Clan Crafter 5e
The Stout Folk are well known for their artisanship and the worth of their handiworks, and you have been trained in that ancient tradition. For years you labored under a dwarf master of the craft, enduring long hours and dismissive, sour-tempered treatment in order to gain the fine skills you possess today.
You are most likely a dwarf, but not necessarily- particularly in the North, the shield dwarf clans learned long ago that only proud fools who are more concerned for their egos than their craft turn away promising apprentices, even those of other races. If you aren't a dwarf, however, you have taken a solemn oath never to take on an apprentice in the craft: it is not for non-dwarves to pass on the skills of Moradin's favored children. You would have no difficulty, however, finding a dwarf master who was willing to receive potential apprentices who came with your recommendation.
Source: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
Tool Proficiencies: One type of artisan's tools
Languages: Dwarvish or one other of your choice if you already speak Dwarvish
Equipment: A set of artisan's tools with which you are proficient, a maker's mark chisel used to mark your handiwork with the symbol of the clan of crafters you learned your skill from, a set of traveler's clothes, and a pouch containing 5gp and a gem worth 10gp.
Features
Respect of the Stout Folk: As well respected as clan crafters are among outsiders, no one esteems them quite so highly as dwarves do. You always have free room and board in any place where shield dwarves or gold dwarves dwell, and the individuals in such a settlement might vie among themselves to determine who can offer you (and possibly your compatriots) the finest accommodations and assistance.
Suggested Characteristics
Use the tables for the guild artisan background as the basis for your traits and motivations, modifying the entries when appropriate to suit your identity. (For instance, consider the words "guild" and "clan" to be interchangeable.)
Your bond is almost certainly related to the master or the clan that taught you, or else to the work that you produce. Your ideal might have to do with maintaining the high quality of your work or preserving the dwarven traditions of craftsmanship.
Should You Be A Clan Crafter?
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Clan Crafter is one of many added backgrounds that don’t deserve to exist; it takes the Guild Artisan background presented in the Player’s Handbook, makes it marginally worse, and repackages it in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide.
Feature: Respect of the Stout Folk
Respect of the Stout Folk is a positive relationship with some Sword Coast factions. That’s not a meaningful background feature you’re going to reasonably use as the game progresses, especially when stacked against modern backgrounds that offer you feats. It doesn’t garner the party anything- I’d find it about as useful as simply being a decent person to the dwarves.
At most, your DM can use this to integrate the dwarves into the narrative. That is how every backstory works, though, agnostic of feature.
Skills:
Insight has a welcome place at many tables as a tool for deducing attitude; it helps your group read a situation. It's not the most pervasive ability check, but comes up often enough it can feel solid to have.
History unfortunately rarely comes up, and when it does, it normally expands out worldbuilding your DM probably wanted to give out to you freely anyway. As a DM, I want to show off my cool ideas, often to the point where it drags the pace of the game down. Progressing the game usually doesn’t come from making successful History checks.
Other Proficiencies
Artisan’s Tools proficiency is fine and all, especially with the update they received in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. You can do some fun stuff, especially early in the game with these. You can get them through the Guild Artisan background.
Equipment
You might notice that the only difference between the Guild Artisan equipment and Clan Crafter is a chisel in place of an introduction letter from your guild. That chisel could simply be included in your artisan’s tools that both give you. There are no other elements of note here.
Bonus Tables
There are no bonus tables here- it just tells you to reference the tables in Guild Artisan, because again, this has no reason to exist. It’s a flavorful retracing of an existing background with some “dwarf” elements lumped in and no expansion on those elements outside the starting block of text.
All Together
If you want what it represents thematically, it fits perfectly within the recommended tables it repackages for you while giving you Persuasion over History. Even if you’re in the Sword Coast, you will find more value in Guild Membership within guilds associated with the gold dwarves than you’ll find Clan Crafter offers you.
This shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t deserve to count as a background. It’s barely a variant of Guild Artisan; Guild Merchant is more of complete background than this is- at least that offers you navigator’s tools instead of artisan’s tools.
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