after you came into his care.

Your uncle was a simple man of the fields and market, and he would have stayed as well, but your bravery shamed him. Bearing your father’s sword and your mother’s shield, he joined the army to fight the cult. Word of victory returned, but your uncle did not. Nor did you ever see your parents again.

Your aunt raised you and sought to protect you from the world. She thought that if she could keep you away from violence and hide from you the truth about the cult and the temple, you might somehow avoid being hurt by such things. But her efforts only inflamed your desire to know more and to be ready for the next battle. You often slipped away to stand in the shadow of the temple, searching through the weeds and rubble of the battlefield for your parents’ sword and shield. You wonder if your mother and father are still alive, slaves locked behind the temple’s doors.

Now bandits again rove the roads, and the village elders whisper that the old sense of terror has returned. If the cult is back, the temple is the source— you’re sure of that. And this time you’re ready to fight.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Athletics, Religion

Cultist

Campaign Setting: General

Cultists don’t have to be experts in religion, but they do need to learn how to get around and practice their heretical beliefs without arousing the suspicion of local authorities.

Associated Skills: Stealth, Streetwise

Cunning Hypnotist

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Gnome

You develop persuasive powers that you can use to beguile your subjects. It began as a simple parlor trick, but your methods have considerable use in saving your hide. Did you use any props in your performances? Are they only tricks or maybe something else? Are you self-taught or did you learn from someone else? If the latter, who was it and under what circumstances did you end the relationship?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Curious Archeologist

Type: Legacy of Acererak

Campaign Setting: General

Dungeons, ruins, and old tombs house the secrets of the past, and dedicated scrutiny can reveal much of old civilizations and famous personages. So whenever an opportunity arises to examine a historical sight, you’re loath to let it pass you by. While many dungeons capture your imagination, none of them has quite the same allure as does the Tomb of Horrors.

Possible Minor Quests: You might explore the corridors of Acererak’s tomb, retrieve relics from the deep chambers, or seek lore about who Acererak was in life.

Associated Skills: History, Perception, Thievery

Benefit: When engaging in a skill challenge to disable a trap, your first successful Thievery check grants you an extra success.

Cursed

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Defender of the Oppressed

Campaign Setting: General

Though the great empires of the world have fallen, tyranny still reigns on a small scale in many places. You swore to bring down tyrants both powerful and petty. Did you grow up under a tyrannical regime? Does it matter who is being oppressed? Would you rather fight for the victims or empower them to fight for themselves?

Associated Skills: History, Streetwise

Desperate Loner

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Halfling

Your wide, easy smile hides a deep-seated insecurity and fear of abandonment. Whatever the limits of your heroism, you find it nearly impossible to trust those closest to you. You are torn between a desperate need to belong and a certainty that, ultimately, everyone will abandon you when you need them. Torn between these extremes, you are gregarious and friendly—annoyingly so—but you also have a dark, pessimistic undercurrent that many fail to perceive.

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Arcane power is in your nature, part and parcel of the same elemental forces that power your dragon breath. Casting spells feels no different for you from exhaling draconic power—they are just as natural. For many dragon-blooded spellcasters, controlling the magic that seems always eager to burst forth is extremely difficult. You might be prone to magical mishaps, especially with at-will powers that burst forth without any real thought or effort on your part. On the other hand, mastery of your powers might be as natural to you as regulating your breathing, a simple matter of directing your will and energy outward and creating the magical manifestation you desire. In either case, those who study and train for years to master the merest scraps of magical power look upon you with envy or perhaps fear, for power comes readily to your hand, for good or for ill. You feel a kinship and affinity for dragons, and you might dream of one day transforming yourself into that pinnacle of the draconic form—or of subjugating dragons to your will.

Most dragon-blooded spellcasters are sorcerers who practice Dragon Magic or bards who extol the Virtue of Valor. Dragon-blooded bards lift up dragons as the exemplars of valor, and many of their spells take on draconic characteristics. For example, your shout of triumph might be a draconic roar that creates a brief image of a dragon around or above you to strike terror in your enemies’ hearts, while your song of storms might make you appear as a blue dragon while the effect persists.

Associated Skills: Arcana

Dragon-Bound Arcanist

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

You learned the practice of magic from an actual dragon. It’s rare for dragons to cast spells as mortals do, but magic is in their blood, and some sagacious dragons instruct mortals—particularly dragonborn—in truly ancient methods of spellcasting. Most commonly, their students are bound to them as slaves, and their magic is meant to be used in the dragon’s service. You were such a slave, learning draconic spellcasting at the side of an exceptionally wise, old, and learned dragon. How did you escape your servitude? Was the dragon killed by adventurers, or by a more powerful monster—perhaps a rival dragon? Did its arcane research lead to its demise or disappearance? What do you plan to do with your newfound freedom? How will you use the magic you learned from your former master?

This is a great background for a dragonborn warlock, since you can put a draconic spin on any pact you choose. Your dragon master might have been a fey dragon of great and mysterious power, an infernal dragon infused with hellfire, or a student of the stars. Alternatively, your sorcerer spells could be a manifestation of the dragon’s power in you (if you practice Dragon Magic), or you might have studied Cosmic Magic at your master’s side.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Intimidate

Dragonbonded Clan

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Your clan is still bonded to the service of a dragon, just as it was before the rise of Arkhosia. Your people do not live among other races, but in the remote wilderness near your patron dragon’s lair. The ways of other races and their civilizations are foreign to you, and to their eyes you might seem barbaric or uncultured. Why have you left your close-knit clan, and its service to your dragon patron? Or do you perhaps adventure in service to that patron? Is your patron benevolent, or cruel and domineering?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Intimidate

Dragonborn - Arcane Mercenary

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Many dragonborn earn a living selling their services as mercenaries, caravan guards, or bodyguards. While their imposing physical size and strength make dragonborn fighters and warlords well suited to such work, many dragonborn of an arcane bent follow similar careers, putting their magic to violent purpose. The life of a mercenary leads quite naturally into a career as an adventurer—all it takes is one job gone horribly wrong, one unexpected encounter with a threat beyond the normal caravan raiders or enemy soldiers, to change a mercenary’s life forever.

You might be a swordmage who fits in easily among more martially inclined sellswords, or a wizard or sorcerer who provides arcane artillery support to a band of more traditional soldiers. Or as a bard, you might serve as the leader of a mercenary company, fighting alongside your fellow soldiers while encouraging and uplifting them with your magic. Even if you’re not normally inclined to melee, you might consider picking up proficiency with a good melee weapon or even multiclassing into fighter or warlord to reflect your military background.

Associated Skills: History, Streetwise

Dragonborn - Brush with the Past

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

At some point in your life, you encountered some element of dragonborn history. You might have found a weapon forged in the lost empire of Arkhosia, discovered a fragment of parchment dating from that age, or dreamed of an ancient battle as if you had been there. How much of an impact did this encounter have on you? How does it motivate you now? Are you driven to rebuild the ancient glory of your race? Or are you embittered by the fall of Arkhosia and prepared to carve yourself a place in a new empire?

Associated Skills: History, Insight

Dragonborn - Dishonored

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Some magnificent failure on your part resulted in the utter loss of your honor. Many dragonborn in your position would seek death, but you have not. Why? Were you wrongly accused? If not, what did you do that cost you your honor? Would you do it again? How might you regain your honor?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Streetwise

Dragonborn - Rare Egg

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

The egg that you hatched from was unusual in a way that dragonborn consider auspicious. It might have had the appearance of burnished gold, carried a pattern that resembled a significant symbol, or broken cleanly into two pieces when you emerged. How much weight do you attach to this phenomenon? What do you think it means, and what did your parents think?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Religion

Dragonborn Iconoclast

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Though you worship a recognizable deity of the traditional pantheon, you do so in a way that most would consider strange or even abhorrent. Your beliefs about the gods and the proper ways to serve them are unconventional, to say the least. You might have learned them in a monastery (making this a particularly appropriate background element for avengers) or come up with them on your own, perhaps in reaction against more traditional teachings that were instilled in you earlier in life. You might, for example, worship Melora as the great catastrophic dragon of the ocean depths, the third and mightiest spawn of Io. Or you might revere Tiamat as an unaligned deity of fair retribution, twisting the traditional understanding of her thirst for vengeance into a quality that is at least palatable, if not admirable. Perhaps you believe that all the deities are actually dragons ascended to godhood who are simply exemplars who show mortals the path to the same ascension.

Since being unconventional defines much of your character, look for other ways you can defy expectations in your character choices. Don’t make choices that prevent you from fulfilling your role, but anything else is fair game. An unexpected multiclass feat (a lawful good paladin with the Pact Initiate feat who dabbles in infernal warlock powers), or atypical weapon and armor choices (an avenger who disdains stealth and wears heavy armor) can go a long way toward making your character seem unorthodox—and interesting.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Drow

The drow community in which you were born no longer exists. Perhaps an army of dwarves or elves wiped it from the Underdark, or it was exterminated by another drow city. Somehow, you survived this event. Did something about you prompt a member of the invading force to spare you and bring you to the surface?

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Endurance

Drow - Outcast

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Drow

You were cast out from the city of your birth, most likely because of your failure to comply with the evil customs of your people or the terrible whims of Lolth’s priests. Do you dream of returning and gaining revenge, or are you fleeing for your life?

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Perception

Dune Ride

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

You were a warrior in Sunspray, gifted with a noble steed and trained to kill Shaitan’s servants on the battlefield. Who was your mentor? What battles did you fight? What ended your career as warrior? Did you leave it with honor or disgrace?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Dusk Envoy

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Elf

Factions within dusk elf communities push for reconciliation with elves and eladrin. They face strong opposition, but a few communities have been successful in establishing talks with their estranged kin. Why were you chosen to be your people’s envoy? How do you see the larger world? Have you made any connections beyond your homeland?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Dust-Treader Skald

Type: Racial

Prerequisite: Half-orc

For years, your tribe acted as the ambassadorial force serving the Kingdom of Many-Arrows. The other races were more comfortable dealing with a half-orc rather than a full-blooded orc. In fact, the members of your tribe can sometimes pass as human. But now, as the raiding from other orc tribes worsens and war seems more and more likely, you are in a quandary.

Do you stay in service to Many-Arrows, working to maintain peace even as the treaty begins to crumble?

Should you strike out on your own, acting as a translator, entertainer, or advisor to other nations as they navigate the complicated situation regarding Many-Arrows? Or have you given up on your orc cousins completely, and now just want to make your own way in the world, using your skill and wits for your own gain?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight

Dwarf - Ancestral Home Lost

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dwarf

During your youth, your clan’s ancestral home was conquered by enemies or destroyed in a natural disaster. You were among the displaced survivors who built a new life, most likely in a nearby human settlement. Did your parents survive the disaster? If not, who raised you? Were the survivors welcomed into the new community, or were you ostracized? Do you dream of someday rebuilding your ancestral home?

Associated Skills: Nature, Perception

Dwarf - Dedicated to an Ancestor

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dwarf

You were born on the same day of the year as one of your clan’s ancestral heroes, and your parents dedicated you to that hero, whose name you share. What was that hero known for? Do you feel called to emulate your namesake’s great deeds, or are you driven to make a name for yourself in a different way? Do you ever dream of your ancestor, or have feelings of déjà vu, as if you’re walking in that hero’s footsteps?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Dwarf - Outcast

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You prepared corpses for burial, removing organs and fluids to preserve them against rot. Was this an acceptable profession in your community? Were you an outsider for your “unclean” occupation? Did you enjoy your work? Did you ever prepare the corpse of someone famous?

Associated Skills: Heal, Nature

Empath

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Ardent

Long before you came into your psionic powers, you had a knack for reading the emotions in other people. You could always tell when something was wrong, bond with people who liked you, and sever connections with those who meant you harm. Close friends marveled when you finished their sentences. You had a gift, a talent that revealed itself in a profound way when you came into the fullness of your psionic ability. Your childhood tricks evolved into something more, until you could almost hear people’s thoughts and read their moods and emotions as if they were words on a page.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight

Enlightened Prodigy

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Kalashtar, Psionic

As a child of a psychic race, it is unsurprising that you developed psionic power and chose to immerse yourself in its study. Your nature, culture, and faith encouraged you in this pursuit. But your fascination eclipsed the interests even of your fellow psionic kalashtar. How does your enlightened drive manifest now? Do you strive to perfect your abilities so you can fulfill your sacred duty to guide others toward a path of light and understanding? Or do you see yourself as superior to those you once studied with, forced to make your own way when they refuse to accept the superiority of your understanding?

Associated Skills: Heal, Religion

Ennui

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Shadar-Kai

Plagued with the pervasive despair characterizing the Shadowfell, you fill the hole in your heart with service to the Raven Queen. How do you feel about the Raven Queen? In her service, what do you do to escape the dissolution awaiting you should you give into your melancholy?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Religion

Eternal Journey

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Minotaur

Somewhere during your quest to slay your inner beast, you became lost, unable to move back and too confused to move forward. This is a mindset, to be sure, but it has prevented you from finding a place in your community. Thus you set out to find the meaning you seek in a world that is strange and often unfriendly.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Eternal Seekers

Campaign Setting: General

You’ve been seeking something your entire life, even if you didn’t initially realize what. Now that you know about your psionic abilities, you are ready to explore every trail that could lead to discovering the ultimate secret—the one that will reveal why you exist.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Insight

Everwatch Conscript

Campaign Setting: General

When you lived in Everwatch, you were part of the city milita. You learned how to handle a spear and shield well enough to stay alive at least long enough to fight goblins. Why did you join the militia? Was it the extra pay? The honor? A sense of duty? Why did you quit?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Perception

Exotic Appearance

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Foulborn Heritage feat

You possess an unusual appearance, typically involving hair, eye, or skin coloration. Your skin might be unusually colored for your race, or it might be oddly patterned with checks, diamonds, or whorls. Alternatively, your eyes might be solid black, pure white, or multicolored. Such an appearance might be frightening to those around you, or oddly alluring.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Intimidate

Exotic Gladiator

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

You have fought for sport—not for your own enjoyment, but for the entertainment of others. You were popular because of your exotic race and your great strength, drawing crowds to see your exploits in the arena, to watch you fight and kill monsters and other humanoids in battle. You might have been a slave in a hobgoblin city, or perhaps you fought in secret, illegal rings within a human settlement.

How long did you fight? Were you generally successful, or did you barely stay alive through a short and inglorious career? Did you fight willingly, or were you forced to do it? Did you perhaps enjoy it? Why have you now stopped? Did you escape slavery, or win your freedom in an important match? Or did a wealthy patron see something in you that your masters didn’t, and purchase you from them? Did any of your fellow adventurers fight alongside or perhaps against you?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics

Experimental Prototype

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warforged

Legions of warforged rolled out from the creation forges, built to be ultimate soldiers. But the creators constantly made improvements and tried new techniques. You’re one of the successful experiments—born of iron and alchemy, destined for greater things than your rank-and-file kin. The resources poured into your creation make you unique, and you find it difficult not to consider yourself greater than your peers. Do you still work for those who created you, or have you escaped their control? Has your superiority made you arrogant, or do you see a duty to use your gifts to help others? Were there any errors in your form that still cause problems?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Type: Divine

Campaign Setting: General

You come from a long family line with members devoted to religion. Does the tradition of worship in your family extend to everyone, or just certain members of the family? Are members of the family forced to adopt the tradition, or is the divine calling something happily shared by everyone? Has everyone worshiped the same deity? Are you breaking with tradition in some way?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Feral Exile

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

After the fall of Bael Turath, thousands of tieflings wandered through the wild. Your ancestors discovered the primal magic in the wildest places of the world, long ignored by the arcane magicians of the empire, and adopted a new lifestyle suited to the savage wilderness. More than many other primal characters, you might be drawn to the ferocity and bloodthirsty nature of some beast spirits, and you might be more at home in desolate, blasted wastelands than in verdant swamps or forests. Is primal magic a means by which you hope to atone for the evil of your ancestors? Or do you view it as a tool to acquire power of your own—power that might one day exceed that of Bael Turath?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Intimidate

Fervent Commander

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Passion drives you. Like many dragonborn, you experience emotion deeply—you become furious, not annoyed, and bubble over with joyous laughter when others might smile to themselves. In battle, your ferocity and enthusiasm more than make up for a certain lack of discipline, and you’re more likely to rush into the fray than wait in a shield wall with your allies. Your passion rubs off on your allies, making you something of a leader figure even if that’s not your combat role in game terms. It’s hard not to follow where you lead, simply because you go there with such enthusiasm and commitment.

