Traits and Flaws: Help or Hinder Roleplay?

[Mr. Mask]

Most RPGs include Traits and Flaws you can take to improve or demerit your character. For some people, I expect this helps them to work out a character concept and makes it easier to roleplay. For others, I can see that it would be easy to forget character concepts and instead work on making the nicest build you can, even if you aren't interested in roleplaying certain traits or they don't fit into your character as well as you thought.

I'm wondering how traits and drawbacks effect people's roleplaying experience ,for god or bad, and whether there are better ways of arranging it. Maybe a system where you're encouraged to not take too many drawbacks or traits to start with, but are encouraged to take more as you play (to help you work out what suits your character). Of course, you'd want options for players who know their characters inside and out before they create them.

[Segev]

They're largely neutral. They can help flesh out a character or tweak a build to match a concept, but they also can be nothing but "a variety of low-impact flaws to maximize [one's] character points."

They're added complexity, but also added options. It's really a matter of whether you think they're well-balanced for what they do within the game context and whether you need the extra customizability for your character versus your tolerance for said complexity.

[Dawgmoah]

I agree with Segev; I have seen them help and other times hinder roleplaying. Just like alignments when players think every action they take must adhere to their alignment. A good roleplayer will weave the traits/flaws into their character while oftimes a not so good roleplayer will fixate on them. It's a mixed bag and results will vary. Give them a try with your group and see what happens.

[ElenionAncalima]

I think they have the potential to be a roleplaying boon, but there is also potential for abuse.

Of all aspect of character creation, traits are where I am mostly likely not to approve choices. Usually, I don't like telling characters they can't use something, unless it was made very clear upfront. However, I won't approve character traits that don't make sense. For instance, in a Pathfinder Game, I have a player with Dex 7 try to take Elven Reflexes. Usually, I wouldn't care, but for traits that was a no, no. I think of traits as being part of who the character is, as opposed to how they have trained...and fast reflexes was obviously not who he was.

[Airk]

I don't tend to like "Flaws" because they tend to come paired with "Advantages" and it usually comes down to a game of "Mechanical advantages balanced by 'roleplaying' flaws." ("So my guy is colorblind and bad at math, which gives me enough points for 'steady hand' for +2 on all my gun tests!")

TRAITS, on the other hand, can be a very different animal and can be good for RP - Mouse Guard handles this very nicely, for example, by allowing players to both gain a bonus from their trait occasionally AND also gain a different kind of "deferred" bonus for taking actual harm from their trait. I think this is key - a good trait system doesn't make them "advantages" or "disadvantages" but rather something that is both good AND bad. That fuels roleplaying. Though it also helps that you don't get any bonuses (or penalties) for taking or not taking traits.

[Mr. Mask]

Segev: This is true. No matter the system, you can't force a horse to drink.


Elenion: I agree. With the example you give, that's one place where you can thankfully get around that through balance. Let's say elven reflexes effectively works like a +1 Dex bonus. You just need to make it cheaper, or of equal cost to buy points in Dex to get the same effect.

Or, if Elven Reflexes gives a separate bonus, say, a bonus to Initiative, then it's an interesting ability that might even work for a low Dex character (like an obese coward who is quick to notice trouble and react to it, but otherwise slow).
Sadly, there are likely many kinds of traits which are difficult to balance. Drawbacks, specially those which never come up in the game and were just taken for points (I think some RPGs have a good solution, where you instead get some points every time your drawback causes you trouble).


Airk: Admittedly, the same is true for character creation in general. "I want to make a knight! A charismatic, well-read, virtuous and skilful warrior.... but instead, I only had enough points to make an awkward spoken character with only 1 point in a lore skill (since I had to spend skill points on riding), a mediocre fighter, and an alcoholic and craven because I needed more points to get this much!" It's one of the problems of min-maxing, and the fact challenge in games tends to be set at the level where less than a min-maxer is not par for the course.

Burning Wheel, that was the one that offered points for doing what your traits said.

[Tengu_temp]

I like flaws the way nWoD handles them; you get bonus points if the flaw becomes relevant in the game, not during character creation. This way they help with roleplay with no risk of being a min-maxer's pool of free feats like they are in DND.

