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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 658487" data-attributes="member: 172">In HERO, as in most games that give you bennies for drawbacks, it's not a question of how many drawbacks you take, but how you are going to fill your disadvantage point allotment. I think HERO works in some settings because hero disadvantages are typically appropriate for the genre.  For example, the main venue for HERO is supers, and HERO gives you points for genre appropriate behavior like "code versus killing" or suchnot.Other games that use similar schemes (or hero in the wrong setting) is like a train wreck. I have seem the most senseless combinations of abilities in some such games, and some games give you entirely too many points for drawbacks.And *D&D is one of them. I remember what is, to this day, one of the most rued book of mine published for *D&D: unearthed arcana. Merely by accepting a bad attitude about certain things, you could play a super-fighter (a cavalier or barbarian), and your bad attitude seldom amounted to anything. In 2e, kits theoretically balanced with disadvantages, but often really did balance, or balanced with a disadvantage that never really meant anything.Of course, we still see this today in d20 system products, like Mongoose's kits... er, character concepts, which (much like Happiest_Sadist mentioned) trade off advantages in your specialty for disadvantages in something you would never bother doing. Only with the Mongoose books, you don't even have to bother dredging up an abuse; they do the work for you.And don't even get me started on how bad I think the anti-feats are in Kenzer's Villain Design Handbook.After playing games for years, I have come to the conclusion that for disadvantages to work right, it takes either or both a good amount of GM ajudication and a good system. In some ways, I really don't think it's worth the hassle. If a player really wants to role-play a disadvantage, they will do so without much promise of compensation. If you do promise compensation, players start fishing for points.</blockquote>

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