Knew a girl like that once - very charming and friendly, intelligent, interesting, a social butterfly. But when the cafeteria-cashier didn´t like her she was crushed. It was kinda adorable... but also rediculous. I told her so. She was pouting. Even more adorable, but also laughable. Not everybody will love you no matter how likeable I and most people find you etc, etc.. For this kind of character, though, a nightmare +grin+
I have had a similar idea for a while. Cleric to a CN goddess of luck that keeps getting in trouble because of bad luck(deep in debt), to much good luck(broke the house and owners are pissed), or smashing up gambling houses because evidence of the house cheating was found(how dare they defy the will of lady luck)
I would like them all to be from different nations, too. Just imagine 2 Zukos convincing each other that their nations way is flawed and they need to find a better path by thinking for themselves.
@@Jane-oz7pp When it comes to perfectionism it can take many forms. Dom could have one of the more minor forms. Edit: Also perfectionists aren't a perfectionist about everything. I'm a perfectionist about my schoolwork and art. While others are perfectionists about fashion or organization, it really depends on the person. None of them are any less or any more perfectionist then another.
I like the sage background flaw "most people run when they see a demon, I stop to take notes on it's anatomy" I love the idea of a character who's so fascinated by unnatural creatures that they could end up in harm's way or not wanting to harm a potentially dangerous creature so they can study them
DUDE THANKS FOR REMINDING ME OF THIS! I've got a little tabaxi gal living in high north, as-of-yet unexplored-by-many-outsiders mountains, and her pelt is too thick for her to move closer to modern D&D societies. So, all she does is tend to her mountain sheep, hunt and gather, and a lil rudimentary cartography as she explores her dangerous home! I ALREADY wrote in her traits that she's fascinated by exotic buildings and animals, so this is RIGHT UP HER ALLY! Every few months an adventurer will find their way to her corner of the mountains, so she certainly could have been taught how to 'take notes on anatomy,' even though her notes will be useless to anyone but her XD. She's fairly cautious, but honestly, she's met a lot of races and animals that were otherworldly to her, and if she doesn't associate the demon with a cautionary tale from her kittenhood, she'll not even consider that it might want to eat her ears.
My sister is playing a character who spent most of her life trying to train to be a wizard and failing miserably, because she didn't realize that she was a sorcerer and her magic didn't work like that. So far her character still hasn't realized what she is, even though she keeps accidentally electrocuting people. Meanwhile my character, who was raised in an intolerant order and was taught to be suspicious of anyone who is different, suspects that she's hiding that she's really a warlock in league with some evil patron.
My character actually just got over his biggest flaw a few sessions back! He had pyrophobia, fear of fire, to such an extent that he couldn’t take up fire spells or do other things because he was so afraid. He got over it by walking into a fire. It was great.
@@cobiebentley9277 it’s a bit of a story, but luckily for you I write the session notes for my group every week, so I can get you that. (They’re more a storybook retelling of the events than normal session notes). In a moment I will post a reply with the story. It will be written from the perspective of my character, Eyeven Swiftorb.
@@cobiebentley9277 (I hope this all makes sense without all the background info) It’s the night after our trip into the astral plane, and we are in the carriage resting from our trip, though Fireball and Mythrillian were outside of the carriage driving it and keeping watch as we traveled because we had to make up for some lost time. I was meditating when the Eye (the deity he worships) came to me in voice once again and said to me “I know what you are working towards, and you have to most degrees earned it through your dedication, but the way of which you are attempting to achieve it will not work. I shall aid you along your path. Open your eyes.” Keep in mind that at this point, I had every night before going to rest been fabricating from gold to the best of my ability upgrades for my staff to replace the bronze components of my staff in order to make it more powerful as a spellcasting focus. I opened my eyes, and I was standing in an Eye shaped room. There with me stood Khoratari and Artaria. In the center of the room there was a beam of light wherein floated a singular copper key. On the opposite wall to where the 3 of us were standing was a heavy wooden door with a lock on it made of copper. Inscribed thrice over in the languages of Elvish, Common, and Infernal were the instructions, “Take a key and proceed forward. Do not backtrack or else your fate will be tainted, and do not lose your key or you will be forever trapped. Be wary for you will be on your own.” I took the key from the beam of light and when I had removed mine, another one appeared in its place, which Artaria took. I went to the door in the room and unlocked it, pulling it open. There was a swirling portal behind it, and I stepped through the portal. I found that when I emerged I was on a cliff ledge with a bottomless pit in front of me. On the other side of the room was another ledge. On the opposite ledge there was a door and behind me was a door the exact same as the one I had originally gone through. So that I wouldn’t lose my key to the pit, I put it safely inside my bag. Also floating in the air above the pit in the center of the room was some sort of disturbance in the wind, which was otherwize still. I cast mage armor on myself just in case, and then cast fly in order to get to the other side of the pit. My wings pulled into existence around me before spreading out, and I used them to fly across the pit. Once on the other side, the disturbance in the air formulated itself into an air elemental and attacked me, ramming toward me. I striked it with lightning, but the elemental seemed hardly phased by my attack. Well, that’s not entirely true. It was a LOT more mad. It caused a whirlwind that threw me twenty feet out from the ledge over the endless pit. I was getting pretty beat up at this point, So I flew back over to the ledge on the side that I wanted to be on and cast arcane fist for the first time ever, summoning up a fist of blue and lilac ethereal energy and punching the air elemental with it, dealing a bunch of force damage in the process. It was so dazed from that blow (get it? Blow? Because air elemental and you blow air? Nevermind.) that it missed on it’s next attempt to attack me. At that point I punched it one final time with my magical fist and it dissipated into smoke. As soon as it dissipated from existence, I pulled out my key and saw it change in my hand from copper to silver. The lock on the door that I needed to go through was silver. I inserted the key and unlocked the door, proceeding into the next room. The next room was simple enough, though there were words on the wall and a door on the far side of the room. A riddle. The riddle said: “You must. You can. You might. You want. Whatever I do, I decide what you don’t. You fight. You cede. You fly. You give. Whatever you try, I decide how you live. A will. A way. A soul. A heart. Whatever you are I control from the start.” when I finished reading it, I felt a sense of urgency to answer it or else fate in this instance would go against me. I thought hard. The Eye, I guessed? But no. The Eye are far too wize to make themselves the solutions to their own riddle. Or are they? Then, as I felt the time limit closing in on me, I spoke the answer. “Fate!” I cried. I felt the time burden lift off of me and the key in my hand turned from silver to gold. I proceeded toward the door on the far side of the room, unlocked the door, stepped in, and that’s when it happened.
@@cobiebentley9277 I saw the fires. Fires. Everywhere. I was in a 70 foot long and 20 feet wide hallway, but the fire made it so there was only about 10 feet for me to walk through. And I couldn’t see a door at the end. The fire overwhelmed my senses. The heat of it caused me to feel like I was shriveling. I fell to the ground, closed my eyes, and crawled forward, not looking up. But I very quickly began to hurt. I was being cooked alive. But I kept going forward. I refused to stop, for Fate had told me at the beginning of all of this that going back would inevitably be the end of myself. So I got to the end of the hallway. I was almost entirely cooked at this point, barely holding onto my own mortality. I managed to open my eyes. The fires showed no signs of dying down. In fact, I could've sworn that it was bigger. I summoned every last ounce of my will to the forefront, and managed to shakely stand up, and attempted to cast ice storm around me in order to calm the fires, but the ice failed to form due to the heat, and I was left without a wit left in my mind. But somehow, I managed to pull myself together. In the midst of something more terrifying than anything I had ever experienced, I held together and I walked forward, directly into the fire in front of me. And then I walked out the other side. Upon leaving the fire, I felt the most overwhelming and powerful sensation of cold that I had ever experienced in my life. I felt better than I ever had since the fire in the library. I felt fully healed. I no longer feared the fire. I looked down to my hands, and saw my golden key turn to platinum. And there was a door in front of me. I opened the door, and there was a portal on the other side of it. I stepped through. We had all just gone through our final portals and were now together in a room only significant in that there was a well in the center of the room, and in that well was what could only be described as liquid light. On the wall were the words, in Elvish, Common, and Infernal, were the instructions “put in your most prized possession in order to proceed forward.” I, after a second of contemplation, walked up to the well and dropped in my staff, my beloved wizard’s staff. It exploded upon contact with the liquid light. I stepped backward from the well, my fingers reaching slightly towards it. Khoratari stepped up next, and like a fool who wishes to deny the bounds of fate, dropped in an empty glass potion bottle. Her hand caught on fire and began spreading up her body. And this wasn’t some measly fire, this was fire made of that same pure light that the liquid in the well was made of. Serves her right for trying to deny fate it’s course. She very dejectedly threw her true most prized possession, her hexblade. As soon as it touched the light in the well, her hair changed from white to black, and she looked visibly weakend. I could tell she was about ready to cry if she wasn’t so stoic with her emotions. After witnessing this, Artaria stepped up to the well looking very solemn. She untied the ribbon from around her neck, and dropped in her raven pendant, her symbol, the very same I had used to recognise this group as the one the Eye had instructed me to join. I saw a look of steely determination on her face like I had never seen before. A portal opened in the room, a swirling mix of 3 different shades of purple, one slightly desaturated looking, one lilac, and one the exact tone of Artaria’s skin. We all stepped through together. Upon emerging, we found ourselves in a place I had never been before, but felt oddly at home in. The room was that of the shape of an Eye, and had sprawling geometric patterns in the floor that said words in a language I couldn’t read, which means they weren’t in celestial, elvish, common, or sylvan. In the center of the room were two statues of the deities that comprise the Eye, one of Zedes Cator and one of Astrala, each with their hand raised toward the very center of the room, where there was floating in the air without any supports a giant stone sigil of the Eye. Also in the center of the room was a literal pillar of light. The Eye spoke in our minds then and gave us our final directive. “You have done well. I congratulate you. Go to the pillar and receive your gift.” I stepped forward to the pillar of light and reached my hand inside and felt the familiar, yet somehow different, hilt of my staff. My fingers wrapped around the handle and I pulled my hand out. In my hand was the most glorious object I had ever seen. (Reference Eyeven’s Thunderous Quarterstaff sheet for a description of appearance). I raised up the staff and stamped it to the ground. All in the same insant as the staff hitting the ground, a ring of multicolored lightning erupted from the bottom of the staff and began traveling upward. The ring of lightning became two rings, three, four, too many to count. They all circled the diamond orb atop the staff before going into it and shooting upward toward the ceiling. Upon the impact of the lightning bolt with the stone ceiling above us, there was a deafening crack of thunder that were we not in the immortal sanctum of the Eye would have surely done damage to us. I stepped back, happy with my gift. I felt a bit of electricity surge through my arm and looked down on it. I had a new tattoo of a bolt of lightning on the inside of my left forearm. I smiled. (My character’s deity has a thing of giving him tattoos for momentous occasions)
My character's flaw is that she's super naive. If she can convince someone to stop for just one instant, they can just start being good. Right? 😅 Of course not, but it doesn't stop her from trying... She'll also heal the enemy because it's her job to save lives. Her philosophy is that all creatures are "citizens" of reality, not the city, and they are all bound by certain laws; one, that everything lies, but also everything tells a truth: what they are; Two, that all life is worth existing and worth saving; Three, everything has a job, a purpose for doing things for others and themselves and a purpose for existing. Her purpose for existing, her job, is healing others with a smile. "She isn't worth existing if she stopped healing" is similar to what her mother told her when she was younger. We had a break this week but I want to bring this up to the party after we're done with this ogre camp
Reminds me of when my aasimar bard dropped because she used life transference on a cultists, all while her war angel angelic patron berates her as she was making her death saving throws. The cultist stabilized her though before running away. I hope we see him again
@@Spiceodog (same person, that's just my deadname account) aww that's nice. After a harrowing battle with several cultists and running out of spell slots, I checked the fallen for any injured that could be saved. The DM said I spotted one, and I performed a medicine check to stabilize him. While I convinced the artificer to carry him for me, a cultist who surrendered said "oh, siegfried? He's an asshole." Immediately splitting the party on the position of if it was the right thing to do. While I went to sleep straight away when we got back, the rest began arguing loudly once he came to and started spouting cultish nonsense. Some said that they should have me kill him because he's my responsibility, some said that that's barbaric but they couldn't deny that he had no reason for being there. I woke up and came into the room as their argument started to circle back. I denied them when they asked for me to do something, and someone said that I shouldn't heal bad people- I denied the concept. The warlock decided to blast them then and there, but he was counter spelled and as the others got ready to hit him back I released my angel wings and shouted STOP. They did and gave up on that for now. I later released that guy and everyone got mad for a moment before I built up the courage to explain it all to them. He helped us kill the doppelgangers in a church. He told us he'd give up and culting and be a priest for that temple. That's the last thing he said to me, and the last thing I did to him was hug him. Aaaaand then we got dropped out of a dragon which the city was housed in. But oh well I'm going to take Sending and Revivify next level at the cost of Chaos Bolt
A character that I just created is a half-elf noble and she doesn't want anyone to know her family name for fear of being treated differently or being taken advantage of because she's a noblewoman
My character did the same thing for the same reasons, and her sister had been killed because of the family nobility. She doesn’t want to tell anyone information about herself and talk about her family because it reminds her of her sister, one of the only people before she met the party that really cared about her. Her flaw is that she won’t let herself warm up to people in fear of loosing someone else.
Yeah, My current Paladin has this. That and he genuinely does not really identify with his family because he was sent of to join the clergy at an early age and see's the Sisters who more or less raised him as his real family. So it adds an extra layer to all of it.
She's proud of her human side but just doesn't fit in and her heart is elsewhere. If the family doesn't support the decision, which is likely, she intends to renounce her human name and embrace her elf name
"Damn it I just made Zuko again!" I actually just finished a Katara cosplay photoshoot when you posted this. It's my first ever cosplay so thanks for inspiring me to do this!
Flaws are very fun to have, and are extremely helpful during the roleplay aspect of games. My Kobold Ranger is afraid of loss and is extremely quick to violence or sacrifice to protect another. He just wants to be a park ranger, but he can't bring himself to leave a group that might die without him.
I have a tiefling sorcerer who, doesn't exactly understand her class. She thinks she's a cleric and the only reason she can't heal others is because her (imaginary) goddess doesn't approve of those around her. She also grew up an orphan and so she can't read either. Which makes certain encounters fun.
I took the "I judge others harshly and myself even more" from the acolyte background for my ex-lawyer warlock. He always to make sure justice is served, even if he has to use extra-legal methods, but he also keeps a list of every law or infraction he has committed with the intent of turning himself in when the quest is done, or when he gets caught.
my current character is increadibly arrogant but its due to a lack of self confidence. he basically has no confidence in anything he does or says but masks it with arrogance.
Meanwhile I have a character that's too overly confident to a dangerous degree. Her ego is as big as a mountain right now due to her standoffish attitude and dumb plans never backfiring (somehow).