[Airk]

Segev: This is true. No matter the system, you can't force a horse to drink.

Well, you can't FORCE them, but you CAN explicitly make it the point of the game. If you want the XP-equivalent in Tenra Bansho Zero, you HAVE to RP. It doesn't come from anywhere else. That's some pretty strong leverage there.

Airk: Admittedly, the same is true for character creation in general. "I want to make a knight! A charismatic, well-read, virtuous and skilful warrior.... but instead, I only had enough points to make an awkward spoken character with only 1 point in a lore skill (since I had to spend skill points on riding), a mediocre fighter, and an alcoholic and craven because I needed more points to get this much!" It's one of the problems of min-maxing, and the fact challenge in games tends to be set at the level where less than a min-maxer is not par for the course.

This is sortof a different problem though - that's just a badly designed chargen process in general. Or rather, a chargen process that does a poor job of producing the types of characters people think the game is supposed to be about. (So there's either a flaw in the chargen, or a flaw in the 'fluff' that makes people think the game is supposed to be about heroic knights when actually it's about loser peasants.)

Burning Wheel, that was the one that offered points for doing what your traits said.

Yeah; Mouse Guard is basically the Burning Wheel system with a lot of complexity filed off, but the basis for how traits work is...similar.

[Mr. Mask]

True. Running the horse a few minutes through the desert can get some results.

Well, traits and drawbacks work into bad balance, the way I see it. BW's system of drawbacks only giving you points when they hurt you seems a fairly decent handling of them.

There's also the problem of if two players see the game differently. If one wants to play a loser peasant and the other wants to play a heroic knight, most systems don't offer a mechanical solution for that.

As mentioned, the fact many games are balanced around min-maxed characters for combat/social/stealth encounters makes it difficult to have more rounded characters. Often I fish for drawbacks which fit my character or can add to them, on the basis that while I want to be competitive (have adequate combat stats), I'd also like to dabble in other skills.

[Jay R]

Of all the games I've played, they work best in Champions.

My Psych Limitations are almost always simply how I intend to play the character - Code vs. Killing, Silver Age Code, plus any personal quirks that fit the specific character. Mostly they serve as a combination of points gained for planning out the character, plus a reminder to stay in character.

DNPCs (dependent non-player characters) are perfect comic book disadvantages. The villains are far more likely to threaten Pepper Potts or Lois Lane than anyone else. The player doens't have to remember these - the GM does. As a GM, I compile a list of everybody's DNPCs to find ones for my plots.

Vulnerabilities, Susceptibilities, and Hunteds are excellent comic book material.

These work much better in a comic book game than any I've seen in a fantasy game.

[Raimun]

I think advantage/disadvantage-system is always a good thing.

That means both can be represented in-game because there are mechanics for them.

By the way, I don't get why people always complain about disadvantages that see little to no use during a game. Guess what? Advantages (and any positive qualities, really) can also see little to no use in a game. Especially if you pick stuff for flavor. Of course, it's not okay to pick disadvantages that get negated by advantages but disadvantages that apply rarely should be okay.

Pretty much all of my characters, ever, have had advantages that I never found any use for during games and do you hear me complaining about that? If the GM can't find any way, ever to make a disadvantage relevant in his game, it shouldn't be a problem either.

[Mr. Mask]

This makes me think more powerful advantages that cost points to use might be a good idea.

[Slipperychicken]

I find the flaws which my group and I enjoy typically aren't the ones I select from a menu to make my character better at murdering people, but ones which were inherent to the character concept.


I also find that I have a great deal more fun when I can generate an entire character concept without considering rules-mechanics (other concerns are considered however, like how the character can interact with other PCs and NPCs). Then, only once the fluff is done and written down, I build a statblock to fit the character (representing as many aspects as I can, like flaws, skills, abilities, etc), instead of writing a backstory after the statblock is done. It feels so much more natural and elegant that it almost seems as if this is the "right" way to build characters for RPGs.

