Robin Hood is an iconic scout: moving through the wilderness unseen and dropping arrows through the hapless tax collectors' apple from a hundred paces. He can appear out of the brush, attack, and fade back without the opponent having a chance to reply. Usually scouts are part of a larger group, whether a band of merry men, as advance guard for a squadron of soldiers, or checking the trail ahead for a band of adventurers.
A ranger, on the other hand, is more like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. He can smell danger, track prey for miles over rocks, or calm a horse with a whisper. A woodsman, usually a loner (though sometimes with an animal companion), a ranger is often at home with a campfire, the stars, and a good knife. His skill set is very similar to a scout's, but with a basis more in nature than in proficiency with stealth or weapons.
What I have done when I running games that don't have this built in is to introduce the concept of tags. In other games, they're called different things, and it's a fairly common technique, though perhaps presented in a different manner.
Each PC when writing his background, tags it with the most important parts of the background from his perspective. These tags are short (less than 5 words) descriptions of what makes that part important. In some cases, I've given each PC a limit of tags; in more open ended (especially diceless) games, I've not really placed a hard limit. But either way, you end up with an open-ended precis of the character background.
Tags are whatever you want to make them. A bit like aspects in Fate Core, i.e. An aspect is a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it’s attached to.
So if the wizard used his abilities on the streets for pay, he might tag that part of his background with Wizard for Hire and perhaps I learned on the streets and Friends in low places.
Once I have these, I use them in a few ways:
- Each tag can be used once by the PC in game to expand the background around some action that he is doing.
- I can use tags when writing up the campaign to make sure that I hit on those areas that are most important.
- I can use tags in game to expand the background or fill in blank areas related to the person's background.
When writing up the adventure, the GM might see the Wizard for Hire, and get the idea that Cortana is the Wizard's rival in the academy and looked down on him for selling his skills and is trying to get him thrown out by framing him. He's just a mercenary after all, so anyone would believe that he killed the councilman for pay.
When running down hints on the charges leveled against him and their origins, the wizard might say "I have friends in low places- Gerard used to run with me and stayed around when I changed circumstances. If anyone knows how I might have been framed, he would."
You can also use them to infer things just by their presence. For example, when playing, the GM might look at the "I learned on the streets," and since that's a major part of the background- the streets know him also, and a gutter snipe that recognized him from when he lived there might approach him because of that with a key piece of information.
By using them in this way, I focus on what's most important to the PCs, and make it relevant to them as protagonists.
Best Answer
Themes and background benefits, though both usually related to a character's background, are separate mechanical elements.
Themes usually give a character a class feature and/or a power for free at level 1, and then give additional power options that character can pick while leveling up instead of a class power. With the exception of Dark Sun themes, themes also provide a character with an additional class feature at level 5 and at level 10.
A background benefit usually has two skills associated to them and sometimes a language, and a character can choose one of those skills and either add it to their class skill list, or add a +2 bonus to skill checks with it or add that language to the character's languages known. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide has background benefits that give the equivalent of a class feature instead of the skill choices entirely.
Sometimes themes also have a mechanical background benefit tied to it, depending on the source of the theme. The themes that appear in the Neverwinter Campaign Setting have a background entry attached to them with the same name; as I don't have the book right to which to refer, I can't say whether you're required to choose that background or not.
Otherwise, your character's theme and your character's background benefit are picked separately.