I like to make characters who under estimated themselves, a Bard who thinks they are unskilled. their are so many artist I know who think they are unskilled I started using it as a character flaw for bard
i currently play a lawful neutral githzerai cleric who believes she’s worshipping kelemvor, but in reality was raised in a cult of myrkul. her main flaw is that she’s had serious doubts about her upbringing and her faith, but doesn’t feel able to express those doubts safely, meaning she comes off as guarded and even overzealous. she tends to mask her own perceived failures by pretending to be more devout than she truly is, which has definitely gotten the party in some sticky situations in the past- especially considering some of the main villains of the campaign are necromancers and cultists.
My favorite take on this that I have played with was my wife's "cleric". The Red Wizards of Thay were recruiting foolish rich kids and passing off their necromancy as clerical healing...her character refused to believe that she hadn't actually brought someone back from the dead when she was raising them as a zombie 😄
@@johnathanrhoades7751 oh nice! i’m planning on playing a sorcerer from Thay for my next campaign who got kicked from her academy. yours is such a cool concept!
My new character is a soldier background Elven healer, who had 4 of their eight sibling die to a mysterious disease before they even reached adult hood and his dad a few decades later to the same disease. He’s become detached from people and has the motto of “Death is inevitable, accept it, move on, try not to get attached to the next one”, so he’s difficult to talk to and tries to keep people at arms length, things is, he’s horribly lonely and just wants a friend, but he’s terrified of what could happen
LOVE this. Love flaws too haha. My fav character hated rich ppl and had a huge sorta Robin Hood kinda thing. I refused money or gave it to my party members or passing NPCs and actively fucked with any quests we were doing that my character deemed “for the rich” to the chagrin of my party. My friends and the table loved it. But their characters were sometimes a little irate with mine (all in good fun). This may not seem like a huge flaw at face value, but it meant i often missed out on cool rewards or couldn’t afford things and it added an extra layer of challenge. My DM was super kind about it and often made sure there were ways for me to still be “rewarded” even when i refused payment or gave away all my gold. Super fun.
I also like to think about how the same background can lead to different flaws for different personalities. My rogue and her brother for example grew up in a pretty strict environment that valued blind devotion to the shady family business as all cost. For my hot headed rogue this made her a pathological liar, eventually leading to her keeping bigger and bigger secrets. Her brother on the other hand embraced that mindset and just suppressed a lot of his own wishes and emotions, essentially shutting them down whenever he had to do something he didn't want to. He now still is loyal to a fault while having a hard time showing emotions or asking for things for himself.
Part of Shadowrun char gen includes taking some negative qualities which are optional but give you more points for building your character. Some of those negative qualities can be pretty punishing but they also lead you into having a defining characteristic for your roleplay later (and they can eventually be bought off, character development!).
I actually have a character like one of the ones you described. They're a wizard, very intelligent, but he's also a very nervous individual. So they aren't always the best at speaking up either when they have an idea or when he sees his party making poor choices. We also have a warlock in the party who is afraid of fire, and has literally gone catatonic in battle when I've had my wizard finish off an enemy with a fire spell. It's actually been really interesting to play with.
That's great advice. My current character, a bard named Hope, is really distrusting of the authorities and at the same time is often too trusting with other people (who are not authorities), because he likes to see the best in people and overlook the bad sides. Also recently he discovered, that he likes to deceive people to get what he wants, and id scared of this part of himself.
Hey ginny, Ive been a fan of your videos for a while and I really love them, especially the stuff that help to make a character, keep the videos like that, Btw love your hair
I made a bard that is very loyal, charismatic and well, cliche bard at the surface but when he was pure or if you know him he is the actual oppisite. He acts like an extrovert but is introverted and insucure
Flaws are my favourite! ☺️ They really make your character feel real. My bard is our group's mouthpiece. She's also dumb as a post an has a tendency to go off script. Plans always get derailed. But for some reason the other players keep putting her forward, like they haven't noticed it yet!
legit, one of the flaws i chose, was my character seems to sneeze alot and has a cough that never goes away...simply cause it's kinda believable. and not horrible. but can also bit you in the ass. (being thief is nice) lmao.
Very helpful! All of these videos about characters are great. I have a character who i've kind of meshed with myself and this is really helping me to come up with good understandable flaws and personality, that also merges with the backstory.
My favorite PC I have played so far, a Lawful Evil Paladin of Zariel, lived and died by her word. She put a lot of weight on loyalty and honesty, and would never tell a direct lie, only omit information that could potentially change someone's outlook on certain situations. Tiara would always follow the word she had given, even when there was no downside to breaking it. That was just one of her principles: Everything is a contract that needs to be upheld until all terms have been satisfied. In a game where people tend to get around consequences by lying, it was refreshing to just not be able to do that, especially as a character who probably would benefit from lying a lot. I guess...her Ideal also doubled as her flaw :3
I made character that used to be a paladin but was killed by his wife's killer (that used to be a friend that betrayed them) before he could avenge her and made a pact with an unknown being so that he may come back to life as his warlock to finish his goal. The hick up is that he was resurrected without any memories of who he was and is now looking to find out who he might have been before his death. He is very charismatic and likes to see the happiness in people's faces. He likes to make friends but deals like he can't get too close to them lest they betray him. At the same time, he doesn't know if he had a family and friends before he died that are waiting for him or if he was alone and the prospect of not having anyone waiting for him scares so he wants to meet new people that he can feal safe with. His pact with his patron is that he must punish all criminals he finds no matter the crime (although the patron sees the punishment as only beating the death penalty). If my character refuses to kill the criminal, the patron will try to possess him and kill the criminal himself (I have to make a CHA saving throw). Also, I forgot to add that he has a hole in his chest from when he was killed and is a revnent, not a human, and that he fears that if he tells people that he has died and is part undead, they might leave him or fear him. I tried to put multiple flaws be it personality or mechanics wise in this Character, do tell me if you feel like it makes sense.
A year later in the campaign and a lot happened. The party found out he could be possessed and found out about the hole in his chest. My character thought they where going to leave or kill him and was understanding but in the end, they freed him, allowed him to stay with them and their bonds ended up growing. They aren't scared of the hole in his chest and actually tease him constantly about it, they where able to clear the lost mine of phandelver and we had a very happy ending all together. I'm now reusing him in our new campaign and he has now got his memories back and is looking for his lost daughter in a cursed city filled with mutated monsters. He now has a new goal and is much more confident and less scared of getting close to people and making new friends. Except many of them have already died and he is starting to fall back into his "stay away from people" mentality, but contrary to before, he isn't doing it because he might hurt them, he is now doing it because he is scared he may be the one to get hurt if they die or if anything happens to them
Talking about basing your characters flaws as part of their more positive traits reminded me of something I've seen in another tabletop RPG. The Space: 1889 game (republished in 2014 with Ubiquity Rules), with its Victorian Era setting, has a sidebar on Victorian Values. It said "Victorian society is characterized by strong adherence to a set of widely accepted values, and many actions taken by the British nation and its citizens can be explained by these moral beliefs. Each value spawns both virtues and vices - and, even though it may sound paradoxical, sometimes one person might exhibit both at the same time. All the best and all the worst aspects of Victorian society lie in these virtues and vices." It then listed a number of values, such as Honesty, Loyalty, National Pride, etc., and matched those with both Virtues and Vices. For the value of Honesty, the virtues might be personal integrity and fairness, while the vices are naivety and contempt for alien codes of behavior. For the value of Loyalty, the virtue is a sense of duty, and the vice is blind obedience. For the value of national pride, the virtue is a sense of high self esteem, while vices include racism and intolerance. The value of sportsmanship might have the virtues of fitness and team spirit, and the vices of an obsession with games and sports, or anti-intellectualism.
Love this episode it is true about flaws My favorite flaw to exploit is a person who likes to weaponsmith they get distracted by looking at all the different weapons they see during the game and not focus on what their task at hand is and usually some racial flaws as in doesn't like certain species can influence a character and overcome that would be like you set You're very inquisitive and I appreciate all the information that you dealt with in your videos past and present
Currently playing two Lancer games, one pilot is an ex-super soldier who is trying to atone for what she was made to do, and has trouble not resolving issues or emotions with violence. She definitely got into trouble for going way past just self defense when a supposed informant tried to jump her in an alley while snooping. Recently the gang got a new, fancier ship with a gym and she’s been using that to work out any feelings that would have previously been resolved with something dangerous. And has in turn had emotional talks with teammates bc she’s been able to process things while working out.
Flaws are great for adding depth to your character. And as you mentioned indirectly, with flaws, as with other things when building a character, specificity is very important.
I play a druidess, and in one of our first adventures we fought a group of varguilles. My charecter got hit by the kiss attack and failed the save, which ment she began to slowly become a varguille herself. Fortunately, we were able to stop it before the change was completed. Since then, I decided her fear was from being turned or changed to a different form. It was fun to roleplay her thinking process of eccsepting wild shape, and it was one of the more interesting roleplay experiencenses I had.
You mentioned naive. I rolled up a little green bundle of joy, left on a monastery's steps, an orc monk. He was on the equivalent of Rumspringa and went out to see the world so he can decide for himself if he wanted to live in the monastic order. Because he was raised in a monastery, he was very clean, skilled at cleaning and jumped at the chance to clean things. He was also good at identifying stains and chemicals. He could also craft tiny figurines and whistles out of grass. (There weren't many toys where he grew up)
I just rolled up a tiefling way of the shadow monk who actually grew up in a cult and didn't realize it. His over eagerness and short attention span finally became too much for the elders and sent him on an impossible quest to track down a treasure that doesn't exist just to get him out of their hair for a while, which he of course enthusiastically agreed to. He also believes the moon is his literal mother, not realizing that the cult members calling the moon Mother Moon was figurative, but his white freckles look like the stars so it makes perfect sense to him that he was made from space stuff. I also homebrewed him a pair of magical transitional lenses for his glasses because he spends so much time in the shadows/dim lighting that being out in the open in broad daylight hurts his eyes. If I ever get to play him at a table, the party who gets him is basically getting an untrained golden retriever who is very good at hand to hand combat and slight of hand. And who doesn't love a puppy, right?
I’m trying to review some basics for writing my new character since I’m going to take the Runechild subclass from Matt Mercer and have her represent a sort of “Gifted Kid” burnout situation where she was considered special because of her abilities but was eventually overwhelmed by the structure and exam based academics of her school. Ashamed of her failures and shortcomings, she left the school and ran away from her life no longer having any sense of purpose or identity. A small part of her still clings onto the lessons and teachings she received while studying the arcane and how to tap into it through step-by-step rituals and spells as she continues to mourn how she wasn’t able to excel and grow as a student in that kind of environment.
You gave me a perfect personality for my armoror artificer. He’s the perfectionist, who feels like his armor will never be good enough, and only sees the flaws. As he gains more infusions and powers, he’ll hopefully slowly start to recognize how awesome his armor is, and how smart his is. This doubt comes from the fact that he was weak compared to the rest of his tribe (reflecting the floating ability score), so he doesn’t think he’s good enough at this either. He’s that lion race from the Mythic Odyssey of Theroes (I think) btw
I tend to separate flaws into three different categories. Minor flaws, which are more like pet peeves or flavor text, major flaws which is a trait that is going to actively hinder the character, and fatal flaws, or in other words, the trait that will get them killed. Using myself as an example, my minor flaw would be that I bite my nails, or that I’m constantly tired, or that my resting face makes me look perpetually pissed. My major flaw returns to my past wherein I was ostracized by my peers from a young age, forcing me to build defenses. Don’t let them see what you’re feeling because anything you show them will be used as ammunition against you. As a result, I now experience great difficulty expressing myself to anyone. It’s hard to show my emotions or to interact with others in any way. My fatal flaw derives from the major. I bottle up my emotions, letting the pressure build until it all comes out in a sudden explosion. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I am afraid of myself, and thus, I have kept others at arms length. Isolating myself from the world and from everyone else in it, because I truly believe that it would all be better off without me
Flaws of my latest character: -"Bonding with humans is unnecessary, I prefer animals" - "When someone knows too much about me, I begin thinking of how best to dispose of them before they use it against me" - "I'm a compulsive liar. I lie to everybody about everything, because I don't know who's my enemy" - "I expect the worst from the people I meet" - "I do not follow the principle of fair play, in game or battle" - "Killing and stealing for my own benefit isn't anything special" - "I think my pet snake (1 meter long) is cute, so I don't realise when it makes others uncomfortable/scared" These flaws are connected to the ultimate goal of this character: "get a lot of money and avoid running into my past, then retire into rich life". Needless to say, that character is chaotic evil. My character was so careful, that on session 0 DM had to do an "you accidentally stumble upon a bandit camp", otherwise I would've never ended up where I was supposed to meet other players (He wanted to start session 1 with a fight, so on session 0 he had to lead my character where that fight would happen). I plan for the first flaw to change for just "Takes care of people close to me, doesn't care about other people", so that my character's flaws don't cause too many problems with other players.
Flaws are always fun, and can have really interesting effects on the narrative. One of my characters, Sir Isaac Valentine, was an absolute disgrace to his house, often bringing shame on his noble family. This was because he had absolutely no regard for politics, and only ever acted in a manner that he perceived as right, consequences be damned. Over the course of a nearly four year campaign, he has no come to understand nuance, and has grown to no longer act without thought and careful consideration to what may transpire as a result of his actions. As a result, he's actually risen to the rank of High Lord, and is working to undo a lot of the troubles he and his family have caused over the years. It's been fascinating to play the headstrong fighter and slowly guide him toward becoming a wizened politician and thoughtful leader figure. My character Yalatharess is a half-even scholar of history and a capable wizard. However, she's grown so used to seeing the world through past events that she really has virtually no regard for the present. After all, the present is just history that's happening to you. As a result, she's prone to not get involved when she can help it, and she has very little regard for the lives of people. She's much more invested in gathering lost or forbidden knowledge than she is abiding by any societal norms. That's not to say she's un-charismatic. She's perfectly capable of going through the routines expected of her. But when someone tells her that something is taboo, such as venturing into an ancient temple full of dark and evil secrets, she'll likely ignore the warning outright with no regard for why it's forbidden. This has led to her becoming arguably more of a monster over the course of the campaign than the actual big bad. At this point, she's willingly accepted Vampirism in order to continue her studies long past her mortal lifespan, and she's made something of a habit of amassing rituals and dark knowledge that may plunge the world into an even greater evil than it's already facing. Honestly, I'm just waiting for the moment the rest of the party realizes she's gone too far off the deep end and tries to stake her. But at this point, she might legitimately be too powerful for the other two player characters to realistically stop. Thankfully (or regrettably, depending on your point of view), neither of their characters are exactly beacons of morality either, so it hasn't yet come to that. Another character, Roland Greymane, is a pirate-turned-privateer who has a serious addiction problem. To what, you may ask? Addiction itself. He quite simply makes poor choices whenever presented with the opportunity. Be it drinking, smoking, gambling, you name it, he has a vice for it. Even though we're only four sessions into this campaign, this has already come dangerously close to throwing the whole party into peril. It's only a matter of time before he gets massive indebted to some crime lord after spending too much time in a gambling house. To make matters worse, Roland's sister Ash (another PC) has something of a rivalry with Roland, and is basically always egging him on to take things one step farther. Any time he strikes up a bet, she's the first to immediately raise the stakes. Any time he goes for a drink, she turns it into a contest. The two are such a self-destructive duo, and it's a blast to roleplay. Outside of D&D, one of my favorite characters I've ever played was in Edge of the Empire. A wealthy philanthropist who, a few years prior to the Clone Wars, had invested heavily in the Techno Union to manufacture some mining droids. Unfortunately for him, the Techno Union wound up using some of his funding to instead build battle droids for the Confederacy of Independent Systems, which proceeded to wage war against the Galactic Republic. My character suddenly found himself under investigation by the Republic, his assets forfeited, yet still indebted to the Techno Union for mining droids he was never going to see. Skip ahead to the rise of the Galactic Empire, and the Empire has seized control over the Banking Clan during the Clone Wars. My character is now having to dodge Imperial debt collectors while every credit he earns is having to be dumped into paying off his mistakes from a decade ago. All while also learning he was Force sensitive, and what it means to wield the Force in a galaxy deprived of the Jedi.
