===README===
Custom Class Backgrounds and Build Compendium


===Changes to Harbinger451’s mod===
Some of the twelve vanilla background questions are “locked in” or coded for their respective class BIOGs, so as to take input from the player’s choices to create a Character History. You can access this in-game from your Character Sheet. Harbinger’s mod corrects and fixes the vanilla BIOGs and history strings to make them work better. Again, you need that mod as a basis for this update to work properly.

The number of hard-coded questions differ by class. Some character histories only take three inputs from the BIOG questions whereas others take up to seven. Regardless, I have left these special questions largely intact, only tweaking some of them slightly in the streamlining process. Ordering all these questions in a large spreadsheet to see what I had to keep and what could be modified was probably more than half the work on this mod.

Some BIOGs had very redundant questions in vanilla, such as three different questions enquiring about thief skills. Other questions appear to have been considered for all BIOGs, but are strangely missing from one or two BIOGs. I have streamlined all this, so that all BIOGs now have the same number and types of questions, and generally as similar questions as possible without interfering with the character history creation process. This gives you ample opportunity to pick up suitable starting equipment and tweak your skills to preference. I have also rearranged the order of the questions in the BIOGs to make them more uniform. That way, it will feel even more as the same BIOG with only subtle differences, regardless of what DFU interprets your custom class to be most similar to (see template below).

One notorious question from Daggerfall BIOGs enforced a penalty of sorts to your character. You were supposed to pick what your character has trouble with. The answer “staying awake and alert” was the best option, as it invoked a fatigue mechanic that was ultimately missing from the game, so it had no consequence. However, this is not very newbie friendly, and at best you end up with a useless question with no roleplaying or build potential at all. So instead, I have remade this final question (question 12) into a positive that leverages the additive resistance mechanics of DFU. If you have a race from Races Redone with a resistance to magic (Breton), poison (Redguard) or disease (e.g. Wood Elf), you can take the corresponding benefit to gain a full immunity. You can also stack it with such resistances from the ClassMaker. If not, you can get a nice dodge bonus instead by selecting the fourth option, which is always useful. This question is probably the one that gives you the greatest bonus, so it is specifically considered in the character build compendium that comes with these BIOGs.

Finally, there are two potential errors in the vanilla questions that I have remedied in these updated BIOGs:
1) It seems as if reputations with nobles/scolars/commoners etc. as represented by the sliders during class creation only take inputs of 0, -5 or +5. They cannot have other values. Some vanilla BIOG questions increase or decrease them using other values, which I have changed to make the replies meaningful.
2) Vanilla Daggerfall has reputation codes for faiths (Q11, “What god, if any, do you worship?”) that point to the respective temples. However, to advance in ranks with a temple, you actually need to increase the reputation with the respective gods themselves (they have other faction numbers). The provided BIOGs have this corrected.

All things combined, the updated BIOGs are still very recognizable from vanilla, but they function better for planning your custom character and provide a smidgeon more starting power.


===BIOG Template===
1. +6 to a main skill
2. character motivation (various minor bonuses)
3. +6 to misc skill
4. +item, non-weapon or wpn in material tiers
5. +item, non-weapon or wpn in material tiers
6. +6 to a main skill
7. +6 to a misc skill
8. +12 to a language skill
9. reduced reputation with social group, sometimes a minor item from stealing from this group
10. +6 to weapon skill + silver weapon associated with skill
11. character faith, increased rep with divine faction
12. increased resistance of choice or improved attack evasion