Do any Pathfinder books contain Player Hubris Options?

[czarofprussia]

Hey everyone, my friends and I are creating characters for a campaign. I know some of the RPG's I have played in the past give you options to give your characters Weakness or Hubris or whatever you want to call them. For example..

Alcoholic - your character must make a Will check around alcohol or they start drinking, after so many drinks they lose their Dex bonus but gain a plus to Str. etc.

I think it gives the GM (me) a lot of fun options to play with. Do any Pathfinder books have something similar?

[deusvult]

There are probably some suggestions of 3rd party material, but I'm not aware of any actual Pathfinder branded books with such options.

As you've noticed it's a common idea in alot of RPG systems, but it's not usually done in d20 in my experience.

[Trikk]

While I haven't seen it in any PF products so far, there are such things in 3.5 products that shouldn't be hard to integrate in your PF campaign. Book of Vile Darkness has some for evil characters I think.

GURPS, Rolemaster and HARP have what you're looking for but will take a little more fiddling to convert.

[Azure_Zero]

look in 3.5's unearthed arcana, it had character flaws

[Trikk]

Azure_Zero wrote:

look in 3.5's unearthed arcana, it had character flaws

Oh yeah, second this. Unearthed Arcana is an amazing book. One of the best supplements I've read for any game.

[czarofprussia]

Trikk wrote:

Azure_Zero wrote:

look in 3.5's unearthed arcana, it had character flaws

Oh yeah, second this. Unearthed Arcana is an amazing book. One of the best supplements I've read for any game.

Cool thanks!

[Gilfalas]

Azure_Zero wrote:

look in 3.5's unearthed arcana, it had character flaws

Be careful with them though. I often found that the drawbacks given were not on par with the free feats you got.

Make sure that any flaws taken are worth the feat your player takes.

[F. Wesley Schneider]

Hum. I agree with Gilfalas that the Flaw for Feat trade off often comes across as unbalanced - so I'd be wary about seeing something like this in Pathfinder.

But some sort of Flaw as a way to get a Trait... there might be something there.

[Gilfalas]

F. Wesley Schneider wrote:

Hum. I agree with Gilfalas that the Flaw for Feat trade off often comes across as unbalanced - so I'd be wary about seeing something like this in Pathfinder.

But some sort of Flaw as a way to get a Trait... there might be something there.

See now that would work. Obviously some flaws are worse than others (like missing a leg) but traits might be a fine trade for most Flaws in the UA.

[Gorbacz]

Virtues/Flaws systems in RPG don't work, at least as far as my experiences go.

They end up in two ways:

1) characters which are loaded with flaws in order to make them interesting to RP out, but end up so handicapped that they impede gaming fun for everybody at the table (So you're an albino devil-marked bisexual leper... and we're having a meeting with an inquisitor today. GREAT.)

2) characters which have only irrelevant flaws (can't cast spells while standing above his knees in running water and so on) in return for one uber-virtue that makes everybody involved cry at night.

[ryric]

Gorbacz wrote:

Virtues/Flaws systems in RPG don't work, at least as far as my experiences go.

They end up in two ways:

1) characters which are loaded with flaws in order to make them interesting to RP out, but end up so handicapped that they impede gaming fun for everybody at the table (So you're an albino devil-marked bisexual leper... and we're having a meeting with an inquisitor today. GREAT.)

2) characters which have only irrelevant flaws (can't cast spells while standing above his knees in running water and so on) in return for one uber-virtue that makes everybody involved cry at night.

This. Unless you have very mature players, flaws simply add to the min-maxing potential. Players will tend to select flaws that have a minimal effect on them, then avoid situations where the flaw might come up. But they select the benefits that work as often as possible.

Have you looked at the nWoD style of flaw? Flaws get you nothing at character creation; whenever they come up during play you get extra xp. Something like that, possibly with hero points, might be a decent way to do flaws in PF.

