"I'm no good at that" and Inspiration

Just a simple house rule, wondering if it adds enough to be worth adding a rule.

Dealing with your weakness is a common themes in stories, but not as much in RPGs like D&D. Having a flaw is interesting, but how do we incentivize it?

Lack of the Knack: You fail at some everyman skill. You may pick 1-3 skills that you are "no good" at. You have disadvantage on all rolls with them. Whenever you use that skill in a meaningful way, success or failure you gain Inspiration. If you gain proficiency with a skill, the disadvantage and the ability to gain Inspiration both disappear. You may also remove this from a skill each time you level.

So basically, players can voluntarily take some things they aren't good at and make them worse, but if they do end up using it they get Inspiration.

"Meaningful" is a bit subjective. Climbing up a cliff when you are bad at Athletics is definitely meaningful, juggling for your party's amusement probably isn't even if you get prickly when people laugh at you.

This can reinforce stereotypes - the barbarian is never going to understand Arcana, but can also have some surprising depths, such as the urban (and urbane) Cleric who just can't get the hang of the outdoors and is bad at Survival and Animal Handling, even though they are Wisdom based skills. The bard who's a horrible liar and has disadvantage at Deception.

So, what do you think? Would you take advantage of this with your own characters?

Yes, I like it. It can help differentiate characters more, sine proficiency bonus is same no matter what. Might also help us all to remember to implement the inspiration mechanic!

I know a GM who is toying with allowing players to decrease proficiency in some skills in order to gain a small bonus in extra skills. Reducing athletics proficiency by one, for example in order to get a one point bonus in a new skill.

I'm not a fan of players granting themselves inspiration. As the DM, I prefer to ignore that mechanic entirely, so this sort of rule would not work for me at all.

Saelorn said:

I'm not a fan of players granting themselves inspiration. As the DM, I prefer to ignore that mechanic entirely, so this sort of rule would not work for me at all.

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I find inspiration really useful. Players enjoy it, and gives them a helpful mechanic if they want to have an edge in a challenging encounter. It allows players to gain a small reward for role playing their character, especially if it's a negative trait, which could get them in trouble. "Yes, my brash behaviour in the face of the Duke was ill advised, but now I have a little extra something to help in the battle against the cult leader."

It does feel a little tacked on in 5e, and has been explained in a multitude of sometimes conflicting ways, but it's easy to adjust to your style and table preference. It's a tool to use, like Blue's house-ruled suggestion. As long as it's remembered, I think it's a good addition to the game.

Arilyn said:

I find inspiration really useful. Players enjoy it, and gives them a helpful mechanic if they want to have an edge in a challenging encounter. It allows players to gain a small reward for role playing their character, especially if it's a negative trait, which could get them in trouble. "Yes, my brash behaviour in the face of the Duke was ill advised, but now I have a little extra something to help in the battle against the cult leader."

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It just reminds me a lot of FATE, and how players are encouraged to make foolish mistakes because it causally benefits them later. Using your example, I don't want anyone to go out of their way to insult the Duke because it will causally help them fight the cult leader.

Roleplaying is supposed to be its own reward. You should insult the Duke because that's what your character would do, not because you really want advantage against Circle of Death.

But that's just me.

Saelorn said:

It just reminds me a lot of FATE, and how players are encouraged to make foolish mistakes because it causally benefits them later. Using your example, I don't want anyone to go out of their way to insult the Duke because it will causally help them fight the cult leader.

Roleplaying is supposed to be its own reward. You should insult the Duke because that's what your character would do, not because you really want advantage against Circle of Death.

But that's just me.

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Nothing wrong with a carrot! And it can be worked in, even in your preferred style. "I let my team down with my brash behaviour, so I'm going to really focus on the fight with the cult leader."

Arilyn said:

Nothing wrong with a carrot! And it can be worked in, even in your preferred style. "I let my team down with my brash behaviour, so I'm going to really focus on the fight with the cult leader."

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That just seems like post-hoc rationalization. The real reason is because I don't want to die, but I'll pretend that I'm inspired to avoid highlighting the absurdness of this reality.

Back on topic, if I was a player rather than the DM, then I would absolutely take this option for my character. The existing game mechanics fail at describing characters with noticeable skill deficiencies, and this solves that problem adequately.

I'm not really sure I understand the goal.

Personality flaws and lack of skill are two different things. The former is being prone to lying. The latter is the inability to make good jokes.

