Everyone on all of my social feeds is going wild for Avowed, the new open-world RPG from Obsidian, the folks behind Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds. A lot of people playing a fairly hardcore RPG means a lot of people having anxiety over character creation, though, so allow me to help.
When you start up a new game in Avowed, you’re given some choices that seem extremely meaningful, and thus, are kind of scary to make. Specifically, you choose a fictional background for your character, which confers role-playing bonuses, starting stats, and even affects which weapon you start the game with. Sounds important, right?
Well, the good news is that your starting background doesn’t matter that much in Avowed. That needs to be said and emphasized as much as possible before we get into what you get from each background. You can choose any background and still have the experience with Avowed that you want to have. Here’s how it all works.
How backgrounds in Avowed work
When you create a character in Avowed, you’re given a choice between five backgrounds:
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Court Augur
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Arcane Scholar
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Vanguard Scout
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Noble Scion
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War Hero
Each of these backgrounds gives you a few sentences of backstory to work with, but that’s not all. Every background has a default set of stats spread across the six primary attributes you’ll level up in Avowed: Constitution, Might, Intellect, Dexterity, Perception, and Resolve. On top of that, your selected background dictates what weapon you start the game with in the tutorial zone.
There are a couple of crucial things to note before we move on. First, the starting stats for each background are merely suggestions; like any old-school RPG, you can fiddle with these during character creation as you see fit, so you’re not locked into your background’s default statistical profile. Second, the point about backgrounds dictating your starting weapon is only a concern during the 45-minute tutorial sequence. After that, you can use whatever weapons and wear whatever armor you want.
Once Avowed properly gets started, you have total freedom over how you allocate skill points and approach combat. Your background doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with that, unless you want it to for role-playing reasons. Role-playing should be your primary motivator for picking a background, because the most meaningful thing it gets you over the course of a full playthrough is occasional an dialogue choice you wouldn’t get if you chose another background.
What each background in Avowed gets you
With all of that in mind, let’s talk about which background is right for you. Again, this is primarily a role-playing choice, so I can’t tell you what to choose, exactly. But I can at least lay out what each background does and give some broad recommendations.
Court Augur
Is your favorite Lord of the Rings character Grima Wormtongue? Court Augur might be the background for you. The backstory here is that you’re a supernaturally perceptive sort who wound up as the emperor’s personal mystic, with a penchant for influencing matters from the shadows. Your starting weapon will be a mace, so I hope you enjoy bashing dudes in the head.
Court Augurs get small bonuses to Perception, Dexterity, Intellect, and Resolve. If you stick to those attributes, your character will be best suited for agile, ranged confrontations rather than brute force. Speaking from personal experience, that’s kind of a tough way to play Avowed because you can die rather easily, but it’s a lot of fun, too.
Arcane Scholar
Arcane Scholar is probably the easiest background to explain: you’re a nerd. This is the background I chose because it gives you a lot of dialogue options where you get to be a know-it-all egghead about basically anything. Arcane Scholars start with daggers.
Statistically, an Arcane Scholar starts with bonuses to Might, Perception, Dexterity, Intellect, and Resolve. It’s a pretty well-rounded background, and might be my personal recommendation if you simply can’t make a choice on your own. You can turn that statistical profile into basically any style of play.
Vanguard Scout
Do you tire of court intrigue and just wish you could hang out in the woods instead? Vanguard Scout might be the background for you. As the emperor’s personal hunter and tracker, nothing will get past your keen senses of perception. Vanguard Scouts start with axes.
If you go this route, you’ll get small bonuses to all six base attributes, but mostly Constitution, Dexterity, and Perception. Vanguard Scouts are survivable and smart, in other words.
Noble Scion
Do you live for court intrigue? Allow me to introduce you to Noble Scion, the rich kid starting background in Avowed. Noble Scions start with swords in the tutorial area.
This is another background that gets stat points in all six attributes to start, but the main points of emphasis are Might, Constitution, Dexterity, and Perception. You’ll have a little bit of brawn to go along with your brains, making this a pretty good starting background for any type of player, as well.
War Hero
Last but not least, War Hero is exactly what you think it is. You’re an elite spearman in service of the emperor, with a distinguished record of battlefield successes. Obviously, your starting weapon will be a spear.
War Heroes get big bonuses right away to Resolve, Might and Constitution, so this is definitely the background for aggressive, in-your-face fighters who don’t want to bother as much with magic or ranged weapons.
Again, it needs to be said that none of these choices are necessarily binding when it comes to the Avowed gameplay experience. You can play however you want to play with any starting background. All it changes, in the aggregate, are dialogue choices. But if you’ve been struggling to make a choice, hopefully this helped.