My last character was a human who grew up in a family of battle mages but was shunned when they wanted to be a healer so became a reclusive and couldn't trust. If I rolled a natural 1 I would be overcome by depression and unable to use magic until I rolled a 10+ (dice roll and charisma combined my charisma was +1 if I remember correctly) the 1st fight I rolled a nat 1 on my 1st go and never did anything other than walk each turn as I couldn't hit that 10+ total. Nazigthon you were one hell of a fun character R.I.P atop the hill your work is done.
Current Campaign I am playing a Dhampir Warlock/Necro that was raised by vampires and embraces that side of himself. Hating the human side, yet in his backstory fell in love and married a human that showed him a new world. He was with her until the day she died of natural causes, something like 58 years of marriage and he constantly wrestles with that memory of human life being fragile and precious. Yet not seeing life or the mortal races as anything other than playthings and food. He struggles with empathy at times where the party is like you are a product of your messed up upbringing and he sees nothing wrong with it. So constantly being told he can be a better person, that he is a good man, or that he is a damaged person they want to fix. His end goal is to become a full vampire like his "family" but it would mean giving up the humanity he has left. He's a complicated character, most complex I have done so far. Another flaw he has is he's smug AF. He's a noble and like the vampire society he is a part of, very very wealthy. Always wanting to one up other rich NPCs or insult their homes or that they are not as wealthy as him. **(side note, he is also lawful Evil. Though I use real life examples of evil and not just the I'm evil for the sake of being it. He has bonds and moments where he does good, but revels in the moments he can do evil. The party is mostly chaotic neutral/good except him.)**
ive only ever had two dms and ive had both the best and worst dm. My first time ever playing dnd was in highschool and my friends and i made a club, we all loved dnd and never played before so making the club was obvious. my friend was a natural dm, he let us be super unique and creative, he really built a beautiful fun world. im the party we had a nature cleric that that worshiped a weed god, a dragonborn bard that played a flute and would accidentally breathe out poison and even hurt the party at times and could roll d20 and d15 or higher attacks could add poison damage to the target, there was druid who was afraid of animals but had to overcome his fear to be able to transform into them, a rogue who had Narcolepsy (fall asleep randomly) and would have to roll every turn to see if they would fall asleep during battle, however as a bonus to that if asleep a fair amount they could recover health. and then finally we had a gnome monk who lost her glasses and joined the party in hopes to find them, it had to be her glasses with her name carved in them and where a magic item no others would do, we did find them at the end of the campaign but because she lost her glasses she had disadvantages in investigation roles and advantage in rolls with her other sense (hearing and smell) and had 5ft of blindsight. the campaign was so much fun and our quirks got us into so many fun situations but good and really really bad. we had to stop often to check rules and look things up and some confusion with spells and abilities but overall still a lot of fun. However my second campaign was when i went to collage and i was playing with experienced players our dm was a junior and had been DMing since highschool so i wrongfully assumed that it would be just as fun, and after watching a lot of campaigns on youtube ive realized generally they go a lot smoother and just as fun and creative however my DM.. was not.. we played with a mix of both newer (3) and experienced(4) players there were 7 of us this time, however when making our characters we were really limited to strict book rules and little freedom and creativity. I was inspired by the druid in my last campaign and wanted to play a pacifist druid in this one however i was not allowed any animals other than a cat, a rat, spider and then a horse... nothing else even when i was leveling up, my dm kept saying "you cant be a bear because youve never seen one" and so on. but let me mind you that i grew up in the forest (and yes he did confirm there are bears in the world) and i was raised by a beast master Ranger with a wolf companion (well i wanted but he said no its not "fair" and changed it to a raven) I really wanted to have fun and be creative but i could see that he wasnt being that open so i tried to go more simple so i wanted my character to be trying to learn druidic as my character originated from a ranger does not know it well but the dm said this was pointless info, so i was brainstorming other ideas but it didnt really matter because not once did the dm include anything related to our backgrounds in the campaign. everyone felt stale and irrelevant, many of our ideas of what we wanted to do our try in the story when roleplaying was often shut down or he would twist into something new to make it what he wanted, it only took just a few meetings before the more experienced players quit, i quit after the 6th (they were 2-3 hour long sessions) my character was short lived only making it to level 3. we had 4 sessions in combat... i dont understand how we were in combat so often however was earning no experience. i dont know what happened after i left. but we started with 6 and when i left they were down to 3... this was 2 years ago and unfortunately ive never have had the opportunity to play since.
Not my character but one of my players had a character who was scared of heights, in a campaign that took place mostly on floating Sky Cities. It was pretty funny to watch this incredibly competent and faithful paladin go green whenever on a sky ship
Flaws are my favorite way to make a character relatable, realistic, and fun. Currently running a lizardfolk who wants to fit in but doesn't understand subtle social interactions, currency, boundaries, manners, or taboos like cannibalism. A lot of fun but his lack of regard for fellow party members' names seems to fluster one at least.
Most of my character's flaws mostly got cured over about a year. Cynicism? Cured by having such a supportive group that taught him to trust again. Impatience? Tempered by many missions where patience was the right solution and he listened to the party... Paranoia? That one's just plain valid to have, because EVERY time he's let his guard down, horrible stuff has happened to him, and JUST as he was getting better, his BBEG nemesis started attempting mind-control on him again. XD
Pretty soon I’ll be playing a Dragonborn creation bard in the whitchlight campaign. Hes a whitchlight hand that works as a sign painter. He’s flaw is that he doesn’t trust people with his emotions despite being a very empathetic and kind person at heart. He also doesn’t thing he’s special in anyway even tho he’s an amazing painter and is quite charming once he finally opens up. He values a good friend above anything and around people he cares about is the only time he can realize he’s abilities and yet can some how still convince himself that it is truly through their actions that the task was archived. If he can learn to trust himself then his reach could be limitless and if he could learn to trust others then the world may be better for it. We’ll just have to see how the fey wilds treat him
7:19 reminded me of my Goliath Barbarian Gladiator who has self-image issues! When they get things right they feel on top of the world! When they miss an attack or fail an intimidation, they buckle and attempt to play it off, especially if it was in front of a crowd/party. Keep up the wonderful work Ginny, I love your content!
One of my characters is an Artificer Armorer named Mira-Polus Skeld. One of her infusions is Homunculus Servant. She is very intelligent and she is extremely dedicated to her work, so much so that she dedicates too much of her time to her work that she doesn't interact much with real friends. Because of this, she has become overly attached to her Homunculus Servant (an animated pumpkin named Petey Pumpkin). If Petey Pumpkin falls to 0hp and reverts back to his component (a bloodstone) while in battle, there is a chance that Mira-Polus will become too distraught to continue fighting (at least to her full capabilities) until she successfully reminds herself that she can simply resummon him the next day. It was so much fun playing her.
mine is literally obsessed with perfection and being perfect, his music and all forms of art MUST be nothing less then perfect, his cursed scythe makes this sickness even more intense and is slowly driving him mad. His food is great tho, because cooking is a form of art
The shoemaker is stingy when it comes to spending his coin, and accepts no less than his work is worth, but this because he is the almost sole benefactor of a charity he helped found using wealth taken from the guild's coffers. He must repay what he stole without letting the charity go without.
I played into the Ranger's class feature of "favored enemy" that coupled with his pride means that he frequently does things that are stupid or morally bad because he is obsessed with getting revenge on the creatures that killed his best friend
Always try to work with your DM to design complex flaws when making a character. I recently played an Artificer who had managed to drag himself out of a life of crime with a blacksmithing apprenticeship and he joined up with the adventuring party to find his mentor after he went missing. He had to find his mentor to stop himself from having to revert back to crime, but his flaw was that everytime he went into combat with the party he reawoke the criminal part of himself that he wanted to leave behind.
My character is a Fey Touched fighter, whose personality got affected by the Fey, alongside it being messed up by her experiencing ten years as though it were a week as a child. This leaves her as impatient and emotional, but also honest and as someone who cares deeply for her family (the party, and the parents who left during those ten years to search for their daughter)
My current character, a Devotion Paladin, has the unfortunate flaw from the Noble Background: "I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me" which when combined with the character trait "If you do me an injury, I will crush you, ruin your name, and salt your fields.", as a result he's made plenty of enemies - he's a DMs dream for creating random side quests by side-tracking him, often taking the party with him. It has put him in plenty of trouble with his God and kept him from becoming the goody-two-shoes Paladin archetype 👍
I’m playing an aberrant mind sorcerer who is an orc that was abandoned to a Goliath tribe at a young age. Never fit in anywhere and has been bullied/beaten in every area he’s tried to settle down. Due to this, he’s very untrusting of strangers and hesitant to speak up. He’s always hoped to find family and connections so when he does trust, it goes a long way(think foster system kid who latches onto fellow children in the household but is still weary of the adults in their life). So playing a Cha based character who avoids being the face of the party, a character who wants closeness but refuses to trust, has been incredibly fun
This is from another role play game but we tried basically rolling dice for our personalities (like we had a list of characteristics, good and bad, and then you rolled and saw what traits you’d get) and it was so fun omg I basically got every bad trait possible- Idk why but that was one of the most fun games I’ve ever played. I was this mean ass mutant bear named Paddington (I thought I was gonna turn out cute lmao) who had no social skills whatsoever and didn’t think before he acted (often resulted in stupid and very unnecessary methods of doing things), and the mission started with me breaking into a gasmack and ended with the whole fricking gas station blowing up-
my favorite character ive ever played was my 4-year-old aarakocra druid named lyra. despite being fully-grown, she was practically a child because she’d never been outside her tribes forest before now, and she left to save it. she was extremely naive and just. entirely didn’t understand how other people worked. she wasn’t tragic, or an asshole, she was just confused, but i had so much fun playing her because she was so different from the “sexy dark and angsty” i almost always play
I had a warlock whose patron was Jareth, the Goblin King, who saw no issue with kidnapping, transforming or otherwise exploiting children, but drew the line at killing and/or eating them. Not quite a flaw, but was fun to role play out in Curse of Strahd. In another campaign, I had a tabaxi who dealt with his heartbreak with catnip, and then struggled to get clean in an effort to win his wife back. Another character started to be a little less sane the further she was from home, nothing magical happening, it was just about being away. When we started to travel back towards their home region, her mind began to clear.
Tact. I once made a Dragon who wanting to experience comradery, had made a potion to polymorph himself into a human... Unfortunately, potions weren't his forte, something went wrong and he ended up transformed into human body with normal skin, but retained his Draconic features, basically he looked like a Tiefling. Not letting this deter him, he continued on to find a party to join, he was a Sorcerer and I played that the more he leveled up, the more the potion began to wear off revealing his future draconic features (subclass Draconic lineage). Now the flaw, while charming his bluntly honest attitude and lack of social tact made him blurt out things without sugar coating, he was genuinely nice to others but could come off as somewhat egotistical because of being socially inept, not understanding cues and what now
As an inexperienced role player, my personal way of choosing a flaw is either removing a difficult element of the role play so I can focus on another piece or deliberately making the role play harder on myself to try to grow more. An example of the first method would be making a character who is a very bad liar and sucks at reading other people so I don’t have to be good at that aspect right away either. I usually like to pair this flaw with a tempering strength, like being very detail oriented and perceptive about the physical environment, so their social ineptitude doesn’t devalue them as a party member. A good example of the second one for me personally would be creating a character who gets easily sidetracked. As someone who tends to love following the overarching plot and is very willing to poke whatever story bait the DM dumps in front of me, I don’t tend to wander very much in DND or veer off course. A character whose flaw is getting distracted and being roped into whatever unimportant thing catches their interest challenges me to explore the other facets of the world the DM has layed out for me to use. Basically, you can build your character with your current role playing capabilities in mind and use their flaw to either push yourself or take a load off. It’s really helpful for me personally.
My most recent character is my most flawed PC yet, but I think he’s also been the most fun to play, even if I get nervous I’m annoying my fellow players with my antics (they assure me I am not). He’s a satyr who was exiled from his community for being a killjoy. Not that he doesn’t love revelry as much as the next guy, but his idea of a good time is rather “destructive,” he starts fights for fun and gets into all sorts of illegal activities. He’s a journalist (valor bard) who isn’t afraid to start some trouble so that his stories can be more interesting without him having to lie in them. Finding out this girl he’s been traveling with (another PCs) is the daughter of an adventurer he used to travel around with like a groupie and write stories about, he’s been in a struggle of feeling an obligation to connect with her since her mom is no longer alive and he can tell the girl things about her, but also the girl’s lawful good nature can be… restricting at times. Honestly all the character dynamics in that campaign are cool as hell, it’s been really fun.
(I talked to my dm and party about this in session 0 before playing this character) Human fighter with multiple multiple flaws. I think 7? it's been a lot of fun role-playing her! In the world we play in there's only 5-6 major cities in the world and 2 of them were destroyed by a giant goose 8 years ago. My character, a youngling in the guard unit was present at the Battle of The Goose and is now terrified of birds- every time she sees one now, she kills it, or freaks out. She also doesn't think the guards from the other major cities actually know how to do their job and recently told some guards that she'd catch the serial killer for them since they obviously don't know how to. It's a lot of fun. As for superfluous flaws, she laughs at inappropriate times, chews on her hair when she's stressed. and eats her companions foods if they don't want to eat it because she worries about not getting her next meal. Oh and she's wayy to devoted to her home city and all their authority figures
I play a Gnome in Pathfinder who is super charismatic and usually gets her way due to her cuteness. She was hungover and thirsty and went up to a table of dwarves and drank their water and got hit with a plate.
My tiefling necromancy wizard caused an argument in game bc he's been sent to a place to do important work investigating necromantic activities in the area and the party also want to help another party member look for her missing brother. My character is very driven by his academic background (he is technically a necromancer, but isn't bad, part of his job is stopping bad necromancers) and was essentially like "yes I will help you with your brother but I'm here to do work, I'm doing that first." He's a little stubborn and good at brushing people off in a way that they won't realise they've been insulted until ages after because of his noble upbringing. My elf bard is looking for missing people from his past that have been missing for nearly 100 years, his main flaw is that he's too hung up on the past and won't let it go. He's also a pacifist which can cause issues, he understands attacking in self defence and has little issue with hurting things that are definitely undead, but he will not actively hurt humanoids, he's only ever used tasha's hideous laughter, hold person and calm emotions against people in combat (he's used vicious mockery and dissonant whispers on undead before). These 2 campaigns are with the same people just different dms and are nicknamed "rich kids on tour" (where I play the tief) and I always refer to the other as "4 holy people and a cultist" (2 clerics, a paladin, my bard who is slightly religious, and a warlock).