Overcoming the former can lead to good character development, but has relatively little mechanical representation in D&D. Yes I get it you're making a new rule, but you're basing it on existing rules of skill checks. This seems like it would require a whole "Flaws" system to both mechanically represent not just skills in which you perform poorly, but areas where you might have to make some kind of save to keep from insulting the King, or making bad jokes at the expense of the dead, or making fart noises during church, or lying about what you did (even if you did something good).

I mean, I made an elf who was racist against elves once (to be fair, they abandoned her as a child because she had aptitude for fire magic). But every time I ran into elves I would generally treat them poorly and make disparaging remarks (Thank you Dragon Age!).

I mean if you want mechanical systems to reward people for playing imperfect human beings, well okay. But it's a lot easier to be a jerk than it is to overcome being a jerk. But I don't see how your system rewards character growth. I'd think you would need something like, earn 10 Inspiration and trade it in for overcoming one of your flaws, or something.

I see how it rewards doing things your character wouldn't normally attempt...but to what end? They're likely going to fail. And they're likely going to make things worse for the party by trying.

shidaku said:

But I don't see how your system rewards character growth. . .

I see how it rewards doing things your character wouldn't normally attempt...but to what end? They're likely going to fail. And they're likely going to make things worse for the party by trying.

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It doesn't look like it rewards character growth so much as character exploration. Have you ever met someone who's good at everything? Seems to never fail? Those people suck. This system rewards you for not being one of those people.

Failure, then, is exactly the idea! However, "you fail" is a big, fat, dead-end. Something interesting must come from the failure...like making things worse for the party.

The tricky part is to change the reward system from "roll a disadvantaged skill check to gain an advantage." Players will gladly roll those left and right. As [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] mentioned, it does point to the Fate system of "accept this consequence, and get a reward." I don't like that either, because I don't want the GM and players to haggle with each other over story outcomes.

You could try a modified Fate system. The GM picks a failure condition that's worth Inspiration, then the player decides if he wants to attempt it with a (poor) chance of success. Better yet, a player can Lack the Knack at any time, and just know that rolling the Fail is going to be horrible...but worth Inspiration.

Blue said:

Just a simple house rule, wondering if it adds enough to be worth adding a rule.

Dealing with your weakness is a common themes in stories, but not as much in RPGs like D&D. Having a flaw is interesting, but how do we incentivize it?

Lack of the Knack: You fail at some everyman skill. You may pick 1-3 skills that you are "no good" at. You have disadvantage on all rolls with them. Whenever you use that skill in a meaningful way, success or failure you gain Inspiration. If you gain proficiency with a skill, the disadvantage and the ability to gain Inspiration both disappear. You may also remove this from a skill each time you level.

So basically, players can voluntarily take some things they aren't good at and make them worse, but if they do end up using it they get Inspiration.

"Meaningful" is a bit subjective. Climbing up a cliff when you are bad at Athletics is definitely meaningful, juggling for your party's amusement probably isn't even if you get prickly when people laugh at you.

This can reinforce stereotypes - the barbarian is never going to understand Arcana, but can also have some surprising depths, such as the urban (and urbane) Cleric who just can't get the hang of the outdoors and is bad at Survival and Animal Handling, even though they are Wisdom based skills. The bard who's a horrible liar and has disadvantage at Deception.

So, what do you think? Would you take advantage of this with your own characters?

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It's a creative idea and a direction that I think some people would enjoy. However, I'm a little unclear on which choice you are trying to reward.

1. There is the choice to be particularly bad at some skills. Is it enough to make that choice and then only use those skills when forced to? If so, rewarding the use of the skills seems a little bit indirect (not terrible by any means, but just a little bit off).
2. There is the choice to use a skill you are bad at even when you don't have to. In this case, your mechanic doesn't seem entirely necessary, although it does make a disaster more likely than just having a low stat does. This is the one that feels to me unpleasantly gamey in the sense that [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] describes.

Saelorn said:

It just reminds me a lot of FATE, and how players are encouraged to make foolish mistakes because it causally benefits them later. Using your example, I don't want anyone to go out of their way to insult the Duke because it will causally help them fight the cult leader.

Roleplaying is supposed to be its own reward. You should insult the Duke because that's what your character would do, not because you really want advantage against Circle of Death.

But that's just me.

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No, you have at least some company.