(Proposal) Flaws

@orsal
Ooo, my bad ^^;

@Covaith
I think that is the point of Character Judges; to veto overpowered characters who abuse the game system for their advantage. And as Orsal has said before you guys will be going over individual flaws to approve them and disapprove them on an individual basis to avoid those probabilities :3

That said I see full well were you're coming from and must say that I like that you know were your priority are and that you voice what you think on a subject :3

Zerith said:

[MENTION=46559]covaithe[/MENTION]
I think that is the point of Character Judges; to veto overpowered characters who abuse the game system for their advantage. And as Orsal has said before you guys will be going over individual flaws to approve them and disapprove them on an individual basis to avoid those probabilities :3

That said I see full well were you're coming from and must say that I like that you know were your priority are and that you voice what you think on a subject :3

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You forgot the 'e' at the end of his name to mention to him, but i fixed it.

Zerith said:

@orsal
Ooo, my bad ^^;

@Covaith
I think that is the point of Character Judges; to veto overpowered characters who abuse the game system for their advantage. And as Orsal has said before you guys will be going over individual flaws to approve them and disapprove them on an individual basis to avoid those probabilities :3

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Except I don't see that as part of the character-judging process. I see that as a policy question, and LEW policy is discussed (by all interested players) and voted on (by all judges, not just character judges) in threads like this one. Character judging is a much more mechanical process -- checking over to see that all the numbers are what they should be. If the vote at the end of this thread is to approve Flaws, including all the ones listed in the d20srd.org SRD, then as character judges I wouldn't feel we had the authority to reject any character submitted with that flaw.

So, if you think that some particular flaw is broken (meaning: the characters least penalized by it, would be penalized by rather less than a feat is worth), this thread is exactly the place to argue against it. We can always exclude it.

Of course, if you want to make the argument that given almost any flaw it's possible to design a character who wouldn't mind it, that would be an argument against the flaw system rather than against specific flaws.

Hmmm. I've been pwned again by simple logic; I need to invest more point into that skill it would seem.

oh well, might as well defend shaky then, because I got to admit, pathetic is not one I care about.

If shaky is unbalanced, so is Noncombatant. so why did'nt you note a ranger or rang orientated fighter who takes noncombatant and pathetic?
wait, I know why, they can foreseeable be forced into a melee.

So why can't a barbarian be forced into a ranged fight?
Because he is quick and durable! Yes, but mounted archers are quicker and terrain advantages are something a DM can call on at a whim to make that shaky melee barbarian of "I can kill relay relay fast"ness into a joke because of his chosen short comings.
Personally I think a Hafling fighter who took slow and pathetic(Cha) would be more abusive to flaws; Give them a mounted combat, ride by attack, spirited charge and power attack for feats, then a war pony and a lance
The Halfing is now Twice as fast as it was originally, it can deal crazed damage to a single foe each round if it charges, and it will move away every time it charges. sure, it's not able to cleave through a bach of creeps, yet, but it can still maneuver were a normal sized character can and it's hard to dismount.

Sure, it's possible for something to force the halfling off its war pony, but it's more likely that a a Barbarian will be forced into into a ranged fight, low level creeps tend to use their environment to give them better odds, or so I tend to believe, and the war pony mounted Halfing is better suited for picking were to fight, it's just as fast and can still make ranged attacks, it also has better AC

And before you say the Halfling dos not get extra high damage and attack roles from 4 extra str, we are debating if Flaws should be added, we are not debating if one race, orcs; something that was not an original character race, make very good barbarians.

The Halfing is the worst Power gaming application I can see from flaws; it takes practicably no down turn, aside from being very slow if knocked off it's mount, but gains very nice benefits. for it.

Honestly, yes, Flaws open up power gaming, and pathetic, with this in mind, should either be dropped entirely or be restricted from lowering Cha. that said, Shaky is a flat out -2 range penalty, the only comparable feats to it are weapon focuses, that give only +1 to attack rolls, to one weapon. Shaky gives -2 to all ranged weapons. it's nothing to make light off.

Sure, the barbarian can ignore ranged combat, but ranged combat is not going to be ignoring the barbarian, sooner or latter the barbarian will be in a ranged fight, and the flaw will bit it in the ass and all of it's melee feats will be worthless

In the same way, sooner or latter the halfling will get knocked off it's mount and will lose a lot of its combative ability until it can hop back on again, and it will have difficulty getting to said mount, or perhaps it's mount will get killed.

That is the worst abuse I can think of (perhaps slow and lame leg for the halfling if lame leg gets approved) and the one you noted, both give the character in question an edge, and they should, but they also give the character a potentially deadly weakness, and they should.

[sblock=Overly long collection of comments]I think we can assume very few people would take a flaw unless they thought the benefit of the bonus feat outweighed the disadvantage.

