Street Scholar

You grew up in the slums, streets or in the care of a neglectful guardian. Many of your disadvantaged peers never learned to read. However, by the charity of some do-gooder or through your own cunning, you learned to decipher text. You saw literacy as your ticket out of poverty and did everything you could to assuage your thirst for knowledge--even sneaking into libraries and stealing books.

Skill Proficiencies

History or Arcana, Survival or Stealth

Tool Proficiencies

Lock picking

Languages

One spoken (but not read), another read (but not spoken)

Equipment

Lock pick, set of common clothes, a book or a bundle of documents and letters, a belt pouch with 10gp

Customization

Depending on the environment in which your character lived, they would have had access to particular books. Work with your DM to figure out what your character has learned from the texts they could get their hands on.

Feature

Secret Passage

Your character can locate any way in or out of a building. If the entrance/exit requires a intelligence or dexterity check to access, your character has advantage.

Suggested Characteristics

Street Scholars, much like urchins, lack a well provided for home. For whatever reason, their dwellings are unstable, unsafe, or in abject poverty. Much of their time is spent looking for food and providing for themselves. However, much like a sage, Street Scholars spend every possible minute reading and contemplating. Your character values knowledge and survival.

Personality Trait

1.) I guard my knowledge. It is one of my only advantages in this life and I will not share it with just anyone.

2.) I can often be seen scratching letters and figures into the dust and dirt at my feet.

3.) I mistrust those older, richer, and more powerful than me.

4.) I often speak in riddles.

5.) I prefer to look unkempt and grimy.

6.) I recite poetry under my breath.

7.) I may look lost in thought, but the moment I am in danger (or somebody makes a loud noise) I fly out of my seat.

8.) I gravitate towards shadows, corners and holes. I don't like to be seen or noticed.

Ideal

1.) Educate: All people deserve an education. (good)

2.) Aspiration: I wish to know all there is to know. (any)

3.) Equality: The wealthy and powerful need to know what we lower folk are capable of. (chaotic)

4.) Repay Debt: I owe all I am to the one who taught me to read. I must repay them in whatever way I can. (lawful)

6.) Power & Retribution: Knowledge will give me the power to punish those responsible for my impoverished/neglected childhood. (evil)

7.) Study: I am committed to my studies and to nothing else. (neutral)

Bond

1.) I learned terrible secrets in the desk of one of the houses I broke into. I have to decide what to do with this knowledge.

2.) My life's philosophy was challenged by the book I carry. I am still working out what I now believe.

3.) I was cast out of my village when I was caught pulling books from a Duke's private library.

4.) Half of what I make I send home to the orphanage I grew up in.

5.) I set up a school in my hometown for underprivileged youths, but it was burned down by Orcs.

6.) The local military learned of my intelligence and forced me to serve as a tactical adviser. I deserted and there is a bounty on my head.

Flaw

1.) If I have my hands on a book I haven't read, I can't focus on anything else until I have read it.

2.) I've been known to end arguments in fist fights. If you're petulant enough to insist I'm wrong, you deserve a slap on the mouth.

3.) I will not even speak to authority figures.

4.) I still break into houses just to see if they have any books I haven't read.

5.) It can take days, sometimes weeks for me to make a decision.

6.) I will go to any length to disprove something a snobby better-than-thou says.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/5ebackgrounds/showentry.php?e=54&catid=1#ixzz3eyj8XLMt