HomeBrew flaws

[Greeniron]

Post some good homebrew flaws here

DMTibernius and I were talking and we came up with a flaw

Inept
choose 3 skills on your class list. These skills can never be used

effect: they can never be rolled, say if you chose spot, no spot checks could ever be made for you.


we also came up with you may only choose one knowledge skill for this flaw (stops ppl from dropping just those)
I was thinking maybe having the number of skills chosen be based off how many class skills.
So what does everyone else think?

[thegurullamen]

No, this flaw just doesn't work. If you twink it out and take, let's say Knowledge (Nobility), Use Rope and Appraise then it's worthless as a flaw. If you take even one skill that you actually might use, you automatically fail at it no matter what and for absolutely no reason aside from your ineptitude. That forces the DM to weigh this one flaw into any encounters he has planned so he doesn't overtax your character by including it or accidentally favor him by removing anything keyed to that particular skill, gimping use of that skill altogether. Yes, a nice middle ground exists, I'm sure, but it's still unnecessary added work for the GM.

Another problem is that by surgically removing three skills from the game (which is likely to happen since the party will want to stay away from anything that can completely incapacitate a PC) weakens the gaming experience. Dissatisfaction will vary from group to group, but the idea still sounds bad.

Another issue is verisimilitude, which I touched on above. If you're inept at something, you fail more often than not but it's not a law of the universe that you will necessarily fail at it every single time you try. The worst spotter in the world can still be expected to see something as large as a house standing right next to him. According to this flaw, not only would he never see the thing, but he's probably blind and deaf for all intents and purposes. As it stands, this is an epic flaw (not that such things do [or should] exist.)

Mechanics-wise and fluff-wise, this thing is broken.

[JoshuaZ]

Yeah, pretty much the same problem as Gurullmen. It might make sense if instead it applied to all class skills for the class you take at level 1 and they had a -2 penalty on all rolls. That might be a bit more balanced.

[EdroGrimshell]

Just say they're no longer class skills

[Greeniron]

Yeah, pretty much the same problem as Gurullmen. It might make sense if instead it applied to all class skills for the class you take at level 1 and they had a -2 penalty on all rolls. That might be a bit more balanced.

this actually makes more sense