One of my characters, a halfling draconic bloodline sorcerer, is a sage and has two flaws (from the rolling table) that I think go well with eachother. One is that he's easily distracted by the promise of info, and another is that he would take notes on a demon's anatomy instead of fleeing (which works well with the brave trait halflings have). We're still early in the campaign, so this has only led to him staring at a locked ritual room from the outside trying to figure out what's going on while the rest of the party is leaving. They had to grab him and drag him out before the building collapsed. He ended up experiencing magical sensory overload. Luckily, the ritual wasn't finished, so we didn't destroy the town we were in. Also, this isn't related to the story, but he knows 8 languages.
My character has an obsession with food because he spent his childhood starving and alone, but that’s just a flavour flaw. His fatal flaw is that he draws his motivation from protecting others and his greatest fear is watching people harmed while being unable to do anything. He also has deep-rooted anger because of these feelings of powerlessness and carries a MAJOR hero complex. He’s also a work hard, not smart kind of guy. He ends up being a temperamental, naive, and kind of gullible dude who’s extremely loyal and strong, who’s brave enough to take the direct road when the party is nervous to. Flaws made that happen, not strengths
Best silly flaw I have experienced in a game was a "Centaur" Ranger who was actually just a sentient talking horse with a elaborate puppet they wore over his head. His father was a centaur and his mother was a horse. Whilst it was silly it was actually a complex flaw. Like pinocchio he would do anything to become real. He acted as though he had abilities that he didn't really have and was devastated by those who challenged his race. Very silly very fun and some surprisingly emotional moments of affirmation from the party who felt like if he said he is a centaur then they will defend that.
I played a high-Charisma warlock who hated speaking. After an isolated youth and military career where he could go weeks without speaking a single word out loud that wasn't simply regiment and routine, he struggled to find the purpose of most conversation. Often he'd misconstrue a lack of information as a lack of discipline, observation or preparedness. If he discovered something, he might not tell anyone. If he knew an answer, he didn't contribute unless asked. He was also a different race than the rest of the party, and so equated what he saw as idiosyncrasies of his party (conversation, displaying emotion, hobbies, etc.) as racial nuances that he didn't and didn't need to understand. At first, he spoke out to warn a party member of danger. Then to assume command lest a compatriot misguide the group. To inspire his friends and strengthen their resolve. To intimidate a guard. Sadly, the group wasn't very roleplay-oriented. But internally, over the campaign, my character learned to speak out and use conversation to explore ideas and people. He learned that we weren't just spears and shields for each other, pointed at a problem by an authority and following tradition, but individuals with hopes, dreams, fears and motivations. He realized his own curiosity with the world and forgave himself for letting it break his discipline at times. (He also came to the realization that power could be acquired through contracts and magical items rather than through numbers and discipline, and he grew very fond of these things.) By the end of the campaign, one of my party members kept a journal of things that my character said, and would embarrassingly announce the addition of an entry whenever he said something moving, witty or deep. But he also acquired the flaws of seeking shortcuts to power, and expecting to be seen as an authority and respected by others. In the end, he took up a position of renown in a burgeoning magic city our party accidentally created out of an ancient ruins, and took it upon himself to safeguard (and maybe kinda hoard) the most dangerous powers from within it.
I've currently got a Lizardfolk Druid who I hadnt really figured out a Flaw for. His background didn't offer one and his goals didn't really offer up one, but as luck would have it, the first session opened up for a "open-goal flaw". We were in a town that got attacked by a Dragon, my character was outside, noticed somehing was up and peaked his head into the Tavern to let everyone else know something was happening as a Blue Dragon struck the Tavern. My Character got stuck under rubble, got free by Wild Shaping and went into the Tavern to try to help people inside. Dragon struck again, dealing 70 odd dmg, Character unconcious and underneath rubble once more. Ever since that session, the Character has been scared and/or unwilling to go indoors unless there is a proper reason or need for him to enter :)
My current main PC is a goblin artificer. She's arrogant, impulsive, loves explosives, and can be very greedy. It makes for an interesting foil to the more subdued and "normal" rest of the party.
A flaw one of my characters has is she’s stuck in the past and still upset and grieving about things that happened years ago. She lost someone who meant a lot to her and now she has a lot of trouble warming up to people out of fear of loosing someone else. The other character I have is a chaotic mess. She’s reckless and is often willing to cause chaos and get herself into trouble. She loves art and vandalism (eg. Drawing on the front of library books or store signs) if someone does anything to hurt her or her adoptive family or they insult her she will not hesitate to kill them.
The two characters I've played were an Aasimar fighter and a kobold celestial warlock The aasimar, Konstanza McIntyre, was quick to distrust people, especially tieflings due to trauma from her backstory. She would quickly think people were up to something and would treat people accordingly (examples being holding a child hostage because she believed they were staging an ambush, or more extremely killing a tiefling bard because they had stole a few coins from the party and charmed her the night before) The Kobold Valentine was a servant to a Unicorn who was a cheese addict, they also were an addict before but not as bad. To continue recieving the powers from the Unicorn they had to consume absurd amounts of cheese that would be magically transported to the unicorn undamaged, but their addiction and dependence on the cheese exponentially grew as they consumed more, leading them to go broke, Rob, or even kill just to get even a little
One thing I'd like to add is that a character isn't bad just because they lack a fleshed out backstory, flaw or ideal system. The key is all about group dynamics and what you & the other players want out of your campaign. Don't let anyone make fun of you for playing a simpler character. Some campaigns (like ones with a lot of players) benefit heavily from having one or two "basic" characters thrown into the mix. Others might not NEED an average Joe with a dream on their team, but could still benefit from having a player who wants to play a supporting role in the story. The supporting character is a humble role, and sometimes underappreciated, but in my experience it can be very valuable in the right circumstances.
I'm reminded of my healer who just had a panic attack behind a tree during the first combat of the campaign while the rest took out the guards and snuck inside the keep we were supposed to conquer.
One of my favorite characters I like to play has the flaw of not being loyal and reliable to his friends in a sense of commitment to that connection. He couldn't feel bad losing them and if the scene was boring to him, he would just ditch the goal and wait for the boredom to pass. It was because in his past he had a family in the form of his sister, but later in a miryad of accidents he betrayed her believes. And now he just thinks that he's that kind of a person, that it's something that will always happen.
My favourite character I have to play is Bianthul. She's filled with flaws that really make her unique and it works fairly well with the party. Bean is stubborn, bullheaded, strongwilled, and runs off of a lot of wrath towards those that were responsible for her daughter, husband, and tribes death. Her biggest goal is to make a safe life for her and her remaining son but she runs headlong into danger to fight every wrong. She feels like she has to protect everything that she can even if it means she's terribly injured in the process. She's also terrible at communicating her issues so is more likely to attack an aggressor than talk her way out of it.
I've got a character ready for the next group I join. A Dwarven Fighter who was part of his clan's militia who were all brainwashed by a master illusionist who made them see the people of their home as invading goblins. The spell wears off just as he deals the killing blow to his family members. As a result, he does not trust anyone who uses illusion magic, he can never forgive himself so he never bothers apologizing for anything, and he is striving to become the best warrior because he is terrified of dying (thinking that he could never bear the shame of being united with his family in the afterlife, while also being terrified of eternal punishment). He is almost always somewhat drunk to drown out the memory of the screams and cries for him to recognize his family.
So, I tried an experiment with one of my characters from one of my two home games of D&D. The campaign was Curse of Strahd, and the character was born on a take on Talesin Jaffe's character Caduceus Clay from Critical Role (my character was also a Firbolg Grave Domain Cleric who worshipped the Wildmother), but the DARK mirror image of Caduceus. Where Taliesin plays Caduceus kind of like "The Dude" from "The Big Lebowski", and he has a large, loving family, my character's family were killed, and entire village burned by unknown monsters (could have been vampires, but unknown to my character). Because I am (to put it mildly) not great at RP, I wanted to integrate my character's flaw (his faith in the Wildmother was shaken, frayed almost to the breaking point because of the death of his family), in a mechanical way into my game play. So my DM and I homebrewed a mechanic to where, every time that I went to cast a spell (other than cantrips, which were 100% success rate), I would have to roll a d100, and roll below a certain percentage (90% or below for Level 1 spells, 80% or below for Level 2 Spells, etc.) to see if the spell worked, if not (if I rolled high) then the spell fizzled. For a while, this was a fun way for me to incorporate his flaw into my game play (the other party members had NO IDEA what was going on at first, and had a fun time figuring it out). But ultimately, it proved to be more of a hindrance to the party in combat than it was worth (even though DM and I had designed it to be less as my character leveled up, so when I gained a level, Level 1 spells would go to 100%, and Level 2 Spells would be 90%, etc.). My DM eventually designed a cool narrative encounter for me with the Wildmother that was basically a test of my character's faith in her (multiple opportunities to choose not to, and my character had to affirm their faith by choosing to continue to hold on, even when it was obvious that my character was in mortal danger), it was basically a really creative way to let my character overcome their flaw, and get a really sweet magic item at the same time (prayer beads that let me cast a small amount of healing from a distance, without using spell slots). Anyway, just wanted to share my experience playing around with character flaws.
My half-orc barbarian/artificer, Sunny, is deaf, and that has inspired pretty much her entire character backstory, including her flaws. One of them is that, obviously, her being deaf means her ability to communicate with others is fraught at best, and as such she has little experience with communication, leading to her being quite naive and easily manipulatable by others, especially considering her trusting nature. As a fun flavour flaw, due to her being a barbarian also, she rarely recognises her own strength, often leading to her slamming things down on surfaces hard, or giving too tight hugs :P
I built a database that contains (at present) 2000 traits, 1500 ideals, 1500 bonds, and 1500 flaws. During character creation in my group, there's an algorithm that randomly chooses these based on a couple selections by the player. Often, we'll click "retry" multiple times, but it's a lot of fun to work through the options to come up with unique character personalities. As DM, I let the randomizer go to create NPCs and work with whatever comes up.
Damn it, I just made Zuko again! Well, that's a mood I wasn't expecting, but here we are. My current rogue has a couple of flaws: he will throw nearly anyone under the proverbial wagon to ensure his continued freedom, he hates arrogant magic users (like our party's sorcerer is proving to be) he loves his little sisters so much that he will act on even the hint of them being in danger and his dad is using a series of bounty hunters to bring him back home.
I have commented about these characters on a past video but here’s the top 6! 160+ yr old human 18th lvl arch magi. 21 int, but old as dirt with Alzheimer’s. Has 25% spell failure in the worst ways. Drives an oliphant, the irony of course a man who can’t remember riding an animal that can’t forget. Through the use of various magical items uses them to buff against his ancient age, and failing body. 17th lvl fighter with a natural 18/00 str, but a 9 int. Weapon of choice a hammer made from the stump of an ancient oak, which he pulled from the ground and leveled a kobold village with… add a few magical spells and a staff of bludgeoning for a handle, now wields a 300 lb murder stump. Add a charm of inertia and charm person and you have a weapon that will crush just about anything. Once it starts moving it cannot be stopped until the wielder wills it to be so. And of course each time it is used under lvl 6 creatures are charmed into immobility and save vs charm on everyone else, or stand there watching this magnificent chunk of wood smash you into a puddle. The rhino of course has a 13 int. So whom is leading whom? 15th lvl thief with a history of nat 1 rolls twice cursed. Geas’d to covet rings on any flavor over all other treasure, and cursed with godlike beauty. His flaws made it difficult to act as a thief. Not only will he lust after a worthless copper ring like a dragon lusts after gold, but because of his comeliness finds it mostly impossible to practice his craft without anyone who sees him falling madly in lust with him. Young women offer their virginity, mature women offer their husbands wealth, old women offer their life savings to him, which of course he will not accept, oh yeah straight guys go gay when he is around. His lust of rings pushed him to make a suit of ring mail out of magical rings in which he can slip his finger into any of the rings within a segment of a combat round and use the effects. And of course he must wear a mask to do any thieving. He is a social butterfly, and frequents mascarade balls to pilfer rings from unsuspecting party guests. A 19th lvl brownie assassin who is a sociopath. Think dexter with a little dose of ‘You’, but 2 ft tall. Obsessed with wealth, riding a griffin. She spends her free time researching poisons, anatomy, and the most brutal tortures imaginable. Unfortunately it also causes her to not have many friends, and those she does have will eventually be murdered by her because she can’t help herself. No apologies. An 18th lvl human LG cleric who while adventuring, returns to find his wife and 13 kids slaughtered by a band of roving thieves. The thieves happened to hide in a gnome village. Well distraught as you can imagine lays waste to the entire village men, women, children, even the livestock and cats… until he found the thieves and of course killed them as well. This out of alignment behavior caused a diametric alignment shift to CE. This shift caused him to suffer from crippling depression. He is often melancholy or weeps uncontrollably. His epic steed is of course a skeletal dragon. Because why not? These bouts of melancholy etc can occur at anytime there is a stressor. Critical decisions, melee, Tuesday… his steed and companion spends a lot of time defending his limp and lifeless prone body. He likes to raise any corpses and skeletons from passing cemeteries and wanders with this army, even into town causing lots of troubles. How about a 16th lvl dwarven ranger who is absolutely terrified of the dark, not to mention claustrophobic. Born into the royal house of Bagburn, spent most of his young adult life pampered and safe until an epic battle with drow expelled to scrawny beardless dwarf into the light. He rides a Roc and refuses to go underground, or for that matter into any windowless stone or earth structure.
“Maybe they’re so committed to being liked that when their charisma fails, they’re crushed by it” wow you did NOT need to call me out on that
Same tho.... its my only reason for sorceror over wizard
My characters don't have this issue, I think it's just me.
This is a vibe tho
As Tom Mulaney said, "it's like I'm running for the mayor of nothing!"
Knew a girl like that once - very charming and friendly, intelligent, interesting, a social butterfly. But when the cafeteria-cashier didn´t like her she was crushed. It was kinda adorable... but also rediculous. I told her so. She was pouting. Even more adorable, but also laughable. Not everybody will love you no matter how likeable I and most people find you etc, etc.. For this kind of character, though, a nightmare +grin+
I had a cleric with a gambling problem who would give away most of his winnings to make himself feel better about cheating.
Thats literally just Chaotic Good charity, damn good idea!
That is just sublime, I love it!
I have had a similar idea for a while. Cleric to a CN goddess of luck that keeps getting in trouble because of bad luck(deep in debt), to much good luck(broke the house and owners are pissed), or smashing up gambling houses because evidence of the house cheating was found(how dare they defy the will of lady luck)
I like this. Father Mulcahey from MASH....almost. He never cheated
@@evanremillard5640 Or Ted from Father Ted, he's a priest with a gambling problem.
Proceeds to play a campaign of just Zukos saving themselves from their other selves.
"Zuko, you have to look within yourself to save yourself from your other self. Only then will your true self reveal itself."
@@LiveGame555 "Damn it! Even when I'm acting as my uncle I still don't understand what he's saying!"
Zuko:why am I so good at being bad!