What stirs your passion for adventuring? Is it a lust for glory, a thirst for gold, or a crusading hatred of monstrous evil? Or is it simply the thrill of being out in the world, rootless and free, risking your life every day in

bloody battle?

Are you a warlord who gets your allies worked into a frenzy to improve their fighting ability? A rogue whose fervor in battle leaves your enemies off guard? A fighter who leads by example, expecting that your passion itself is contagious? Or a ranger who gets lost in the whirl of blades until the battle itself fades from your conscious awareness?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Intimidate

Fey Beast Tamer

Campaign Setting: General

You have learned to exploit your bond with a creature from the Feywild, learning much about your own world or the workings of the fey realm.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Fey Blood

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Corellon

Some distant ancestor was an elf, eladrin, drow, or other fey humanoid. Though the generations have diluted your fey heritage, you still feel a kinship with your cousin races. Who was this ancestor? Why was this ancestor important? How did you learn about this mysterious connection? How has it changed your life?

Associated Quests: Trace the sundered branches of your family tree to reconnect with your distant fey relatives; spread reverence for Corellon to a region where nonfey have forgotten or rejected his gifts; create a lasting pact between two warring communities of elves and humans, dwarves, or another race.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Perception

Associated Languages: Elven

Fey Exile

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

Your ancestors were rescued by the former Empress Amphaesia before the fall of Nerath and brought to the Feywild to dwell with her and her father, the King of Blooms. Of all the scions of Nerath, you and your kind are the most pure to the imperial legacy. You were steeped in the empire’s rich culture and philosophy through a line of unbroken teachers and grandsires. From birth you’ve been groomed for a purpose. Perhaps that is to preserve Nerath’s only living culture from agents of the Ruler of Ruin, or maybe it’s to wage war against him in a final battle to restore Nerath. You may have even made a warlock pact with your fey host.

Personal Quests: Return from the Feywild and find your family’s former home; earn an audience with Empress Amphaesia; unite Nerathi faithful across worlds.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Fey Inheritor

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Eladrin, Elf, Half-Elf, or Gnome, Psionic

Many fey resent psionics users, feeling that they debase magic and encourage other races to usurp powers that rightfully belong to the folk of the Feywild. You, however, take the more benign view that you do not betray your fey heritage by embracing your psionic abilities—you grow closer to it. By studying the psionic power source, do you hope to gain the wisdom and abilities that come naturally only to the archfey? And if you do so, will there be a price to pay for seeing the world as those powerful elders do?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Diplomacy

Fire in Your Veins

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

You have traced your ancestry to House Zolfura, not that you needed dusty tomes or wrinkled sages to tell you who you are. Elemental power flows through you like blood. You see the primordial forces in things in ways that others consider madness. A flash of lightning in the distance always sends a delirious thrill through your body, and when you look upon flames, your ears seem to detect the distant call of elemental beings. Does your ancestry cause you to be interested in

arcane or elemental magic, or do you abhor it because of the strange things you percieve? Are the things you see and hear when elemental forces are used around you true visions, or mere hallucinations? Do you seek the power wielded by your ancestors?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Intimidate

Fists of Zuoken

Campaign Setting: General

Fists of Zuoken disciples either raised you or trained you. From an early age, you’ve worked to balance the needs of mind and body. You have also studied the enemies of gods and mortals against whom Zuoken battled, and possibly battles still as Ioun’s exarch.

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Religion

Associated Languages: Primordial

Followed a Cult

Type: Divine

Campaign Setting: General

You participated in a cult and worshiped a false god before you saw the true path. Did you follow a mortal demagogue, or was the cult dedicated to some magical creature or supernatural threat? Was the cult nefarious or simply misguided? How did you escape the cult and find your way? Does the cult still exist, or was it crushed or dispersed? Do you still secretly believe the cult’s teachings, or do you hunger for revenge against those who lied to you?

Associated Skills: Stealth, Streetwise

Former Cult Sympathizer

Campaign Setting: General

You have done terrible things, acts that still have you waking in a cold sweat more than a decade later. You had killed before and you have killed since, but you remember everything about each person you were forced to execute or enslave for the cult: the color of frightened eyes, the trails traced by tears on upturned faces, brave last words, heart-wrenching pleas and screams, even the sudden warmth of spit on your face.

You wonder every day if you should have been as courageous as they were—if you should have rejected the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye and died in the terrible dungeons beneath the temple. Is life worth living with so much blood on your hands? Can you even consider your desperate existence a life? When you encounter anyone new, you search your memory, frantically hoping that the face is not one you recognize. At the same time, something inside you burns to be called out for your crimes. At least then the torment might finally end.

Yet each time you consider giving in, you find the strength to stay alive and stay hidden. You’re not really strong, though—you’re just afraid. What else would you be willing to do to avoid death? If the time again comes when you must choose between what is right and what is safe, will you add more faces to the host that haunts you, or will you accept their judgment in the afterlife?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight, Intimidate

Fortune Teller

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Your talent for observation served you well as a teller of fortunes. Like the other charlatans who worked for coppers, you told the aged of long years to come, the loveless of the romance they would find, and the paranoid of the dangers that lay ahead. It didn’t seem like lying to tell people what they wanted to hear.

Things became complicated when your predictions started coming true. Business boomed, but soon you began telling people things they didn’t like. You couldn’t stop yourself from unveiling secrets and unmasking lies. Your newfound powers brought you more grief than gold, and eventually you fled and took up a new life as an adventurer. As you trained for battle and exploration, your powers of prescience faded, but your other psionic abilities increased. Thanks to them, you foresee a profitable future.

For whom did you read fortunes? What dire fates or dark secrets did you discover that might come back to haunt you? Does anyone seek revenge for a fortune you told? Do you still have visions of the future? Are they always clear and correct, or is much left to interpretation?

The ardent class makes the most sense with the feel of this background, but any class could work. Pick powers that emphasize prescience and acting before your enemies can react. The infernal eye paragon path might also suit you.

Associated Skills: Insight, Perception

Found in the Wild

Type: Birth

Campaign Setting: General

You were discovered wandering in the wilderness at a very young age, and you have little memory of your early past. You spent your youth working on a farm not far from the area where you were found. That life

might have been enough for you, for you’ve always felt a deep connection to the earth. However, when your new homeland was attacked by goblin raiders and its citizens were murdered, you felt a presence within your blood that called you to action, and you have been following that call ever since.

Who took you in when you were found? Was that person a loving foster parent or a cruel taskmaster? What experiences in your youth nurtured your apparently inborn connection to the primal spirits, and how has that connection flourished in your adulthood?

Associated Skills: Heal, Streetwise

Found Religion Among Others

Type: Divine

Campaign Setting: General

You gained your appreciation of your deity in a culture not your own, and you worship in a manner unfamiliar to your own people. Did you come to worship among another race or in some foreign culture? Was the place where you gained your appreciation for the faith in a distant land or on some other plane? What are the ways that you worship that others might find strange?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, a skill another race gains a bonus to

Founder

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Erathis

You helped found a community. Where was it? Why was it created? You might have helped to plan the settlement, or you might have spent some time laying bricks with your own two hands. Was the process part of a simpler life, or was it a prelude to your adventuring career? Did you learn to do battle while patrolling its half-constructed walls? A town with your own personal stamp on it might serve as a worthy base of operations, and its people might clamor for your protection.

When was the last time you were there? What was once a small but promising settlement might now be a thriving city—or a ghost town.

Associated Skills: Athletics, History

Foundling

Campaign Setting: General

You were abandoned in your infancy, and the compassionate one who discovered you was an instructor at the academy. Did the entire school parent you, or were you ignored after your basic needs were met? Did your roots spread in the fertile soil of knowledge or are you glad to be away from the school’s oppressive, stagnant atmosphere?

Associated Skills: Streetwise

Free Spirit

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Halfling

The ultimate symbol of primal power, to your eyes, is the ever-changing, relentless rush of water. The spirits you evoke are nature spirits of lakes, rivers, and rain, or animal spirits of fish, waterfowl, and songbirds. Water is everywhere, a sign of freedom that encourages you to stay on the move. You might come from a halfling tribe that wanders a marsh, a river, or a coastline. Or you could come from a city, where artificial pools and aviaries are your only connection to the spirits you revere.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Nature

Freed Slave

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Sehanine

You toiled under harsh masters until you were freed by one of Sehanine’s champions. After years of suffering, your deliverance—whether by force of arms or by subterfuge—inspired you to repay the favor. Who enslaved you? Were they regular masters, hailing from the common races, or were they supernatural overlords, such as mind flayers, drow, or vampires? Do you seek to eradicate slavery altogether, or do you focus on freeing one slave at a time? Do you see slavery as another facet of a harsh world, trying not to think too much about those still in chains?

Are you afraid of returning to the site of your forced labor? Maybe your old masters might recognize you and try to take away your freedom again. Or perhaps you still have friends or family among the slaves there?

Enduring years of labor has made you strong and resilient, the better to face the challenges ahead.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Friend of an Eladrin House

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Bard

In your wanderings far from the mortal world, you met illustrious members of an eladrin house. They found you charming and became your patrons. Did they teach you magic and song, or were they impressed by the gifts you already possessed? Do they have other allies in the world? Are you a mere friend, or were you born a member of the house?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Diplomacy

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Genasi

Perhaps they created you, perhaps they summoned you, or perhaps they simply found you—however they acquired you, a cabal of arcane scholars treated you as the subject of fascinating study. You might have been on display, or you might have been kept hidden away from everyone except members of the cabal. Were you well treated, or were you locked in a cage? Did some catastrophe befall the scholars, allowing you to escape? Were you the catastrophe?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Thievery

Genasi - Chaos Burn

Type: Racial

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Battlemind

From the day you were born, you were told the tales of blood and bravery that marked the empire’s fall. As a child, you played out the ancient battles whose names were among the first words you learned, but Nerath was never more than stories to you. Or so it was until you first felt the spark of psionic power that marked you as a battlemind. With that power came a knowledge that filled you like a ghostly chorus—the memory of a dozen lifetimes never lived, tracing back to the last of the Ghost Blades.

Whether or not you sought the role, you are a ghost of Nerath fated to search for the signs that will herald the empire’s rise from the ashes. Do you have the strength to take up a quest whose conclusion might lie long after your own death? Can you set aside the need for love and family, hearth and home to wander the world in search of the vague and elusive signs? Do you dare to consider that you might be the most important of those signs and scion to a bloodline long thought lost?

Associated Skills: Endurance, History

Githzerai - Cenobite Initiate

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Githzerai

You were raised and trained in a githzerai monastery in the Elemental Chaos or in a remote part of the world. You might have lived there your whole life, contemplating the dangers around you and binding your mind in rigid discipline. Something drew you away from your home. Perhaps you sought the answers to questions about your race’s origin. Maybe a visitor to your monastery aroused your curiosity about the world beyond its walls. Now you find yourself outside the disciplined civilization of the githzerai. How are you adjusting? Is the experience intriguing or frustrating? Are new companions suitable replacements for those you left behind?

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Githzerai - War Band Survivor

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Githzerai

You joined a githzerai war band that either traveled to the world or originated in it. Your band sought enemies of the githzerai and found foes beyond your group’s capabilities. Only you survived the battle. What happened to the rest of your band? You might be stranded in the world with no easy route home, but do you want to go home? Is the shame of your band’s defeat, or perhaps the shame of your survival, too great? Do you seek vengeance for the death of your companions or absolution for the guilt you feel as a survivor?

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Perception

Gladiator - Follower of Kord

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Kord

You found your faith in Kord in the blood-flecked dust and the echoing cheers of the mob. It came to you as you struck down one challenger after another. The wanton violence of your profession as a gladiator had to have some meaning or you wouldn’t have the will to draw your sword. Your faith in Kord gave you the strength to survive, and Kord rewarded your actions by the thunder in the stands and the sight of another blood-red dawn each day.

How did you become a gladiator? Was it a choice, were you a criminal, did you owe debts, or were you a slave? How did you escape the games? Did you win your freedom, break free, or decide to walk away from the glory you could have gained through meaningless slaughter? Did you see any unusual creatures in the arena? Did you make any unusual friends or enemies?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Campaign Setting: General

The disgusting creatures of the goblin family (goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears) have earned your unending enmity. Did someone close to you get hurt or killed by goblins? Was a place you once lived looted or attacked? Do you abhor goblins for their cowardice? How about their awful smell?

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Perception

Associated Languages: Goblin

God Hater

Campaign Setting: General

Whether it is one god or all, you have turned against the powers of divinity. You feel the world does better without them. You found out that gods can—and do—die. You seek out dead gods to find out how gods die so you can rid the world of their presence forever. Dead gods also leak power, which you believe can be turned against the other faiths. You have found that hate and love are closely paired, and your quest against the gods is a belief as strong as that of any priest.

Why do you hate the gods? Do you hate all of them, or only one? How deep does it go? How does the dead god whose power you seek relate to that hatred? How do you see others who worship gods? How do you make sure you can work with them? Do you pity them, or despise them for their foolishness? Do you fear death and the fate some tales spin for those who die faithless? How do you see the primordials? Are they beings better fit for worship, potential allies, or creatures as bad as or worse than the gods?

Adventurers with this background seek out fellow adventurers with care. They avoid conflict by finding ways to accept divine characters, despite philosophical differences, even if it is only a temporary truce. As can be expected, god haters are rarely divine characters. Primal characters, as the world’s wardens, have a great motivation to be god haters. However, some divine characters can become god haters after being disillusioned. Knowing the ways of the faith, these are perhaps the most fanatic and dangerous god haters.

Associated Skills: Intimidate

Associated Languages: Primordial

Goliath - Lightlost

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Goliath

Your tribe members, brought near starvation by drought, followed a mountain spring to an underground river and found the food they needed to survive. Eventually forging an alliance with a nearby clan of dwarves, they adapted to a subterranean life and haven’t emerged since. You are the first member of your tribe to see the sun in generations. Why have you emerged from the caves?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Dungeoneering

Goliath - Skywatcher

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Goliath

You were a respected advisor to your tribe. You helped your people avoid overhunting and overharvesting, scouted new territory, and oversaw seasonal celebrations. Now you are separated from your tribe, either by choice or by necessity. What happened? Did you make a decision that earned you bitter enemies in your tribe? Did a younger member rise to favor over you? Or did you feel a call to the world beyond your tribal lands?

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Grave Digger

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You dug graves and prepared gravesites for the funerary rites. How did you see your profession? Did you ever experience anything strange? How did your occupation lead you to the Raven Queen?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Green Moss Guide

Type: Racial

Prerequisite: Half-orc

You have spent most of your life traveling between the lands of your people, on the tundra to the north of the Spine of the World, and the lands of the Silver Marches to the south. You are as comfortable in the cold, lying on a bed of nearly frozen moss, as you are in a down-filled mattress next to a roaring fire. And your footing on the ice-covered slopes of the mountains is just as sure as on flat ground.

What has brought you away from your place within your tribe? Do you still revere the primal beauty of the cold North, or have you given up your tribal ways for something different?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Nature

Grifter

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Too often tieflings wander without purpose. They seek something in the world that they cannot find within themselves, or they try to run from what they learn when they gaze deep into their souls.

Not so with you. You’ve known all your life why you were born and for what purpose you continue to draw breath. You are heaven’s weapon, a prophesied embodiment of the gods’ desire to bring Asmodeus to heel. You might not personally strike the final blow against the gates of hell, but you are somehow the key. If you fail in your purpose, another soul like yours might not be born for a thousand years.

What makes your soul special? Did the gods change it somehow or are you related to some god in a deeper way than most? Are you destined to battle Asmodeus, to imprison the devils more firmly in the Nine Hells, or to prevent a more immediate danger? Do all the gods but Asmodeus favor your fate, or might some have reason to continue dealing with the devils for another thousand years?

