Traits and Flaws - how do they work out in practice?

[Quasqueton]

Have any of you used the traits and flaws from Unearthed Arcana?

I've looked through them and I see some that would fit my character -- "Hey, look, a trait that gives a game mechanic to how I've been playing," or "Oh, you mean I could get an extra feat by taking a game mechanic flaw to how I've been playing anyway?"

But I've also (subconsciously) noticed ways I could min/max my character beyond how I've been playing him.

I kind of like the concept of a game mechanic supporting how a Player plays a character. But I fear of abuse. What has been your experience?

Quasqueton

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

They don't work.

I haven't used Unearthed Arcana's sytem, but I've extensively used the ones in Alternity and World of Darkness. The word that comes to my mind is "busted".

It's not that every flaw is broken, it's just that any such system seems to always include flaws that don't inflict real penalties. For instance, a flaw that gave you -2 Strength in exchange for a feat would be busted - a wizard putting as many ranks in Escape Artist as they can won't notice it. Escape Artist ends up with a higher bonus than their BAB + Strength in any event, especially if they're Small, so a wizard without the feat would still get a benefit from spending the skill points on Escape Artist.

 

[andargor]

Have any of you used the traits and flaws from Unearthed Arcana?

I've looked through them and I see some that would fit my character -- "Hey, look, a trait that gives a game mechanic to how I've been playing," or "Oh, you mean I could get an extra feat by taking a game mechanic flaw to how I've been playing anyway?"

But I've also (subconsciously) noticed ways I could min/max my character beyond how I've been playing him.

I kind of like the concept of a game mechanic supporting how a Player plays a character. But I fear of abuse. What has been your experience?

Quasqueton

As (Psi)SeveredHead indcated, there is space (a LARGE space) for abuse.

We however use it in our campaign. We can make suggestions to the DM and he can decide if it fits the character concept. And he approves the bonus feats.

For example, my wizard took Absent-minded and Noncombatant because that's what he is, and he took Spell Mastery x 2 as his bonus feats. So on the combat side, not much difference, and he'll be a little less screwed if his spellbooks get taken away.

Like anything, in moderation traits and flaws can be a good thing...

My Turkish $0.02

Andargor

 

[reapersaurus]

God forbid the players have more fun with their characters.

 

[Humanophile]

Traits, the ones from the book and well designed third party ones, at least, are fine. They're designed to make sure the advantage and the disadvantage cover the same area of play, so mostly they just tweak the numbers to get your character's mechanics a little bit closer to how you play him. A character with a trait may be a little better than one without, but it's absolutely negligible on the scales of balance.

Flaws, on the other hand, are tricky for the reason (Psi)SeveredHead put forth; any minmaxer worth his salt is going to make sure that the things he's minning are covered by his maxed strengths, so it's quite likely that the flaw's real effect is negligible next to the feat picked. Some of them are workable if the player has a long background that absolutely requires that extra feat, but even then it requires active DM overwatch.

 

[Li Shenron]

First of all, both Traits and Flaws are suggested to be (1) available to each chracter in the campaign and (2) limited to 2. Of course a DM may want to grant more at higher level or otherwise limit them further to just 1, but as long as everyone has access to the same number it should be fine.

TRAITS

They are really minor. The ones about skills are more exploitable, since you may never use the penalized skill(s), but they usually grant a mere +1 to a single skill. Other traits can be effectively quite good for some characters, and others don't make sense outright (such as... why should a slow character be more robust?), but most of them are ok.

FLAWS

There's a reason why they included only a few. Almost all the flaws in UA give a penalty to something that is useful for everyone, such as AC, a saving throw, initiative, Listen/Spot, hit point, movement speed. These penalties are always larger than the bonus given to the same things by a feat, therefore you are paying a price higher than the bonus feat. I think they are actually very fair, since you are definitely going to suffer these kind of penalties early or late.

If you use a flaw that affects something which can be ignored by a specific character, the cost is zero. The UA flaws which could have this problem are for example those that give -2 to all melee attacks or ranged attacks, which can be basically harmless to a PC who always fights in the other way or if she's a spellcaster. For the same reason, the one that gives -2 to a single ability score can be circumvented (it has an interesting restriction however).

 

[Darklone]

I like the UA stuff. I mean, the stuff where you can't choose your benefit freely.