[Kazarath]

Theres a 3PP book from Adamant Ent. called Tome of Secrets. Its got a lot of stuff in it, including a section on flaws. They had an interesting take on it, where instead of getting a free feat, you get 4 extra skill ranks. Not sure how balanced it is, but it might be worth a look.

[EWHM]

Long and painful experience has taught me to be very wary of allowing roleplay oriented flaws to pay for combat mechanical advantages. There's also a lot of very strong metagame temptations both for GM and Players when you have such virtues and flaws around.

[Fozbek]

Unearthed Arcana's flaws suck, because it's way too easy to choose one that simply doesn't affect your character.

What our group has found that works is the Arcanas from AEG's 3.0 Swashbuckling Adventures campaign setting. They're flaws, but instead of giving a constant numerical disadvantage, they allow other players or the DM to screw you over in certain circumstances once per day. For example, there's the Hot-Headed flaw: once per day, another player or the DM can force your character to lose your temper. Another example is Inattentive: 1/day, you automatically fail a Perception check.

I havn't found any that can really be marginalized the same way the Unearthed Arcana flaws can be. For example, -2 to melee attack rolls doesn't matter at all for a wizard; meanwhile, any of the Hubrises from Swashbuckling Adventures will apply at least some of the time, because the DM can force them to apply in a situation where it really does hurt you.

[Azure_Zero]

that's why the flaws, if used, should have requirements to take them.

[Bellona]

(Granted, misused flaws can ruin a game. Despite that, I do like them.)

As has already be mentioned up-thread, Unearthed Arcana (the contents of which are available from the 3.5 SRD) has flaws. Note that characters are limited to max. 2 flaws. A flaw acquired later in a character's life does not give a bonus feat.

More flaws were published in the various Class Acts articles in Dragon magazine issues 324 - 330, and 333. (The ones in 330 were humorous ones "meant for commoners".) As far as I can tell, the only classes which didn't get a flaw article were Fighter, Monk, and Rogue. However, many of the flaws published in Dragon were not necessarily class-specific, despite being mostly in the Class Acts.

Flaws can generate some funny moments. Like the time a Non-Combatant female character tried to grapple a Light-Weight female character who was suffering from the Confusion spell. They were both so ineffective that it was decided that the "combat" didn't even rate as a cat fight, but was a kitten fight instead.

A flaw has also been the cause of character death in a recent game. A Sorcerer was unlucky/"non-tactical" enough to get surrounded by some Rogues. When the sneak attack-enhanced damage was calculated, the Sorcerer dropped below the point of death by 1 hp - thanks to the Metal Intolerance flaw.

[czarofprussia]

ryric wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Virtues/Flaws systems in RPG don't work, at least as far as my experiences go.

They end up in two ways:

1) characters which are loaded with flaws in order to make them interesting to RP out, but end up so handicapped that they impede gaming fun for everybody at the table (So you're an albino devil-marked bisexual leper... and we're having a meeting with an inquisitor today. GREAT.)

2) characters which have only irrelevant flaws (can't cast spells while standing above his knees in running water and so on) in return for one uber-virtue that makes everybody involved cry at night.

This. Unless you have very mature players, flaws simply add to the min-maxing potential. Players will tend to select flaws that have a minimal effect on them, then avoid situations where the flaw might come up. But they select the benefits that work as often as possible.

Have you looked at the nWoD style of flaw? Flaws get you nothing at character creation; whenever they come up during play you get extra xp. Something like that, possibly with hero points, might be a decent way to do flaws in PF.

Yeah I would definitely put limits on them, like 1 per PC and I would make sure they were something actually useful to the GM (me) I have seen to many power gaming as well, but I have a pretty mature group that can have fun with them. I have one guy who wants to a secret arsonist...

[Mark Sweetman]

The other option you have is creating some custom campaign traits - which have the flaw (and benefit) built into them.

That way people can only take one, it gives a DM controlled penalty and you can make the benefit a bit better than a standard trait if you like.