DESCRIPTION

Description

This mod makes all 73 background character traits into hero skills. In this way, there is no forced RNG. Be aware that recruitable heroes over level 1 may already have a background hero skill, but it can be respecced. Additionally, for technical and balance reasons, affinity-granting background hero skills cannot be respecced (but they will never be chosen unless you pick them.) The effects of affinity-granting background hero skills are applied when you end your turn.

Purpose

There are a couple of things this mod effectively allows for:

1. All heroes can have meaningful backgrounds. Since it is difficult to refresh the recruitable hero pool, you will not be forced to recruit heroes with useless backgrounds (i.e. a hero with a stability boost background when you have Dark culture.)
2. Ruler heroes get access to background character trait modifiers. Since ruler heroes do not have access to these in vanilla, it is optimal to put all of your best gear on some recruited hero. By making background character traits into hero skills, rulers can be just as strong as recruited heroes.

Balance

While making this mod, I realized that there are a lot of potentially abusable background traits. To solve some of the balance problems (especially from the lack of RNG,) I made a handful of choices: 

1. Each hero can only have 1 background hero skill. (In vanilla, pre-defined template heroes like Jonas the Strong can have up to 2 background character traits, but all regular heroes have 1 background character trait.)
2. Each background hero skill requires 1 skill point.
3. Each affinity-granting background hero skill can only be chosen once for each player. This background hero skill cannot be respecced. (This will prevent abusing these skills to quickly get many high tier tomes.)

If you want heroes to have any number of background hero skills, check out Backgrounds Are Hero Skills - Unrestricted (other than this change, it is the same.)

Future Balance Ideas

I would like for heroes to have more than 1 background skill but it could be too strong. Here are some ideas I am considering (there can be a mix of ideas:)

1. Having a background skill in 1 category will not limit you from having a background skill in another category.
2. More powerful background skills require more skill points.
3. Heroes can select another background skill at certain level intervals.
4. Background skills are divided into tiers based on strength. You must select a lower tier skill before obtaining a higher tier skill.
5. Background skills can be respecced (there is no way to prevent players from abusing temporary unit unlocks.)
6. Players can get the same background skills on different heroes.

Used Files

• Definitions_HeroSkills.rpk
• SharedModifiers_UnitProperties.rpk
• Traits_Background_Characters.rpk (MODIFIED!)
• Lords.rpk (MODIFIED!)
• Gameplay_Icons.clb
• 1 vanilla language file (i.e. EN.mo)

REQUIREMENTS

Age Of Wonders 4

Full game

FORUM LINKS