Roleplaying weaknesses
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Pretty simple, roleplaying a weakness in your character, like a fear, or a physical or mental problem.
How many people are doing this? And how successful are you at keeping it consistent, how do you roleplay it? Remember any great roleplayers who included a memorable weakness?
There you go olouth.
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Bluebeard was scared of water if I remember well.
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Caden trips over all the time and runs away from spiders, it is awesome.
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Kali Strongarm was also scared to death of boats and the sea
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There was one wizard PC who was afraid of mirrors. He believed his shadow or duplicate would pop out and strangle him if he saw his reflection. He often RPed this and would avoid any rooms with mirrors or have someone cover it up. I remember one quest with him where I would emote covering it with my cloak so he could pass. A very quirky, funny guy. I can't remember the player's name, or even the PC's name.
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Marin used to get irate at various fauts in others. She stormed away from parties and lost out on loot on a number of occasions. I gave her this, often irrational, anger when I considered what her upbringing might have given her as a character trait. I tried to give her a fault that allowed others to interact with or react to her. Some of the reactions to her anger were awsome!
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Jack McMadd has a fear of writing and anything written…
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Rahe was scared of being blinded Tyrus has a fear to…just keeping it to myself
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Rashim has a fear of intimacy, luckily the no cyb0r rule makes this not come up very often :-)
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Jamendithas is afraid of getting fired and thrown out of the factory.
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I honestly think a focus on "weaknesses" is almost silly. It got started perhaps because our Faction Applications asks for character flaws. We did this because we wanted three dimensional and believable characters, with faults and flaws.
Somehow, players read this to mean people should all have debilitating phobias, gimp legs, suicidal tendencies and so on.
Which tends to go the opposite extreme of what we had, which were people super human courage, wisdom, compassion, and so on.
Let's just see simple believable characters.
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Caden´s tripping is pure perfection of situation comedy. I love it.
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Although Thirlo's fearless to an unbelievable degree when facing beasts, monsters, and other indescribable horrors, he is scared to death of broken mirrors, spilled salt, and other trivial superstitions. I thought a Tymoran who wouldn't back down from a dragon but would flee from a black cat would be funny. Only one or two characters have picked up and played along, however. Terenshan helped him to be less afraid of the stray black cat of the Gilded District, and a priest of Beshaba discovered his superstitious nature and tormented him for a number of days before disappearing.
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I once played an elven mage who was afraid of everything and was certain that he would die at the slightest sight of resistance. Even rats had him running for the hills. Sadly he needed money for his beloved sewing and tailoring, so there was no way about it but adventure. I kinda miss him…
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I played a character that walked with a limp
He also couldn't tie shoe laces or whistle. Gimped to shit.
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I rp a character who prefers the flight option to fight. I also run at the drop of a hat, especially when I'm alone.
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I honestly think a focus on "weaknesses" is almost silly. It got started perhaps because our Faction Applications asks for character flaws. We did this because we wanted three dimensional and believable characters, with faults and flaws.
Somehow, players read this to mean people should all have debilitating phobias, gimp legs, suicidal tendencies and so on.
Which tends to go the opposite extreme of what we had, which were people super human courage, wisdom, compassion, and so on.
Let's just see simple believable characters.
This was what I was getting at actually.
I'm just not as blunt as the moloch
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Matthew to this day will kill every boar in sight and often charged the gigantic boars on a certain quest even though his AC couldn't handle it when he enraged at their sight just for the opportunity to cut off a pork flank. I always enjoyed that random quirk that was a weakness at the time.
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THANK YOU!
This is a discussion i really like. Especially since Moloch has stated that weaknesses are perhaps over done.
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I think character "flaws" or "fears" are things that drive your character to do crazy stuff. For example, with Theo, his over-protectiveness pushed him into a plot I had not originally intended to touch at all. He also did crazy things due to his fears/flaws, both mechanically (charging a half dragon in a tunic anyone?) as well as RP-wise (The whole Vaelyssa episode comes to mind). I'll admit that this took the character story in a direction I had not originally intended but that's what made it all the more fun.
There are several other character quirks you can add which makes it even more fun (Again taking Theo as an example, he died to a stationary monster once simply because he never disengaged a foe in a fight as a general rule). Physical flaws are not really character weaknesses unless they dictate your characters actions.
Just my thoughts.
