What do you want out of the Backgrounds system?

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Backgrounds Backgrounds are something that has hardly been expanded on at all, beyond that they're meant to replace racials. I assume racial augments have gone the way of the Dodo, because they seem incompatible with previous statements (Plus, Vaknar asked about Backgrounds feedback in my Racial Augments thread, so I'm reading that as Backgrounds in and Racial Augments out). So that raises the question, what do you want out of backgrounds? For me, I'd like to avoid any mistakes that can be made during character creation, the time when you know the least about the game. There's nothing worse than getting 20 levels in and realizing that a different, irrevocable choice would have given you something you only now realize you want. I would also like the choice of background to be meaningful, though. So to get the discussion started, here are my two ideas: 1. Have the benefits of the background earnable by everyone. Hard to say without knowing what the background system entails, but say you can pick the "Soldier" background, representing your past life on Sanctus. As a result of this choice, you start with a sword, shield, heavy armor, and a few free points in your active block skill tree. These benefits would be regardless of your archetype choice, and since they're all things technically available to everyone, it isn't locking you into anything. I think this would be the simplest way to implement a fair background system, and give players a jump start into their playstyle of choice. It's kind of boring though. 2. Make the benefits of the background only relevant early in the game. These could be exclusive things to that background, like maybe the "Priest" background gives you a trinket that can be used to give a flat shield. As you level it would become less and less useful. Or even an augment, something that doesn't scale well but is useful early on, maybe the "Cultist" background grants an augment that causes an ability to heal you for 20hp when that ability causes a killing blow. Useful early on for sustain, but such a paltry number by higher levels that it won't be useful anymore. Narratively, it would be like symbolizing your character moving on from their old life and embracing the magic Verra has granted them when you finally replace that augment or trinket.