Feel free to post any flaws questions or commentary here.

Or, post your flawed super-combo and I'll tell you why I think you're still coming out behind. ;)

Got to be the biggest flaw in the game :P

I've been taking it for years and all it gets me is wimpy allies and not-as-cool-as-evil eq. Wasn't someone designing a 'heaven' to solve problem 2?

Yhorian.

not a character flaw, so no. Playing good align is like masochism, sure some people like it, but they're ####ing crazy.

nt

nt

n/t

An anti-paladin with the squeamish flaw would be! Assuming Squeamish triggers off of face slash, cleave, crippling strike, lashes of the slave, vault, etc

Or even a squeamish wussy orc. I'd think hilarity would ensue. Until the char got deleted 30 hours in.

So I just made an orc just to ya know see, and I don't know how low the charisma eventually was, but I'm guess 3 (I took it until it wouldn't let me anymore). I'm not going to pretend to know how exactly that would affect orc skills (they seem more reliant on morale than anyone else), but I am curious how you see people (especially ones with naturally low charisma, and in this case no haggle) will be affected by low charisma.

Orcs do still have some skills based on leadership, brute persuasiveness, presence, etc.

Ultimately, you probably could play a very effective orc that didn't desperately need any of those skills, but you also don't get a whole lot for selling your charisma down. If it means anything to you, I wouldn't do it with my next orc unless I was looking for an extra challenge.

NT

Any BattleRager that could meet the prerequisites is probably going to suffer much more elsewhere.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Knowing how it works, Battle is about the *last* thing I'm going to pick it on, even if I could. It (combined with Battle's other restrictions that no one else has, for example, can't quaff a potion to end up somewhere you can't keep summoning me again and again and again) just turns up the lethality rate of being summoned incredibly.

####, maybe I should change things so Battle app warrior can pick it if they want to. :P

Or at least not the ones posted to Dio's.

Characters with this flaw are often sickened and/or disoriented by mystical transportation of all kinds.

I forgot about summon when I wrote up the edge description and subsequent helpfile, but it turns out my code is smarter than I am and accounts for it.

I like the flaws so far. Without giving away what character concepts it has inspired me to play though, I'd like to see some way to counter-act the gimpy flaw somewhat. It seems like if I wanted to play a character that specifically wants to learn to shapeshift to get around a serious disability, then it shouldn't carry over into my animal form or when I turn on hooves of the gazelle.

Overall, I am really interested in seeing what kinds of flawed heros we will have joining our ranks over the coming weeks. We'll need to start hosting some charity fundraisers for all of the crippled, disfigured teenagers that will be hobbling along the streets of Galadon for awhile though.

If there isn't already, I think it would be fitting to give an echo when somebody with the gimpy flaw enters or leaves the room... instead of Bob leaves east or enters the room, maybe Bob limps into the room or Bob hobbles to the east.

>I like the flaws so far. Without giving away what character
>concepts it has inspired me to play though, I'd like to see
>some way to counter-act the gimpy flaw somewhat. It seems like
>if I wanted to play a character that specifically wants to
>learn to shapeshift to get around a serious disability, then
>it shouldn't carry over into my animal form or when I turn on
>hooves of the gazelle.

Gameplay-wise, if you can counteract the flaw, then you should get no benefit. I think it's cool idea to have a shapeshifter that shifts to avoid gimpiness, but they shouldn't get any other benefits for it. It would seem reasonable that shapeshifters only are affected by gimpiness out of form, but they don't get any edge points for the flaw at all.

That's roughly my line of thinking... if we decide that shapeshifters can ignore most of gimpy, they'll either get few or no points for it.

I did this with a felar shapeshifter whose body was stuck hunched forward, somewhere between walking on two legs or four. While I like the idea of flaws, and have an idea for a new character based on one, I would not have taken gimpy for that prementioned character.

For one reason, I wouldn't want it to affect my forms since it was his whole reason for studying magic. Mainly though, even if the immortals agreed that it was ok, I wouldn't want to get those points for an RP device that doesn't affect my character where combat is concerned. It wouldn't seem fair.

Even if we could stack five partial shifts on a shapeshifter, most would still mainly use their forms.

One seemed to disallow me from setting a wimpy, and the other re-allowed it... and then it wasn't allowed again, or something... Honestly I'm not real sure what was going on.

Edit: Having not had the help files on hand when I originally took these, it seems my understanding of what they do/were doing was greatly flawed.

Awesome idea, first of all. I've always liked these kinds of things.

In the announcement you said . "We've tried very hard to make sure that won't happen here. " in the flaw announcement thread.

It looks like an elf warrior could take the "foolish" flaw, without really noticing any serious drawback. Assuming, of course, that the foolish flaw is less than a 4 point reduction in wis. Maybe elves can't be foolish? I'll assume that orcs can't take the foolish flaw, because if they could they could seemingly take it all day without issue.

Vis-a-vis crippled mages, can they not take the str/dex flaws? It seems like a clumsy arial mage is better than a non-clumsy arial. Elves can also suffer some loss of dex without being hampered much. Sure, it's nice to carry extra wands and such, but really it's not a big deal unless you're lightmage.

For most characters, charisma seems unimportant if you can gather gold at all well.

