D&D 5E Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws

[whimsychris123]

I am curious about how or if groups use the personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws system in their game. I have some thoughts about them, but I wanted to hear from others before I share mine.

 

[Charlaquin]

I use them. I rule that it is the player’s responsibility to claim Inspiration when one of these traits comes into play, rather than wait for me to award it, and each trait can be used to claim Inspiration up to once per session. Works great!

 

[DND_Reborn]

We removed Alignment from the game and replaced it with the Personality info.

 

[Don Durito]

I've always just ignored it.

 

[iserith]

I detailed how I use it here: The Case for Inspiration.

Just about everyone who plays in my games takes this to their own games (or so they tell me).

 

[Aldarc]

I ignore it for the half-baked afterthought mechanic that it is.

 

[Retreater]

I don't use them, or inspiration. They didn't even make it through a single campaign.
They are straightjackets to actual roleplay or worse provide opportunities for disruption of the game with playing out the flaws. Inspiration, when it is remembered at all, is a wink-wink nudge "I did something in character, can I get a bonus" annoyance. Most of the time it is completely forgotten - even when I upped its importance to basically "you can do anything in the game, succeed at anything."
In my games it's a completely unnecessary subsystem with no real impact on the game, kind of like backgrounds (just take any two skill proficiencies you want and be done with it).

 

[toucanbuzz]

Purely as a roleplay reminder. I've never handed out trophies or awards or inspiration for playing your character.

It doesn't mean I don't value personality traits. They're actually one of my favorite parts of the game, and I encourage players to use sheets that have these front-and-center. It's my experience that, without constant reminders, many players given enough time will revert from playing the character into some caricature of their own personality and/or the same type they always play, such as the smart-ass.

 

[Don Durito]

In terms of helping people come up with characters to play I think something like the backgrounds in 13th Age or Barbarians of Lemuria is more useful. In those games they're used as skills, but even if it's just something to write down it's more useful then bonds and flaws and the like.

Something like:
- Small village farmer
-Drudge slave for 6 years
- Pit-fighter

Gives a player more to work with. I think it's a mistake to work from the inside out. Get the basic life background down in succint details and the inner stuff will work itself out. In the above example it naturally leads you to start thinking "hey, I was enslaved as a kid - what happened to my parents - maybe I want revenge" and "my guy has been a slave most of his life, maybe he's not comfortable with freedom".

A lot of players (including myself) take a few sessions to really feel our way around a character and things like personality traits written down in advance are not much help there.

It might work better if after three sessions or so, you asked the other players to try and identify the traits of the player's characters - but I'm not convinced there's much to be gained from codification.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I ask my players to fill the traits/ideals/bond/flaw section themselves, no rolling on the background charts, mostly as a gentle nudge toward putting a modicum of effort to think about the mindset of their character.

I decided that I will no longer use Inspiration in my games: Advantage is too easy to come by, no need to have one more source. I'll discuss it with my players, but I thought of having ''Inspired'' be a condition that lower the DC of Death Saves from 15 to 10 for the PC, being lost at the end of each ''adventure'' (no each day, but each adventuring sequence ie. a dungeon, one wilderness treck etc)