Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 6008113" data-attributes="member: 8835">Celebrim's got points that I agree with, but they go a different direction than my own.I agree with you that most writing advice is to not make your protagonist perfect and give them a flaw.  I don't think anybody is against the basic concept of a protagonist should have a flaw that complicates their life or they have to overcome.  That's storytelling.what the tangent about character flaws was the extreme of giving your PC a totally debilitating flaw that makes him absolutely worthless as an adventurer, which was the job title the PC was supposed to be built for.I don't know how often it happens, it may be a bit of a straw man, but apparently some players go overboard on thinking their PC has to have a flaw to their PC has to totally suck at doing his job in order to qualify as a "real" or dramatic character.Buffy, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Harry Dresden, Anita Blake, Tony Stark, MacGuyver, Colonel Jack O'Neill all have some flaw or weakness.  But most of their fiction shows them quipping smartly, convincing others to help, fighting evil and winning, having friends and allies, etc.The purpose of designing in the flaw is to eventually use it to cause the hero to stumble or have a new challenge to overcome and grow.The failure in flaw design allegedly comes when a player goes overboard in thinking that the PC has to be terrible at their job (a fighter who sucks at fighting), socially inept and unlikable, all in the name of "better roleplaying"I don't know how often this actually happens.  it's possible.  I know I have one friend who seems to like it when he rolls low on stats, and objects if you offer him a re-roll that is granted by the RAW.  So he trends toward this crappist design behavior.</blockquote>

Verification