Un-Downgrading Backgrounds

So, of course, Backgrounds were completely garbaged in the change to 5.5e. In terms of interestingness, in terms of roleplaying hooks, in terms of everything good that matters: 2024 (5.5e) Backgrounds are strictly a bad and terrible downgrade from 2014 (5.0e) Backgrounds. Part of the downgrade is part and parcel of 5.5e having disposed of the Trait/Ideal/Bond/Flaw system entirely; part of it is that each Background came with a roleplay-based ability, not just More Numbers -- example, the Noble background's Position of Privilege feature:

[...P]eople are inclined to think the best of you. You are welcome in high society, and people assume you have the right to be wherever you are. The common folk make every effort to accommodate you and avoid your displeasure, and other people of high birth treat you as a member of the same social sphere. You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to.

That's way cooler than 5.5e's Noble background, which gives you the Skilled feat. (Woo. Three skill or tool proficiencies. I cannot restrain my exuberance.)

How do we fix it?

First instinct is to throw away the 5.5e Background system almost entirely, just say use 5.0e Backgrounds instead (maybe mix in the ability-scores-from-Background from 5.5e). But Origin feats are actually an okay thing to have from a homebrewing perspective (most -- all? -- of the feats I've homebrewed are Origin feats).

My second instinct, which I would and will probably go with, is to make the special feature of each 5.0e Background available as an Origin Feat, which may be taken as the Origin Feat associated with that Background in place of the listed feat.

In fact, more precisely: The Feature of any 5.0e Background is now an Origin Feat of the same name as the Feature; you may choose that Origin Feat in lieu of the feat listed for the 5.5e version of that Background, or for any other Background that it makes sense with.

Something like:

Acolyte: Shelter of the Faithful (Acolyte) or Magic Initiate (cleric)
Artisan: Guild Membership (Guild Artisan) or Crafter
Charlatan: False Identity (Charlatan) or Skilled
Criminal: Criminal Contact (Criminal) or Bad Reputation (Sailor) or Alert
Entertainer: By Popular Demand (Entertainer) or Musician
Farmer: Tough
Guard: Watcher's Eye (Guard) or Alert
Guide: Wanderer (Outlander) or Rustic Hospitality (Folk Hero) or Magic Initiate (druid)
Hermit: Discovery (Hermit, PHB) or Wanderer (Outlander, PHB) or Healer
Merchant: Guild Membership (Guild Artisan) or Lucky
Noble: Position of Privilege (Noble) or Retainers (Noble) or Skilled
Sage: Researcher (Sage) or Discovery (Hermit) or Magic Initiate (wizard)
Sailor: Ship's Passage (Sailor) or Bad Reputation (Sailor) or Tavern Brawler
Scribe: Skilled
Soldier: Military Rank (Soldier) or Savage Attacker
Wayfarer: City Secrets (Urchin) or Lucky

The 5.5e Origin Feats are of course somewhat more powerful, on the whole, than the 5.0 Background Features, which may present a bit of a hurdle in terms of anybody actually making this decision. Maybe count two upgraded-Background-Features as one regular Origin Feat (which are in turn maybe about half the strength of a General Feat)? Or maybe give upgraded-Background-Features a +1 to an Ability Score like a General Feat has? Neither of these possibilities is without flaw.

(And also we'll gently suggest that players pick up Traits/Ideals/Bonds/Flaws from 5.0e, as a matter of put it somewhere near your written background, though that's more training wheels for roleplaying than anything experienced players desperately need.)

Age Categories in 5.5e

So, 5e and 5.5e doesn't have Age Categories. I'm on the record as enjoying aging effects, but admittedly, it does get a bit fiddly, doesn't it. Figuring out what age category an elf is as compared to a human of the same age, or whatever? Fiddly.

The Modifiers

I do rather like 3.5e's numbers:

• At middle age, a character gains -1 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha
• At old age, a character gains an additional -2 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha
• At venerable age, a character gains an additional -3 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha

So being Middle-Aged is strictly a sidegrade; Old is a downgrade (with a silver lining); Venerable is an even worse downgrade (with a silver lining). Extreme min/maxers might choose to be Old or Venerable; Middle Age is an eminently reasonable choice for a moderate min/maxer.

What Age Category Am I?

We can probably mostly basically just use 3.5e's numbers for what age category a character of a given species is is at any given age.

(I believe 5.x canon is that elves age like humans until adulthood, and then just stay there; the relevant 3.5e charts indicate that they used to definitively hit Adulthood at 110 years; we could split the difference and let them Young Adult at a more human-like age)

Aging Effects

I used to use specific year amounts for aging magic and effects, but I'm leaning towards, instead: you don't advance specific year numbers; if you fail a save, you straight-up advance an age category; elves just have advantage on the save.

Maybe mix it up with a touch of what 3.5e used to have you do for Negative Levels: at the end of the day, make a save vs it becoming permanent. ...no, I low-key hate that, because I hated that about NLs in 3.5e.