[Knaight]

I generally find them helpful, provided that they are designed to accumulate points through use, rather than as a one time sum (basically what Tengu Temp said, though I associate it with different games). The lump sum approach encourages finding negligible flaws that don't really come up, whereas the points through use one encourages flaws that are actually relevant. Provided that relevant flaws are there, it can be pretty helpful.

[Lanaya]

M&M 3rd edition is the only game I've ever played that does flaws well. You get no bonus at all during character creation for choosing a flaw and may take as many as you like. Whenever a flaw crops up in play in such a way that gives you a substantial disadvantage, you get a bonus hero point which you can spend in that session to get temporarily better at stuff. There's no min/maxing aspect, as the rewards are given out by the GM if and only if the flaw actually hurts you, and you're encouraged to pick flaws that actually affect your character because otherwise you get no reward for them. Or if you don't like flaws you can basically ignore them without being any better or worse off than your fellow players.

[BWR]

I like them, in general. Mechanical advantage is one thing but if done correctly, Advantages and Disadvantages, call them what you will, can really help make your character unique and promote good roleplaying. Ars Magica, for instance, has a category of A&Ds called Story. Story A&Ds basically mean your character is a magnet for certain types of people and events that make your life interesting, for better or worse. They don't really necessarily have any mechnical effect beyond this but Story A&Ds are basically giving your GM free pass to mess with your character in certain ways.

Badly designed A&Ds will be unbalanced in how they work. If Ds only give vague RP penalties and As give serious mechanical bonuses, then the system is unbalanced. A&Ds should, in general, give mechanical effects. If you have a D called "Brash", let us say, and its effect is that you tend to answer any sort of insult with violence. A bad design would be leaving it at that. Yes, it's a roleplaying D and players are expected to RP, but good players are seldom a problem even with bad systems, and bad players will downplay or ignore the effects to suit their purposes. If Brash instead requires some sort of roll to avoid using violence when insulted, it's a better designed D because now it has a mechanical effect that's hard to ignore.

[The Insanity]

If someone doesn't want to roleplay, nothing will help them.
Like most mechanics, traits and flaws help, because they give you something you can base your roleplay on.

[JusticeZero]

I have a player with Dex 7 try to take Elven Reflexes. Usually, I wouldn't care, but for traits that was a no, no. I think of traits as being part of who the character is, as opposed to how they have trained...and fast reflexes was obviously not who he was.

I'd have allowed that, since it seems like a valid way of saying "My reflexes are lousy, but at least they aren't *slow* too." It's pretty much saying "I move passably fast, i'm just clumsy".
According to the SRD, Elven Reflexes is basically half of an Improved Initiative feat (+2 instead of +4), for those who were unsure.

I don't care for flaws much, since they usually either go unused or overused, and they aren't much help in rp.

[Frozen_Feet]

Traits and flaws only help roleplaying if they're designed to do that. The easiest way to do that is to reward *the player* for following the tenets they place on their character sheet. Basically: "you played a convincing drunkard. Well done! Here's a cookie." Except instead of cookies, most RPGs sadly use character resources, experience points or other in-game awards.

D&D style traits with clear mechanical effects have at best indirect effect on roleplaying. They exist to ensure a character mechanically works in-game as they are described by the player: ie., ensure a slow character actually is slow etc. However, this doesn't guarantee player immersion, or even player noticing these effects. Let's take Murky-Eyed from d20 SRD. Sure, across many attempts of trying to hit a concealed target, a character with the flaw will perform notably worse, but aside those situations the player may well forget there's anything wrong with his character's vision, because it's not immediately obvious to them (because the player doesn't actually see through the character's eyes).

Min-maxing players naturally strive towards situations where their mechanical disadvantages don't matter. Sure, this counts as "roleplaying" in the sense that most people don't like to do what they're bad at, but it also ensure the flaws will almost never come up during play on the player's iniative. By contrast, advantages will be relevant a disproportionate amount of gametime. Ie., everyone will notice the strong guy with bad eyes is strong, but almost completely forget the bad eyes.

[NichG]

I'm a fan of flaw systems that make the players want to take more flaws for their own sake (combined with a limit to the number of flaws you can have). For example, 7th Sea has Backgrounds that you have to purchase with XP, which cap out at 5 points, and which generally correspond to things that try to screw over your character. Why would you want such a thing? Well, every time your Background comes up, you get XP, and every 3 games that your background doesn't come up you gain even more XP (to encourage the DM to make sure that your background does come up regularly).

