Hey all,

I just made a blog post that summarizes the skills that each culture starts with for quick reference, as well as some commentary on why this skill set makes sense for each culture. You can find it here.

I discovered some things that I didn't really even think to look for. For example, Bardings and Woodmen both tend toward being generalists, with the longest list of skills that they have some ranks in. The skill groups with the weakest representation in the Bardings are Survival and Movement, which happen to be the strongest groups for the Woodmen. Other odd findings included the fact that Beornings have a dearth of Rank 2 skills (representing a strong focus in a relatively large number of skills without giving up some competence in a breadth of skills), and the fact that Dwarves tend toward specialization (they lean toward lots of Rank 2 and 3 skills), but they have a representative from each skill group that gets a lot of attention. Perhaps this signifies a type of well-roundedness in which they have their own way of doing things and they don't like deviating from it.

Anyways, nothing earth-shattering but since I did the work I figured I'd share it.

Nice post!

Here's the next thing I wanted to dissect, cultural patterns for the different backgrounds. Should make creating custom ones a little easier without breaking any cultural assumptions.

I'll be interested in seeing what you come up with; especially if you can map it out the way you did with Cultural skills. Of course, besides the choices of Favoured skill and Distinctive features, I am curious about a pattern in the six different Attribute sets.

For example, the six Barding Backgrounds determine basic scores for Body, Heart, and Wits; these are the choices: 5-7-2; 4-6-4; 6-6-2; 4-7-3; 5-6-3; and 5-5-4.

This means that Bardings have an average Body of 4.83, Heart of 6.17, and Wits of 3.0. They have a median Body of 4.75, Heart of 6.25, and Wits of 3.0. Their strengths are clearly Heart, then Body, and then Wits. Comparing these facts to the Starting Resources Table on p. 75 of the AB, Barding characters will likely have the highest starting Endurance (starting with 22 + Heart).

I wonder how the other Cultures come out. I'll let you do the research!

I actually didn't bother with averages. I figure since any one character only has 1 background, what is most important (when making up your own, especially) is which attribute tends to be highest, second highest, and lowest. The post is live, but here's the breakdown by culture (surprisingly symmetrical):

Bardings: Heart > Body > Wits

Beornings: Body > Heart > Wits

Dwarves: Body > Wits > Heart

Elves: Wits > Body > Heart

Hobbits: Heart > Wits > Body

Woodmen: Wits > Heart > Body

I think the biggest take-home message is that if you want a decent value in a culture's weakest area, your best option is to go with a more well-rounded option (like 5, 4, 5) as opposed to a more polarized set (7, 5, 2).

Good point on Bardings having the highest starting Endurance on average. Likewise Hobbits will generally have the highest starting Hope. Elves and Woodmen will typically have the best Parry, while Beornings and Dwarves will rock the highest damage values.

It's interesting, because before I did this analysis I assumed that backgrounds pretty much boiled down to "you have 14 points, divide them up among the 3 attributes while making sure that values fall between 2 and 7." The cultural influence certainly makes things a bit more interesting, but I'll confess that I tend to be drawn to the more well-rounded packages in general, so if I were to create my own background I'd probably go that route.