A protecting or virtuous paladin makes a great choice for this background. Give some thought to the deity your character favors. You might be a generalist who worships the whole pantheon and opposes the god’s enemies, or you might function as the secret weapon of a particular deity with an axe to grind with Asmodeus. If your DM allows, you might even serve an evil deity. Even the vilest god might have good reason to see the infernal forces defeated.

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Associated Languages: Supernal

Heir to Power

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling, Psionic

From the first time your psionic power manifested, you have been consumed by the feeling that you are beholden to someone—or something—for that power. Do you trace your family line back to the psionics users of Bael Turath? Or do you believe that the diabolic power rumored to still watch over tieflings has granted you this gift? Do you embrace your power regardless? Or do you search endlessly for insights into the origin of psionic power, hoping to understand the nature of that power to prevent it from consuming you?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Religion

Hellfire Heir

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Some tieflings think of the ancient story of their race’s origin as a fairytale or as events so long past that they have no effect on the world today. But you know better. The oaths sworn by your ancestors still bind your soul to a hellish fate in the afterlife. The powers that liberated so many tieflings neglected to free your line. You know this not just because a devil told you so but because you feel it in your bones. Diabolic power flows through your blood and surges with every spell you cast. Infernal creatures know you by face and name, and they tempt you with power. If you do as they wish, they’ll give you what you want in this world. Yet you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

What kinds of devils have contacted you? Do you have a relationship with any particular fiend? What do they want from you? Do you sometimes do as the devils ask, figuring that you might as well enjoy the gifts they’ve given you? Or do you use your hell-wrought spells to fight the devils or even to free yourself from their power?

A warlock with the infernal pact makes an excellent choice for this background, but other classes have suitably hellish powers that suit this character history. The swordmage has powers such as inferno’s sword and hell’s own blade. The sorcerer and wizard classes have plenty of fiery powers that could have infernal ties. Bard presents relatively few powers that are obviously appropriate, but as with any arcane class, you could link a power to hell by describing it in a thematic way. The song of discord, for example, might set tiny devils to playing discordant music as they whirl about the dominated victim’s head.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Religion

Associated Languages: Supernal

Hellion

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You grew up on the streets and learned everything you know in filthy alleys, backroom brawls, and rooftop gang fights. As a youngster you were fascinated by the culture of the bravo, the rake, and the duelist. In time, you earned a reputation as a hellion, showing a capacity for being tough and improvisational in a fight. You ran the streets and roofs, engaging in duels and brawls with other hellions. You are one with the night, and you revel in the thrills of street life. You evade guards and rivals by using your knowledge of the city, and when you fight, it’s always on your terms. Above all, you live for excitement.

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics

Hereditary Psionics User

Associated Languages: Goblin

Hulking

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Foulborn Heritage feat

You are exceptionally large for your race. Your size doesn’t change, but you might be tall, broad-bodied, or corpulent. Your size might give you greater endurance or make you more intimidating.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Human - Ancestral Holdings

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

Your family carried a significant noble title during the height of the empire of Nerath, but the lands your family once held are now a dangerous wilderness. Do you dream of clearing the lands and making them fit for human habitation once again? Or are you fleeing the ever-shabbier pretensions of your family of nobles-in-exile?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Human - Heir of the Forgotten Gods

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

A sign at your birth or some event in your life pointed to the influence of a god that is either dead or forgotten. Are you destined to revive the worship of this long-forgotten deity, or to take the place of a god that has lain dead since the dawn of time? Do you view the other gods as potential allies or as dangerous competitors?

Associated Skills: Insight, Religion

Ikemmu

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

You hail from the mighty shadar-kai city of Ikemmu. With its proximity to the multiple planes, you have learned to adapt to hostile environments.

Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Arcana and Dungeoneering checks in addition to a +2 bonus to skill checks when using any travel ritual.

Incomplete Creation

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warforged

You never emerged intact from the creation forges like the others of your race. No, your “birth” was a fluke, and you were far from complete. Since your awakening, you’ve had to piece together the rest of your body from whatever you could find, using any techniques at your disposal. The alchemical substances you developed keep you alive and complete you, but they’re mere patches, inferior to a complete original body. Was your creation forge shut down or destroyed before your completion? Did an accident awaken your consciousness, or did someone bring your incomplete body to life for a purpose? Do you consider the life you were granted a blessing or a curse?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Endurance

Indulged Scion

Campaign Setting: General

You might not be a natural at the arcane arts, but you have enough money to make up the difference. While at the academy, did you live beneath your means to fit in or did you flaunt your wealth with fine food and a large suite in the town’s best inn? Were your friends bought, natural, or vanishingly few? And did you pay someone to do your homework?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Intimidate

Infernal Slave

Campaign Setting: General

In exchange for hellfire’s gift, the devils demand you work evil in the world. They urge you to tempt, corrupt, and destroy. If you embrace this purpose, the fiends grant you the insight to know your victims’ weaknesses as well as a better understanding of the art of deception.

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Initiate of al-Shaphal

Campaign Setting: General

The Temple of Reason recruits initiates from the city’s youth by scooping up preadolescents to mold their beliefs and attitudes about religion and make them valued servants in the order. You were such a child. Alongside your peers, you studied the teachings of the Shining Light (Erathis or some other god). The adventurer’s life offered an escape from temple duties. You might be a heretic, driven out for radical views. You could be a temple agent who ventured into the surrounding lands to bring reason and light to the world.

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

You were raised in a secret society that sniffs out psionic talent, then guides its development in those who have it. This controlled environment allowed you to grow into your ability, and you never experienced the uncertainty and confusion that many other psionics users face. You exceeded your tutors’ expectations, quickly mastering the fundamentals and harnessing the fullness of your power at an early age. Your gifted psionic status came at the cost of isolation, however. You studied history and culture, but you had no actual experiences with the natural world, its wonders, or its terrors.

How do you see your childhood? Did you live in an ivory tower where you could indulge in whatever intellectual pursuits you wanted, free from fear, pain, and want? Or was the order’s compound a prison to you? How and why did you eventually leave? Were you free to go when your training was complete? Did you run away before your lessons had ended? How does your inexperience with the world shape your personality, views, and behavior?

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Kapak Draconian

Type: Racial

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

You are as slippery as a kender and as deadly as a minotaur. When you set your sights on a foe, it is as good as dead.

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Stealth, Thievery

Keen Senses

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Foulborn Heritage feat

You have keen senses thanks to extra eyes, eyestalks, spare ears, antennae, or particularly sensitive skin.

Associated Skills: Perception

Keeper of Hate

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dwarf

Forgeborn dwarves rely on the Keepers of Hate to maintain the ledgers in which they record the wrongs done to their clans. You spent your youth training to join their ranks, during which time you studied the ancient texts and learned to despise those ancient foes. Such indoctrination does not leave its students unchanged. How does your upbringing shape your present views? Is there one particular group for

which you harbor a special grudge? What would happen when you encounter the object of your hate? Since you are no longer serving as a Keeper, what drew you from the stronghold? Are you on a mission? Or are you a survivor from an attack?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Intimidate

Keeper of the Flame

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

For years you have tended a spark of the Flame Imperishable which burns as a beacon of hope within a shrine that still stands in a former Nerathi city. As one of its attendants, you are a member of an esoteric society known as the Keepers of the Flame who are well versed in secret lore. Are you a wizard in the custom of ancient Nerath, or perhaps a simple scholar keeping alive the living light of humanity’s mightiest civilization? You recognize that you and your order possess the most powerful symbol of ancient Nerath, but to what end? Are your efforts futile, or will they illuminate the path to greatness?

Personal Quests: Protect your shrine from looters; deliver an ember of your fire to another city and raise a shrine in its honor; reclaim the Flame Imperishable from the gnolls.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Religion

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dwarf

You are a member of the Kord Clan. Were you born to the clan, or did unfortunate circumstances lead to your joining? What is your place in the clan? In what ways do you break dwarven customs in your behavior and appearance? What led you to leave the clan-hold and take up adventuring? Are you an exile from another clan, out to perform great deeds that will redeem your standing in dwarven society and earn you the privilege of returning to your ancestral home?

Personal Quests: Rectify and atone for the misdeed that caused your exile; safeguard refugees from war or disaster on their journey to your Kord Clan stronghold; assemble a company of Kord Clan berserkers and lead it to victory in a major war.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Intimidate

Last Legionnaire

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You are one of the few brave soldiers left in the final struggling legions of the empire, still fighting under the imperial banner despite your lost cause. As a member of the disciplined legion, you underwent time-honored trials of endurance and strength to become the perfect soldier. Though your skills are peerless, where does your loyalty lie? Perhaps you truly believe that Nerath can be reclaimed and its provinces reunited, or maybe you fight because it’s all you know. What were the circumstances of your recruitment into the legions, and why are you now separated from them? Has your general issued you special orders requiring you to venture away from a battlefield? Perhaps you are that battlefield’s only survivor, and you dragged yourself from the red field of slaughter with a vow to search for meaning in the aftermath of so much destruction and sacrifice.

Personal Quests: Use your military acumen to organize or protect defenseless folk; take command of an allied army; rally the scattered legions for a final march to recover the capital city.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Heal

Last of the Line

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

You are the last remaining descendant of a noble house of Bael Turath. You have no family; every last relative has perished, some under mysterious circumstances. Some tieflings who learn your background see you as cursed and alone, while others grow jealous

at your opportunity to turn away from the past.

Was your house mighty or humble? Does your heritage make you proud or ashamed? Do you seek to reestablish your house, or would you be happier ending its sinister reputation once and for all? What events led to you being the last of your line? Have you been marked for death by the murderer of your noble house? Or are you somehow responsible for the elimination of your lineage?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Laudable Legacy

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Your clan claims at least one notable individual member or associated family, someone who has brought great glory to the clan’s name. An ancestor might have been a great war hero or a benevolent ruler. A family associated with your clan might be renowned artisans or esteemed diplomats. Those who know your clan affiliation expect you to live up to your clan’s high standards. They might assume you’re arrogant or haughty before they even meet you. Or they might have a grudge against you, believing that your clan stole recognition that belonged to theirs. How do you react to your clan’s renown? Are you proud of it, or is the burden of its high expectations too much for you to bear?

Associated Skills: History, Diplomacy

Lawmaker

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Erathis

You served as a politician or judge. The law was literally in your hands as warrants and statutes passed under your pen. You spent your days surrounded by both sides of the legal world—your colleagues who worked with the law, and the criminals who railed against it. You might have toiled to maintain the status quo, but you might also have been instrumental in making radical changes to the government. Regardless, you probably made at least a few enemies of the criminals you locked up or the opponents you outvoted. Do these grudges persist?

Either way, that career is over, and you have turned to adventuring. Why? Did scandal rock your office? Did you become disillusioned with how little you could accomplish from behind a desk? The memories of those days will remain with you, but what they mean to you is a matter of circumstance. Do you adventure to preserve the legal system you once upheld, or to revolutionize it from without?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Llewyrr Elf

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Eladrin

Llewyrr elves study the natural world and master arcane magic. A long-standing cooperation with the druid circles of the Moonshaes has given the Llewyrr an understanding of their rare tongue. Many Llewyrr are avid historians with a keen interest in the lineages of humanoid societies.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History, Insight, Nature

Longbridge Local

Campaign Setting: General

You grew up in Longbridge during the last days of the ice iron rush and can remember running back and forth across the river, pounding the boards of the Long Bridge with your tiny feet, rushing to bring grains of the clear metal to the assayer. One day, in your haste to “quick step across the Quickstep” (as your father used to say), you dropped the bag of hard-won metal and watched it plunge into the river through a gap in the bridge. No punishment from your parents could match the terror and guilt you felt as you saw your family’s fortune slip away.

Now the future of your family and many others in Longbridge is more uncertain than ever. The ice iron rush is over, and the curse that besets the village seems like it will never end. You’ve seen good people—even close friends you grew up with—become desperate, go bad, and finally swing from the gallows. The town was a happier place when the metal was here. But no amount of panning in the river or digging in the hills has turned up even a flake of ice iron for as long as the curse has been active.

Yet the gates of Firestorm Peak are made of the stuff. Clearly, that fact is significant, but in exactly what way remains to be determined. You’ve made a study of all the legends and history, so you know the gates are invulnerable when they’re shut. But what about when they’re open? Even if they are still invulnerable, there could be more ice iron inside the mountain. You know one sure way to find out.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Lost Drifter

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Mul

Since gaining your freedom, you have been adrift, unable to settle down and make yourself a home. How did you escape your captivity? What drives you now? What stops you from settling down? What is a cause for which you could fight?

Associated Skills: Nature, Perception

Lost Kin

Type: Legacy of Acererak

Campaign Setting: General

When you were young, a beloved relative—a parent, sibling, or another family member—left with an adventuring company in search of glory, treasure, and adventure. From time to time, you received letters recounting their successes and near-failures, but eventually the letters stopped coming. The last letter was brief, saying only they were headed for Skull City somewhere in the Vast Swamp. After years of no communication, your family believed the relative met an end somewhere in that sinister place, but no one knows and the question of what really happened haunts you still.

Possible Minor Quests: Although searching for your lost kin might be the forefront of your concerns, you should be careful of what you seek. In all likelihood, your lost kin might be searching for you, but this person might not be the person you remember. You relative might have been driven mad, might seek to give you a cursed relic pulled from the dungeons she explored, or might even return as an undead monster. In any event, putting the memory of your relative to rest, and perhaps the relative herself, might serve as a suitable minor quest.

Associated Skills: Any skill

Associated Languages: Any language other than Abyssal or Supernal

Benefit: You gain a +3 bonus to Nature checks made to recall useful information about geography.

Lost Love

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Sehanine

You have lost a loved one, and it had a profound impact on you. Was it a romantic partner, a family member, or a good friend? Was someone responsible for the death or departure of your loved one, or was it a cruel trick of life? Do you use this empathy to prevent others from suffering the same fate? How do you react to those who steal away loved ones, such as kidnappers or a mischievous fey? Do you favor bounties and quests aimed at rescuing relatives, or do you undertake those missions expecting no reward?

Regardless of how you lost a loved one, your heart guides you and helps you understand and appeal to the hearts of others.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight

Lucky Child

Campaign Setting: General

You were born when, by all rights, such a birth should have been impossible, making you either a blessing or a curse for your surprised parents. Since a young age, you have been told that you owe your existence to the forces of luck, and you have developed a keen understanding of how chance conspires to influence reality. Perhaps your parents were old, or maybe you were born despite a hex against your bloodline. Perhaps a prophecy predicted your death but, unlike all the others, you survived.

Why was your birth such a quirk of fate? Is there a purpose to your birth, or do you seem to beat the odds wherever you go? Has your origin led you to question the odds, or do you fear you’ve used up all your luck just by being born?

Associated Skills: Insight, Religion

Maelstrom

Crashing waves on a stony shore, brooding storm clouds, rushing rivers spilling into an unruly sea

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

The Maelstrom is a never-ending whirlpool of the sea, shrouded in constant storms, spewing thunder and mist as it inundates the surrounding lands with rain. Overlooking the spinning vortex is a great rocky shore, a nesting place for birds and tortoises. The stony beaches are home to scuttling crabs and scavenging gulls. To those living in its shadow, the Maelstrom is the birthplace of all living things. To outsiders, it is an insatiable vortex that swallows all things. The people who dwell in the shadow of the Maelstrom venture into the stormy waters on its verge to fish or to salvage wrecked vessels.

You were forged in the storm and quenched by the sea. Halflings are the most common race from this region, but genasi, specifically the stormsoul, watersoul, and windsoul manifestations, claim this homeland as well.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Intimidate

Associated Languages: Primordial

Magpie

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

You came back to the ruin again and again, often exploring its secrets for days at a time. One day, you found something special: a crystal imprinted with visions of the past, including the teachings of a tiefling

psion. This crystal awakened not only your latent psionic talent, but also a burning hunger to learn more of the past.

Where were the ruins in which you played? Did you unearth other secrets, perhaps dangerous ones? Did you meet any creatures in the dungeons below the ruins? What memories did the crystal contain? Do you still have it? Who was the tiefling psion? What happened to your childhood friends? What do you seek to discover from the visions in the crystal—the lost psionic techniques of the ancient tieflings, untold secrets of tiefling history, or something else entirely?