What wizard wouldn't take one or two of Noncombatant, Shaky and Feeble? She could frontload with feats that lack prerequisites, such as Spell Focus or Skill Focus (Spellcraft), all required to enter Archmage, or metamagic feats that will become useful later. This leaves the later slots free for item creation feats that have a CL prerequisite. There are no difficult choices left to make. That's quite an upgrade.

Psions can likewise frontload with metapsionic feats, freeing their later slots for Expanded Knowledge of higher level powers. That's another big upgrade. There are other attractive possibilities - Improved Psicrystal twice, for a 3rd level psicrystal and, effectively, two Skill Focus feats? Psionic Talent twice, for an extra 5 PP at 1st level? Or four times in all, for 20 PP at 1st level? That's a lot of manifesting, compared to any other PC It makes the sorcerer's 5/4 seem a bit sad. Bear in mind, a Psion can eventually use Psychic Reformation to rejig feat choices.

A heavy armor Cleric with Dex 8 or 10 (and good Con), which is most of them, might as well take Poor Reflexes, because they're not passing any Reflex saves anyway.

I'm not sure that fighter types (especially feat-rich Fighters specifically) benefit enormously in the long-term, but as covaithe has pointed out, at low levels those extra two feats make a massive difference. It's very nice to get a head start along feat chains. It's nice even just to have Improved Initiative as a bonus feat.

There's a general weakening of humans with respect to other races. Instead of getting two feats to everyone else's one, they're getting three versus two, or four versus three. Moreover, there's a case to be made that nonhumans with their various racial bonuses can more easily absorb the effects of a flaw. For instance, the Frail flaw is automatically cancelled by a dwarf or gnome's Con bonus, leaving them as the equivalent of a human with lots of additional bonuses, though fewer skill points.

[Incidentally, I think the Pathetic flaw, while extremely tempting for those with no need for Str or Cha, would rarely be an option, except for orc PCs, because with 30 pt buy nearly everyone will have an ability modifier total of 8 or more. It's pretty difficult not to.]

But then, biggest of all... is the comparison between new characters with flaws, and old characters without them, bearing in mind that the majority of the 'old' characters are still only 1st to 4th level. The 'flawless' PCs really wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the 'flawed'.

So, would we retrospectively allow flaws for preexisting PCs? So many of the flaws seem like inherent traits, not something that can be acquired later. orsal's already expressed a negative opinion on this, and I'd agree. I'd wonder about the in-world mechanism. An epidemic of gimping-flu??

Obviously PCs above 1st level who gained flaws could still only choose feats they could have qualified for at 1st level. But that's another problem. Surely we have had a nonhuman Dex Rogue who took Point Blank Shot at 1st level, then had to wait for Precise Shot until 3rd, enduring all those arrows that missed by 4, and at that point make a hard decision whether to go for Weapon Finesse instead... then ended up throwing away 6 skill points and sneak attack progression on a Fighter dip to gain both feats before the incredibly distant 6th level, which at PbP speed might be three years away. I don't really care if a player makes choices that I consider suboptimal, but these players would be being punished for making sensible, standard build choices!

Seems to me that allowing flaws would unfairly create two tiers of PCs, whether only new PCs get the almost free bonus feats, or old PCs are revamped.

If we were starting from a clean slate with the lessons learned from LEW - and I think the big one is just how sllllooooowww level progression is in PbP, such that you spend years waiting for your PC to become halfway competent, and iterative attacks are a distant dream for most - then frontloading abilities using flaws might be a good idea, but as it is, I think not.[/sblock]

Case in point: Pendrake Utherman, started 3 yeaars 11 months ago, give or take a few days, and is now only level 5. No Iteative attacks. and probably won't get level 6 with this adventure.

Scott DeWar said:

Case in point: Pendrake Utherman, started 3 yeaars 11 months ago, give or take a few days, and is now only level 5. No Iteative attacks. and probably won't get level 6 with this adventure.

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He will definitely level. That gives you an incentive to get posting (except we're waiting on me right now, aren't we?!). Peladus and Quozen will as well. Midias and Ngikhnit probably won't, though, unless it drags on for another 3 months.

please, no. not three more months. Most of my xp for my 2 characters seem to be from time xp as it is.

.... ;
Why is an entirely on point post in an Sblock while two that have to do with a present RP (and thus off point) are in plain view with no tread related information in the entire post?
I Don't mind off topic chat in a thread, but each post should, at lest in part, be on topic ^^;

Any ways: I would not use Noncombatant with a mage: Touch attack spells look like they're hard enough for a caster to use already. (not saying a mage should be built around the use of them, but losing the ability to use them at all sounds like a lose to me.

And about the slow leveling inherited into PbP: has no one considered rising the exp and wealth gain rates to compensate? (and if its don latter, it could be made fair for older players/characters by having there present xp/wealth raised by the same amount.)
Just a thought.

sometimes a dm quits posting and the judge has to take over. That leaves the characters in a form of minimal xp and no wealth gain status. very frustrating. I have a near level 6 fighter with nothing more then MW tools of his trade.