I also prefer advantages/flaws which really have major impacts on the gameplay. Things like '-1 to X' or '+1 to Y' aren't really all that interesting and I don't think they add much aside from a bit of an opportunity to tweak the numbers even higher/lower. On the other hand, flaws like 'you are immune to the effects of magic, for better and for worse' or 'you are bound to a cursed item which drains away a fifth of your xp gain; however, this xp gain enables the item to grow in power as you do' or 'a powerful being imprisoned outside of existence can use your presence to make small things happen - it will use the influence you provide to leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of interesting items or knowledge for you to find, though this will gradually create the path for its return' are transformative to both story and gameplay, and provide their own specific advantages so there's no need to have some sort of point-based tradeoff between the two. They're sort of package deals.

[LibraryOgre]

There's also the HM way... quirks and flaws add character resources for creation, but failure to play them costs Honor as play goes on... and Honor is the metagame mechanic, giving +1s and rerolls in play, or being spent to purchase the same. Also, cherry-picking your Q&Fs is worth less than random rolling (i.e. you can't pick a few favorite, easy to play flaws), and the more you have, the less each subsequent one is worth. So you can't load up on easy flaws and run rampant through character creation... and failing to play the ones you have can screw you long term.

[Yora]

I prefer it when players approach the game as a narrative, not a mathmatical problem where you need to solve for x. I want them to not think about numbers, the numbers are simply a tool, not the game.
Traits and flaws are a mechanic to increase the precision of the numbers representing the character. And they have the side effect of drawing the players attention to the numbers. Ability scores and class is about as much precision in representing character concepts as numbers as I want to have. I think even feats and skill ranks are already taking it too far. Traits and flaws are something that I never use. Players can simply say that their character is brave or cowardly and play accordingly. There's no need to have a +1 in one very specific situation, or a -1 in another.

[AMFV]

I prefer it when players approach the game as a narrative, not a mathmatical problem where you need to solve for x. I want them to not think about numbers, the numbers are simply a tool, not the game.
Traits and flaws are a mechanic to increase the precision of the numbers representing the character. And they have the side effect of drawing the players attention to the numbers. Ability scores and class is about as much precision in representing character concepts as numbers as I want to have. I think even feats and skill ranks are already taking it too far. Traits and flaws are something that I never use. Players can simply say that their character is brave or cowardly and play accordingly. There's no need to have a +1 in one very specific situation, or a -1 in another.

But do you see how having the numbers reflect that might help certain people with immersion. I know that thinking about avoiding a situation in which I am at a disadvantage helps to me roleplay a character that wouldn't want to be placed in that situation, perhaps more so than simply thinking "My character is cowardly", that may be a flaw in my thinking but in experience even bonuses that are functionally so small as to be irrelevant can trigger this sort of thinking. I'm sure there's a psychological reason for it.

[jedipotter]

I'm wondering how traits and drawbacks effect people's roleplaying experience ,for god or bad, and whether there are better ways of arranging it.

I'm not a fan, in general, of the idea that you need to have mechanics to role play. And I see a lot of players get so caught up in the mechanics that they don't role play. Though traits and drawbacks are often of limited effect. If you get a ''-1'' while in the dark, that is so pointless you might as well forget it.

[NichG]

I think the problem is that numbers in particular are not very evocative, because there are so many equivalences.

Lets say I have a character with a +8 to hit on ranged attacks. There are tons of ways I can construct that:

- Lv5 Fighter with a +3 Dex modifier
- Lv7 Fighter with a +3 Dex modifier and the Shaky flaw.
- Lv5 Fighter with a +0 Dex modifier because of Pathetic(Dex) and a base 10 Dex but a +2 Dex magic item, combined with a +3 ranged weapon.
- Lv5 Fighter with a +0 Dex modifier with a masterwork weapon, firing from an elevated position for a +2 circumstance bonus.
- Lv16 Wizard with a +0 Dex modifier

The end result 'I have a +8 to hit on ranged attacks' loses the ability to capture anything at all about the reason why the number is +8. So when you apply a lot of traits/effects/etc to produce a single number, whatever those things are lose their distinctiveness.