This background works as well for self-taught ardents and battleminds as for monks and psions; perhaps you sought tutelage after your contact with the memory crystal. Work with your DM to establish the details of the ruin and the memory crystal. The crystal and your quest for knowledge can become major plot points or simply remain background material, depending on your inclination.

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, History

Moonstruck Hunter

Campaign Setting: General

One night, when the moon was full, you followed a spectral stag that led you deep into the wilderness. There you danced with a member of the Gloaming Court, who introduced you to his or her mysteries. Since then you’ve been in some way fey-touched, and now you walk in silence upon dusky paths of mystery.

Associated Skills: Perception, Stealth

Muscle

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

The criminal’s trade makes enemies as often as it makes money. To keep the law at bay and outraged marks from getting too close, swindlers and thieves keep muscle on hand for protection. Doing these things was your job. Most people who wind up as enforcers have few other appreciable talents. Was this your story? If not, what led to this work? How did you feel about strong-arming others?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Intimidate

Mythspeaker

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Kalashtar

Dal Quor is the region of dreams, and it holds other spirits beyond the quori. Here stories come to die and legends loved by the living can find a permanent resting place. These are the vestiges the mythspeaker deals with—echoes of great heroes both real and fictional, whose tales live on in the world of dreams. As a mythspeaker, you are an ambassador between reality and the world of stories; you draw your strength from legends, and many might want you to bring their stories back to the world. Which tales do you draw upon most? Which ones do you avoid? Do you prefer tales of heroism and stirring battles? Do you better relate to those tainted by darkness?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Associated Languages: Quori

Naive Arrogance

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warlock

You know the consequences, but you are strong enough to withstand the patron’s influence without corruption—or at least you think you are. For you the pact is a calculated risk, and you trust to your willpower or decency to justify associating with a patron. Are you a bored debutante at play with fell magic? Perhaps you are a student of the clergy, peering into heretical lore. Are you so focused on your goals that you can rub elbows with dire entities without their evil corrupting you?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Bluff

Narrow Way Clan

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Minotaur

You are a heretic—someone obscene and mad. Even your thoughts are dangerous and must not be heard. Any minotaur can tell this by looking at you: Your clan symbol is two unbending lines.

Your clan is outcast. It sees only one truth—one clear and narrow path. All your life, you learned that only one proper way exists and there is a right way to do everything, from waking in the morning to fetching water from the well. The labyrinth holds little meaning for your people. Why turn corners when your goal lies within sight?

Your clan has no castes and no roles or declared leader. In it, all are equal as long as they adhere to the Narrow Way. In this philosophy, your clan has one god and adheres to that power’s tenets alone.

You’ve learned much about the weaker religions and the history of a world that does not know its path. As you head out into the world, you hope to steer others on the proper course. Of course, outside the strict life of your homeland, things get more complicated...

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Natural - Follower of Kord

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Kord

It’s not your fault you were born the biggest and the strongest. You don’t exercise. Strength has come naturally to you, but courage is another matter. Your size made you the target of ridicule when you were young, and it was years before you fully understood what a boon it was. When you learned about Kord, something clicked. You had all the power needed—all you required was the will to use it. Controlling your strength, knowing when to use it and when words are enough, is something you had to learn in back alleys. Once you started standing up for yourself, it felt like an endless stream of bullies and toughs wanted to test your mettle.

Do you still feel like you have something to prove? Do your adventures represent you taking on the other bullies in the world, or are they your attempts to face down internal demons from your past? Is being brave still something with which you struggle? Do you have any fears from a past you never conquered?

Associated Skills: Insight, Streetwise

Necromancer’s Chattel

Type: Legacy of Acererak

Campaign Setting: General

The Bleak Academy keeps a stable of living slaves to murder and animate as undead when they come of age. Life in servitude to these necromancers is understandably bleak. You, though, escaped your chains and survived the long flight through the Vast Swamp to reach civilized lands. Do you want vengeance? Will you fight to liberate the others held by the necromantic cabal?

Possible Minor Quests: You might have escaped, but your former captors are not likely to let you stay free. You might have to avoid their attempts to reclaim you, so you are always moving and staying one step ahead of them. Or you might go back, intent on freeing your fellows and razing the necromancers’ city.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Religion, Stealth

Benefit: You gain a +2 racial bonus to saving throws to end conditions and ongoing effects with the fear keyword.

Oathbound Death-Seeker

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dwarf

You have sworn an oath to your ancestors to avenge some wrong done to your people, and you let your oath carry you into desperate battle. Death holds no fear for you. As long as you acquit yourself well in combat, your ancestors will welcome your sacrifice. What was this wrong that now drives you? Who committed it and why?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Oathbound Fellow

Campaign Setting: General

You belonged to one of the school’s serious secret societies. Do you maintain secret contact with your fellows in sworn secrecy? Does the group have goals reaching beyond the graduation project, and are you working toward them or dismayed to know of them? Are you still in contact with anyone from which you’re keeping the secrets?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Campaign Setting: General

You worked aboard a ship. Was it a river boat or a sailing ship? Were you a deckhand, a pilot, a marine, or an officer? How extensively did you travel? Where did you go? Was your vessel a merchant craft, a pleasure yacht, a transport vessel, or a pirate ship?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Perception

Occupation - Mariner

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You worked aboard a ship. Was it a river boat or a sailing ship? Were you a deckhand, a pilot, a marine, or an officer? How extensively did you travel? Where did you go? Was your vessel a merchant craft, a pleasure yacht, a transport vessel, or a pirate ship?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Perception

Occupation - Mystic Slayer

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You were a trained killer who focused on eliminating magical or magic-using targets. For whom did you work? How did you train for this occupation? What lessons did you learn from your experiences? How does your past affect your relationship with other player characters who use magic?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Stealth

Associated Languages: Draconic

Occupation - Poison Master

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You were a master of poisons. How did you learn this trade? What sorts of enemies did you use poison against? Why are poisons your preferred tools? Did you use these concoctions yourself or did you sell them? If you sold them, what made you stop?

Associated Skills: Nature, Thievery

Occupation - Punisher

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You were wronged at a point in the past and you worked for revenge, perhaps turning to a life of punishing similar wrongdoers. Who wronged you? Did they harm you directly or hurt someone you loved? Did you achieve the revenge you sought? When you got it, what did you do next? If you’re still working toward revenge, how do you plan to get it?

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Streetwise

Occupation - Revolutionary

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You fomented rebellion in your homeland. What sort of government did you fight? What sorts of crimes and injustices did it commit? Were you successful? What happened to the people you helped? Or did you fail? Are the people worse off? What sorts of tactics did you use?

Associated Skills: History, Streetwise

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You had a revelation from the gods, or you think you did, and saw it as your life’s work to destroy the enemies of your faith. Who or what appeared to you? Was it a person or did the idea come to you in a dream? Who do you define as an enemy of your faith? How does your vision fit with other representatives of your faith? Are you a rogue element or an accepted member of a religious organization?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Religion

Orc Slayer

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dwarf

All forgeborn warriors must contend with the elemental corruption inside them, but not all are so successful in containing their hatred. War masters channel this destructive energy into useful ways, assembling strike teams to hunt down and destroy orc tribes. These missions have a high attrition rate, so only the most reckless and crazed warriors are chosen. You were such a warrior, but unlike your peers, you survived. You might have lived because no enemy could stand against you. You might have been lucky. Or, perhaps you were recruited for the mission and had no business being amid the other berserkers, and somehow escaped the fighting. How do you look on your good fortune? Have you returned to your people? If not, how would they greet you?

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Nature

Orphan of the Gibbering Massacre

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

You became aware that you were different from a young age. Perhaps your parents flinched in fear when you threw a temper tantrum. You might have sometimes spoken a language no one else could understand, and the alien sounds disturbed them. Most likely, you heard the whispers that seemed to follow you, and felt the stares of the people who looked away just a moment too late.

Perhaps there was one person who followed you around. When others looked away, he or she continued to stare. When you found the courage to approach, you learned the truth. The sins of the parents have been visited on their children, and you have a connection to the Far Realm that most others could never understand… but this person can, because he or she has that connection as well.

Personal Quests: Find the gravesite of your birth parents; permanently close a portal to the Far Realm; destroy a Far Realm creature that threatens the community that adopted you

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Insight

Associated Languages: Deep Speech

Ostracized

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

Many characters born with psionic talent find the guidance, comfort, and understanding that allows them to recognize their nature and embrace it. You were not so lucky. Left to your own devices, you used trial and error to navigate the murky waters of your mind as your life devolved into a series of accidents. Your anger might have burned out a friend’s mind. Your despair could have driven another to suicide. Your wild thoughts could have sent doors slamming, crockery flying, or been the cause of any number of bizarre occurrences. Even though the strange events dogging your heels were just as perplexing to you, your kinfolk came to fear you. They suspected you were possessed, cursed, or trafficking with dark powers. Friendships ended, relationships died, and isolation closed in around you.

How did you cope with the alienation? Did anyone reach out to you? If so, did he or she escape the experience unharmed? Did you remain in the community but apart from it, or did you leave? How did you finally come to terms with what you could do? Now that you have achieved a modicum of control, how do you feel about the people who rejected you?

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Stealth

Out for Revenge

Type: Divine

Campaign Setting: General

You follow your god not because you believe in what the god stands for, but because you and your deity have a common enemy. What individual, nation, or race do you desire vengeance against? What happened that made you so hell-bent on justice? How are other faithful likely to view your single-minded pursuit?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Pact

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Revenant

You forged a pact with the Raven Queen when you lived, promising to serve her in death in exchange for a benefit in life. She fulfilled her bargain and now it’s time to live up to yours. What does she expect you to do? What mission must you fulfill before you earn your true death?

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Padding Wolf

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

You were a scout for Wolfstone, sent out onto the glacier to ascertain enemy movements, numbers, and supplies and bring information back to the fortress. How long did you work in this position before you left it? Did you ever find information of great help? Did you ever bring back information that later proved false?

Associated Skills: Perception, Stealth

Associated Languages: Giant

Paranoid Manipulator

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Drow, Psionic

In a society built on betrayal, secrets, deception, and murder, the ability to tap into thought and emotion is both a blessing and a curse. If your power were to be discovered, you would not long survive the vengeance of your kin. How successfully did you learn to discern friends from enemies? Did you consistently misdirect and elude those who would do you harm? Or were you forced to flee your home one step ahead of the blades that you know are seeking for you still?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Perception

Parentage - Cult Raised

Type: Birth

Campaign Setting: General

An abyssal cult purchased you to raise as one of their own, possibly to use as a weapon someday. Did you resist your lessons, or did you only repent later?

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Associated Languages: Abyssal

Parentage - Draconic Adoption

Type: Birth

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You come from a tribe of primal barbarians conquered by Magroth after he slew Ayunken-vanzen and lit the Flame Imperishable. Magroth claimed your ancestor’s lands as his own but welcomed your ancestors into his service when they swore to serve the master of the dragon’s undying fire. Your ancestors incorporated the best of both their own primal traditions and Nerathi science into their culture to become enlightened mystics dwelling in the wilds around Nerath. As one of the few that remain, do you hold true to the blending of cultures or cast aside the failed façade of civilization and embrace your primal heritage? How is the strength of the golden dragon manifested through your evocations?

Personal Quests: Work with civilized folk toward a common goal; find a way to commune with the spirit of Ayunken-vanzen; gain draconic allies to aid you in driving the gnolls from your homeland.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Nature

Perfect Recollection

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Revenant

You awoke in death with a perfect memory of who you once were, the people you cared for, and all the little experiences that shaped your life. Do you grieve for your present state? Have you tried to resume the life you lost? How have these memories informed your choices and actions now?

Associated Skills: History, Intimidate

Persecuted

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Sehanine

Campaign Setting: General

You spent a period possessed by a demon, unable to prevent the atrocities it committed with your body. Are you trying to correct the wrongs your body performed? Are there places where you are known as a villain?

Associated Skills: Arcana

Associated Languages: Abyssal

Pivotal Event - Transformation

Campaign Setting: General

A magical accident transformed you into another creature. (You might still be that creature if it is a PC race.) What is your old form and what is your new form? What are your fondest and worst memories from that period?

Associated Skills: Insight, Intimidate

Pivotal Event - Unwholesome Journey

Campaign Setting: General

The Far Realm claimed you, and you wandered there for a time. Did your time there make you stronger of mind, or weaker? Did it alter your worldview?

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering

Associated Languages: Deep Speech

Pivotal Event - You Die

Campaign Setting: General

You died, either through foul play or by accident, and some person or event brought you back to life. Do you know what returned you from the dead?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Heal

Pivotal Event - You Kill

Campaign Setting: General

Through accident, error, or misbegotten intention, you were responsible for the death of an ally, friend, or loved one. Who was it, and how does it torment you?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Heal

Pledged Scout

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Sehanine

You found Sehanine’s teachings to your liking from an early age, and after your coming-of-age you joined the ranks of the Pledged Scouts, consummate explorers and wanderers devoted to the Moonbow. Are you specially pious, seeing omens everywhere? How did your family and friends react to your choice of career? Were you indoctrinated by another Pledged Scout, or were you a self-taught mystic? As a Pledged Scout you tend not to stay put for long. Do you have a hard time making friends, or do you leave behind a network of acquaintances that make you feel welcome whenever you return? Do you dream of one day crossing the forest paths of the Feywild, or perhaps reaching Arvandor?

You are at home in the wilderness, wondering what’s over the next horizon.

Associated Skills: Nature, Perception

Primal Fey

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Eladrin or Gnome

The primal spirits inhabit and protect the natural world. The echo planes—the Feywild and the Shadowfell—are not entirely cut off from the spirits’ power, but the spirits are much weaker there, where other powers hold sway. You are native to the Feywild, where arcane magic courses through every leaf and blade of grass. You always felt an affinity for and a sensitivity to that magic, a constant awareness of its hum through the wild places of your home. Then you visited the world, and your ear naturally listened for the same vibrant hum. You found it, but it was different—it was the song of the primal spirits. You found that you could naturally communicate with those spirits and call on their power.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Primal Omen

Type: Birth

Campaign Setting: General

Great Watcher sent signs to herald your birth: patterns in the sky or in the flights of birds, whispers in the leaves of the forest, rumblings in the earth, or a song in the thunder. The omens were said to point to the primal spirits’ favor, and no one was surprised when you mastered the evocations of your class. However, just before her death, your mother tried to tell you that there was more to the omen—something more troubling, perhaps even sinister. She couldn’t get the words out, and no one else knew or was willing to tell you what the elders had said about your birth. You left your home partly to prove that you are the master of your own destiny, and you still don’t know what destiny Great Watcher foresaw for you.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Primal Soul

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Genasi

Many genasi gravitate toward the places in the world that reflect the elemental nature of their own being; earthsoul genasi live in mountainous regions, while watersoul genasi live by the sea. For you, however, this natural attraction led to a far deeper communion. Your nature is closely tied to the Elemental Chaos, but in the world you found powerful spirits inhabiting the same features that called to your elemental soul. Your earthsoul spoke to the spirit of the great mountains. Your firesoul called to the spirits dancing in the volcano’s heart. Your stormsoul sang as the storm spirits thundered in the sky. Your watersoul found its kindred in the spirits of wave and current. Your windsoul howled in harmony with the spirits of the air. You recognized your kin, and they recognized you, gifting you with power and wisdom.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Nature

Prophesied Master

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Portents presaged your birth, and arcane forces gathered to welcome you into the world. You are the prophesied one. Your greatness as a spellcaster has been long foreseen, but the mystics disagree on how you will use that power.

Did your parents know about the unethical teachings of your school? Did they deliver you freely, or did some greater power mandate your attendance. Did your parents earn some reward for handing you over to the psionic school? Were you a star student or a troublemaker? What did your teachers plan for your future? What do your parents think of your departure from the school? Do agents of the school seek you out, fearing what you might do with what you learned there?

This background works well for a psion or monk because both classes assume a character takes some training to learn the rudiments of the class’s powers. Even so, an ardent or battlemind could work with this background as well, with evil teachers manipulating their students’ emotions or drilling them in dirty fighting. Regardless of class, you might choose a feat that represents your educational experience, such as Jack of All Trades or Skill Training.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Intimidate

Psionic Artifice

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warforged, Psionic

For reasons unknown, you emerged from the creation forge with powers that marked you as a psionics user, and with the knowledge that prepared you for that path. Your uniqueness has been a constant burden to you, separating you from your own kind and the mortal races alike. Do you fully embrace your psionic nature, confident that you will never meet your equal? Or do you curse your power, constantly yearning for the emotional and intellectual solitude in which other warforged dwell?

