Korbel wrote:I guess this is the best place to ask.
A trend I've observed here on forums (characters created by all of us, that's more of a dozen already) is to pick a Low Freeman status (Tier 2) and then the lowest Tier 1 to
Edges and Flaws. Then such a character would be "blessed" with a dark secret, enemy or something... and voila, you have 12 priority pick points to buy Attributes, Skills and Proficiences.
For example, latest character from
Agamemnon himself:
Pope's bastard. And many others.
I won't go so far to say that it's a cheap tactic... but I kinda find it boring, when most of the characters are low freemans with good skills and an enemy (I'm perfectly aware that that was kinda imposed by the theme of the campaigns we decided to have, but still)
For my part, this wasn't a case of min-maxing so much as a confluence of other factors.
- The Bastard part of the concept came first, which naturally pushed me further down the social ranks and demanded that by the current rules, I needed at least a Major Flaw in there.
- I actually started by reading the Edges & Flaws section before I did anything else as the rest are just numbers. The ones that stuck out to me were Secret, Bastard, and Honorable. I was tempted to take on more, but that seemed to be a good trifecta to clash with from the start. I tend to like playing struggling, flawed characters to begin with.
- Conversely, not very many edges fit with the character concept in this case. Most of them grant some ability that doesn't add anything to the character I wanted to play.
- On the other hand, what I did need for this character was for him to be a sort of jack-of-all-trades. I wanted him to have combat ability, and he was going to need quite a bit of skill points to throw around. Compounding this, the way the current build is set up, he needs good attributes to be effective at either. Thus the triple-4 allocation.
- Beyond this, a big part of it is how I saw my role in the game. Marco is the default nobleman here and in theory, his house is the central impetus of this story. I thus didn't want to be any kind of proper noblility as I don't want to either steal his thunder or accidentally drag attention from his house by bringing my own.
- This further compounds the edges & flaws pick logic because so many of the edges are about elevating your character in some way. The theme of this campaign, however, seems to be about pawns and henchmen. Even Marco is effectively Primus inter Pawnus in the scheme of this because we're all being shuffled around by nobles and kings. Given that my angle in was as Giovanni's man, I wanted to be in some ways the mirror of one of Marco's men.Thus, I deliberately avoided anything that would have given me status, men, etc of my own.
In this case, at least, it's a combination of where I wanted to fit in, the themes of the campaign, what I actually wanted to do, and, frankly, the fact that I like playing flawed characters.
taelor wrote:Edges and Flaws are very dump-staty in the current draft. I seem to remember one of Higgins or Agamemnon saying that they would be reworked in the upcoming release.
I can see the former and can confirm the latter. It was one of the sections I found more annoying to rework and rewrite.
Korbel wrote:Anyway, do you find it a problem?
I've heard the Flaws are going to work differently now, under S&S. How will it change this situation?
taelor wrote:Personally, I like the Burning Wheels approach of just giving you trait points, and you can spend them how you want; if being blind or having a nemesis or what have you is really important to the character, then spend the trait points just like anything else
Which is exactly why we went the trait point route this time. This is for three major reasons. First, you have people like me who actively like playing flawed characters, and thus a low-priority pick in the existing category is actually an incentive rather than a discouragement. Next we have the problem that flaws are actually very beneficial, because they offer you a constant source of SAs if you are playing them right. Finally, the issue where there's a lot of cross-over between flaws and edges. Honorable could really go either way, as could any given reputation/infamy inthe right context. Thus division between what is an "Edge" and what is a "Flaw" seemed to arbitrary for comfort.
This time around, the category gives you access to points that can be spent on different things. A low Trait pick now doesn't force a bunch of flaws on you, it simply leaves you with fewer points to spend -- which effectively makes you lonely and boring. Further incentivizing the thing, traits plug in nicely to the tapping system, they still can get you SA points, and they are basically where your character goes to establish anything about themselves that isn't numbers or your social status.
Speaking of social status, we've been juggling this weird overlap of "what if I want to play a noble but don't necessarily want to be the head of the household?" In the coming build, this line gets cleaner. Social status confers increased wealth and the legal rights associated with someone of your blood status. By default you are now assumed to be a second son or some forgotten cousin or an otherwise well-off but minor part of the house to which your noble backside would belong. If you want to be the head of the house, you'll create said house as a faction and like all player-associated factions, it is built with trait points.
So TL;DR - we've dropped the Edges/Flaws dynamic and made traits more useful/interesting across the board.
