# 5.1 - Background Rules

Background answers what your character did before adventuring. **V4.0 does not create or replace backgrounds.** Use the background rules already selected for the campaign.

## Choose One Native Background System

| Campaign Rules | What You Gain |
| --- | --- |
| 2014-style D&D 5e | The background's listed skills, tools or languages, equipment, and narrative feature. Use the campaign's normal ability-score generation. |
| 2024-style D&D 5e | The background's listed ability-score options, Origin feat, skills, tool, and equipment. |
| Existing Hiraeth background | Exactly the benefits on that background's live BookStack page, interpreted through the campaign's selected edition. |
| Campaign custom background | The benefits allowed by the campaign's normal background-building rule. |

## No Double-Dipping

- Do not take both a 2014 background feature and a 2024 Origin feat unless the campaign gives both to every character.
- Do not take ability-score increases from v4.0; it grants none.
- Do not take a second set of skills, tools, languages, or equipment from this chapter.
- Heritage and Ancestral Details remain separate because they grant narrow language, story access, or physical expression—not another profession package.

## Ability Scores

Your ability-score increases come from whichever character-creation method the campaign uses. If a 2014-style background does not assign ability scores, that does not cause v4.0 to assign them. Use the same rule used by every other character in that campaign.

## Customizing a Background

If the campaign permits custom backgrounds, follow that edition's or campaign's native customization procedure. Heritage can inspire the background's story, but never supplies extra mechanical selections.