Additional Backgrounds

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Here are some additional backgrounds available for characters in the Return:

Guard

You have spent much of your life guarding things. This could have been as a merchant's guard, a town guard, or even just watching fractious younger siblings. The experience has made you alert for danger and good at figuring out where it might come from.

Skill Proficiencies: Investigation, Perception
Tool Proficiencies: One type of gaming set
Languages: One common language of your choice
Equipment: One gaming set, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 15 gp

Feature - Informants: You have a network of people who can feed you the word on the street. They are not very reliable and need to be paid or coerced into helping you, but you know to who to ask to find out what shady doings are going on. Occasionally one will come to you with useful information, but mostly you must go to them.

Outcast

You have never fit in to your community. You may have had a home as a child, but had few or no friends and perhaps no family. You learned to fend for yourself and protect yourself against bullies.

Skill proficiencies: Insight, Intimidation
Tool Proficiencies: Two types of artisan's tools, gaming sets, or musical instruments
Equipment: One set of artisan's tools, gaming set, or musical instrument (of your choice), a worn set of playing cards, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp.

Feature - Sense Hostility: You are constantly alert for people who might bully or attack you. When you first encounter a humanoid, you have an immediate sense whether they are hostile or not and whether they are willing to talk or would be inclined to move to physical assault regardless.

Politician

You are naturally politically ambitious. Whatever organization you find yourself in, you work to move up in rank and become a leader. This could be a temple hierarchy, an artisan's guild, or a city's council. You have a sense for people and power and a way of getting them to do what you want them to.

Skill Proficiencies: Deception, Persuasion
Languages: Two languages of your choice
Equipment: A bottle of black ink, a quill, 10 sheets of paper, a collection of correspondence with other members of your organization, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 15 gp

Feature - Political Sense: You have a sense for power. In any group of people, after interacting with them for at least a few minutes, you can tell who is the leader if there is one. With a longer interaction, you get a sense of political currents in the group -- who are allies and who are enemies. This won't necessarily let you see through a deliberate deception, but will tell you about interactions that aren't obvious on the surface but aren't being deliberately hidden.

Variant - Honest Politician: You have the Insight skill proficiency instead of Deception.