Phobias and Flaws

Fauchard1520 · Aug 28, 2018

Characters with Phobias. They can be challenging to pull off well. Case in point.

Have you ever seen a character that managed to make such a drawback interesting without getting flanderized by it? By the same token, have you ever had a character that really nailed some other kind of Flaw? What was your strategy?

Rya.Reisender · Aug 28, 2018

Haven't seen someone really play out a flaw in an interesting way yet. The most noticable flaw in my groups usually is "I attack first and talk later", but that's not necessarily a disadvantage and the modules are written in a way you can play through them perfectly fine without talking to your enemies.

With me as DM, people with quite bad flaws wouldn't actually be very disadvantaged at all, because I hand out Inspiration almost exclusively for bringing yourself into a disadvantage because of a well-played-out character flaw. Unfortunately it rarely happens.

Eltab · Aug 28, 2018

I've seen players do a good job with "I don't have patience for long planning sessions. We came to clean out this dungeon!" The key was the word 'long'. He'd let us set up so Team Monster was at a disadvantage and we would get less hurt, but he would not let us maximize/minimize the strategy.

Many phobias become comic relief. PC has Fear of Spiders? DM introduces Drow in the next dungeon.
Paranoia can be appropriate (for a while imo) if you just finished a deathtrap dungeon. "No, wait, we didn't check everything with a 10-foot pole yet!"

Other phobias just turn into spotlight-hogging. Paranoid schizophrenia comes to mind immediately.

iserith · Aug 28, 2018

My players portray their characters' flaws every single session.

That is because I use this one weird trick that DMs don't want to you know about.

Ralif Redhammer · Aug 28, 2018

I’ve seen that sort of thing quite a bit; it’s not really a flaw if it’s what the player would do anyway.

I think flaws, quirks, and phobias bring characters to life far more than any other trait, when done properly. I mean, we remember Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes – it’s up there with the hat and whip as what makes him iconic.

As far as my strategy for flaws goes, what makes a good flaw is when it pushes me to do something that I, as the player, would not want to do. That’s when the character starts to have a life of their own. I want to help the rest of my party against the giant bats, but my tiefling rogue with “coward” listed as a flaw, seeing that they’ve all but got the bats beaten, is going to go back in the tavern and finish his drink, where it’s safe.

Rya.Reisender said:
Haven't seen someone really play out a flaw in an interesting way yet. The most noticable flaw in my groups usually is "I attack first and talk later", but that's not necessarily a disadvantage and the modules are written in a way you can play through them perfectly fine without talking to your enemies.

Blue · Aug 28, 2018

Every single one of my characters has flaws. I played a lot of Champions and other systems that encourage flaws in my "formative" roleplaying years, and find that I really enjoy it. And it helps remind me that I'm not trying for the "best solution" to everything that some players can get caught up in, conflating character "win" (success) with player "win" (fun).

I like having at least one obvious flaw, and then more subtle ones that come out over time. Makes good RP.

hbarsquared · Aug 28, 2018

A little different from the Flaw system, but I remember hearing an approach that Keith Baker has taken before.

His example was "Paranoid" where the character had a high bonus, +5 or +10 to Perception, something like that. The problem was, the DM would roll and something like 10% of the time the information would be false.

If someone was whispering about you from across the room, you'd know. Just not if someone actually was whispering...

I thought that was a cool approach weaving mechanics into the Flaw that the player experiences, too.

ad_hoc · Aug 29, 2018

There are a lot of great flaws in the PHB.

I think the key to all of them - traits, ideal, bond, flaw - is for them to not come up every session. Put them there and allow them to happen naturally in the course of play. With 2 traits that is 5 things, with 4 characters that is a total of 20 things. If all 20 things came up all the time they would just be noise.

Imaculata · Aug 29, 2018

I played a barbarian with a fear of heights a long time ago. It worked really well, because it provided a lot of role playing. Plus it was a lot of fun to watch the fearless brute be reduced to a whimpering child whenever there were heights involved.

Fauchard1520 · Sep 5, 2018

Imaculata said:
I played a barbarian with a fear of heights a long time ago. It worked really well, because it provided a lot of role playing. Plus it was a lot of fun to watch the fearless brute be reduced to a whimpering child whenever there were heights involved.

Nice. Seems like a useful study in contrasts. Same deal with the wizard that has mental block about flying spells or the thief who only steals from other thieves. Phobias are explicitly irrational, so they make a useful counterpoint for tightly themed characters.