Characters With Flaws and Weaknesses Are More Fun to Play!
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Back our Kickstarter! www.kickstarte...
Use Promo code PICKLED with the following companies to SUPPORT the CHANNEL!
www.Thorum.com - Use Promo code PICKLED for 20% off your Purchase!
1985games.com - Use Promo code PICKLED for 10% off your Purchase!
www.DnDDice.com - Use Promo code PICKLED to show your support!
The Pickled Dragon
Teespring Gaming Swag: teespring.com/...
Website: www.thepickledd...
Facebook: / thepickleddragon
Instagram: / the_pickled_dragon
@The_Pickled_Dragon
Twitter: / 1pickleddragon
The Monstrous Lexicon: www.amazon.com...
Pickled Dragon 5e Adventures
The Days of Blight Trilogy
Days of Blight Book 1: www.dmsguild.c...
Days of Blight Book 2: www.dmsguild.c...
Days of Blight Book 3: www.dmsguild.c...
The Pickled Dragon's are now in PDF on DriveThruRPG: www.drivethrur....
The Prison of K'aas: www.amazon.com....
The Evil Under Clorehaven: www.amazon.com....
The Misfit Maggot Five: www.dmsguild.c...
I can attest to this being true. The most memorable character I ever had in 5e was an aaracockra sorceress that had a CON score of 10. She rolled a one for HP at second level, and a one for third level (We stuck to the 'if you roll it, you take it' rule). She had a total of 8hp at third level and it was amazing to try and play her in a way where she wouldn't get hit. In fact, it felt very OSR to play her, because she DIDN'T want to get into direct fire or attacks, most things could drop her in one hit, even kobolds or goblins.
Of course, she could fly (Again, it's not overpowered when most of the enemies are smart, and have ranged weaponry). The one time she tried to fly over the field to attack a spellcaster at the back, she got hit by a cantrip that put her at 0hp. It was a fire-cantrip, it was ruled she was like a struck aircraft and spiraled on fire, smoking into the ground with a thud. We were *wheezing* with laughter at the table. They had to find a way to get through the front-liners to get to the back to keep her alive. It was close, but they did, and that's when she became my absolute favorite character to play in the brief time I played 5e. I liked playing into those flaws. I loved that she couldn't just super-hero-solo everything and had to pick her battles.
This is absolutely a great memory and it came from a very glaring weakness! Back in the 1e days, I had a player who was very unlucky with hit point rolls. As a 9th level Cleric, he had only 19 hit points. As the DM, it made for interesting encounter balance.
I like that you use two disparate examples to make your point. The first character's flaw was based in pure chance, and the second was a self-imposed roleplay choice. One very nitpicky thought I had though, is when you discuss the importance of CHA for 3E Clerics, and say "back then," as if the 3E rules are a thing of the past. To me, each edition is just as current as any other, and new ones don't make previous ones obsolete. I know, it's a very minor point, and not what you meant, but anything that can be done to keep people from thinking they have to constantly chase after Hasbro's next new thing is worth it to me.
Arguably less of a mechanical weakness than a story/in-world flaw, but hands down my favorite PC I ever played was so much fun precisely because of his big flaw: He practiced a forbidden form of magic (a Binder from the 3.5 Tome of Magic supplement, if you're familiar), and had to keep that a secret from everyone else. I invested a lot of his build into just being able to better pose as a more conventional wizard, taking feats to enable me to use scrolls and wands I otherwise couldn't to expand my spell repertoire and to use Sleight of Hand checks to reliably pass it off as my own magic rather than items.
At the start of the campaign, only the DM knew my actual class, and I would pass him notes on what pacts I was making and secretly roll the checks. What made it extra interesting was that, unbeknownst to me when I made the character, two of the three other players were rolling up very devout religious characters who would be very much opposed to my use of pact magic: A paladin, and a cleric with the Church Inquisitor prestige class. I managed to keep the true nature of my magic under wraps for half the campaign, but eventually the inquisitor's suspicions got to be too much for him to ignore and he cornered me at the inn to confront me about it. The inquisitor's player and I stuck around roleplaying out that confrontation for over an hour after the other players left.
This sounds like so much fun! Secrets kept from the party make for great dramatic reveals later!
Talking about 3e rules like taking that warforged and playing cleric was something I loved doing in 3e. like Tiefling Warlock in 3e was like that. My halfling Barbarian was like that which was hilarious. It was just fun to go against the grain for me I think. Others would say "oh that is a bad match up you should really pick something else." I wasn't trying to be the greatest, was just having fun with it.
Halfling Barbarians are VICIOUS and awesome. Like little wolverines! In one of muy campaign worlds ALL halflings are more like the ones in Dark sun. I call them Wildlings instead of Halflings and they are predominantly Barbarians, Fighters, and the like.
I always looked at character races/ancestries/origins/species as Archetypes rather than Race in the way it is used or has been used in our history. Orcs were a symbolic representation of the threat to civilization and elves represented (more or less) the pinnacles of civilization. Dwarves were the sturdy working class stock and Kenders and Halflings the child-like wonder, goblins the representation of the Id, etc... It's a fictional world but it seems that today we are trying to manufacture consent among everyone and we can't talk about race in a fantasy role playing game without somehow making it about real world issues and politics. Personally, I love characters with wildly different stats and abilities and flaws. Today every Barbarian is getting relatively the same build and now without the ancestral differences ( and I truly think they are doing it to appease a wider audience that might critique it and not for any mechanical reasons) all characters are brought to a similar power level. It kinda makes the game focused on the mechanical effect rather than the flavour or role-play opportunities a "challenged" character can offer as a playing experience.
As to the your request for examples of unbalanced characters>>> I had a Wizardr with a 13 INT but a 16 STR and 7 WIS. I Should have picked Fighter but I wanted to be a spellcaster. Every time he tried to cast a spell it became a bit of a joke because his INT mod ( this is 5e) meant he had much more likelihood that his spells would fail or be resisted. But I had a fun character that wanted to be like his wizard heroes but he was an outcast from the community, known as the laughing stock of the Wiz community. Sometimes we choose to be things we can't really excel at and I had fun being largely ineffectual but providing lots of "Oh NO" opportunities in the game.
I don't know whether to call this a paradox. But we have the situation of homogenization of races in D&D, taking away their "unique" way of being. And we suggest that "flaws" in a character must exist to make them unique and fun to play. At the same time we have conflict with situations such as characters in wheelchairs and we wish not to deal with characters "with those types of flaws." Possibly, the complaint is even that even in a wheelchair, they do not have any "objections", returning to the theme of the homogenization of the characters. "They are all the same with different 'skin'"
Anyway! THX for the video!
We wants flaws yes but not disabilities that would make adventuring impossible without the DM creating idiodic accommodations for the player to make the character viable. It is an interesting "line" to examine. What kind of flaw is too big to be playable?
I’m currently running a halfling bard. So she’s slower than the rest of the party but she also only has a strength of 9. With today’s normal not usually getting that low it’s different to run. She is also a bit of a coward but she’s fun to play
Many players on purposely choose to take mechanical flaws when those rules come with some sort of bonus to be used else where.
OSR Players: 😅😅 yeah...