Zuko:pshhhh if I know,
…all of my characters 😬
I would like them all to be from different nations, too. Just imagine 2 Zukos convincing each other that their nations way is flawed and they need to find a better path by thinking for themselves.
“A perfectionist who’s never satisfied with what they have.”
In other words, a perfectionist.
-Signed, a perfectionist.
Facts -Another Perfectionist
Comment isn't edited after 5 hours, I doubt your perfectionism.
@@Jane-oz7pp When it comes to perfectionism it can take many forms. Dom could have one of the more minor forms.
Edit: Also perfectionists aren't a perfectionist about everything. I'm a perfectionist about my schoolwork and art. While others are perfectionists about fashion or organization, it really depends on the person. None of them are any less or any more perfectionist then another.
Perfectionism itself can be a flaw.
I would say I'm a perfectionist about what I am (or can do), not about what I have.
I like the sage background flaw "most people run when they see a demon, I stop to take notes on it's anatomy" I love the idea of a character who's so fascinated by unnatural creatures that they could end up in harm's way or not wanting to harm a potentially dangerous creature so they can study them
DUDE THANKS FOR REMINDING ME OF THIS! I've got a little tabaxi gal living in high north, as-of-yet unexplored-by-many-outsiders mountains, and her pelt is too thick for her to move closer to modern D&D societies. So, all she does is tend to her mountain sheep, hunt and gather, and a lil rudimentary cartography as she explores her dangerous home!
I ALREADY wrote in her traits that she's fascinated by exotic buildings and animals, so this is RIGHT UP HER ALLY!
Every few months an adventurer will find their way to her corner of the mountains, so she certainly could have been taught how to 'take notes on anatomy,' even though her notes will be useless to anyone but her XD.
She's fairly cautious, but honestly, she's met a lot of races and animals that were otherworldly to her, and if she doesn't associate the demon with a cautionary tale from her kittenhood, she'll not even consider that it might want to eat her ears.
Also helpful for making NPCs memorable.
My sister is playing a character who spent most of her life trying to train to be a wizard and failing miserably, because she didn't realize that she was a sorcerer and her magic didn't work like that. So far her character still hasn't realized what she is, even though she keeps accidentally electrocuting people. Meanwhile my character, who was raised in an intolerant order and was taught to be suspicious of anyone who is different, suspects that she's hiding that she's really a warlock in league with some evil patron.
This is a fair argument for having a dump stat in your lineup, too. Glaring weakness can be an excellent catalyst for fun in the right situations.
My character actually just got over his biggest flaw a few sessions back! He had pyrophobia, fear of fire, to such an extent that he couldn’t take up fire spells or do other things because he was so afraid. He got over it by walking into a fire. It was great.
I'd really like to hear how that went down!
@@cobiebentley9277 it’s a bit of a story, but luckily for you I write the session notes for my group every week, so I can get you that. (They’re more a storybook retelling of the events than normal session notes). In a moment I will post a reply with the story. It will be written from the perspective of my character, Eyeven Swiftorb.
@@cobiebentley9277 (I hope this all makes sense without all the background info)
It’s the night after our trip into the astral plane, and we are in the carriage resting from our trip, though Fireball and Mythrillian were outside of the carriage driving it and keeping watch as we traveled because we had to make up for some lost time. I was meditating when the Eye (the deity he worships) came to me in voice once again and said to me “I know what you are working towards, and you have to most degrees earned it through your dedication, but the way of which you are attempting to achieve it will not work. I shall aid you along your path. Open your eyes.” Keep in mind that at this point, I had every night before going to rest been fabricating from gold to the best of my ability upgrades for my staff to replace the bronze components of my staff in order to make it more powerful as a spellcasting focus.
I opened my eyes, and I was standing in an Eye shaped room. There with me stood Khoratari and Artaria. In the center of the room there was a beam of light wherein floated a singular copper key. On the opposite wall to where the 3 of us were standing was a heavy wooden door with a lock on it made of copper. Inscribed thrice over in the languages of Elvish, Common, and Infernal were the instructions, “Take a key and proceed forward. Do not backtrack or else your fate will be tainted, and do not lose your key or you will be forever trapped. Be wary for you will be on your own.”
I took the key from the beam of light and when I had removed mine, another one appeared in its place, which Artaria took. I went to the door in the room and unlocked it, pulling it open. There was a swirling portal behind it, and I stepped through the portal. I found that when I emerged I was on a cliff ledge with a bottomless pit in front of me. On the other side of the room was another ledge. On the opposite ledge there was a door and behind me was a door the exact same as the one I had originally gone through. So that I wouldn’t lose my key to the pit, I put it safely inside my bag. Also floating in the air above the pit in the center of the room was some sort of disturbance in the wind, which was otherwize still.
I cast mage armor on myself just in case, and then cast fly in order to get to the other side of the pit. My wings pulled into existence around me before spreading out, and I used them to fly across the pit. Once on the other side, the disturbance in the air formulated itself into an air elemental and attacked me, ramming toward me. I striked it with lightning, but the elemental seemed hardly phased by my attack. Well, that’s not entirely true. It was a LOT more mad. It caused a whirlwind that threw me twenty feet out from the ledge over the endless pit. I was getting pretty beat up at this point, So I flew back over to the ledge on the side that I wanted to be on and cast arcane fist for the first time ever, summoning up a fist of blue and lilac ethereal energy and punching the air elemental with it, dealing a bunch of force damage in the process. It was so dazed from that blow (get it? Blow? Because air elemental and you blow air? Nevermind.) that it missed on it’s next attempt to attack me. At that point I punched it one final time with my magical fist and it dissipated into smoke.
As soon as it dissipated from existence, I pulled out my key and saw it change in my hand from copper to silver. The lock on the door that I needed to go through was silver. I inserted the key and unlocked the door, proceeding into the next room.
The next room was simple enough, though there were words on the wall and a door on the far side of the room. A riddle. The riddle said: “You must. You can. You might. You want. Whatever I do, I decide what you don’t. You fight. You cede. You fly. You give. Whatever you try, I decide how you live. A will. A way. A soul. A heart. Whatever you are I control from the start.” when I finished reading it, I felt a sense of urgency to answer it or else fate in this instance would go against me. I thought hard. The Eye, I guessed? But no. The Eye are far too wize to make themselves the solutions to their own riddle. Or are they? Then, as I felt the time limit closing in on me, I spoke the answer. “Fate!” I cried.
I felt the time burden lift off of me and the key in my hand turned from silver to gold. I proceeded toward the door on the far side of the room, unlocked the door, stepped in, and that’s when it happened.
@@cobiebentley9277 I saw the fires. Fires. Everywhere. I was in a 70 foot long and 20 feet wide hallway, but the fire made it so there was only about 10 feet for me to walk through. And I couldn’t see a door at the end. The fire overwhelmed my senses. The heat of it caused me to feel like I was shriveling. I fell to the ground, closed my eyes, and crawled forward, not looking up. But I very quickly began to hurt. I was being cooked alive. But I kept going forward. I refused to stop, for Fate had told me at the beginning of all of this that going back would inevitably be the end of myself. So I got to the end of the hallway. I was almost entirely cooked at this point, barely holding onto my own mortality. I managed to open my eyes. The fires showed no signs of dying down. In fact, I could've sworn that it was bigger.
I summoned every last ounce of my will to the forefront, and managed to shakely stand up, and attempted to cast ice storm around me in order to calm the fires, but the ice failed to form due to the heat, and I was left without a wit left in my mind. But somehow, I managed to pull myself together. In the midst of something more terrifying than anything I had ever experienced, I held together and I walked forward, directly into the fire in front of me. And then I walked out the other side.
Upon leaving the fire, I felt the most overwhelming and powerful sensation of cold that I had ever experienced in my life. I felt better than I ever had since the fire in the library. I felt fully healed. I no longer feared the fire. I looked down to my hands, and saw my golden key turn to platinum. And there was a door in front of me. I opened the door, and there was a portal on the other side of it. I stepped through.
We had all just gone through our final portals and were now together in a room only significant in that there was a well in the center of the room, and in that well was what could only be described as liquid light. On the wall were the words, in Elvish, Common, and Infernal, were the instructions “put in your most prized possession in order to proceed forward.” I, after a second of contemplation, walked up to the well and dropped in my staff, my beloved wizard’s staff. It exploded upon contact with the liquid light. I stepped backward from the well, my fingers reaching slightly towards it.
Khoratari stepped up next, and like a fool who wishes to deny the bounds of fate, dropped in an empty glass potion bottle. Her hand caught on fire and began spreading up her body. And this wasn’t some measly fire, this was fire made of that same pure light that the liquid in the well was made of. Serves her right for trying to deny fate it’s course. She very dejectedly threw her true most prized possession, her hexblade. As soon as it touched the light in the well, her hair changed from white to black, and she looked visibly weakend. I could tell she was about ready to cry if she wasn’t so stoic with her emotions.
After witnessing this, Artaria stepped up to the well looking very solemn. She untied the ribbon from around her neck, and dropped in her raven pendant, her symbol, the very same I had used to recognise this group as the one the Eye had instructed me to join. I saw a look of steely determination on her face like I had never seen before. A portal opened in the room, a swirling mix of 3 different shades of purple, one slightly desaturated looking, one lilac, and one the exact tone of Artaria’s skin. We all stepped through together.
Upon emerging, we found ourselves in a place I had never been before, but felt oddly at home in. The room was that of the shape of an Eye, and had sprawling geometric patterns in the floor that said words in a language I couldn’t read, which means they weren’t in celestial, elvish, common, or sylvan. In the center of the room were two statues of the deities that comprise the Eye, one of Zedes Cator and one of Astrala, each with their hand raised toward the very center of the room, where there was floating in the air without any supports a giant stone sigil of the Eye. Also in the center of the room was a literal pillar of light.
The Eye spoke in our minds then and gave us our final directive. “You have done well. I congratulate you. Go to the pillar and receive your gift.” I stepped forward to the pillar of light and reached my hand inside and felt the familiar, yet somehow different, hilt of my staff. My fingers wrapped around the handle and I pulled my hand out. In my hand was the most glorious object I had ever seen. (Reference Eyeven’s Thunderous Quarterstaff sheet for a description of appearance). I raised up the staff and stamped it to the ground. All in the same insant as the staff hitting the ground, a ring of multicolored lightning erupted from the bottom of the staff and began traveling upward. The ring of lightning became two rings, three, four, too many to count. They all circled the diamond orb atop the staff before going into it and shooting upward toward the ceiling. Upon the impact of the lightning bolt with the stone ceiling above us, there was a deafening crack of thunder that were we not in the immortal sanctum of the Eye would have surely done damage to us. I stepped back, happy with my gift. I felt a bit of electricity surge through my arm and looked down on it. I had a new tattoo of a bolt of lightning on the inside of my left forearm. I smiled. (My character’s deity has a thing of giving him tattoos for momentous occasions)
@@JustAnotherPerson811 You are an amazing writer!
My character's flaw is that she's super naive. If she can convince someone to stop for just one instant, they can just start being good. Right? 😅 Of course not, but it doesn't stop her from trying... She'll also heal the enemy because it's her job to save lives.
Her philosophy is that all creatures are "citizens" of reality, not the city, and they are all bound by certain laws; one, that everything lies, but also everything tells a truth: what they are; Two, that all life is worth existing and worth saving; Three, everything has a job, a purpose for doing things for others and themselves and a purpose for existing.
Her purpose for existing, her job, is healing others with a smile. "She isn't worth existing if she stopped healing" is similar to what her mother told her when she was younger. We had a break this week but I want to bring this up to the party after we're done with this ogre camp
Reminds me of when my aasimar bard dropped because she used life transference on a cultists, all while her war angel angelic patron berates her as she was making her death saving throws. The cultist stabilized her though before running away. I hope we see him again
@@Spiceodog (same person, that's just my deadname account) aww that's nice. After a harrowing battle with several cultists and running out of spell slots, I checked the fallen for any injured that could be saved. The DM said I spotted one, and I performed a medicine check to stabilize him. While I convinced the artificer to carry him for me, a cultist who surrendered said "oh, siegfried? He's an asshole." Immediately splitting the party on the position of if it was the right thing to do. While I went to sleep straight away when we got back, the rest began arguing loudly once he came to and started spouting cultish nonsense. Some said that they should have me kill him because he's my responsibility, some said that that's barbaric but they couldn't deny that he had no reason for being there. I woke up and came into the room as their argument started to circle back. I denied them when they asked for me to do something, and someone said that I shouldn't heal bad people- I denied the concept. The warlock decided to blast them then and there, but he was counter spelled and as the others got ready to hit him back I released my angel wings and shouted STOP. They did and gave up on that for now.
I later released that guy and everyone got mad for a moment before I built up the courage to explain it all to them.
He helped us kill the doppelgangers in a church. He told us he'd give up and culting and be a priest for that temple. That's the last thing he said to me, and the last thing I did to him was hug him. Aaaaand then we got dropped out of a dragon which the city was housed in. But oh well I'm going to take Sending and Revivify next level at the cost of Chaos Bolt
A character that I just created is a half-elf noble and she doesn't want anyone to know her family name for fear of being treated differently or being taken advantage of because she's a noblewoman
My character did the same thing for the same reasons, and her sister had been killed because of the family nobility. She doesn’t want to tell anyone information about herself and talk about her family because it reminds her of her sister, one of the only people before she met the party that really cared about her. Her flaw is that she won’t let herself warm up to people in fear of loosing someone else.
Yeah, My current Paladin has this. That and he genuinely does not really identify with his family because he was sent of to join the clergy at an early age and see's the Sisters who more or less raised him as his real family. So it adds an extra layer to all of it.
She's proud of her human side but just doesn't fit in and her heart is elsewhere. If the family doesn't support the decision, which is likely, she intends to renounce her human name and embrace her elf name
"Damn it I just made Zuko again!"
I actually just finished a Katara cosplay photoshoot when you posted this. It's my first ever cosplay so thanks for inspiring me to do this!
Flaws are very fun to have, and are extremely helpful during the roleplay aspect of games. My Kobold Ranger is afraid of loss and is extremely quick to violence or sacrifice to protect another. He just wants to be a park ranger, but he can't bring himself to leave a group that might die without him.
I have a tiefling sorcerer who, doesn't exactly understand her class. She thinks she's a cleric and the only reason she can't heal others is because her (imaginary) goddess doesn't approve of those around her. She also grew up an orphan and so she can't read either. Which makes certain encounters fun.
My bard thinks that bards , sorcerers, and clerics are all the same , and that they get there powers from the gods.
I took the "I judge others harshly and myself even more" from the acolyte background for my ex-lawyer warlock. He always to make sure justice is served, even if he has to use extra-legal methods, but he also keeps a list of every law or infraction he has committed with the intent of turning himself in when the quest is done, or when he gets caught.
my current character is increadibly arrogant but its due to a lack of self confidence. he basically has no confidence in anything he does or says but masks it with arrogance.
Meanwhile I have a character that's too overly confident to a dangerous degree. Her ego is as big as a mountain right now due to her standoffish attitude and dumb plans never backfiring (somehow).