Associated Skills: Insight, Streetwise

Psionic Descendant

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

You claim descent from a great psionic hero who fought against aliens from the Far Realm long ago. Who was this person? What were some of his or her greatest accomplishments? How did your ancestor’s presence in your family’s history shape your choices?

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Psychic Hunter

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Shifter, Psionic

You come from a clan of shifters that dwells far from civilized regions. Your people have refused to let the increasing danger of the wilds scare them off. Unlike the many shifter communities that see psionic powers as inherently evil, your clan views them as a survival tool—no better or worse than any other. That cultural acceptance must still compete with your kind’s baser instincts. When your psionic abilities first manifested, did you welcome them or were you forced to fight your own fears? Once you did accept who you were, did you do so because your psionics allows you to defend your people? Or is it more important that your power grants you a measure of superiority over your peers?

Associated Skills: Nature, Perception

Purified Soul

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Deva

You fell from grace and lived many lifetimes as a rakshasa. For some reason, a god intervened and lifted you from the darkness to give you another chance in the light. Your wickedness burned away, leaving you pure and whole once more. Who was the god? Why were you chosen? Did you go willingly?

Personal Quests: Raise a shrine or temple to your benefactor deity; find another deva who is tortured as you once were and guide him or her back to the light; remove a tyrant from power.

Associated Skills: Insight, Religion

Quori Nightmare

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Kalashtar

Although she does not dream, the quori nightmare can touch the dreams of others. She hears the whispers of your hopes and fears, and she can pluck terrors from your unconscious mind and turn them into deadly reality. Many quori nightmares are shamans, but you might have chosen the path of the assassin, and you combine your skills as an assassin with the power to craft nightmares. As you go about your work, you might be a grim figure even as you strike fear into the hearts of evildoers. If you chose to become a druid, you might draw your wild shape from the nightmares of others, becoming a beast never seen in reality—or even a shadow of your quori spirit. How does this make you feel, though? Do you revel in the sense of fear you instill in others, or do you see it as another tool in your arsenal of abilities?

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Insight

Racial Devotee

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Changeling

You have chosen to imitate a race because you idealize the race or think that it best represents your personality. Why did you choose this race? How do you think true members of the race would react if they found out the truth about you? How does it feel to be so close to the race you admire but never really be a part of it?

Associated Skills: History, Insight

Associated Languages: A language the imitated race speaks.

Raised

Type: Psychology

Campaign Setting: General

You died and were restored to life. What were the circumstances of your death? Who raised you? Why did you come back? Do you recall anything from the time you spent dead? How did this event shape your religious views?

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Religion

Raised as Another

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Changeling

Your changeling parents wore the guise of another race and have passed that on to you. You might have believed yourself a member of that race until only recently or known it since you were young. How did you react when you learned the truth of your identity? Will you cling to your adopted form or adopt the fluid ways of the changeling?

Associated Skills: A skill to which the imitated race gains a bonus.

Associated Languages: A language the imitated race speaks.

Raised by Wild Beasts

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Like too many other unfortunate tiefling children, your parents left you to die in the wild. Yet you survived due to the ministrations of a magical beast. Most consider your adoptive family dangerous, more likely to eat a child than care for it.

As you matured you forged a connection to the primal world, and y realized you couldn’t remain with your wild family forever. Like a bird, you eventually left the nest to make your own way in the world.

What creature found you and kept you safe? Why didn’t it simply eat you alive? How did you learn languages? How did you become introduced to the civilized world? How did you react to seeing other tieflings? Do you still yearn to run through the wilds with your family? Where do they live now, and do you stay in contact with them?

This background works for any primal class. Choose powers that reflect the creatures that raised you, or change the flavor of the powers you select to mimic aspects of that monster.

Associated Skills: Nature, any skill in which your adoptive parent is trained

Associated Languages: A language spoken by your adoptive parent

Raised in the Unseen Path

Campaign Setting: General

Although some rangers come to the Unseen Path when their adventuring career has already begun, others develop their abilities by sensing the faint touch of the Feywild in their mind, body, and soul before they seek adventure. Some choose never to adventure, as well. Perhaps you were born in a town very near a hidden doorway, or grew up under the watchful eye of fey who dwelt in the woods behind your family’s ramshackle hut. You might even have been stolen from your crib as an infant and taken to the Feywild. In this case, you must have been retrieved swiftly—those who spend too long in the Feywild develop beliefs and attitudes other than the Unseen Path—but still, an element of the experience stayed with you even to adulthood.

You can choose to make this experience one of your character’s backgrounds. While most characters with this background are rangers who are followers of the Unseen Path, you don’t have to be. You could be anyone who experienced a childhood somehow influenced by the Path.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Associated Languages: Elven

Reaver

Campaign Setting: General

You were raised from birth to withstand the heartless weather of your homeland and to greet your enemies with utter savagery—the kind of brutality that weakens the knees of even the most stalwart civilized folk.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Rebel

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Recent Life - Mercenary Work

Campaign Setting: General

The money was good enough to justify taking continued employment as a paid soldier. What contacts do you retain from that time?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Recent Life - Peaceful Life

Campaign Setting: General

You chose a quiet life of farming, keeping a shop, or running the family business. What ended that period for you?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Insight

Recent Life - Spreading the Word

Campaign Setting: General

Wherever you have gone, you have done the work of your deity. Have you won converts or made enemies?

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Recent Life - Teambuilding Exercise

Campaign Setting: General

You were traveling in search of allies. Did you find anyone before your current group, and was there something specific you were looking to accomplish or find?

Campaign Setting: General

Holy sites deserve respect and require protection. Across the world, especially amid ruins and in the lairs of monsters, divine shrines to good gods have been polluted by the presence of evil. You have taken it upon yourself to purify these places. Do you also hunt down those who desecrate shrines? What equipment do you carry to reconsecrate shrines?

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Religion

Redemption

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Bahamut

You spent your life as a slave to darkness. What sort of wicked deeds did you perform? What was the moment of revelation, the event that opened your eyes to your own darkness? What penance have you paid? What penance must you still pay?

Campaign Setting: General

Despite your natural talent and early skill, the dean of students turned you away, yet you still learned from the academy. Did you purchase lessons from willing students or steal texts while at the academy? Did you challenge students to competitions and duels to study their techniques? Did one instructor disagree with the dean and teach you in secret? Has your anger at the school faded or grown sharper, and is it a broad brush applied to all the school and its students?

Associated Skills: Perception

Rejected Inheritance

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Many tieflings grow up knowing only a handful of their own kind. You weren’t so fortunate.

Your life began in Bael Hexott, a colony of hundreds of tieflings hidden in the ruined castle of a powerful cleric from the age of Bael Turath. The leaders of your colony claimed kinship to this ancient leader, showing as proof their ability to pass through the castle’s magically warded gates. Like the cleric of old, the tieflings of Bael Hexott worship Asmodeus. Outsiders who discovered the secret colony inevitably became sacrifices in its fiery halls.

Yet you never felt any passion for their doctrines of tyranny and domination. The more you rebelled against the temptations of Asmodeus, the more clearly you heard another god’s call. You concealed your faith, but in time your devotions could stay secret no longer. You escaped Bael Hexott, hoping never to return.

Which deity called out to you in the dark? Do the tieflings of Bael Hexott seek to silence you? Do any relatives or friends remain behind? Might they also be tempted toward a path of light?

Having come from a place of tyranny and evil, you might follow a deity of freedom or goodness, such as Pelor and Avandra. On the other hand, perhaps Kord gave you the strength to rebel, or Sehanine helped you hide your faith.

When picking powers for your character, consider taking those that help others gain the freedom you desired for yourself, such as powers that grant saving throws. Also, consider how your fiery home might have affected you: perhaps you avoid fire powers in preference to radiant powers.

Associated Skills: Bluff, Stealth

Reluctant Pawn of Tiamat

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Your divine powers come from Tiamat, but it hardly seems fair to say you worship the evil god of greed and vengeance. You might fear her, certainly, and even respect her power—but if it were up to you, you’d rather forsake the power she’s given you than actually carry out her will. Perhaps you trained as an avenger to hunt down Tiamat’s enemies, but some event awakened your long-dormant conscience and spurred you to flee her temple’s service. You might even have been kidnapped, magically controlled, and indoctrinated into her secret cult, then freed—but left to sort out the jumble of your thoughts and allegiances on your own.

Playing an evil character can easily become disruptive at the game table, but playing a character who is struggling against strong evil tendencies can be rich with roleplaying opportunities. Choose powers that emphasize the sinister nature of the deity who grants them to you, so that even your fellow adventurers are a bit scared of what you might do. But look for ways for your character to someday break free of Tiamat’s grasp, even if it’s in a final act of self-sacrifice.

Associated Skills: Bluff, Thievery

Remnant Legacy (Vestige)

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warlock

You claim ancestry or influence from a vestige. Are you fixated by tasks left undone by vestiges? You might feel a connection to places or events your vestige touched in life. Do you strive to live up to their example or to atone for terrible acts? Perhaps you experience moments of déjà vu and question whether it is your own life you’re living and not that of the vestiges.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Renegade

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You have spent many years walking the roads, and though many know you, few know your origin. You are the lone survivor of a mystic enclave that possessed a terrible secret. The only way you have found to avoid those who might try to seize the knowledge you have is to keep moving, always just ahead of your pursuers. You use your allies among the primal spirits to help you stay one step ahead of your enemies. However, it’s a hard life always being on the move, and you wonder how long you can keep it up.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Streetwise

Restless Dead

Type: Legacy of Acererak

Campaign Setting: General

Undead horrors stalk the countryside in your homeland, preying on the living and staining the land with their evil presence. You grew up fighting these monsters, watching as your friends and kin fell at your side only to rise as zombies or worse. You escaped the nightmare of youth, but the experiences fill your nights with nightmares. Have you sworn to fight undead no matter the cost? Or are they so terrible that you cannot bear to face them?

Possible Minor Quests: Finding and destroying the origin of the undead creatures menacing your community might drive you to undertake a life of adventure. You might scour the countryside to find and destroy powerful agents until you find the true source of the burgeoning evil.

Associated Skills: Insight, Perception, Religion

Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls against creatures with the undead keyword.

Resurrectionist

Campaign Setting: General

You are truly devoted, to the point that you actively seek to bring back to life the powers to which you pray. Returning a dead god to life is an epic adventure, and your initial aim is to gather power and lore to achieve it. Depending on your deity’s nature and cause of death, you might seek alliances with other deities in a hope they will aid you in your quest.

Why do you want to bring back this deity? Do you hope for a reward? Do you seek salvation? Do you see a need for that deity’s return? How will you bring him or her back? Do you seek apotheosis or powerful necromantic rites? How do others feel about your quest, and how open are you about it? What do you intend to do if people oppose it?

Most adventurers who follow this path are divine characters. Invokers, and especially devas, have a strong investment in a deity and might follow this path out of a sense of duty. Other races might be drawn to a deity’s specific qualities and seek to bring it back as a patron to their race. Resurrectionists often fulfill a leading role. They are strong traditionalists, fighting to maintain and protect what they know and love.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Heal

Revered Elder

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You are no brash youth embarking on a life of adventure before settling into a respectable adulthood. Your younger days are behind you, though your body and mind are still strong thanks to the favor of the spirits. You have communed with the spirits all your life, and until recently you used their wisdom to guide your people. You might have been the head of a family following the spirit way in the midst of a town or city, or you could have advised the chieftain of a vast tribe in the wilderness. Perhaps you sat on a council of elders in a village, or even led that council.

But something changed, and the sedate life of an elder is no longer possible for you. What happened to spur you into adventure? Did you have a vision that summoned you to a dangerous place? Did a younger member of your family venture into a dungeon and never return? Perhaps you lost your ability to easily slip into the spirit world and commune with the spirits, and you want to find out why.

Associated Skills: Insight, Nature

River Guardian

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Halfling

You have trained in the Flowing River, a fighting style devised by your people. On mastering the art, you traveled with your people, watching out for bandits and raiders, while working alongside the crew. What places did you visit? Did you travel through dangerous lands? What sorts of enemies did you face? What made you leave this work?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Perception

Rogue Scholar

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Others might have learned their magic in stuffy schools or from learned masters, but you’re self-taught. Always prone to curiosity more than common sense, you poked about in places others considered dangerous and delved into locations thought to be deadly. In one such exploration you found a strange book, and since no one seemed to be using it at the moment, you stole it. It took a while to puzzle out its strange symbols and odd language, but your patience was rewarded with the casting of your first spell. Now you’re a self-made master of the arts, but the curiosity that drove you into arcane magic drives you still. You’re always curious about new magic and strange devices—especially when no one is looking.

Where did you get your first taste of arcane knowledge? What was the book and do you still have it? Who owned the book before? Are they still looking for the scoundrel who stole it? Were you a thief before you took the book, or did this one indiscretion lead you down the path of burglary?

Warlocks and wizards make the most sense as rogue scholars. A wizard might find a spellbook, and a warlock might discover the means of contacting some otherworldly power. Other classes can make sense as well. For example, the techniques of a swordmage

might be written down as a kind of training manual. Work with your Dungeon Master to detail the nature of the book you pilfered and from whom you took it. Maybe it holds secrets you still struggle to decipher.

Associated Skills: Stealth, Thievery

Runaway

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Sehanine

You are on the run from a harsh authority. Did you commit an actual crime, or were you falsely accused? What might happen if you were found out? How do you react to authority now? Do you try not to draw attention to yourself, for fear of being recognized, or do you boldly challenge anyone with a badge? Would you ever return to face those who accuse you, perhaps once you’ve found evidence of your innocence? Or do you plan on taking revenge on corrupt officials who framed you?

Did the authorities put a bounty on your head? If so, do you seek to evade the bounty hunters, or do you face them head-on, hoping to discourage others from trying their luck against you?

Stick to the shadows and keep your ears open to any rumors of your pursuers’ whereabouts.

Associated Skills: Stealth, Streetwise

Sage

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You have dedicated your life to a careful study of nature, learning its cycles and rhythms. You see the world in a very different way from others, and for that reason, people come from far and wide to seek your wisdom on matters of nature. You have read the spirits’ signs and omens, and you know something is coming that no one is prepared for. You might be alone in this knowledge, but the fact that you have the knowledge suggests that you can help avert whatever disaster is imminent.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Salvation

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Shadar-Kai

All shadar-kai face oblivion, because that is the price exacted by the Raven Queen for being spared age and its infirmities. What do you think the Raven Queen will grant you by serving her? Do you want to escape the oblivion altogether or just forestall it? Do you hope to be chosen to serve as her sorrowsworn? Do you resent the deity?

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Religion

Sandstorm Caller

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

Your clan inhabits a remote and harsh wilderness, such as a stormy desert, and strives to live in harmony with the equally harsh primal spirits of that environment. You have an affinity for those spirits—primal beings that don’t take human or animal shape, but roar in the wind and pulse in the harsh light of the sun. Because of that affinity, you were the protector of your people, able to summon those spirits with a word to scour your enemies from the earth in a terrible storm.

But now you are cut off from those spirits and from the people you used to defend. Why did you leave? Perhaps you failed in your duty, and you have no clan left to protect. Perhaps the spirits of storm and sun summoned you from your home in pursuit of a larger purpose. Or you might simply have grown tired of your responsibility and become curious about the world beyond your clan’s lands.

Without the spirits of your native land, your primal magic is not as strong, but neither is it entirely absent. Other spirits of weather and the land respond to your call, just more slowly. With time, perhaps, you will learn to control the mightiest forces of nature wherever your travels take you.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Sarifal Feywarden

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Any fey race but drow

The fey of Sarifal are uniquely attuned to the world around them. They have a Feywild connection that transcends the mortal world. Many fey hailing from Sarifal can traverse difficult terrain with surprising ease and swiftness.

