I really dislike BIFTs because they are specific, instead of general like alignment. They make caricatures of PCs instead of well rounded characters. The impact has been minimal because there is no teeth to BIFTs, so its easy to ignore. My guess as to its limited mechanical impact is to stop the complaints of PCs being screwed by their flaws. Or, I suppose, playing up for every advantage possible in play. Also, to insulate player agency from the mechanics, which has been a major topic in this discussion.
Well, far be it from me to defend BIFTs overall, but I expect the reason they're ignored so often isn't that they create caricatures so much as because the actual rules involved are minimal. There's very little to them that connects them to the rest of the game, and as such, they're often treated as roleplaying suggestions, at most. In that regard, I really don't see them as being significantly different from Alignment.
If instead these things had actual impact on play in some way... if the rules were not partitioned off but instead integrated along with the other systems of play... it would all be more meaningful. How to do that (or something like it) within the overall rules structure of 5E is the question, really.
But having such mechanics isn't an infringement on player agency. Characters are not free from things that limit them, the players don't always have say about what their character can or cannot do. For example, a character who has been bound by rope is fairly limited in what they can attempt to do... this doesn't mean that tying a character up is negating agency. There will always be constraints on play that arise from the fiction. Someone being angered or shaken in some way is no different in this regard from a myriad of other conditions we all accept. Especially when, as is the case with BIFTs, it's the player who chooses them in the first place.
I tell you one thing you don't do - leave something that important to opposed rolls between the PC and NPC. That's just anti-climatic as heck.
No, it's not. It's how a significant amount of most games are played. Even in the cases where things do boil down to a single die-roll, it's not generally done in isolation. There are factors that must be considered and applied in some way to the odds of the die roll. This idea that rolling dice is anti-climactic and you acting out a 21-NPC scene isn't, is purely your opinion. I personally would feel that a scene with that much GM input is more likely to reach some pre-determined end rather than for play to have mattered, and as such will feel anti-climactic to me.
There are very simple ways to expand such situations out to more than one roll, and to have the scene play out naturally, with the players playing in character and their actions leading to rolls, just as they would in combat or any other kind of scene where the outcome was in doubt.
yeah this is why we stopped using alignment (and never used the traits flaws ect) there is this super small list that are supposed to perfectly grab all of human experience
this reminds me of an issue with old world of darkness (another game that like D&D I still play) where players would pour over flaws that gave the most amount of pts for the least in game effect.
I mean, setting aside if treating the game as if it's a game is good or bad, there's really no way to stop people trying to game the system. It's going to happen and you ether let it or you try and limit it per your taste and that of your players. I don't think overlooking potentially relevant spheres of play simply to try and avoid someone gaming a disadvantage is the best approach.
Combat works the way it does because there are stakes. If things don't go well, the PCs may die. There may be any number of other stakes established in the fiction... they don't recover the magic sword, they don't save the princess, the cultists are able to summon their patron, and so on. The uncertainty of combat and the rules that govern it are what makes such situations tense. The outcome is decided by playing the game. Not by someone deciding what would be most likely to happen.
So if social encounters are to have stakes... it there's to be meaningful risk and if the outcome is not pre-determined... then there needs to be rules to govern that.
This does seem to be a common perspective on the subject. I wonder why.
Have (general) you ever been pushed over the edge by an insult? Or maybe too tired to argue with someone? Or so smitten that you agree to things you know are a bad idea? If so, you have lost a "social combat." And if it can happen to you, it can happen your character.
It's because there're mechanics involved... the use of a spell slot and an action to cast the spell, the targeting of a character, a saving throw... all clear and understandable rules that make it easier for the player to understand and accept the results. I fail my save, bad thing happens.
Not to say that social complexities are as easily mapped to such a system, but there is at least the invoking of rules in that regard. If this kind of thing were to be expanded to skills such as Persuasion or Bluff, then we'd need some kind of similar mechanics that would substitute.
PbtA also relies heavily on the GM improvising things on the fly, again heavily relying on table contracts to negotiate that. In other words, PbtA takes a lot of complexity out of the game and instead moves it to the metagame.
I would say that's not a metagame.... that's the game. The game is the conversation. The rules determine who gets to say what and when. The principles of play are not really just suggestions. Not any more so than any other rule, anyway.
