Voluntary Flaw

[Dieben]

Hello and well met all,

Short and sweet: Am I allowed at character creation to choose take a permanent, numeric penalty to a subset of saving throws (e.g. mind-affecting spells) at character creation? This is NOT to gain any sort of bonus, feat, qualification, etc. It is purely for fleshing out mechanically a few facets of a character concept I am working on.

[MrSin]

Is there a particular reason you want to? You could just roleplay it and not allow yourself to be extra easy to dominate and kill your fellow pathfinders couldn't you?

[RainyDayNinja]

I believe you always have the option of forgoing a saving throw, and just taking the full effects. But your teammates will probably hate you for it the first time you get confused or dominated.

Or you could just dump your Wisdom and put the points somewhere else, so you at least get some benefit in exchange.

[Dieben]

The build for this character is likely to be Paladin/3 Bard/X. His saves are all going to be atrociously high, even after dumping wisdom, and it seemed appropriate to take an additional penalty.

[nosig]

Dieben wrote:

The build for this character is likely to be Paladin/3 Bard/X. His saves are all going to be atrociously high, even after dumping wisdom, and it seemed appropriate to take an additional penalty.

just roll badly.

;)

[DrSwordopolis]

Play hardmode; roll d12s for your saves. =)

[SCPRedMage]

Officially, there's nothing in the rules that support this, and PFS is a RAW campaign, so officially no, you can't.

That said, as has been pointed out, you can voluntarily fail a saving throw, so, depending on GM, you might be able to get away with telling the GM that you voluntarily fail the save if you don't beat it by two or more points...

[Dieben]

Alright, many thanks everyone. I appreciate your assistance.

Humorous Tangent:

It isn't often that you see people asking for permission to nerf their characters.

[Dhjika]

Dieben wrote:

Alright, many thanks everyone. I appreciate your assistance.

** spoiler omitted **

When it comes time to roll. D20 for that mind affecting spell accidentally roll a d12 instead

[Muja]

As far as I know there is no way to get penalties for no reason. You might be surprised at how often people ask things like this. I've seen people ask if their character can be missing an eye and want a penalty to perception. I've seen a character want to be missing a leg and wanted to lose half his move speed.

Intentionally nerfing a character only hurts the party as a whole. If your character is hyper optimized you can always tone down your actions and bring them back up when needed.

Edit: There is another thread currently up about a wizard who wants to either not have a spellbook or to have a spellbook but not to have any spells prepared.