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Arcana, Athletics, Stealth

Saved from the Noose

Campaign Setting: General

Only the timely intervention of the headmaster, who saw your astounding natural talent, saved you from execution. Was the sentence deserved? Do you begrudge the headmaster his effort? Do you meet the potential he saw, or have you run from your abilities?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Thievery

Scholarship Student

Campaign Setting: General

You never thought you’d have a chance at schooling because of the cost, but the scholarship makes it affordable. Barely. Did you envy affluent students their wealth? Did they mock and shun you, or was the class division a false one in your case? What other jobs did you work to help meet your tuition requirements?

Associated Skills: Endurance

Scholastic Stowaway

Campaign Setting: General

You never enrolled at the academy at all, instead hiding in the tunnels and unused classrooms to spy on lessons. Were you ever discovered? How many times did it come close? Did you make any secret friends? How do you feel having missed out on most of the social aspects of school? And why didn’t you ever apply for a scholarship?

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Stealth

School of Unmatched Excellence

Campaign Setting: General

As a psionics user, it is your right and responsibility to govern mortals who lack psionic abilities—even if they do not want it.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Intimidate

Associated Languages: The language of the mind

Scion of Blood

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

You are a member of House Kahlir. You know this because one of your ancestors came to you and told you so. Of course, she was dead at the time. The vampire informed you that you would be joining the rest of the family in undeath, but that first you would be given time to produce an heir.

How was your ancestor related to you? Is your ancestor a recent conversion? Perhaps you know of vampire relatives that date back to the time of Bael Turath. How often are you in contact with your vampire

family? Do you hide from them or seek their counsel? What if you refuse to provide an heir to your bloodline? Do you have any siblings facing a similar fate?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Stealth

Scion of Patricians

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You’re of noble blood and descended through an unbroken Nerathi pedigree. You grew up with stories of your ancestors’ wealth and prestige; you might even be the heir of an important Nerathi politician or of a self-styled “emperor” of a provincial region. Throughout your life you’ve been taught to respect your heritage and that you possess the power and imperative to be a leader of humankind. How has living in the shadow of your ancestors affected you? Do you have a feeling of entitlement, taking what you feel is owed to you for your ancestor’s glory? Perhaps you feel the opposite—that your wealth and heritage brings the burden of responsibility to contribute something to a world spiraling into darkness.

Personal Quests: Discover the true line of your noble descent; use your family connections to restore order to a turbulent city; perform a deed of your own worthy to stand beside your ancestors’.

Associated Skills: History, Insight

Sea Chaplain

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Melora

You have lived a stone’s throw from the sea your entire life, learning its secrets. For as long as you can remember, riding the ocean waves or diving beneath the foam felt more natural than walking on land. You can hold your breath longer than anyone you know, and when you sit on the beach at night, you can hear the ocean breeze whispering to you. Now you spend your days on the open water and in a myriad of ports, helping others deal with the loneliness and dangers of life at sea.

Associated Quests: Tend to the lost and set them on the path of nature’s harmony; build lighthouses to warn sailors of perils; investigate mass beachings of dolphins and whales to ensure nothing sinister is behind them.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Religion

Sea Dog - Follower of Kord

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Kord

Every sailor worth his salt prays to Kord from time to time. To do otherwise is to invite his storms upon your ship. But you’ve never feared his storms. When the lightning slashes the sky and the waves toss the ship like a leaf on the wind, you like nothing better than to be at the prow, leaning out into the tempest like a living figurehead. Other sailors think you’re crazed. On a ship your bravery cannot be doubted, but when the storms come, your sanity has been questioned. You’ve been lashed to the mast, and some have accused you of attracting Kord’s wrath. You know the truth, though. On the sea you hear Kord the clearest, and in his storms you laugh along with him.

Were you captain of a ship or just a crew member? On what kinds of vessels did you sail: merchant, military, or any boat that left port? Why don’t you sail as often as you once did? Is there some danger in the sea you aren’t facing? Do you seek something on land such as a treasure or special magic item?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Sea of Dust

Exposed barrens, shifting dunes, ruins of an ancient era buried in a vast wasteland

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

The Sea of Dust was once a verdant land, destroyed by unchecked magic in a storm of hatred and destruction. The power released in these cataclysmic rituals erased the ruling civilizations, reducing their cities to rubble and their fertile lands to areas of waste. Yet even in the wake of this devastation, life continues—testimony to nature’s resilience. The nomadic peoples of the Sea of Dust band together, seeking to heal the land ravaged by their ancestors.

Having long roamed the Sea of Dust, you have become inured to its challenges. Dragonborn and tieflings are the most likely races to come from this homeland, but humans as well as firesoul and windsoul genasi are found here, too. Barbarians and shamans are the best class choices.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Associated Languages: Draconic, Primordial

Seeker of Rumor

Campaign Setting: General

You managed to locate and then studied at the Hidden Academy, Rumor, the magical university believed by many to not even exist. By tailoring your course of study to take advantage of your best talents, you might have picked up some great techniques for sneaking or thieving, or you might have poured your efforts into being the best spellcaster you can be.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Stealth, Thievery

Associated Languages: Elven

Seeking Penitence

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warlock

Long is the list of your transgressions, but your patron represents a chance to wash away the stains of a sordid history. What reviled deeds weigh heavily upon your soul? What made you abandon your path of deviance and seek atonement—if such a thing exists for your actions? Do you embrace the example of your patron, or struggle to live up to its values?

Associated Skills: Endurance, History

Seer

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You peered through time’s veil to perceive the future and learn the fates of those around you. Were you a fake, or did you have a genuine talent? If the latter, how do your visions manifest? Choosing this background does not let you consistently perceive the future, but it does provide the DM with a tool for starting adventures and as a way to feed you information you might have missed.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Bluff

Seer (Psionic)

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

Strange dreams have regularly troubled your rest, some more peculiar than others. These dreams were clear but chaotic, revealing places and sights you had never seen before. In time, you began to witness your dreams unfolding in reality—predictive visions that you have come to know as true dreams. As you grew older, you began to experience the true dreams at will, allowing you to scout the future.

Now, your talent provides you with insights into the situations that await you, your companions, and the folk that come to you seeking aid and advice. But what you see does not always come to pass, for the future is mutable. How much do you depend on your visions? Do you see the prophesied future as a destination toward which you must walk, or as a warning of a destiny that you can consciously avoid?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Self-Improvement Expert

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warforged

When your joints squeak or a connecting fiber tears, you could fix it easily. But why not replace it with something better? You’re lucky to be a warforged. Creatures of flesh can’t make the same upgrades you can. Your body has few original parts left—and good riddance! Does your fascination with modifying your body drive you to create homunculi or other constructs as well? If a new part becomes available, do you try it out though it might be dangerous?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Thievery

Sellsword

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

Mercenary isn’t quite the right word. It sounds too formal, too militaristic. No, you worked for a living, and as ugly as that work got, it put food on the table and coins in your purse. Your life as a hired sword wasn’t easy—and you have the scars to prove it—yet those who crossed you always got the worse end of the bargain.

Why was fighting for money the best way to make a living? Are you still for hire? Did your work earn you a reputation, and is it one you welcome or regret? What kinds of jobs did you take—pushing around merchants, shadowy bodyguard work for a spoiled noble, or something much worse? Were there jobs you wouldn’t take? Does anyone still owe you pay? Did you make any enemies while working for others’ interests?

Sellsword is a good background for fighters and warlords, but as a ranger or rogue your employment might have put you in more secretive roles. Perhaps instead of a soldier you were a scout, or rather than an armed guard you acted as a plainclothes bodyguard.

Consider feats that emphasize your history as someone who lived by the blade. Nimble Blade, Quick Draw, and Toughness might be good choices.

Associated Skills: Heal, Perception

Sentry

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You have served as a sentry on the far-flung borders of some realm or region. You received martial training to equip you with the skills to guard against specific threats. The peaceful existence of the people within the border depended on your vigilance. You might have traveled with a small band of fellow sentries, or you might have remained alone for weeks at a time, relying on signal fires and horns to communicate with other sentries nearby. You were versed in the use of weapons, yet you recognized that mobility and keen senses were your most valuable assets. The chance of meeting your foes in the remote lands you frequented was tiny. However, your ability to identify the signs of an intruder—a broken twig, an upturned leaf, a faint depression—meant that even unseen foes were detected. Did you weather your post stoically, or did the long, lonely days take their toll? Have you seen horrors on the borderlands that have left you taciturn, or do you remain chipper despite the duties you performed?

Associated Skills: Nature, Perception

Servant of the Light

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Kalashtar

The renegade quori were driven from Dal Quor because of their faith in the Path of Light, and their belief that the Darkness That Dreams can be replaced by il-Yannah, the Great Light. This faith continues to drive you to this day. If you are a Duulora avenger, you strike with righteous fury borne from your faith, and if you are a hashalaq cleric or paladin, you use charisma and diplomacy to inspire mortals to turn away from darkness. When it comes to battle, psychic power and the radiant force of il-Yannah combine within you to make you a fearsome foe. How can you reflect both aspects of your culture? Are you a kalashtar ardent who falls upon training as a paladin to ref lect your faith? Or have you recently discovered the need to find and destroy those who oppose the light?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Religion

Associated Languages: Quori

Sewer Wretch

Campaign Setting: General

Your family was poor, and you grew up in the Graves. There you learned to hunt rats, scavenge, and thieve to survive. You also encountered the strangeness that haunts the deeper and newer passages, the undead and mutants that prowl the dark. Proximity to such oddness might have awakened psionic powers in you or you might have become touched yourself, burdened with an unnatural corruption. Then again, you might have clawed your way free from the dark to claim a place in the light.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Dungeoneering

Shard of Io

Type: Racial

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Shifter

You or your family endured a period of persecution, during which shifters were imprisoned or killed because of their perceived ties to lycanthropes. Were you arrested? Did you live in hiding? Has the experience made you ashamed of your origin, or defiantly proud?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Stealth

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You are a member of the aristocracy. Does your family have a noble rank? Are you the heir to a title, and if so, how many people stand between you and that title? Under what circumstances did you become an adventurer?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight

Society - Poor

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You grew up without a steady income. Were your family members peasants, servants, or unskilled laborers? Did you and your family have to beg in the streets to stay fed? What was the biggest sacrifice you or your family had to make to survive? How did you come to own your starting possessions?

Associated Skills: Streetwise

Society - Wealthy

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You grew up rich, never wanting for anything. What was the source of this wealth? Was it inherited, or did your family work for its riches? Was it obtained legitimately, or through underhanded methods? What kind of home did you live in? Was there ever a time when you knew what it was like to be hungry or desperate?

Associated Skills: History

Sorrowful Existence

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Deva

You escaped the eternity as a rakshasa but at a terrible price. You recall with perfect clarity every wicked deed you performed, every cruelty done by your clawed hands. You can’t escape the memories and the other lifetimes are nearly silent now, just faint wisps that surface only to level accusations and recriminations. How do you cope with the guilt? Are you at risk of falling again?

Personal Quests: Enter a rakshasa stronghold and rescue slaves; aid another deva in gaining forgiveness for past atrocities; locate a rakshasa you once associated with and either lead it to redemption or kill it forever.

Associated Skills: History, Intimidate

Spirit of Two Worlds

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Half-elf or Half-orc

You are the child of a city-dwelling human and either an elf from a particularly wild tribe or an orc from a relatively civilized one. You inherited a keen awareness of nature and an affinity for the primal spirits from your nonhuman parent, and a fondness for civilization and a reverence for the gods from your human parent. You see no conflict between these two worlds, and you move easily between the rites you use to invoke the spirits’ favor and the prayers you offer in the temples of the gods. You venerate your elf or orc ancestors and seek deeper understandings of your human side’s primal roots. Some people—perhaps even one of your parents— might pressure you to choose one path or the other, but for now, you choose to walk them both.

Associated Skills: Nature, Religion

Spirit Possessed

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Goliath

A spirit entered your body while you slept, and now it won’t leave. The spirit makes you see things and sense things you couldn’t detect before. With it in your head, you can achieve far more than you thought possible. Is the spirit an unwelcome guest? Have you tried to exorcise it? Or are you at peace with the essence, believing yourself favored by the spirit world?

Associated Skills: Insight, Nature

Spirit Soul

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Deva

You believe that your race has a dual essence, that upon your death one part of that essence reincarnates in a new body while another joins the great cloud of primal spirits. The spirits of your past incarnations are like your ancestors, and you seek to commune with them above all other primal spirits, striving to assimilate all the wisdom you have acquired in your past lives.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Squire

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Bahamut

You studied under a famous knight, serving the warrior until you mastered the talents she taught. What kind of person was this knight? What was the most important lesson you learned? Is your mentor still alive? How long was it since you last saw the knight? Did your association end on good terms?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Nature

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Wilden

All wilden share a spiritual connection to the elemental fury of nature in their aspect of the destroyer. However, your connection to elemental power is stronger than that, letting you shape that power and unleash it as you hunt.

How does your status as a stormchaser affect your relationship with your kin? Are storm-homes common in your native land, making you only one of countless wilden imbued with such power? Or is the power of the storm a rare and legendary thing among your community? Does your power set you on the path to greatness and mark you as one possessed of the full fury of nature? Or do your people view your elemental power as a weakness which dilutes the purity of your Feywild essence?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Endurance

Struck By Lightning - Follower of Kord

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Kord

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Substance of Thought

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Genasi, Psionic

A small number of genasi philosophers do not subscribe to well-known psionics origin theories. Instead, they speculate that the essence of thought might have originated in the Elemental Chaos, manifesting in the material world like all other elemental power. By subscribing to this view, do you perceive psionics as a means of establishing closer ties to the surging chaos reflected by the natural world? Or do you embrace it as a kind of primal energy—endless and all-encompassing as it threads through every living thing?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

An unwanted child rarely finds safe haven in the world, and an unwanted tiefling baby fares even worse. Many are left to die in the wilderness, prey to beasts, exposure, or starvation. Few would praise such an act of cruelty, but fewer still would agree to take in an orphan tiefling.

You were lucky—if being left to die can ever be called lucky. A wandering priest found you. Despite the ill omens and your cursed form, the cleric took you in. Despite this softhearted moment, you would not call your benefactor kind—firm, proud, faithful, righteous, but not kind. You learned much under his tutelage and from those with whom he shared his secret student. When you were strong enough to make your own way, he set you out into the world as friendless as he found you.

What kind of a person was your teacher? What omens did he see, and why did he ignore them? Why did your religious training not occur in a more structured setting? Did you learn beliefs or practices different from mainstream worshipers? Why did he keep your existence a secret? Do you want to learn the identities of your parents? Why did they abandon you? Has your hard life made you strong? Are you distant from others or do you seek out companionship?

The avenger class works particularly well with this background, but any divine character could have his or her origin to a trainer in the wilderness. Melora makes perfect sense for your deity, but so might Avandra or Kord. Perhaps those who found you were elves and they taught you worship of Corellon. If non-humans found you, it might help to explain why your upbringing was so strict and secretive.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

The Basilisk Society

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

You fled when you learned the hidden purpose behind Basilisk, the secret society to which you belonged. Basilisk swore to bring down tyranny and place rulership justly in the hands of the people. But their secret leader, an ash nymph known as the Golden Mistress, runs a criminal cartel to bring about the downfall of civilization so that it can be reclaimed by nature. She will not let you escape because she gave you her blessing—her true kiss of trust. You know too much, and now you must be reclaimed or silenced. In cities, she hunts you with assassins and thugs; in nature, she hounds you with wild beasts and fey.

Associated Skills: Nature, Streetwise

The Breach

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

A roiling, seething realm polluted by chaotic energy, the Breach features lightning gathered in pools, thunder rocking the ground, and liquid fire falling from the heavens. The Breach is a warped and tortured region, assailed by energy spilling forth from the Elemental Chaos. Everything is wrong here: Mountains drift through the skies, ice forms over molten rock, and dark columns formed from shrieking winds swirl in place. Patches of normal terrain form islands here: Bits of forest or ruin remain as the only evidence of what the land was like before the breach. Few people live here, because the land cannot sustain natural life for long, but elemental beasts and humanoids exist here—some are benign, but most are malevolent.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Endurance

Associated Languages: Primordial

The Demon Binder

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

When a minor demon possessed your true love’s body, you did not have the heart to strike the killing blow. Instead you offered the creature a choice: It could bind itself to your service, or else you would strike your love down and send the demon back to the Abyss.