There are alternatives. Imagine if Shaky gave a 20% miss chance on all ranged attacks. There are very few things that contribute an innate miss chance on an attack mode, so the origin of that mechanical effect would remain distinctive whenever it came up. In that case, you can say clearly 'I missed because of Shaky'. On the other hand, with the to-hit modifier case its hard to trace back the consequences to a particular origin point (you could as well say 'I missed because of Shaky' or 'I missed because my bow is just masterwork' or 'I missed because I'm Lv5' or 'I missed because I didn't take Weapon Focus', and all of those are equally valid explanations).

So I think mechanical things can help with characterization, but things that participate in aggregate/derived quantities do so very poorly because they serve to confuse the origins of the results.

[BWR]

Flaws can help if the player is inclined to roleplaying in the first place. Getting some sort of recompense for intentionally limiting yourself is nice, and for many of us they work as a reminder that the character is limited in some fashion.
If players are only interested in mechanical advantage flaws will be ignored, forgotten or played poorly to minimal effect.

Some flaws are better than others. Ars Magica has Story flaws: for some reason, certain types of complications occur around you - perhaps faeries think it's fun to play pranks on you, perhaps the wrong people fall in love with you and cause all sorts of trouble, perhaps you just look suspicious enough that you get blamed for everything that goes wrong. More material for games, plenty of personal situations for the PC to react to

[Airk]

There's also the HM way... quirks and flaws add character resources for creation, but failure to play them costs Honor as play goes on... and Honor is the metagame mechanic, giving +1s and rerolls in play, or being spent to purchase the same.

This sounds super awkward; How does it work? What if no opportunity to play a flaw came up in a given session? Do you get penalized because you took "Socially awkward" and then spent a week in the wilderness because that's where the game went? Do you wave your hand and say "No! I can't go on that wilderness jaunt! If I do, I'll get penalized for not having anyone to be socially awkward around!" (Yes, this is a crap example that could be avoided by building a smarter 'flaw', but I don't think it's possible for all flaws to be applicable in all situations.) It just seems so much cleaner to do rewards for presence rather than penalties for absence.

[Segev]

I am inclined to agree. In D&D, without flaws, it can be frustrating, at best, to decide to play, say, "the blind master." Even leaving aside the strained credulity of a character past a certain level and amount of wealth not simply buying a Remove Blindness spell from a cleric (or getting it from his party cleric), the blind character is at serious disadvantages. This may be realistic, but it is similar to if a player were to say, "You know, I want to play a Warblade, but I think I'll forgo the Maneuvers and just use Stances."

In D&D 3e, the fact that playing one class over another can be just as badly weakening your character is an unintended flaw in the system; in theory, characters are meant to be roughly on par with each other for having spent the same amount of character-building resources.

Flaws can allow you to play "the blind master" and get an extra advantage elsewhere to make up for it.

Of course, D&D can handle this (though rarely does) with existing tools: A feat or PrC, for example, which required you to be blind to take it, could be designed to specifically address the archetypal traits of your blind character's advantages.

[Jay R]

The ideal traits and flaws are ones that the player was already planning to play. A cautious player should take some variant of cowardice of caution. Someone who tends to jump into melees immediately should take some version of impetuosity or impatience. If you're going to try to get more than your share of the treasure anyway, take Greediness.

The worst flaws and traits are the ones taken just to get free points, and chosen to be unlikely to come up in play.

[Airk]

The ideal traits and flaws are ones that the player was already planning to play. A cautious player should take some variant of cowardice of caution. Someone who tends to jump into melees immediately should take some version of impetuosity or impatience. If you're going to try to get more than your share of the treasure anyway, take Greediness.

The worst flaws and traits are the ones taken just to get free points, and chosen to be unlikely to come up in play.

I have trouble reconciling these two ideas. If you're basically getting points for doing something you were going to do all the time anyway (A greedy player taking the "greedy" flaw), how is that different from getting points for not doing something you weren't going to do anyway?