Gate Warden 5E Background Guide
Planescape has come to 5th Edition D&D, and it has brought a few new player options with it. The book might not offer any new subclasses, but it does provide some new backgrounds – including the Gate Warden. You can get the full scoop with our Gate Warden 5E Guide.
Exploring the Gate Warden Background
The Gate Warden is an interesting option for your next Planescape campaign. Much like other backgrounds released by Wizards of the Coast in recent years, the Gate Warden represents a newer approach. Instead of providing little more than some flavor, a few proficiencies, and maybe a language or two, the Gate Warden offers players a feat right out of the gate.
As the name suggests, a character with the Gate Warden background has spent substantial time near portals to other planes of existence. They are exceedingly comfortable with extraplanar beings, and are accustomed to unusual encounters that most people could never wrap their minds around.
Gate Warden Traits
As you might expect, you pick up a handful of useful traits when you take the Gate Warden background. Specifically, you gain
- Skill Proficiencies: Persuasion, Survival
- Languages: Two of your choice
- Equipment: A ring of keys to unknown locks, a blank book, an ink pen or quill, a bottle of black ink, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a pouch containing 10 gp
Planar Infusion Feature
The cornerstone of this background is the Planar Infusion Feature. You gain a 5E feat known as Scion of the Outer Planes. In addition to gaining this feat, you also how to find free, modest food and housing in the place where you grew up.
This feat infuses your character with planar energy. This infusion gives you two useful bonuses, resistance to a specific type of damage and a cantrip. For example, the Chaotic Outer Plane option gives you resistance to poison damage and allows you to cast minor illusion.
This feat follows some of the same patterns as feats from the Dragonlance book. As you level up, having the Scion of the Outer Planes feat gives you the option to add additional feats at higher levels. At Level 4 and above, a character with this feat could add one of six additional feats that build on Scion of the Outer Planes.
How to Build a Gate Warden
As a Gate Warden, your character is shaped by their experience with and connection to the Outer Planes. Living near a gate to another plane shapes not only your outlook on life but also your physical appearance. Growing up near a planar gate to the Hells could give you tiefling-like physical traits, for example.
Choosing Your Gate Warden Personality Traits
The personality of a Gate Warden is generally shaped by the planar energy that they absorb. Their connection to the Outer Planes not only shapes their physical appearance, but also their personality.
| d6 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | Strange events and otherworldly creatures don’t faze me. |
| 2 | I think in terms of exchange: something for something, nothing for nothing. |
| 3 | I speak with an unusual cadence. |
| 4 | I pepper my speech with words or curses borrowed from planar languages. |
| 5 | I’ve seen enough to know that you can’t take anyone at face value, so I scrutinize everyone. |
| 6 | I have a superstitious habit I picked up from my gate-town, such as touching iron when I’m nervous or arranging objects in a specific order. |
Gate Warden Trinkets
Another flavorful aspect of playing a Gate Warden is picking out a trinket. These trinkets represent the other side of the planar portal your character spent much of their life living close to.
| 6 | Trinket |
|---|---|
| 1 | A tiny vial pendant filled with a drop of honey that glows faintly |
| 2 | A small lead ingot that has a strange thumbprint pressed into it and whispers when held tightly |
| 3 | Two lodestone spheres that chime when they attract each other |
| 4 | A smoldering pebble of coal that, while always hot, doesn’t burn skin, fur, scales, or clothing |
| 5 | A feather that sheds dim light in a 5-foot radius |
| 6 | A ring made from a chain link that, once donned, won’t come off without pulling painfully hard |
Concluding our Gate Warden 5E Guide
That’s it for our Gate Warden 5E Guide. This background is interesting and has some similarities to the Planar Philosopher, but it is also fairly specific to the Planescape setting. Whether you like this background or not will really depend on how you feel about the feat that comes with it.