The creature accepted your offer, but it kept your love’s soul as a hostage, secreting it away in the Abyss.

The foul thing is bound to you now and cannot be abjured. It wishes only to wreak havoc in the world and rise among the ranks of its kind by lending its awful might to your causes. It is an obedient servant and a prison mate. It is a festering growth. It is the jailor of your true love’s soul.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Religion

The Five Wraiths

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

You are dying, but not by normal means. You recently discovered a remarkable ancient ritual that, if performed perfectly, would grant the participants eternal life. You persuaded your five closest friends to swear a pact that you would each use this power to shepherd the world and its people prosperously through all its future ages. But something went terribly wrong.

Soon after the ritual, each of you began to fade gradually from existence, becoming light and ephemeral and occasionally translucent. You felt a strange hunger—a craving for vitality and experience.

In your friends, however, this hunger manifested as a mad, destructive impulse. Now, instead of protecting the world as they swore to do, they seek to bring it down with them. They name themselves Strife, War, Hatred, Doom, and Terror, and they have dubbed you Death.

Will you allow these wraiths to break the world you all sought to save? Or will you submit to your fate and fade away?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics

The High One Falls

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

In a prophetic vision, the high priest of your people saw you slay the ruler of your land. Your possible future act against the person, who many believe descended from the gods, caused you to be branded a traitor. So you fled your home, narrowly escaping capture and execution. Now mercenaries and bounty hunters stalk you wherever you go with cunning traps and ambushes, each desperate to claim the royal price on your head or to protect the sovereign from harm. Did you love or hate this ruler? Was the priest’s prophecy likely to come true, or were you framed? Will the path you take help to avoid this destiny or cause it to come true?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

The Path of Thirty-Seven Obstacles

Campaign Setting: General

Trained to think only of improving your own skills and standing victorious against foes, you have learned to withstand all manner of duress and to swiftly judge the abilities of your opponents.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Insight

Booming thunder, cloud-shrouded slopes, mountains so tall they scrape the sky

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

Spine of the world, the Thunderpeaks have long been deemed insurmountable by travelers. No pass threads between the peaks, no road climbs their dizzying heights. Worse, black storm clouds gather overhead, herded by inexplicable wind currents, to lash the peaks with lightning and constant rain. The Thunderpeaks offer a glimpse into the raw and often violent nature of primal power. Intrepid souls who scale their heights soon taste its potency.

Goliaths make the best Thunderpeaks characters, although dwarves and dragonborn can also emerge from this homeland. Barbarians are an obvious choice for character class, but wardens serve as well.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Dungeoneering

Associated Languages: Dwarven, Giant

Touched by an Angel

Type: Divine

Campaign Setting: General

You have encountered dangerous immortals for as long as you can remember, and a guardian angel taught you much of what you know about your god. What was the angel who watched over you like? Is the angel alive or dead? Why did the angel take an interest? What other immortals might interfere with your life?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Perception

Touched by Darkness

Type: Legacy of Acererak

Campaign Setting: General

You might have served a necromancer in your youth, perhaps as an apprentice or possibly as guard or servant. Proximity to your master’s corruption left a mark on you. Did your experience alter how you see undead? Is necromancy a path you might seek or is it an abomination to be fought and destroyed? How does the mark manifest on you? Are you pale? Do you suffer from a disfiguring condition, or are you unhinged?

Possible Minor Quests: You might have born witness to appalling acts of wickedness, and if so, you might seek redemption, fighting the darkness to atone for your past. You might also seek out the necromancer or undead master you served to prevent his works from plunging the world into death.

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Stealth, Religion

Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to saving throws against ongoing effects and conditions with the necrotic keyword.

Tower Graduate

Campaign Setting: General

You learned magic at the Obsidian Tower. To supplement your main course of study, you chose one of three paths: Either delving into the tower’s libraries of lore at every opportunity gave you a strong sense of how to learn from the past, or you specifically researched the undead to better combat them, or you decided to rely almost exclusively on your considerable spellcasting ability.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History, Religion

Trapped in the Feywild

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Bard

A reluctant traveler, you became imprisoned or lost in the Feywild against your will. While there, you had your first brush with arcane magic and the odd fey creatures that inhabit the realm. Did you wander into the Feywild by mistake and lose your way home? Were you captured and placed in bondage by fomorians or other cruel fey? How did you escape from the Feywild? Do you want to go back and clean up some loose ends, or do you want to avoid the plane for good?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Endurance

Associated Languages: Elven

Treasure Hunter

Campaign Setting: General

Fascinated by antiquity and the magical arts, you’ve long dreamed of finding and collecting ancient enchanted items. Do you plan to create magic items yourself one day, or do you merely want to find and wield the power of items created by long-dead civilizations? Do you already possess an item you think has untapped magical potential? Were you intrigued by stories you’ve heard about famous relics? Are you just in it for the money?

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Tree Talker

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Melora

Your parents swear you could climb trees before you learned how to walk. You spent your childhood high in the branches, and for as long as you can remember, the trees whispered to you whenever the breeze moved through their leaves. Sometimes they would warn you of looming danger—a poisonous snake or a mountain cat. At other times, they shared secrets with you, such as who met secretly beneath the poplar the previous night.

Associated Quests: Find and renew a long-forgotten or defiled sacred grove; create a book of trees with names, descriptions, leaves, and pressed flowers of each of the sacred trees, including oak, ash, hawthorn, elm, apple, hazel, alder, elder, yew, holly, and willow.

Associated Skills: Athletics, Streetwise

Tuathan

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human or half-elf

Your blood pulses with the spirit of the Feywild, driving you toward action and excitement. You might be able to push your hale and hearty body to extremes, or you have knowledge about the ancient fey realm that many have forgotten.

Associated Skills: Endurance, History

Campaign Setting: General

You focus your studies on whatever demonic, diabolical, or aberrant creature you believe imbued you with psionic power. When the natural world falls, you plan to ride the tide of blood alongside your master.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Dungeoneering, Religion

Two Sides of the Coin

Campaign Setting: General

You are a twin, yet yours was not a normal birth; you were brought into the world beneath an alignment of stars not seen since before the Spellplague. The first born arrived in the world bright, laughing, and smiling only moments after birth. The second twin came later—an unexpected arrival after birthing was thought finished. This twin looked coldly upon the world with dark eyes and silence. Since then, you and your twin have been opposites, each one a different side of the same coin.

Is one twin good and the other evil? How were you and your twin treated differently as you grew up? Were you brought up together or separated? Can the twins be judged by appearances or is the truth that the first born hides the darkness that the second born shows? Which twin were you? Do both your parents still live? Was your strange birth prophesied or an accident of coincidence? Do you know where your twin is now?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight

Underdark Survivor

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Drow

You never saw the lightless depths beneath the earth as a place of death and unmoving stone. To your eyes, it teemed with life— not just the life of fungi and crawling things, but the whispers of the Deep Winds and other primal spirits. Even the terrible spider symbol of Lolth you saw as an echo of the Fate Weaver, a being of far greater wisdom than the dread and demented Spider Queen. Your beliefs and strange behavior earned you exile from your home city, but you didn’t mind much—you always felt more at home in the wild caverns anyway.

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Nature

Underwild

Twisting corridors, subterranean gardens, fearsome horrors that have never seen daylight

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

The Underdark crawls with vile abominations that shun the rays of the sun. Populated by creatures such as drow and mind flayers, the place is known for its violent and cruel denizens. Still, not all areas are overrun by such sinister inhabitants. Certain places, far from the frequently traveled corridors, are filled with eddies and swirls of primal power, spawning new life out of the ruins of old. Such places are called the Underwild, and in them fungus forests, sweeps of phosphorescent mold, and slime pools gather primal energy for use by those who have the courage to seize it. Those who discover the Underwild also find abundant food, water, and other resources to help them survive the otherwise desolate Underdark.

Originating from the Underdark, you have seen its wonders and its wickedness. Drow is the best racial choice for this homeland, and the dark elves make interesting barbarians and druids. Of course, any race that has strong ties to the Underdark can work as well.

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Perception

Associated Languages: Deep Speech, Elven

Unfettered Future

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

You have turned your back on the so-called noble history of the tiefling race. Rather than reveling in the sordid glories of the past, you instead seek to start a new dynasty of grandeur and fame. You know that your efforts will be rewarded in time, and one day your descendants will hold your name in high esteem.

What caused you to reject the nobility of Bael Turath? Do you know which noble house (or houses) you’re actually descended from, and did this knowledge sway your decision to found a new house? What do your relatives think about your decision? Which of your extended family might be angry enough to interfere with your plans?

Associated Skills: History, Insight

Unhomed

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

You lived with the Unhomed for many years. You might have been born there, never setting foot on dry land before becoming an adventurer, or you could have used the community as a safe harbor for a time. As Unhomed, you learned the essential trades necessary for survival, and from this training you learned to anticipate the weather, repair ships, become an excellent swimmer, and serve as a cunning negotiator. Why did you leave Foamgather? Were you left behind by accident when the fleet broke apart? Or were you exiled for some accused crime? Were you innocent? If so, why were you blamed?

Associated Skills: Athletics, Bluff, Perception

Associated Languages: Any one except Abyssal or Supernal

Unlikely Primal Hero

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

You didn’t ask for this. You were perfectly happy with your life in the city. Well, maybe not happy exactly; you survived as a crook, a scam artist. One day, a scheme for putting silver in your pocket hit a snag, and you felt it prudent to leave town for a while.

That’s when the spirit spoke to you.

While resting near a natural spring in the forest, you heard its voice in your heart and mind. It had chosen you, it said. The forest needed a champion, and it was your destiny to help. You tried many times to worm out of this obligation, but each time your mind returned to the beauty of the glade and the warmth of the voice. You wonder, if you’d chosen a different path through the woods, would the spirit have chosen the next traveler as its champion.

How connected are you to your former life? How long ago did you leave it behind? How does being caught between two worlds affect you? Do you still regret the spirit’s selection of you as its champion? How does this reluctance manifest itself in your attitude toward the spirits? What was the spirit who taught you primal magic? What danger brought you to the forest’s defense, and how does it still threaten the world?

You can also represent your internal conflict between the civilized and primal world with a mix of skill choices (Nature and Streetwise make good opposing skills). Consider using multiclass feats or even hybrid character rules to build a character torn between the primal spirits and another path.

Associated Skills: Bluff, Streetwise

Unseelie Agent

Campaign Setting: General

Your continued contact with the Unseelie might have taught you much about their magic, or else your need to operate in secrecy has engendered in you a respect for silence and subtlety.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Stealth

Urban Gnome

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Gnome

You grew up in a large town or city that had large buildings and many people. You’re at home in the bustle of town life, and dodging through crowds is second nature. Perhaps you dress in bright and flashy clothing to stand out among the throngs (and to avoid falling underfoot). Or do you cultivate a quieter existence, where you stay out of sight and out of mind so that you can be left to your own devices in the packed streets? Did you ever long for the hidden forest home you never knew, nestled deep among the roots of massive trees? Or do you feel somehow guilty for not being terribly interested in the traditional home of fey creatures? Do gnomes from the forests find you an oddity when they meet you?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Streetwise

Urban Shaman

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Shifter

The city is alive. You barter with the spirits of stone and steel, speaking with the ancient foundations of the city and the dominant force that drives it. Is it a fortress driven by war? A market with a dozen spirits of commerce all clamoring for attention? Is the heart of the city the great academy? You know, because you hear its voice. You barter with the spirits for the good of your people, and you use these same skills to keep peace between packs. You learned the ways of the wild from your ancestors, but in the city you feel most at home. If you are a shaman, consider how your spirit companions reflect your urban bond; a protector spirit could be the embodiment of strong city walls, and your stalker spirit is a glittering assemblage of steel blades.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Streetwise

Benefit: While in an urban environment, you can substitute Streetwise for Nature when using a ritual that requires a Nature check.

Vengeance

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Revenant

In the final moments before you died, you witnessed a terrible act—an experience so profound that death could not claim you. Who wronged you and why? Were you murdered? Was a loved one harmed to get at you? How will you achieve the vengeance you desire? What will happen once you get it?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Vengeful Royalty

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Tiefling

After the fall of Bael Turath, some tieflings retained power, ruling over isolated baronies and duchies throughout the remains of the empire. Your family ruled one such fiefdom; in truth little more than a sturdy tower and surrounding village, but a mark of pride nonetheless.

When you returned home after a long diplomatic mission, you found the tower cast to rubble and everyone dead. Only scattered tracks and the arrows left in the bodies of the fallen gave any clue to the horrors that had occurred. Your royal escort fled to a neighboring kingdom to beg for shelter, but you couldn’t let the trail go cold for fear that the murderers responsible might go unpunished.

What do you remember of your royal history? Do you seek to reclaim your ruined kingdom? Who destroyed all that you knew? How will you mete out vengeance when you find these villains? Or does something prevent you from gaining your revenge?

Any martial class can work with this background. Decide whether you learned this class’s talents before or after your kingdom fell; rogue and warlord fit well with a royal background, while fighter or ranger might make the most sense for a loner hell-bent on revenge. Consider mixing contrasting character elements that represent both your royal life and your new, harder existence, such as the Jack of All Trades and Lethal Hunter feats.

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature, Perception

Campaign Setting: General

Long, glorious hours of study have turned you into a veritable font of dark lore. Knowledge is, after all, the most formidable and remorseless of weapons.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Voice of a Dozen Generations

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Deva, Psionic

Accustomed to thinking in terms of souls and past lives, many devas subscribe to the “collective sentience” theory of psionics origin. Some devas additionally theorize that psionics draws not only on the minds of living beings, but on the thoughts of all sentient creatures that have ever lived. You believe that your psionic abilities are derived, in part, from the thoughts, dreams, and ambitions of your prior incarnations and angelic ancestors. But do you feel obligated to honor your forebears’ convictions? Or is their constant presence in your mind an endless burden that prevents you from making your own way in the world?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Voice of Pelor

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

You were chosen to become a priest, a mystic and spokesperson in Pelor’s clergy. Why were you selected? Were your parents well-placed or were you born under an omen? Did you complete your training? How does this training influence you now?

Associated Skills: History, Religion

Wanderer

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

As you walk the road ahead, you leave your past behind you where it belongs. When you came of age, you pulled up stakes and left everyone and everything you knew. Is fate drawing you toward a particular location or individual, or is the unconscious pull you feel compelling you to fulfill some inscrutable purpose? Are you traveling to escape something, perhaps to overcome a loss, a conflict, or a humiliation? Whatever your reason, you do not or cannot put down roots. Before you run the risk of settling into any particular place, you pick up and move on again.

Associated Skills: Nature, Perception

Wandering Master

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Sorcerer

You have improved your fighting skills with techniques from far off lands. Did you learn from expatriates from those lands, or did you travel there yourself? Has this worldly experience imbued you with a controlled demeanor, scoffing at the posturing of novice brawlers? Do you favor quests that take you to the far corners of the world, or is there some place to which you dread returning? You have learned the ways of the world, and you’re ready to take to the road at a moment’s notice.

Associated Skills: History, Nature

Associated Languages: Any one, except for Infernal and Supernal

Wandering Zealot

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Half-Elf

You champion a god, a belief, or some other cause, and you allow it to eclipse all other considerations. You drift from town to town, preaching your views to any who listen. Those who stop are moved by your words and might leave behind their lives to follow in your steps. What, then, is your cause? How did you come by it? Why do you champion it still?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Endurance

Ward of the State

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Erathis

Orphaned or abandoned at a young age, you spent your childhood in the care of a magistrate or some other public official. You might have been used as a living and breathing symbol of legislative compassion—whether real or phony. Do those memories still sting? Although your guardian treated you kindly enough, he or she was frequently preoccupied by matters of state. Did you feel neglected during his or her absence, or did you find it freeing? Did your guardian’s world of political machinations appeal to you, or did you find it rigid and boring?

You might adventure in your guardian’s name, fighting to keep the peace for a nation you grew to love. Conversely, you might adventure as a way of shaking off the monotonous memories of a stale childhood. Does your guardian approve of the life you lead? Is he or she aware of it?