Ooooh, here's an idea: You know how if you have 6 levels of Exhaustion, you just straight-up die? What if, instead of death, if you have 6 levels of Exhaustion (perhaps: "and at least one of them is from a magical or supernatural effect"), you straight-up advance an age category? Or maybe you go unconscious at Exhaustion 6 either way, and if you fail a save you also advance an age category?

On Bringing Back Ability Damage

In D&D 3.5e, we had Ability Damage. Things (especially poison, but also other stuff, especially various creatures) could deal damage directly to an ability score -- if you take 1d6 Strength Damage, your Strength score goes down by 1d6 (so your Strength modifier correspondingly goes down by about half of 1d6).

If any of your Abilities reach 0 from damage, you are, depending on the Ability, paralyzed (a physical score), unconscious (a mental score), or dead (Constitution). If you take an 8-hour sleep, you heal damage in each damaged Ability by 1; if you take a 24-hour sleep, you heal each by 2. You can also take Ability Drain, which is basically the same but it doesn't heal without magic.

The designers of 5th Edition, of course, judged this all absurdly fiddly and mathy -- not only do you have to track each of your current Ability scores separate from your actual Ability scores (plus keep track of how much is Damage and how much is Drain), you also have to do the (x-10)/2 (rounded down) thing for each one to calculate your current and actual Ability modifiers -- and, probably rightly and correctly, dispensed with the whole thing.

I do find its loss very mildly unfortunate. It did allow a fair bit of differentiation between monsters. This guy just paralyzes you, that guy gradually makes you more sluggish until you're paralyzed, the other guy makes you dumber until you're paralyzed, and so on.

To the rescue: the OSR stylings of Swedish TTRPG Dragonbane!

In Dragonbane, each Ability score can have or not have a Condition. If you have a Condition in an Ability score, every time you roll that Ability for anything, you simply roll with what in 5e would be called Disadvantage (in Dragonbane, it's called a "Bane").

Porting that back to 5e, we could, while maintaining a high level of simplicity, have 3 (or even 4) levels of "ability score damage":

• Regular, undamaged (roll normally)
  If you then fail a save vs Ability Damage:
• Damaged (all rolls with that Ability have disadvantage)
  If you then fail another save vs Ability Damage in an already-damaged Ability:
• Paralyzed/Unconscious (or, if Constitution, unconscious and making Death saves)
  We could also introduce some sort of blessing/boon/etc that goes the other direction:
  
• Blessed or something (all rolls with that Ability have advantage, with the side benefit that you have an extra level of buffer against Ability Damage to that Ability -- failing a save vs Ability Damage when you're blessed in that Ability just brings you down to normal)

We could take Dragonbane's names for the Conditions (Exhausted, Sickly, Dazed, Angry, Scared, and Disheartened), some of which are already used in 5e (plus the term "Condition" itself has a 5e meaning, too). We could just call them Bane and Boon to Abilities, terms which are mostly not already in use.

Dual Types

I have heard tell that, early in the development of 5e, the notion of creatures/races with two Types was thrown around, and eventually ruled against. I don't know how it was meant to work at the time, but it does fill a much-needed gap.

Early on in published 5e, PCs could only be Humanoid. The Eberron book made Warforged simply Humanoid, rather than the old 3.5e jerry-rig of Construct(living construct) that made them technically Constructs but also work for PC purposes (mostly resurrection).

Then, later on, they abandoned that principle and started publishing races that are other Types, such as the Fairy in Wild Beyond the Witchlight. They had realized it's not super important for PCs to be Humanoid -- although there are still no properly Undead options (the three Lineages in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft are Humanoid, but with various Undead-esque properties). I hear tell there is or will be an actual Construct option (the Autognome?).

My solution to there being no Undead PC options, Warforged being nonsensically Humanoid, and so on: bring back dual Types!

• Some races -- including warforged (humanoid/construct), tiefling (humanoid/fiend), aasimar (humanoid/celestial), dragonborn (humanoid/dragon), kobold (humanoid/dragon), and alithi elves (humanoid/plant) -- have dual creature type.
• If any favorable effect would affect either or both of your types, it affects you.
• If any unfavorable effect would affect one of your types but not the other, you can be affected by it but you have advantage on saves against it.
• If any effect would affect neither of your types, you are immune to it.
• If any effect would affect both of your types, you do not gain immunity or resistance to it from your types.

The one peculiarity here is: what happens if you have an effect that has a positive effect on one of your Types and a negative effect on your other Type? I'm not sure if there are any actual effects that heal a living thing but do radiant damage to Undead, but a character with both the Humanoid and Undead Types would have to deal with it if it does. My instinct is that you are affected by both -- you are, in that example, healed and take radiant damage (albeit with advantage on any saves against it). But this is a rare enough circumstance that I'd leave it up to individual DM adjudication.