Traits, Drawbacks, and Flaws


Advice


Alright so Pathfinder is suppose to be Backwards Compatible with 3.5. Now yes Flaws were an Alternate set of rules but does it transfer well into Pathfinder?

Now Drawbacks were clearly draw from the old Flaw style. But Flaws had the bonus of granting a feat in exchange for taking a Drawback. Now Drawbacks as far as I know only grants Traits.

Is there a way to take Drawbacks or flaws in Pathfinder to gain bonus feats?


In homebrew yes, nothing prevent you from taking back the Drawback (using the old drawback, not the new one which are intended to work for traits) and take one for a bonus feat, it's not game breaking at all...


Drawbacks in Pathfinder are not nearly as devastating to a character as Flaws in 3.5 were. The tradeoff is still equivalent. A Feat for a Flaw, a Trait for a Drawback.


Devistating?
Most of them are on Par with Drawbacks

Shaky takes a -2 to all ranged attacks. That is worth a feat in 3.5.


Shaky is 3rd party Drawback, not a Paizo Pathfinder Drawback. If you are going to use a source like D20PFSRD please confirm the source of that information. It lists the source at the bottom of the page.

No, Drawbacks are not on par with Flaws in 3.5. There is no parity to be found between Drawbacks and Flaws.

Shadow Lodge

The issue with drawbacks/flaws, and I think this is why they weren't included in Pathfinder, is that you could take a flaw that wouldn't really affect you much (eg. -4 to Swim) for a feat, which is as powerful as you want.

It would be a different story if there were specific flaws for specific feats, since their power level can be matched more easily, but even that's never going to be perfect.


Gauss wrote:

Shaky is 3rd party Drawback, not a Paizo Pathfinder Drawback. If you are going to use a source like D20PFSRD please confirm the source of that information. It lists the source at the bottom of the page.

No, Drawbacks are not on par with Flaws in 3.5. There is no parity to be found between Drawbacks and Flaws.

Shaky was a 3.5 FLAW was not aware it was a drawback 3rd party or not.

And I agree. I was curious as to why this system was not imposed especially with all the feat starved builds.

Liberty's Edge

Because most of the times a player will chose a flaw or drawback with a minimal negative impact on a character in exchange for a powerful feat.

To make an example:
"Shaky takes a -2 to all ranged attacks. That is worth a feat in 3.5."
I make a melee monster or a controlling spellcaster, a shapechanger druid or a summoner.
How often shaky will affect my play? How often the extra feat will benefit me?

Grand Lodge

Diego Rossi wrote:

Because most of the times a player will chose a flaw or drawback with a minimal negative impact on a character in exchange for a powerful feat.

To make an example:
"Shaky takes a -2 to all ranged attacks. That is worth a feat in 3.5."
I make a melee monster or a controlling spellcaster, a shapechanger druid or a summoner.
How often shaky will affect my play? How often the extra feat will benefit me?

Heck, even just using spells like magic missile, since it is an auto hit, would bypass this drawback entirely.

I recall building an archer in 3.5, and taking the similar drawback for melee attacks in exchange for getting some benefit to his archery early. Run away from melee, so not much real effect on the PC. Especially since I think the campaign allowed some Pathfinder feats, specifically the Point-Blank Master feat, so using a bow, without provoking, against an adjacent target is still not melee...

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Traits, Drawbacks, and Flaws All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice