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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMforPowergamers" data-source="post: 5739569" data-attributes="member: 67338">Ok, so i have a love/hate relationship with the concept of merit/flaw...the same one I have with point buy in general. Read my screen name and you might get a clue, but I have delt with more then my share of power gamers over the years (even been labled one once or twice)1) White wolf, my first experance with the idea of flaws. I remeber when we started it was all about characters... then we learned how some DMs ran.  We use to joke that in a larry game everyone had 7 more freebies for free. He always had his plot and NPCs set before seeing your sheet, so enemies, dark secrets, hunted all had a good chance of never showing up. I remeber a game where I as a PC finaly threw a fit when I found out that another PC had a 5pt enemy the prince, and Clan enemity Ventrue (The prince's clan) but in game 1 the prince went missing and so did the ventrue primagin... By the way I was a Ventrue and told that if I wanted to play I had to stay more or less with the group and PvP was not allowed...      by the time I was runing white wolf I tried to stop it, but trying to balance 4 or 5 sets of backgrounds and flaws is alot (and I think I am a darn good dm/storyteller) and I know even in my games not all of them got what they should.    My fav was in the LARP where players with glasses took bad sight, and smokers took addiction smokeing... 2) Gurps...where I learned why I hate math. I only played a few times, but people who knew how to game the system.  I could derail my own thread if I go into it too much3) Deadlands, where the rules taught you to cheat.  Flaws that should never be allowed made my first few (non house ruled) games un fair, then the suggested house rule made it almost unplayable...               the old ways shaman who would never touch a gun or loose powers, has 3 flaws that give penelties to shooting guns... by the way suggested by the book.               then a flaw Grim Servent of Death was all RP, and worth max pts...it said people you care about die around you. We all pictured the lone gunslinger who;s wife, kids, side kick, best friend, dog, new girl...all die, but that is hard to pull off, so the suggest house rule was when you used fate chips to negate damage a memeber of your party took the damage... after a month of game half the party felt WE should get points for him having the flaw...4) the 3e flaws are not much better. Your swordman is 'shaky' -3 ranged attacks...um but he gets weapon focus sword for that...and he didn't plan on buting  a bow.             I will say it was funny when the dex 8 fighter took the penelty to initative flaw...and in one fight rolled a nat 1.. calling a -4 or 5 intiative.I like the idea of flaws, and I can make just as many examples where they worked perfect, helped me build my concept, and round my character...but I think you need the right DM/Player set to make them work most times... if some 5e came out and used the idea, I want suggested rules and limits to avoid atleast most abuses.</blockquote>

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