I like to make characters who under estimated themselves, a Bard who thinks they are unskilled. their are so many artist I know who think they are unskilled I started using it as a character flaw for bard
you are my favorite "DnD advice" channel
i currently play a lawful neutral githzerai cleric who believes she’s worshipping kelemvor, but in reality was raised in a cult of myrkul. her main flaw is that she’s had serious doubts about her upbringing and her faith, but doesn’t feel able to express those doubts safely, meaning she comes off as guarded and even overzealous. she tends to mask her own perceived failures by pretending to be more devout than she truly is, which has definitely gotten the party in some sticky situations in the past- especially considering some of the main villains of the campaign are necromancers and cultists.
My favorite take on this that I have played with was my wife's "cleric". The Red Wizards of Thay were recruiting foolish rich kids and passing off their necromancy as clerical healing...her character refused to believe that she hadn't actually brought someone back from the dead when she was raising them as a zombie 😄
@@johnathanrhoades7751 oh nice! i’m planning on playing a sorcerer from Thay for my next campaign who got kicked from her academy. yours is such a cool concept!
Why is this me? 😆
My new character is a soldier background Elven healer, who had 4 of their eight sibling die to a mysterious disease before they even reached adult hood and his dad a few decades later to the same disease. He’s become detached from people and has the motto of “Death is inevitable, accept it, move on, try not to get attached to the next one”, so he’s difficult to talk to and tries to keep people at arms length, things is, he’s horribly lonely and just wants a friend, but he’s terrified of what could happen
LOVE this. Love flaws too haha. My fav character hated rich ppl and had a huge sorta Robin Hood kinda thing. I refused money or gave it to my party members or passing NPCs and actively fucked with any quests we were doing that my character deemed “for the rich” to the chagrin of my party. My friends and the table loved it. But their characters were sometimes a little irate with mine (all in good fun). This may not seem like a huge flaw at face value, but it meant i often missed out on cool rewards or couldn’t afford things and it added an extra layer of challenge. My DM was super kind about it and often made sure there were ways for me to still be “rewarded” even when i refused payment or gave away all my gold. Super fun.
I also like to think about how the same background can lead to different flaws for different personalities. My rogue and her brother for example grew up in a pretty strict environment that valued blind devotion to the shady family business as all cost. For my hot headed rogue this made her a pathological liar, eventually leading to her keeping bigger and bigger secrets. Her brother on the other hand embraced that mindset and just suppressed a lot of his own wishes and emotions, essentially shutting them down whenever he had to do something he didn't want to. He now still is loyal to a fault while having a hard time showing emotions or asking for things for himself.
Part of Shadowrun char gen includes taking some negative qualities which are optional but give you more points for building your character. Some of those negative qualities can be pretty punishing but they also lead you into having a defining characteristic for your roleplay later (and they can eventually be bought off, character development!).
I actually have a character like one of the ones you described. They're a wizard, very intelligent, but he's also a very nervous individual. So they aren't always the best at speaking up either when they have an idea or when he sees his party making poor choices.
We also have a warlock in the party who is afraid of fire, and has literally gone catatonic in battle when I've had my wizard finish off an enemy with a fire spell. It's actually been really interesting to play with.
That's great advice.
My current character, a bard named Hope, is really distrusting of the authorities and at the same time is often too trusting with other people (who are not authorities), because he likes to see the best in people and overlook the bad sides.
Also recently he discovered, that he likes to deceive people to get what he wants, and id scared of this part of himself.
When your motivation can be summed up with “mid-life crisis,” the flaw writes itself!
My characters flaw is that he’s Italian.
Hey ginny, Ive been a fan of your videos for a while and I really love them, especially the stuff that help to make a character, keep the videos like that,
Btw love your hair
I made a bard that is very loyal, charismatic and well, cliche bard at the surface but when he was pure or if you know him he is the actual oppisite. He acts like an extrovert but is introverted and insucure
I'm so glad to have Ginny's videos as a resource for both table top games I play & for the RPG-based and non-RPG novels I'm writing!
Thank you, Ginny!
Flaws are my favourite! ☺️ They really make your character feel real. My bard is our group's mouthpiece. She's also dumb as a post an has a tendency to go off script. Plans always get derailed. But for some reason the other players keep putting her forward, like they haven't noticed it yet!
legit, one of the flaws i chose, was my character seems to sneeze alot and has a cough that never goes away...simply cause it's kinda believable. and not horrible. but can also bit you in the ass. (being thief is nice) lmao.
I had a character who would often get sick or into coughing fits because of there awful constitution haha. It was pretty fun
Ugh your opening bits always look so good, like that lighting is 👌👌👌👌 Like a dang Movie or something
Very helpful! All of these videos about characters are great. I have a character who i've kind of meshed with myself and this is really helping me to come up with good understandable flaws and personality, that also merges with the backstory.
My favorite PC I have played so far, a Lawful Evil Paladin of Zariel, lived and died by her word. She put a lot of weight on loyalty and honesty, and would never tell a direct lie, only omit information that could potentially change someone's outlook on certain situations. Tiara would always follow the word she had given, even when there was no downside to breaking it. That was just one of her principles: Everything is a contract that needs to be upheld until all terms have been satisfied.
In a game where people tend to get around consequences by lying, it was refreshing to just not be able to do that, especially as a character who probably would benefit from lying a lot.
I guess...her Ideal also doubled as her flaw :3
I made character that used to be a paladin but was killed by his wife's killer (that used to be a friend that betrayed them) before he could avenge her and made a pact with an unknown being so that he may come back to life as his warlock to finish his goal. The hick up is that he was resurrected without any memories of who he was and is now looking to find out who he might have been before his death.
He is very charismatic and likes to see the happiness in people's faces. He likes to make friends but deals like he can't get too close to them lest they betray him. At the same time, he doesn't know if he had a family and friends before he died that are waiting for him or if he was alone and the prospect of not having anyone waiting for him scares so he wants to meet new people that he can feal safe with.
His pact with his patron is that he must punish all criminals he finds no matter the crime (although the patron sees the punishment as only beating the death penalty). If my character refuses to kill the criminal, the patron will try to possess him and kill the criminal himself (I have to make a CHA saving throw). Also, I forgot to add that he has a hole in his chest from when he was killed and is a revnent, not a human, and that he fears that if he tells people that he has died and is part undead, they might leave him or fear him.
I tried to put multiple flaws be it personality or mechanics wise in this Character, do tell me if you feel like it makes sense.
A year later in the campaign and a lot happened. The party found out he could be possessed and found out about the hole in his chest. My character thought they where going to leave or kill him and was understanding but in the end, they freed him, allowed him to stay with them and their bonds ended up growing. They aren't scared of the hole in his chest and actually tease him constantly about it, they where able to clear the lost mine of phandelver and we had a very happy ending all together. I'm now reusing him in our new campaign and he has now got his memories back and is looking for his lost daughter in a cursed city filled with mutated monsters. He now has a new goal and is much more confident and less scared of getting close to people and making new friends.
Except many of them have already died and he is starting to fall back into his "stay away from people" mentality, but contrary to before, he isn't doing it because he might hurt them, he is now doing it because he is scared he may be the one to get hurt if they die or if anything happens to them
Not played D&D, but enjoy the D&D media, and really enjoy listening to you talk :)
Talking about basing your characters flaws as part of their more positive traits reminded me of something I've seen in another tabletop RPG. The Space: 1889 game (republished in 2014 with Ubiquity Rules), with its Victorian Era setting, has a sidebar on Victorian Values. It said "Victorian society is characterized by strong adherence to a set of widely accepted values, and many actions taken by the British nation and its citizens can be explained by these moral beliefs. Each value spawns both virtues and vices - and, even though it may sound paradoxical, sometimes one person might exhibit both at the same time. All the best and all the worst aspects of Victorian society lie in these virtues and vices."
It then listed a number of values, such as Honesty, Loyalty, National Pride, etc., and matched those with both Virtues and Vices.
For the value of Honesty, the virtues might be personal integrity and fairness, while the vices are naivety and contempt for alien codes of behavior.
For the value of Loyalty, the virtue is a sense of duty, and the vice is blind obedience.
For the value of national pride, the virtue is a sense of high self esteem, while vices include racism and intolerance.
The value of sportsmanship might have the virtues of fitness and team spirit, and the vices of an obsession with games and sports, or anti-intellectualism.
Love this episode it is true about flaws My favorite flaw to exploit is a person who likes to weaponsmith they get distracted by looking at all the different weapons they see during the game and not focus on what their task at hand is and usually some racial flaws as in doesn't like certain species can influence a character and overcome that would be like you set You're very inquisitive and I appreciate all the information that you dealt with in your videos past and present
Currently playing two Lancer games, one pilot is an ex-super soldier who is trying to atone for what she was made to do, and has trouble not resolving issues or emotions with violence. She definitely got into trouble for going way past just self defense when a supposed informant tried to jump her in an alley while snooping. Recently the gang got a new, fancier ship with a gym and she’s been using that to work out any feelings that would have previously been resolved with something dangerous. And has in turn had emotional talks with teammates bc she’s been able to process things while working out.
Flaws are great for adding depth to your character. And as you mentioned indirectly, with flaws, as with other things when building a character, specificity is very important.
"like, you know? . . . . . .Therapy."
Aaaannnnd THAT'S where I lost it! (truer words were never spoken)
I'm loving this series since I am currently building a long form campaign character!
I play a druidess, and in one of our first adventures we fought a group of varguilles. My charecter got hit by the kiss attack and failed the save, which ment she began to slowly become a varguille herself. Fortunately, we were able to stop it before the change was completed. Since then, I decided her fear was from being turned or changed to a different form. It was fun to roleplay her thinking process of eccsepting wild shape, and it was one of the more interesting roleplay experiencenses I had.
You mentioned naive. I rolled up a little green bundle of joy, left on a monastery's steps, an orc monk. He was on the equivalent of Rumspringa and went out to see the world so he can decide for himself if he wanted to live in the monastic order. Because he was raised in a monastery, he was very clean, skilled at cleaning and jumped at the chance to clean things. He was also good at identifying stains and chemicals. He could also craft tiny figurines and whistles out of grass. (There weren't many toys where he grew up)
I just rolled up a tiefling way of the shadow monk who actually grew up in a cult and didn't realize it. His over eagerness and short attention span finally became too much for the elders and sent him on an impossible quest to track down a treasure that doesn't exist just to get him out of their hair for a while, which he of course enthusiastically agreed to. He also believes the moon is his literal mother, not realizing that the cult members calling the moon Mother Moon was figurative, but his white freckles look like the stars so it makes perfect sense to him that he was made from space stuff. I also homebrewed him a pair of magical transitional lenses for his glasses because he spends so much time in the shadows/dim lighting that being out in the open in broad daylight hurts his eyes.
If I ever get to play him at a table, the party who gets him is basically getting an untrained golden retriever who is very good at hand to hand combat and slight of hand. And who doesn't love a puppy, right?
I’m trying to review some basics for writing my new character since I’m going to take the Runechild subclass from Matt Mercer and have her represent a sort of “Gifted Kid” burnout situation where she was considered special because of her abilities but was eventually overwhelmed by the structure and exam based academics of her school. Ashamed of her failures and shortcomings, she left the school and ran away from her life no longer having any sense of purpose or identity. A small part of her still clings onto the lessons and teachings she received while studying the arcane and how to tap into it through step-by-step rituals and spells as she continues to mourn how she wasn’t able to excel and grow as a student in that kind of environment.
You gave me a perfect personality for my armoror artificer. He’s the perfectionist, who feels like his armor will never be good enough, and only sees the flaws. As he gains more infusions and powers, he’ll hopefully slowly start to recognize how awesome his armor is, and how smart his is. This doubt comes from the fact that he was weak compared to the rest of his tribe (reflecting the floating ability score), so he doesn’t think he’s good enough at this either. He’s that lion race from the Mythic Odyssey of Theroes (I think) btw
This video just came at the perfect time for me! I was just making a character for a new campaign, and that's just what I needed! Love your vids!
Giving my character flaws and watching her grow in spite of them is what give me the most enjoyment in DnD.
I tend to separate flaws into three different categories. Minor flaws, which are more like pet peeves or flavor text, major flaws which is a trait that is going to actively hinder the character, and fatal flaws, or in other words, the trait that will get them killed.
Using myself as an example, my minor flaw would be that I bite my nails, or that I’m constantly tired, or that my resting face makes me look perpetually pissed. My major flaw returns to my past wherein I was ostracized by my peers from a young age, forcing me to build defenses. Don’t let them see what you’re feeling because anything you show them will be used as ammunition against you. As a result, I now experience great difficulty expressing myself to anyone. It’s hard to show my emotions or to interact with others in any way. My fatal flaw derives from the major. I bottle up my emotions, letting the pressure build until it all comes out in a sudden explosion. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I am afraid of myself, and thus, I have kept others at arms length. Isolating myself from the world and from everyone else in it, because I truly believe that it would all be better off without me
Flaws of my latest character:
-"Bonding with humans is unnecessary, I prefer animals"
- "When someone knows too much about me, I begin thinking of how best to dispose of them before they use it against me"
- "I'm a compulsive liar. I lie to everybody about everything, because I don't know who's my enemy"
- "I expect the worst from the people I meet"
- "I do not follow the principle of fair play, in game or battle"
- "Killing and stealing for my own benefit isn't anything special"
- "I think my pet snake (1 meter long) is cute, so I don't realise when it makes others uncomfortable/scared"
These flaws are connected to the ultimate goal of this character: "get a lot of money and avoid running into my past, then retire into rich life". Needless to say, that character is chaotic evil.
My character was so careful, that on session 0 DM had to do an "you accidentally stumble upon a bandit camp", otherwise I would've never ended up where I was supposed to meet other players (He wanted to start session 1 with a fight, so on session 0 he had to lead my character where that fight would happen). I plan for the first flaw to change for just "Takes care of people close to me, doesn't care about other people", so that my character's flaws don't cause too many problems with other players.
Flaws are always fun, and can have really interesting effects on the narrative.
One of my characters, Sir Isaac Valentine, was an absolute disgrace to his house, often bringing shame on his noble family. This was because he had absolutely no regard for politics, and only ever acted in a manner that he perceived as right, consequences be damned. Over the course of a nearly four year campaign, he has no come to understand nuance, and has grown to no longer act without thought and careful consideration to what may transpire as a result of his actions. As a result, he's actually risen to the rank of High Lord, and is working to undo a lot of the troubles he and his family have caused over the years. It's been fascinating to play the headstrong fighter and slowly guide him toward becoming a wizened politician and thoughtful leader figure.
My character Yalatharess is a half-even scholar of history and a capable wizard. However, she's grown so used to seeing the world through past events that she really has virtually no regard for the present. After all, the present is just history that's happening to you. As a result, she's prone to not get involved when she can help it, and she has very little regard for the lives of people. She's much more invested in gathering lost or forbidden knowledge than she is abiding by any societal norms. That's not to say she's un-charismatic. She's perfectly capable of going through the routines expected of her. But when someone tells her that something is taboo, such as venturing into an ancient temple full of dark and evil secrets, she'll likely ignore the warning outright with no regard for why it's forbidden. This has led to her becoming arguably more of a monster over the course of the campaign than the actual big bad. At this point, she's willingly accepted Vampirism in order to continue her studies long past her mortal lifespan, and she's made something of a habit of amassing rituals and dark knowledge that may plunge the world into an even greater evil than it's already facing. Honestly, I'm just waiting for the moment the rest of the party realizes she's gone too far off the deep end and tries to stake her. But at this point, she might legitimately be too powerful for the other two player characters to realistically stop. Thankfully (or regrettably, depending on your point of view), neither of their characters are exactly beacons of morality either, so it hasn't yet come to that.