Macho also seems unimpressive. If you solo or lead groups and play evil an evil meleer, it doesn't sound like much of a drawback.

Since I know nothing about how these actually work, and you guys do, I guess what I'm really asking is what is lacking in my understanding of the game that it looks this way to me?

I think you're assuming that Flaws will trade one-for-one with Edges or something close to it. That's not the case. They are very deliberately priced as "unfair", erring on the side of "extra-unfair" with a side order of "hosed".

Basically, if you aren't willing to take a Flaw 'for free', I wouldn't take one. They're intended to give you a few ways to round out a character.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>I think you're assuming that Flaws will trade one-for-one
>with Edges or something close to it. That's not the case.
>They are very deliberately priced as "unfair", erring on the
>side of "extra-unfair" with a side order of "hosed".

Well I didn't think one-for-one, but I didn't think hosed either. That does change things. If you get basically no benefit for them, then that makes it reasonable. Basically, my perception of losing 3 max wis as an elf warrior is that it has virtually no downside, so even a modest upside is still an upside.

Sorry, I meant to be more attentive to this thread but I've been wrestling password hackers with my free minutes here and there.

Dropping your wisdom to a practice threshold was one of the cases we talked about in balancing this stuff, and we generally agreed that from a powergaming standpoint it's less stupid than a lot of choices you can make, but still not worth it in our opinion. Some of the reasons why:

1) You're probably hurting your skill gains at level up. Effectively, you've untaken Apt Learner.

2) You're probably hurting your mana gains and regen. If you think you'll have any cabal powers or progged items that burn mana to function, you may care.

3) Biggest one, probably: wisdom factors into most of the saving throws you'll make over your lifetime. You're taking what's normally one of the strengths of your combo (good at making saves) and gimping it down.

4) If you're planning on picking any legacies that care about your mental stats, you're making them weaker. If you're not, that you're playing an elf warrior that's throwing that out is probably drawback enough.

So even if you could get, let's say, the Swiftblade edge in exchange for all of that, I'm not totally convinced that it's worth it.

>1) You're probably hurting your skill gains at level up.
>Effectively, you've untaken Apt Learner.

Meh. Your int is 25. The level-up skill gains are convenient, but given that even a fire-giant can perfect everything in short order, you're not really losing any actual power. Personally, I wouldn't take apt learner as an edge unless I'd gotten everything else directly useful first, but I especially wouldn't take it as a high-int combo.

>2) You're probably hurting your mana gains and regen. If you

I haven't played a lot of warriors, but generally even low mental combos don't seem too mana-bound. Especially as an elf, I wouldn't think mana would be an issue 99.9% of the time.

>3) Biggest one, probably: wisdom factors into most of the
>saving throws you'll make over your lifetime.

Okay, that is interesting. I've always considered this effect negligible, but maybe it's significant. I figured that if you're down 3 from max wis, you're still probably better off wearing more svs than wearing +wis. Maybe I'll reconsider that conclusion.

>4) If you're planning on picking any legacies that care about
>your mental stats, you're making them weaker.

Put like that, it sounds like one is a fool for taking legacies that shore up weakness rather than play off strengths. Aren't there a ton of very viable legacies for an elf warrior that have nothing to do with int/wis? Harmonius, Balance or Maelstrom, just to name 3.

>So even if you could get, let's say, the Swiftblade edge in
>exchange for all of that, I'm not totally convinced that it's
>worth it.

Okay, well I'll take your word for it. To me, Swiftblade looks better than 3 wis worth of saves, but if you say it's not, then I guess I'll revise my opinion of wisdom upwards.

Thanks for the response.

P.S. This flaw is another reason to make practices a finer-grained affair.

>>3) Biggest one, probably: wisdom factors into most of the
>>saving throws you'll make over your lifetime.
>
>Okay, that is interesting. I've always considered this effect
>negligible, but maybe it's significant. I figured that if
>you're down 3 from max wis, you're still probably better off
>wearing more svs than wearing +wis. Maybe I'll reconsider that
>conclusion.

It depends; if you're not packing any saves at all, you'll probably get more mileage out of some -save gear.

To put it another way, there's a diminishing returns at some point on -save, but there's never a diminishing return on more wisdom.

>>4) If you're planning on picking any legacies that care
>about
>>your mental stats, you're making them weaker.
>
>Put like that, it sounds like one is a fool for taking
>legacies that shore up weakness rather than play off
>strengths. Aren't there a ton of very viable legacies for an
>elf warrior that have nothing to do with int/wis? Harmonius,
>Balance or Maelstrom, just to name 3.

Yeah, that's a good point.

>Okay, well I'll take your word for it. To me, Swiftblade looks
>better than 3 wis worth of saves, but if you say it's not,
>then I guess I'll revise my opinion of wisdom upwards.

It depends on how much you think you'll fight people who cast/commune/etc., I suppose, and how much making the saves is a factor in your fighting style.

But it's definitely not a guaranteed good choice.

I'm personally a whore for saves so I couldn't see selling down my wisdom with any character.

>P.S. This flaw is another reason to make practices a
>finer-grained affair.

Yup! Something we've talked about, it just has never quite hit being the top priority for any of us yet.