Associated Skills: Insight, Streetwise

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

The wilderness is your home, far from any city or village. You might have been a fugitive from a dragonbonded clan, eking out your livelihood from the remote forest, swamp, or desert near your clan’s holdings. Or perhaps you were an orphan, stranded in the wilderness as a youth when your parent met a terrible end. Or the parent who raised you might have been an exile, a fugitive, or simply an ornery loner who preferred solitude to the company of others. Whatever the reason, you have lived for years by your own wits and resourcefulness, without having to rely on anyone else.

What has changed to bring you closer to civilization and into a party of adventurers? Did a new population of monsters make your wilderness home suddenly inhospitable? Or perhaps a new frontier settlement was established near your territory, bringing you unwillingly into contact with this outpost of civilization. Maybe you were captured by hobgoblin slavers and only just won your freedom. How will you adapt to your new circumstances? Will you be able to trust your new allies enough to rely on them? Can you handle the burden of having others relying on you?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature

Winterguard Marshal

Campaign Setting: General

It is your responsibility as a member of the Winterguard to track down and apprehend outlaws, using both your arcane magic and your well-honed blade. What led you to join the Winterguard? Are you a descendant of one of the original eladrin members or a recruit from another race? What are you feelings toward the fallen kingdom of Cendriane? Are you hunting down anyone in particular? If so, who are they, and what did they do to merit your attention?

Personal Quests: Apprehend a wanted fugitive; escort a hostile captive through the wilderness to the Winterguard’s prison; thwart a conspiracy to free a powerful prisoner from the prison.

Associated Skills: Perception, Streetwise

Associated Languages: Elven

Wintertouched

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Eladrin

The Pale Prince looms large in the Winter Lands, and while not the true sovereign of the Winter Court, his power grows. Many fear he will claim the entire court and all the winter fey as his own. Those who come into his service are called the wintertouched, because they are his thralls. For a time, you served the Lord of the Longest Night, but you somehow threw off his bonds. What drew you into his service? What missions did you undertake? Why did you quit? Did a single event lead to this decision? If so, what was it?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Stealth

Witch

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Corellon

You were a witch, a hedge mage, or village wise person. Did you have genuine magical skill or was your knowledge invested in herbal healing? Were you welcome in your community or did they treat you as an outsider?

Associated Quests: Save a village from mystical marauders; identify and befriend angry primal spirits; destroy a temple of Lolth.

Associated Skills: Arcana, Heal, Nature

Witness

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Bahamut

You witnessed a terrible evil, an act so profane you feel as though you will never be clean again. What was this act? What were the circumstances? Did you participate? Did it befall a loved one or friend?

Associated Skills: Insight, Perception

World Walker

Campaign Setting: General

Your nomadic life has taken you on countless strange trails. You are familiar with regions of the world, the Feywild, and the Shadowfell. What path was usual for your clan? Which regions did you spend the most time in? Do you have favorable connections in some of these places? Enemies? What secrets do you know that might lead to adventure?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Wrathwood

Emerald shadows, tall trees, a profusion of sun-dappled sylvan splendor

Type: Geography

Campaign Setting: General

Blanketing a secluded valley, steeped in ancient magic, is the Wrathwood. This brooding forest has never felt the bite of an axe or the flame’s hungry touch, for the woodland defends itself. One does not live in the Wrathwood without the permission of the trees; even the animals and insects sheltering beneath the boughs show deep reverence for their homeland. The Wrathwood does not welcome sentient beings, but those who show deference to and respect for the trees are tolerated and might even be allowed to make their homes in the cool shadows cast by towering redwoods.

You have a special connection to the Wrathwood and carry the lessons of your homeland with you as you venture into the world. Elves, eladrin, gnomes, and other races with strong connections to nature hail from this homeland. Any primal class can originate in the Wrathwood, though druids are the most common.

Associated Skills: Perception, Stealth

Associated Languages: Elven

Wrongs to be Righted

Campaign Setting: General

Dark forces in the Shadowfell wronged you in some way. You survived the experience, but you are left with bitter hatred for your persecutors. Who was wronged and in what way? How did you survive? Do you get back at the people that wronged you or are they still out there?

Associated Skills: Endurance, Intimidate

Aberrant Slayer

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Elan Heritage feat

Madness grows in the shadows, spawning new horrors to assail the world and corrupt it, twist it, and remake it into unspeakable forms. You are wholly consumed with destroying the menace of the Far Realm, though only you know what path brought you to the Awakening. Did you lose your people or loved ones to the aberrant menace? Or is your obsession merely intellectual, built on the knowledge that you must sacrifice yourself to stop this growing doom?

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Perception

Accidental Initiate

Type: Origin

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Avandra

You had a happy childhood that involved a lot of running and playing, and your parents were overjoyed that you were strong and healthy. When you came of age, you set out to explore the world with wanderlust in your veins. Over time, you fell in love with the freedom you experienced while on the road. But you never gave much thought to worshiping Avandra. One fateful day, you happened upon a cleric espousing the virtues of Avandra, and you realized you were a follower without knowing it.

Associated Quests: Establish five new roadside shrines to Avandra in distant locations and stock their hidden caches; blaze a trail into unexplored territory on another plane of existence; work with followers of Ioun and the Raven Queen to establish a new temple to all three deities of fate.

Associated Skills: Insight, Perception

Accursed Lineage

Type: Legacy of Acererak

Campaign Setting: General

Whispers about your family’s lineage haunted your childhood. Claims of being cursed, doomed, or otherwise touched by evil made your early years difficult. These troubles sourced from tales about your family’s history because it is believed you are a descendant of the infamous Acererak.

Possible Minor Quests: You might seek to clear your family’s name, uncover the truth about your family’s past, or follow in the steps of your dark ancestor.

Associated Skills: History, Intimidate, Religion

Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Diplomacy and Intimidate checks when interacting with undead creatures.

Adventurer’s Scion

Type: Legacy of Acererak

Campaign Setting: General

One or both of your parents were adventurers and you grew up listening to stories about their achievements, the monsters they defeated, and the fantastic places they explored. Although each tale was more harrowing than the last, they always came out victorious in the end, with one exception: the Tomb of Horrors. They never speak of it, except to say it was an evil place—dark like no other. The only survivors, they left many friends in that accursed dungeon and warned you against following in their steps.

Possible Minor Quests: You might seek out the fabled Tomb of Horrors to succeed where your parent or parents failed. You could search the dungeons or what lies beyond to rescue their lost comrades.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History, Religion

Benefit: Whenever you make a monster knowledge check, you can reroll the check, but you must use the second result even if it’s worse than the first.

Ancestral Speaker

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Thri-kreen race

You have a strong tie to the Ancestral Khanate. You might have a particularly good memory and recall events that you did not witness. Occasionally, the ancestors could speak through you, imparting cryptic truths. It’s likely you have a magical power, whether arcane, divine, primal, or psionic. You are expected to be an exemplar and a teacher among your people, to honor and share your gifts. How do you take this duty? Why did you set out from your pack into the wider world? Did you anger the khan or another dominant pack mate? Have the ancestors given you a greater purpose? Can you share this goal with others or is it a secret you keep?

Associated Skills: History, Nature

Ancient

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Revenant

When you awoke as a revenant, you discovered centuries had passed. Everyone you knew, loved, and hated is now gone. Why did the Raven Queen call you from death? Do you have special knowledge? How do you see the world now? How do you look at the years you lost?

Associated Skills: Endurance, History

Arcane Agent

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You are a member of a secret arcane society. The public believes that your secret society is composed of thieves and assassins, and it has been outlawed. Your society believes that your particular tradition of magic is unduly prosecuted in the area where you reside. Whether this belief is correct or not, you are an avid supporter of your society, and you look forward to the rare times when you receive secret communiques from other members of your society. Sometimes these messages take the form of magical sendings; others are inked on parchments that are magically treated to flash into ash upon being read. Most are of the “keep the faith” variety, though a few instruct you to undertake minor quests for the society. So far, none of these missions have taxed you or put you in a precarious moral situation.

Associated Skills: Stealth, Streetwise

Arcane Mercenary

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You work for pay. You’ll take coin if that’s all your patron has to offer, but you prefer to be paid in magic. Magic items, magical lore, magical secrets—you value these more than gold.

More than any other form of payment, you want an artifact. Gaining an artifact is your goal. You might even have a specific artifact in mind.

You recognize that artifacts, as magical quasientities with temperaments and goals all their own, cannot be bought and sold by gold. That knowledge only stokes your burning desire to possess one.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Arcane Pariah

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Warlock

You were a student to the finest wizard mentor. Yet, you grew bored with the old mage’s sermonizing. Impatiently, you sought shortcuts to power by making your pact. Breaking this arcane taboo, you were banished by your teacher. Do you revel in the powers and scoff at the dangers of your pact? Have you realized the mistake you’ve made and sought to reconcile with your old mentor?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Streetwise

Arcane Refugee

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

A great conflagration of magic enveloped your home when you were a child. Your family fled, and your parents became bitter, angry people who denounced spells and those who worked them.

Your family never explained to you the nature of the magical disaster that destroyed your home (and perhaps even the city or region where you lived as a child). This event stirred a great curiosity in you because of a strange red scar you have on the back of your hand—a remnant of your flight from the disaster. Some nights, the scar glimmers with its own light.

You began secretly exploring arcane magic. Your study was enhanced when you found an old locked chest in your surviving parents’ chamber. It was filled with dusty, old books describing arcane fields of study. Before long, you were working basic spells on your own—but then your parents found out. You were banished and commanded never to return.

You wander now, looking for ways to increase your arcane knowledge and trying to discover more about the magical disaster that overshadows your life.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Arcane Sentinel

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

A great secret has been entrusted to you, and you are that secret’s sentinel. Your secret might be your guardianship of a tome containing dire and wondrous prophecies, the location of a magical shrine or planar gate, or your identity as the heir of some arcane tradition hunted to extinction except for the last few who cling to their allegiance to the order.

You are not completely alone. A few others share your burden. Sometimes you note the secret sign of your sentinel affiliation scribed in magical runes on the side of a building, written on a dungeon wall, or whispered in a dream. Until the next gathering of your fellow sentinels, reading these secret signposts is the safest way to maintain contact with your fellows without betraying your secret trust.

Associated Skills: Arcana

Arcane Tracker

Type: Society

Campaign Setting: General

You are on the trail of a wondrous thing. It might be a manifestation that appears only under a full moon or an eclipse, a spellwarped beast whose rampages lash into the world from another plane, a lich assassin who killed your master and stole relics meant for you, or a demon child who rides an albino serpent through the dreams of its hapless victims. You pledged yourself to this hunt, knowing full well that the nature of your quarry could lead you far across the world and perhaps even beyond it. You know that when you finally catch what you are chasing, a great trove of arcane knowledge will be yours for the taking.

Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Nature

Arkhosian Totem Rager

Type: Racial

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Dragonborn

The totem ragers of ancient Arkhosia were an elite warrior order that practiced primal traditions to become more ferocious in battle. The order was shattered before the fall of Arkhosia, after being infiltrated and corrupted by infernal spies loyal to Bael Turath. The imperial priests of Erathis declared the totem ragers to be in league with devils and the empire’s enemies, and the order was officially disbanded and outlawed. It survived only in small groups that continued to meet in secret.

In this form, the totem ragers survived the fall of the empire, and you are one of its few, scattered heirs. This tradition has long outlasted the imperial authority that declared it outlaw, so there is little need for secrecy—but the scattered members of your order have practiced secrecy for so long that it is a well-ingrained habit. What’s more, your primal connections are still greeted with suspicion by the clergy of the Imperial Arkhosian temples, though they lack any legal recourse to prosecute you.

Most Arkhosian totem rager characters are barbarians. You might choose to focus on daily rage attack powers that evoke draconic spirits, from rage drake’s frenzy at 1st level to blue dragon rage at 25th. If you can’t find an appropriate rage power at a given level, consider renaming and reflavoring an existing power, so frost wolf rage at 5th level might become white dragon rage in your hands. You might also choose this background element as a warden, applying some of the same cosmetic changes to your daily guardian form powers.

Associated Skills: History, Streetwise

Artist

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Corellon

You were a painter, a sculptor, a poet, a writer, or some other form of artist. What was your medium? Did you study under a master? Who was he or she? Were you well known in your trade? Have you come across any of your works?

Associated Quests: Retrieve an artifact of Corellon or a great work of eladrin art stolen by the drow and hidden in the Underdark; rediscover the fragments of eons-old epic poems and assemble them into a definitive retelling of the battle between Corellon and Gruumsh; locate and rededicate a shrine of Corellon that was destroyed during the Dawn War.

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Aspirant of the Watcher

Campaign Setting: General

You were intrigued by Erak Cobb for a while, during which time you participated in the rites and ceremonies, communed with spirits and, in the end, had your eyes opened to a different world. You might have gone on to further your studies, becoming a druid or maybe even a shaman. Or, you might have abandoned that path to pursue some other destiny. What was your story?

Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature

Astronomer

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

Occultists claim that the stars in the night sky are windows into the Outside, and that to look upon them is to invite madness and physical corruption. Indeed, tales tell of mad warlocks who traffic with alien entities, securing power from the stars themselves. As your mind has opened to new possibilities, you search the heavens for answers regarding your internal wellspring of psionic energy. You examine celestial movements for clues about the world’s fate, and to perhaps catch a glimpse of the terrors that lurk between the twinkling lights.

Associated Skills: Arcana, History

Athlete

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

You spent years earning your living as a competitive athlete. You might throw hammers, spears, or discs, or you could be a sprinter, a swimmer, a gymnast, or an equestrian. You have participated in athletic competitions, both in small settlements and in major cities. In your youth, you participated in athletic challenges for your own enjoyment or fitness, and you found you had a knack for them. Now, you are in top physical condition, and your athletic training has aided you in your martial prowess. Wherever you go, people recognize your name for the great acts of strength or dexterity you perform. Locals challenge you to arm wrestling, throwing, and running, just for a chance to compete against you. Perhaps now you seek to earn renown as a hero, gaining a new kind of glory, or maybe adventuring is just an excuse to continue training and improving your prowess.

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics

Awakened

Type: Birth

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Psionic

Your birth was unremarkable. You were healthy and seemingly normal. Your parents or caretakers quickly noticed, however, that something was amiss. Your newborn eyes gleamed with awareness, the first sign that you possessed the intellect of a full-grown adult. You learned to speak within hours, and you started walking as soon as your muscles could support your weight. You proved to be a prodigy in nearly every discipline.

Your awakened mind gave you advantages over your peers, but your incredible intelligence proved disconcerting to youngsters and adults alike. Did you try to fit in, or did you abandon your peers’ petty concerns and embrace your destiny? How have your childhood experiences influenced your interactions with others? What advantages did you gain from your early development? What events from that time still haunt you?

Associated Skills: Bluff, Intimidate

Back Alley Bravo

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Sorcerer

You have long settled scores at knifepoint. Did you work for a thieves’ guild as an enforcer, or did you fight to repel those same thugs from your neighborhood? How did you come across your fighting skills? Were you taught by an aging master, or did you learn it the hard way? How do you view these activities now? Do you have a grudge against criminals and take on quests to put bandits down? Or is there bad blood between you and your former associates? You have learned to remain unseen when pursued and to stand your ground when you have nowhere to turn.

Associated Skills: Intimidate, Stealth

Baernor Scion

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Human

You are a member of Everwatch’s noble family. You might be next in line to take the throne, or you could be a distant relation with few prospects. How do you get on with your family? With King Festrick? Are you a beloved member or a black sheep? How did the larger family respond when you chose to leave Everwatch and become an adventurer?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History

Banished from the Order

Type: Occupation

Campaign Setting: General

Prerequisite: Follower of Ioun

You were an excavator, trained by the Collectors to find a way into dangerous vaults and trapped tombs, recover precious artifacts, and escape. Unfortunately, one of your missions triggered a terrible curse, and the curator of your chapter cast you out, unwilling to risk the curse falling upon the rest of the order. What is the nature of your curse? Do you seek a cure, or are you resigned to live with the consequences? What artifact cursed you? Do you have it still, or is it in the hands of the Collectors? Perhaps you were part of a team prior to your current adventuring party. Were they also cursed, and if so, what happened to them?

Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Thievery

Associated Languages: Supernal