Another character, Roland Greymane, is a pirate-turned-privateer who has a serious addiction problem. To what, you may ask? Addiction itself. He quite simply makes poor choices whenever presented with the opportunity. Be it drinking, smoking, gambling, you name it, he has a vice for it. Even though we're only four sessions into this campaign, this has already come dangerously close to throwing the whole party into peril. It's only a matter of time before he gets massive indebted to some crime lord after spending too much time in a gambling house. To make matters worse, Roland's sister Ash (another PC) has something of a rivalry with Roland, and is basically always egging him on to take things one step farther. Any time he strikes up a bet, she's the first to immediately raise the stakes. Any time he goes for a drink, she turns it into a contest. The two are such a self-destructive duo, and it's a blast to roleplay.
Outside of D&D, one of my favorite characters I've ever played was in Edge of the Empire. A wealthy philanthropist who, a few years prior to the Clone Wars, had invested heavily in the Techno Union to manufacture some mining droids. Unfortunately for him, the Techno Union wound up using some of his funding to instead build battle droids for the Confederacy of Independent Systems, which proceeded to wage war against the Galactic Republic. My character suddenly found himself under investigation by the Republic, his assets forfeited, yet still indebted to the Techno Union for mining droids he was never going to see. Skip ahead to the rise of the Galactic Empire, and the Empire has seized control over the Banking Clan during the Clone Wars. My character is now having to dodge Imperial debt collectors while every credit he earns is having to be dumped into paying off his mistakes from a decade ago. All while also learning he was Force sensitive, and what it means to wield the Force in a galaxy deprived of the Jedi.
My last character was a human who grew up in a family of battle mages but was shunned when they wanted to be a healer so became a reclusive and couldn't trust. If I rolled a natural 1 I would be overcome by depression and unable to use magic until I rolled a 10+ (dice roll and charisma combined my charisma was +1 if I remember correctly) the 1st fight I rolled a nat 1 on my 1st go and never did anything other than walk each turn as I couldn't hit that 10+ total.
Nazigthon you were one hell of a fun character R.I.P atop the hill your work is done.
Current Campaign I am playing a Dhampir Warlock/Necro that was raised by vampires and embraces that side of himself. Hating the human side, yet in his backstory fell in love and married a human that showed him a new world. He was with her until the day she died of natural causes, something like 58 years of marriage and he constantly wrestles with that memory of human life being fragile and precious. Yet not seeing life or the mortal races as anything other than playthings and food. He struggles with empathy at times where the party is like you are a product of your messed up upbringing and he sees nothing wrong with it. So constantly being told he can be a better person, that he is a good man, or that he is a damaged person they want to fix. His end goal is to become a full vampire like his "family" but it would mean giving up the humanity he has left. He's a complicated character, most complex I have done so far. Another flaw he has is he's smug AF. He's a noble and like the vampire society he is a part of, very very wealthy. Always wanting to one up other rich NPCs or insult their homes or that they are not as wealthy as him.
**(side note, he is also lawful Evil. Though I use real life examples of evil and not just the I'm evil for the sake of being it. He has bonds and moments where he does good, but revels in the moments he can do evil. The party is mostly chaotic neutral/good except him.)**
ive only ever had two dms and ive had both the best and worst dm. My first time ever playing dnd was in highschool and my friends and i made a club, we all loved dnd and never played before so making the club was obvious. my friend was a natural dm, he let us be super unique and creative, he really built a beautiful fun world. im the party we had a nature cleric that that worshiped a weed god, a dragonborn bard that played a flute and would accidentally breathe out poison and even hurt the party at times and could roll d20 and d15 or higher attacks could add poison damage to the target, there was druid who was afraid of animals but had to overcome his fear to be able to transform into them, a rogue who had Narcolepsy (fall asleep randomly) and would have to roll every turn to see if they would fall asleep during battle, however as a bonus to that if asleep a fair amount they could recover health. and then finally we had a gnome monk who lost her glasses and joined the party in hopes to find them, it had to be her glasses with her name carved in them and where a magic item no others would do, we did find them at the end of the campaign but because she lost her glasses she had disadvantages in investigation roles and advantage in rolls with her other sense (hearing and smell) and had 5ft of blindsight. the campaign was so much fun and our quirks got us into so many fun situations but good and really really bad. we had to stop often to check rules and look things up and some confusion with spells and abilities but overall still a lot of fun.
However my second campaign was when i went to collage and i was playing with experienced players our dm was a junior and had been DMing since highschool so i wrongfully assumed that it would be just as fun, and after watching a lot of campaigns on youtube ive realized generally they go a lot smoother and just as fun and creative however my DM.. was not.. we played with a mix of both newer (3) and experienced(4) players there were 7 of us this time, however when making our characters we were really limited to strict book rules and little freedom and creativity. I was inspired by the druid in my last campaign and wanted to play a pacifist druid in this one however i was not allowed any animals other than a cat, a rat, spider and then a horse... nothing else even when i was leveling up, my dm kept saying "you cant be a bear because youve never seen one" and so on. but let me mind you that i grew up in the forest (and yes he did confirm there are bears in the world) and i was raised by a beast master Ranger with a wolf companion (well i wanted but he said no its not "fair" and changed it to a raven) I really wanted to have fun and be creative but i could see that he wasnt being that open so i tried to go more simple so i wanted my character to be trying to learn druidic as my character originated from a ranger does not know it well but the dm said this was pointless info, so i was brainstorming other ideas but it didnt really matter because not once did the dm include anything related to our backgrounds in the campaign. everyone felt stale and irrelevant, many of our ideas of what we wanted to do our try in the story when roleplaying was often shut down or he would twist into something new to make it what he wanted, it only took just a few meetings before the more experienced players quit, i quit after the 6th (they were 2-3 hour long sessions) my character was short lived only making it to level 3. we had 4 sessions in combat... i dont understand how we were in combat so often however was earning no experience. i dont know what happened after i left. but we started with 6 and when i left they were down to 3... this was 2 years ago and unfortunately ive never have had the opportunity to play since.
Not my character but one of my players had a character who was scared of heights, in a campaign that took place mostly on floating Sky Cities. It was pretty funny to watch this incredibly competent and faithful paladin go green whenever on a sky ship
Flaws are my favorite way to make a character relatable, realistic, and fun. Currently running a lizardfolk who wants to fit in but doesn't understand subtle social interactions, currency, boundaries, manners, or taboos like cannibalism. A lot of fun but his lack of regard for fellow party members' names seems to fluster one at least.
Most of my character's flaws mostly got cured over about a year. Cynicism? Cured by having such a supportive group that taught him to trust again. Impatience? Tempered by many missions where patience was the right solution and he listened to the party...
Paranoia? That one's just plain valid to have, because EVERY time he's let his guard down, horrible stuff has happened to him, and JUST as he was getting better, his BBEG nemesis started attempting mind-control on him again. XD
Pretty soon I’ll be playing a Dragonborn creation bard in the whitchlight campaign. Hes a whitchlight hand that works as a sign painter. He’s flaw is that he doesn’t trust people with his emotions despite being a very empathetic and kind person at heart. He also doesn’t thing he’s special in anyway even tho he’s an amazing painter and is quite charming once he finally opens up. He values a good friend above anything and around people he cares about is the only time he can realize he’s abilities and yet can some how still convince himself that it is truly through their actions that the task was archived. If he can learn to trust himself then his reach could be limitless and if he could learn to trust others then the world may be better for it. We’ll just have to see how the fey wilds treat him
7:19 reminded me of my Goliath Barbarian Gladiator who has self-image issues! When they get things right they feel on top of the world! When they miss an attack or fail an intimidation, they buckle and attempt to play it off, especially if it was in front of a crowd/party.
Keep up the wonderful work Ginny, I love your content!
This video was actually really REALLY good and super eye-opening; even as a veteran D&D player. Great work :)
My bard has the attention span of a gnat. He's also very random, egotistical, and impulsive.
One of my characters is an Artificer Armorer named Mira-Polus Skeld. One of her infusions is Homunculus Servant. She is very intelligent and she is extremely dedicated to her work, so much so that she dedicates too much of her time to her work that she doesn't interact much with real friends. Because of this, she has become overly attached to her Homunculus Servant (an animated pumpkin named Petey Pumpkin). If Petey Pumpkin falls to 0hp and reverts back to his component (a bloodstone) while in battle, there is a chance that Mira-Polus will become too distraught to continue fighting (at least to her full capabilities) until she successfully reminds herself that she can simply resummon him the next day. It was so much fun playing her.
mine is literally obsessed with perfection and being perfect, his music and all forms of art MUST be nothing less then perfect, his cursed scythe makes this sickness even more intense and is slowly driving him mad. His food is great tho, because cooking is a form of art
The shoemaker is stingy when it comes to spending his coin, and accepts no less than his work is worth, but this because he is the almost sole benefactor of a charity he helped found using wealth taken from the guild's coffers. He must repay what he stole without letting the charity go without.
I played into the Ranger's class feature of "favored enemy" that coupled with his pride means that he frequently does things that are stupid or morally bad because he is obsessed with getting revenge on the creatures that killed his best friend
Always try to work with your DM to design complex flaws when making a character. I recently played an Artificer who had managed to drag himself out of a life of crime with a blacksmithing apprenticeship and he joined up with the adventuring party to find his mentor after he went missing. He had to find his mentor to stop himself from having to revert back to crime, but his flaw was that everytime he went into combat with the party he reawoke the criminal part of himself that he wanted to leave behind.
My character is a Fey Touched fighter, whose personality got affected by the Fey, alongside it being messed up by her experiencing ten years as though it were a week as a child. This leaves her as impatient and emotional, but also honest and as someone who cares deeply for her family (the party, and the parents who left during those ten years to search for their daughter)
My current character, a Devotion Paladin, has the unfortunate flaw from the Noble Background: "I secretly believe that everyone is beneath me" which when combined with the character trait "If you do me an injury, I will crush you, ruin your name, and salt your fields.", as a result he's made plenty of enemies - he's a DMs dream for creating random side quests by side-tracking him, often taking the party with him. It has put him in plenty of trouble with his God and kept him from becoming the goody-two-shoes Paladin archetype 👍
I’m playing an aberrant mind sorcerer who is an orc that was abandoned to a Goliath tribe at a young age. Never fit in anywhere and has been bullied/beaten in every area he’s tried to settle down. Due to this, he’s very untrusting of strangers and hesitant to speak up. He’s always hoped to find family and connections so when he does trust, it goes a long way(think foster system kid who latches onto fellow children in the household but is still weary of the adults in their life). So playing a Cha based character who avoids being the face of the party, a character who wants closeness but refuses to trust, has been incredibly fun
This is from another role play game but we tried basically rolling dice for our personalities (like we had a list of characteristics, good and bad, and then you rolled and saw what traits you’d get) and it was so fun omg I basically got every bad trait possible- Idk why but that was one of the most fun games I’ve ever played. I was this mean ass mutant bear named Paddington (I thought I was gonna turn out cute lmao) who had no social skills whatsoever and didn’t think before he acted (often resulted in stupid and very unnecessary methods of doing things), and the mission started with me breaking into a gasmack and ended with the whole fricking gas station blowing up-
my favorite character ive ever played was my 4-year-old aarakocra druid named lyra. despite being fully-grown, she was practically a child because she’d never been outside her tribes forest before now, and she left to save it. she was extremely naive and just. entirely didn’t understand how other people worked. she wasn’t tragic, or an asshole, she was just confused, but i had so much fun playing her because she was so different from the “sexy dark and angsty” i almost always play
I had a warlock whose patron was Jareth, the Goblin King, who saw no issue with kidnapping, transforming or otherwise exploiting children, but drew the line at killing and/or eating them. Not quite a flaw, but was fun to role play out in Curse of Strahd. In another campaign, I had a tabaxi who dealt with his heartbreak with catnip, and then struggled to get clean in an effort to win his wife back. Another character started to be a little less sane the further she was from home, nothing magical happening, it was just about being away. When we started to travel back towards their home region, her mind began to clear.
Tact. I once made a Dragon who wanting to experience comradery, had made a potion to polymorph himself into a human... Unfortunately, potions weren't his forte, something went wrong and he ended up transformed into human body with normal skin, but retained his Draconic features, basically he looked like a Tiefling. Not letting this deter him, he continued on to find a party to join, he was a Sorcerer and I played that the more he leveled up, the more the potion began to wear off revealing his future draconic features (subclass Draconic lineage). Now the flaw, while charming his bluntly honest attitude and lack of social tact made him blurt out things without sugar coating, he was genuinely nice to others but could come off as somewhat egotistical because of being socially inept, not understanding cues and what now
As an inexperienced role player, my personal way of choosing a flaw is either removing a difficult element of the role play so I can focus on another piece or deliberately making the role play harder on myself to try to grow more.
An example of the first method would be making a character who is a very bad liar and sucks at reading other people so I don’t have to be good at that aspect right away either. I usually like to pair this flaw with a tempering strength, like being very detail oriented and perceptive about the physical environment, so their social ineptitude doesn’t devalue them as a party member.
A good example of the second one for me personally would be creating a character who gets easily sidetracked. As someone who tends to love following the overarching plot and is very willing to poke whatever story bait the DM dumps in front of me, I don’t tend to wander very much in DND or veer off course. A character whose flaw is getting distracted and being roped into whatever unimportant thing catches their interest challenges me to explore the other facets of the world the DM has layed out for me to use.
Basically, you can build your character with your current role playing capabilities in mind and use their flaw to either push yourself or take a load off. It’s really helpful for me personally.
Your "nuanced leader trying to end a war" character is basically Queen Poppy from Trolls World Tour. And it's a good idea
My most recent character is my most flawed PC yet, but I think he’s also been the most fun to play, even if I get nervous I’m annoying my fellow players with my antics (they assure me I am not). He’s a satyr who was exiled from his community for being a killjoy. Not that he doesn’t love revelry as much as the next guy, but his idea of a good time is rather “destructive,” he starts fights for fun and gets into all sorts of illegal activities. He’s a journalist (valor bard) who isn’t afraid to start some trouble so that his stories can be more interesting without him having to lie in them. Finding out this girl he’s been traveling with (another PCs) is the daughter of an adventurer he used to travel around with like a groupie and write stories about, he’s been in a struggle of feeling an obligation to connect with her since her mom is no longer alive and he can tell the girl things about her, but also the girl’s lawful good nature can be… restricting at times. Honestly all the character dynamics in that campaign are cool as hell, it’s been really fun.
(I talked to my dm and party about this in session 0 before playing this character)
Human fighter with multiple multiple flaws. I think 7? it's been a lot of fun role-playing her! In the world we play in there's only 5-6 major cities in the world and 2 of them were destroyed by a giant goose 8 years ago. My character, a youngling in the guard unit was present at the Battle of The Goose and is now terrified of birds- every time she sees one now, she kills it, or freaks out. She also doesn't think the guards from the other major cities actually know how to do their job and recently told some guards that she'd catch the serial killer for them since they obviously don't know how to. It's a lot of fun.
