New Background: Farmer

You gather resources from the land. Perhaps you are a member of the gentry managing a large area of land, or you are a serf who owes a share of the harvest to a local lord in exchange for land and protection. You are familiar with reading the weather, the turning of the seasons, and rural life, though you may be less comfortable in the city or lack knowledge of courtly etiquette.

 

Skill Proficiencies: Survival, Nature

Tool Proficiencies: Farmer’s Tools. This includes a bag of seeds, a spade, a trowel, and a bucket. Proficiency with these tools lets you plant a garden or add your proficiency bonus on any attempt to move soil.

Languages: Choose one language

Equipment: Farmer’s tools, an almanac with predictions of weather and tides, tack for a horse or other mount, 40 feet of stout rope, sturdy boots, a broad hat, warm woolens, and a leather pouch containing 10 gp

 

Crops and Flocks
Most farmers take care of a variety of animals and plants to ensure that even if one fails, they can make do with the other. Woodsmen who hunt game or gather firewood from the wilderness or fisherman are other types of farmers. Pick 1-3 of the crops shown below, or roll randomly.

   

Feature: Harvest
A farmer in the wilderness or in a cultivated field can almost always find something to eat or water to drink. By spending an hour, the farmer can find some supplies—perhaps catching fish in a lake, or trap a rabbit, or dig up tubers. During the summer and fall, the farmer can roll 2d6 and the result is the number of days of food for one person that is harvested. During the spring and winter, the farmer rolls 2d4. The DM may apply penalties or not allow the harvest if the terrain is truly desolate.

 

Suggested Characteristics
Farmers are hard-working, humble people. They know that they are only one bad harvest away from starvation, and try to store up as much as they can. They also know that the weather and their luck can always turn, and try to help others knowing that one day they may be seeking help themselves. For that reason, they tend to be part of close communities.

         

Variant Farmer: Groundskeeper
Instead of a rural community, you might have been working for a nobleman as a gardener or a gamekeeper. In this case you are familiar with fine manners and courtly politics, though you also know enough to stay out of the way of the nobles. Your duty to the noble will take a fair amount of your time, however, and you often get odd or even bizarre requests, such as ripping out the rose bushes you just planted last year because they have gone out of fashion, or trapping and bringing back white foxes for the next foxhunt because the red ones are too common.