Optimizing Your Backstory, a Guide to Traits and Flaws.

[TheOneHawk]

I'm currently working on having all the green+ traits organized into individual docs based on their general purpose, with purple then blue at the top. I was also planning on a purple only doc. There's probably too many blues (and too many of them being identical or nearly so) to include them in said document though.

Glad you like it, though!

[TheOneHawk]

Faith and Family traits sorted. Just have Magic, Race, Regional, Religion and Social left to sort. I've also added what type of trait it is to each trait in their sorted sections.

[pi4t]

I disagree with your rating of the Shadow-Scarred drawback: provided someone in the party has, say, the Light spell, you can wear a glowing whatever shedding normal light in a 20ft radius around you from level 1 on. The only issue is if you get separated from the caster, or are in an antimagic field or the light spell gets dispelled, but by the time that becomes an issue you should have been able to set up backup options (eg carry a lit sunrod on you as well, so that if one option fails the other is still there).

[TheOneHawk]

Hm, ok maybe red was a little harsh on a second look. I still don't think it's a very good drawback, though, because if you're casting light on yourself all the time to make sure you're not taking that awful penalty you basically cannot ever do stealth things. Pretty hard to be sneaky when you're glowing. You're also expending resources to deal with a drawback, where most of the other ones the penalty isn't bad enough to bother with that.

[pi4t]

I hardly think that getting the wizard to cast one of the stronger cantrips qualifies as expending resources. The stealth thing is a fair point, and although you could always just put up with the penalty at that point it's still probably worse than most of the other drawbacks (although still costing significantly less than half a feat, unless you're going to be stealthing a lot).

Also, you seem to assume that the player chooses whether Attached applies to an object or a person, but it seems to me that it's the GM's choice. I think "know your gm" applies to that one.

[TheOneHawk]

This is a million years out of date, I don't have time to keep it up to date. I apologize. If anyone would like to take on this project, I feel it is still valuable and I'd be willing to help out, but I simply cannot even come close to keeping up on my own. Let me know, if you're interested.

Thanks.

[TheOneHawk]

So, I guess admitting defeat is what it took to get me back updating this thing?

I'm reducing the scope, pretty substantially. I'm not going to categorize the traits based on their effect, I simply do not have the time for that level of commitment and frankly that project is what burned me out to begin with. I've added a bunch of new traits, though, and am working my way through the sources that have come out since I last updated, as well as replied to a great many comments. I'd like to give a sincere thank you to the various people who have given well thought out reasons why they felt my ratings were inaccurate, this kind of community involvement is definitely the best way to make this the best guide possible.

If anyone is still reading this, as well, thank you. :smallsmile:

[Kurald Galain]

Of course we're still reading this :smallcool: Good to hear you're doing new additions!

[TheOneHawk]

Of course we're all still reading this, says one of the most active members of the entire forum.

Good to see you here still, Kurald.

[Quarian Rex]

I'm looking to incorporate Traits and Flaws more heavily into my games and this is more useful than I can express. You're doing the Lords work Skater McGee.