As for superfluous flaws, she laughs at inappropriate times, chews on her hair when she's stressed. and eats her companions foods if they don't want to eat it because she worries about not getting her next meal. Oh and she's wayy to devoted to her home city and all their authority figures
I play a Gnome in Pathfinder who is super charismatic and usually gets her way due to her cuteness. She was hungover and thirsty and went up to a table of dwarves and drank their water and got hit with a plate.
My tiefling necromancy wizard caused an argument in game bc he's been sent to a place to do important work investigating necromantic activities in the area and the party also want to help another party member look for her missing brother. My character is very driven by his academic background (he is technically a necromancer, but isn't bad, part of his job is stopping bad necromancers) and was essentially like "yes I will help you with your brother but I'm here to do work, I'm doing that first." He's a little stubborn and good at brushing people off in a way that they won't realise they've been insulted until ages after because of his noble upbringing.
My elf bard is looking for missing people from his past that have been missing for nearly 100 years, his main flaw is that he's too hung up on the past and won't let it go. He's also a pacifist which can cause issues, he understands attacking in self defence and has little issue with hurting things that are definitely undead, but he will not actively hurt humanoids, he's only ever used tasha's hideous laughter, hold person and calm emotions against people in combat (he's used vicious mockery and dissonant whispers on undead before).
These 2 campaigns are with the same people just different dms and are nicknamed "rich kids on tour" (where I play the tief) and I always refer to the other as "4 holy people and a cultist" (2 clerics, a paladin, my bard who is slightly religious, and a warlock).
One of my characters, a halfling draconic bloodline sorcerer, is a sage and has two flaws (from the rolling table) that I think go well with eachother. One is that he's easily distracted by the promise of info, and another is that he would take notes on a demon's anatomy instead of fleeing (which works well with the brave trait halflings have). We're still early in the campaign, so this has only led to him staring at a locked ritual room from the outside trying to figure out what's going on while the rest of the party is leaving. They had to grab him and drag him out before the building collapsed. He ended up experiencing magical sensory overload. Luckily, the ritual wasn't finished, so we didn't destroy the town we were in.
Also, this isn't related to the story, but he knows 8 languages.
My character has an obsession with food because he spent his childhood starving and alone, but that’s just a flavour flaw. His fatal flaw is that he draws his motivation from protecting others and his greatest fear is watching people harmed while being unable to do anything. He also has deep-rooted anger because of these feelings of powerlessness and carries a MAJOR hero complex. He’s also a work hard, not smart kind of guy. He ends up being a temperamental, naive, and kind of gullible dude who’s extremely loyal and strong, who’s brave enough to take the direct road when the party is nervous to. Flaws made that happen, not strengths
Best silly flaw I have experienced in a game was a "Centaur" Ranger who was actually just a sentient talking horse with a elaborate puppet they wore over his head. His father was a centaur and his mother was a horse. Whilst it was silly it was actually a complex flaw. Like pinocchio he would do anything to become real. He acted as though he had abilities that he didn't really have and was devastated by those who challenged his race. Very silly very fun and some surprisingly emotional moments of affirmation from the party who felt like if he said he is a centaur then they will defend that.
I played a high-Charisma warlock who hated speaking. After an isolated youth and military career where he could go weeks without speaking a single word out loud that wasn't simply regiment and routine, he struggled to find the purpose of most conversation. Often he'd misconstrue a lack of information as a lack of discipline, observation or preparedness. If he discovered something, he might not tell anyone. If he knew an answer, he didn't contribute unless asked. He was also a different race than the rest of the party, and so equated what he saw as idiosyncrasies of his party (conversation, displaying emotion, hobbies, etc.) as racial nuances that he didn't and didn't need to understand. At first, he spoke out to warn a party member of danger. Then to assume command lest a compatriot misguide the group. To inspire his friends and strengthen their resolve. To intimidate a guard. Sadly, the group wasn't very roleplay-oriented. But internally, over the campaign, my character learned to speak out and use conversation to explore ideas and people. He learned that we weren't just spears and shields for each other, pointed at a problem by an authority and following tradition, but individuals with hopes, dreams, fears and motivations. He realized his own curiosity with the world and forgave himself for letting it break his discipline at times. (He also came to the realization that power could be acquired through contracts and magical items rather than through numbers and discipline, and he grew very fond of these things.) By the end of the campaign, one of my party members kept a journal of things that my character said, and would embarrassingly announce the addition of an entry whenever he said something moving, witty or deep. But he also acquired the flaws of seeking shortcuts to power, and expecting to be seen as an authority and respected by others. In the end, he took up a position of renown in a burgeoning magic city our party accidentally created out of an ancient ruins, and took it upon himself to safeguard (and maybe kinda hoard) the most dangerous powers from within it.
I've currently got a Lizardfolk Druid who I hadnt really figured out a Flaw for. His background didn't offer one and his goals didn't really offer up one, but as luck would have it, the first session opened up for a "open-goal flaw".
We were in a town that got attacked by a Dragon, my character was outside, noticed somehing was up and peaked his head into the Tavern to let everyone else know something was happening as a Blue Dragon struck the Tavern. My Character got stuck under rubble, got free by Wild Shaping and went into the Tavern to try to help people inside. Dragon struck again, dealing 70 odd dmg, Character unconcious and underneath rubble once more.
Ever since that session, the Character has been scared and/or unwilling to go indoors unless there is a proper reason or need for him to enter :)
My current main PC is a goblin artificer. She's arrogant, impulsive, loves explosives, and can be very greedy. It makes for an interesting foil to the more subdued and "normal" rest of the party.
A flaw one of my characters has is she’s stuck in the past and still upset and grieving about things that happened years ago. She lost someone who meant a lot to her and now she has a lot of trouble warming up to people out of fear of loosing someone else.
The other character I have is a chaotic mess. She’s reckless and is often willing to cause chaos and get herself into trouble. She loves art and vandalism (eg. Drawing on the front of library books or store signs) if someone does anything to hurt her or her adoptive family or they insult her she will not hesitate to kill them.
The two characters I've played were an Aasimar fighter and a kobold celestial warlock
The aasimar, Konstanza McIntyre, was quick to distrust people, especially tieflings due to trauma from her backstory. She would quickly think people were up to something and would treat people accordingly (examples being holding a child hostage because she believed they were staging an ambush, or more extremely killing a tiefling bard because they had stole a few coins from the party and charmed her the night before)
The Kobold Valentine was a servant to a Unicorn who was a cheese addict, they also were an addict before but not as bad. To continue recieving the powers from the Unicorn they had to consume absurd amounts of cheese that would be magically transported to the unicorn undamaged, but their addiction and dependence on the cheese exponentially grew as they consumed more, leading them to go broke, Rob, or even kill just to get even a little
One thing I'd like to add is that a character isn't bad just because they lack a fleshed out backstory, flaw or ideal system. The key is all about group dynamics and what you & the other players want out of your campaign. Don't let anyone make fun of you for playing a simpler character. Some campaigns (like ones with a lot of players) benefit heavily from having one or two "basic" characters thrown into the mix. Others might not NEED an average Joe with a dream on their team, but could still benefit from having a player who wants to play a supporting role in the story. The supporting character is a humble role, and sometimes underappreciated, but in my experience it can be very valuable in the right circumstances.
I'm reminded of my healer who just had a panic attack behind a tree during the first combat of the campaign while the rest took out the guards and snuck inside the keep we were supposed to conquer.
One of my favorite characters I like to play has the flaw of not being loyal and reliable to his friends in a sense of commitment to that connection. He couldn't feel bad losing them and if the scene was boring to him, he would just ditch the goal and wait for the boredom to pass.
It was because in his past he had a family in the form of his sister, but later in a miryad of accidents he betrayed her believes. And now he just thinks that he's that kind of a person, that it's something that will always happen.
That guild artisan example reminds me of a certain artist from Austria who was a soldier for a little while.
My favourite character I have to play is Bianthul. She's filled with flaws that really make her unique and it works fairly well with the party. Bean is stubborn, bullheaded, strongwilled, and runs off of a lot of wrath towards those that were responsible for her daughter, husband, and tribes death. Her biggest goal is to make a safe life for her and her remaining son but she runs headlong into danger to fight every wrong. She feels like she has to protect everything that she can even if it means she's terribly injured in the process. She's also terrible at communicating her issues so is more likely to attack an aggressor than talk her way out of it.
I've got a character ready for the next group I join. A Dwarven Fighter who was part of his clan's militia who were all brainwashed by a master illusionist who made them see the people of their home as invading goblins. The spell wears off just as he deals the killing blow to his family members. As a result, he does not trust anyone who uses illusion magic, he can never forgive himself so he never bothers apologizing for anything, and he is striving to become the best warrior because he is terrified of dying (thinking that he could never bear the shame of being united with his family in the afterlife, while also being terrified of eternal punishment). He is almost always somewhat drunk to drown out the memory of the screams and cries for him to recognize his family.
So, I tried an experiment with one of my characters from one of my two home games of D&D. The campaign was Curse of Strahd, and the character was born on a take on Talesin Jaffe's character Caduceus Clay from Critical Role (my character was also a Firbolg Grave Domain Cleric who worshipped the Wildmother), but the DARK mirror image of Caduceus. Where Taliesin plays Caduceus kind of like "The Dude" from "The Big Lebowski", and he has a large, loving family, my character's family were killed, and entire village burned by unknown monsters (could have been vampires, but unknown to my character). Because I am (to put it mildly) not great at RP, I wanted to integrate my character's flaw (his faith in the Wildmother was shaken, frayed almost to the breaking point because of the death of his family), in a mechanical way into my game play. So my DM and I homebrewed a mechanic to where, every time that I went to cast a spell (other than cantrips, which were 100% success rate), I would have to roll a d100, and roll below a certain percentage (90% or below for Level 1 spells, 80% or below for Level 2 Spells, etc.) to see if the spell worked, if not (if I rolled high) then the spell fizzled. For a while, this was a fun way for me to incorporate his flaw into my game play (the other party members had NO IDEA what was going on at first, and had a fun time figuring it out). But ultimately, it proved to be more of a hindrance to the party in combat than it was worth (even though DM and I had designed it to be less as my character leveled up, so when I gained a level, Level 1 spells would go to 100%, and Level 2 Spells would be 90%, etc.). My DM eventually designed a cool narrative encounter for me with the Wildmother that was basically a test of my character's faith in her (multiple opportunities to choose not to, and my character had to affirm their faith by choosing to continue to hold on, even when it was obvious that my character was in mortal danger), it was basically a really creative way to let my character overcome their flaw, and get a really sweet magic item at the same time (prayer beads that let me cast a small amount of healing from a distance, without using spell slots). Anyway, just wanted to share my experience playing around with character flaws.
My half-orc barbarian/artificer, Sunny, is deaf, and that has inspired pretty much her entire character backstory, including her flaws. One of them is that, obviously, her being deaf means her ability to communicate with others is fraught at best, and as such she has little experience with communication, leading to her being quite naive and easily manipulatable by others, especially considering her trusting nature. As a fun flavour flaw, due to her being a barbarian also, she rarely recognises her own strength, often leading to her slamming things down on surfaces hard, or giving too tight hugs :P
I built a database that contains (at present) 2000 traits, 1500 ideals, 1500 bonds, and 1500 flaws. During character creation in my group, there's an algorithm that randomly chooses these based on a couple selections by the player. Often, we'll click "retry" multiple times, but it's a lot of fun to work through the options to come up with unique character personalities. As DM, I let the randomizer go to create NPCs and work with whatever comes up.
Damn it, I just made Zuko again!
Well, that's a mood I wasn't expecting, but here we are.
My current rogue has a couple of flaws: he will throw nearly anyone under the proverbial wagon to ensure his continued freedom, he hates arrogant magic users (like our party's sorcerer is proving to be) he loves his little sisters so much that he will act on even the hint of them being in danger and his dad is using a series of bounty hunters to bring him back home.
I have commented about these characters on a past video but here’s the top 6! 160+ yr old human 18th lvl arch magi. 21 int, but old as dirt with Alzheimer’s. Has 25% spell failure in the worst ways. Drives an oliphant, the irony of course a man who can’t remember riding an animal that can’t forget. Through the use of various magical items uses them to buff against his ancient age, and failing body. 17th lvl fighter with a natural 18/00 str, but a 9 int. Weapon of choice a hammer made from the stump of an ancient oak, which he pulled from the ground and leveled a kobold village with… add a few magical spells and a staff of bludgeoning for a handle, now wields a 300 lb murder stump. Add a charm of inertia and charm person and you have a weapon that will crush just about anything. Once it starts moving it cannot be stopped until the wielder wills it to be so. And of course each time it is used under lvl 6 creatures are charmed into immobility and save vs charm on everyone else, or stand there watching this magnificent chunk of wood smash you into a puddle. The rhino of course has a 13 int. So whom is leading whom? 15th lvl thief with a history of nat 1 rolls twice cursed. Geas’d to covet rings on any flavor over all other treasure, and cursed with godlike beauty. His flaws made it difficult to act as a thief. Not only will he lust after a worthless copper ring like a dragon lusts after gold, but because of his comeliness finds it mostly impossible to practice his craft without anyone who sees him falling madly in lust with him. Young women offer their virginity, mature women offer their husbands wealth, old women offer their life savings to him, which of course he will not accept, oh yeah straight guys go gay when he is around. His lust of rings pushed him to make a suit of ring mail out of magical rings in which he can slip his finger into any of the rings within a segment of a combat round and use the effects. And of course he must wear a mask to do any thieving. He is a social butterfly, and frequents mascarade balls to pilfer rings from unsuspecting party guests. A 19th lvl brownie assassin who is a sociopath. Think dexter with a little dose of ‘You’, but 2 ft tall. Obsessed with wealth, riding a griffin. She spends her free time researching poisons, anatomy, and the most brutal tortures imaginable. Unfortunately it also causes her to not have many friends, and those she does have will eventually be murdered by her because she can’t help herself. No apologies. An 18th lvl human LG cleric who while adventuring, returns to find his wife and 13 kids slaughtered by a band of roving thieves. The thieves happened to hide in a gnome village. Well distraught as you can imagine lays waste to the entire village men, women, children, even the livestock and cats… until he found the thieves and of course killed them as well. This out of alignment behavior caused a diametric alignment shift to CE. This shift caused him to suffer from crippling depression. He is often melancholy or weeps uncontrollably. His epic steed is of course a skeletal dragon. Because why not? These bouts of melancholy etc can occur at anytime there is a stressor. Critical decisions, melee, Tuesday… his steed and companion spends a lot of time defending his limp and lifeless prone body. He likes to raise any corpses and skeletons from passing cemeteries and wanders with this army, even into town causing lots of troubles. How about a 16th lvl dwarven ranger who is absolutely terrified of the dark, not to mention claustrophobic. Born into the royal house of Bagburn, spent most of his young adult life pampered and safe until an epic battle with drow expelled to scrawny beardless dwarf into the light. He rides a Roc and refuses to go underground, or for that matter into any windowless stone or earth structure.