Okay, here's an idea I had awhile ago. I got it from D&D's Flaws system, where you could take Flaws to get bonus feats at character creation.

Basically, there could be certain things that you could thematically work in to your character, with GM approval, that could grant additional starting experience. These would be totally optional, and probably only on the table for more advanced players, since I wouldn't want to bog down creation for newer people with these.

The biggest reason I kind of want this as an option is because I like making characters with glaring weaknesses. Also, there's NO way that I have a Brawn of 2, so if I wanted to make myself in this game, I feel like there should be a way for me to replicate that .

Some ideas would include:

Feeble: You're weaker than typical members of your species. -1 Brawn. This cannot bring your Brawn below 1. You cannot increase your Brawn during character creation. +15 Experience.

Slow: You are slower than typical members of your species. -1 Agility. This cannot bring your Agility below 1. You cannot increase your Agility during character creation. +15 Experience.

Stupid: You are dumber than typical members of your species. -1 Intellect. This cannot bring your Intellect below 1. You cannot increase your Intellect during character creation. +10 Experience.

Foolish: You are less worldly than typical members of your species. -1 Cunning. This cannot bring your Cunning below 1. You cannot increase your Cunning during character creation. +15 Experience.

Cowardly: You are less willful than typical members of your species. -1 Willpower. This cannot bring your Willpower below 1. You cannot increase your Willpower during character creation. +15 Experience.

Socially Inept: You are less personable than typical members of your species. -1 Presence. This cannot bring your Presence below 1. You cannot increase your Presence during character creation. +10 Experience.

Blind: You are blind. You automatically fail all sight-based skill checks (like some Perception checks). Any skill check partially dependent on sight, but that can be assisted by other senses have their difficulties increased by one, including all combat checks. Certain other checks entirely dependent on senses other than sight may have their difficulties decreased by one instead. +30 Experience.

Partially Blind: You are either missing an (or multiple, as is possible with some species) eye, or something has caused severe deterioration of your vision. Increase the difficulties of all sight-dependent skill checks by one. +15 Experience.

Deaf: You cannot hear. You automatically fail all sound-based skill checks (like some Perception checks). Any skill check partially dependent on hearing, but that can be assisted by other senses (such as Negotiation), have their difficulties increased by one. +15 Experience.

Hearing Impaired: You are hard of hearing. Increase the difficulties of all hearing-dependent skill checks by one. +5 Experience.

Amputee: You are missing a limb. You can replace this with a cybernetic, but for now, you're out of luck. +15 Experience.

And the list goes on, obviously. Players and GMs would be encouraged to make up more as you go. And obviously, as GMs, you may want to limit your players to taking no more than a few of these, maybe 2 or 3 at the most. All of them should make thematic sense, too.

What do you think?

I really like the idea of flaws in general as a tool for creating more complex characters. Personally I'm more inclined towards making them "character flaws", as in mental conditions, habits and social issues, than purely physical alterations. Especially in a high-tech setting like Star Wars where physical handicaps are so easily fixed with cybernetics and the like. A flaw should, in my opinion, be something that sticks with the character for a long time (but only comes up in certain situations) and not something that can be easily fixed with a one-time expenditure of money.

If you like it, and can make it work, do it.

Personally, I think the players will have their hands full juggling obligation and motivation, and won't need an extra element to keep track of.

But one of the things I enjoy about this system is that you can tweak it almost any way you want.

I really like the idea of flaws in general as a tool for creating more complex characters. Personally I'm more inclined towards making them "character flaws", as in mental conditions, habits and social issues, than purely physical alterations. Especially in a high-tech setting like Star Wars where physical handicaps are so easily fixed with cybernetics and the like. A flaw should, in my opinion, be something that sticks with the character for a long time (but only comes up in certain situations) and not something that can be easily fixed with a one-time expenditure of money.

I agree that those are some of the best flaws, but they are replicated in many ways with Obligation and Motivation in this system.

I think this simply plays into the issues that any sort of "flaws" system has. You're going to have people that are going to "game the system" and pick flaws that won't have a major impact on their character. I could see a lot of Hired Guns and Bounty Hunters taking the hit to Intellect and Presence since they really don't need those skills to do their thing.

If you are going to this sort of route, instead of reducing the Characteristic, instead have the character suffer a permanent setback die to all checks involving that Characteristic instead, with a corresponding reduction in XP refund as well. Agility I could see being worth a 10 XP return since it covers the most frequently used combat skills as well as piloting checks, while the rest would only be 5 XP. I'd also set a hard cap on how many of these flaws (beyond "once per Characteristic") a PC could take to avoid attempts to farm bonus XP by taking penalties to Characteristics that the player has no intention of really focusing on. Frankly, I'd cap it to only being able to take one such flaw.

I think this simply plays into the issues that any sort of "flaws" system has. You're going to have people that are going to "game the system" and pick flaws that won't have a major impact on their character. I could see a lot of Hired Guns and Bounty Hunters taking the hit to Intellect and Presence since they really don't need those skills to do their thing.

If you are going to this sort of route, instead of reducing the Characteristic, instead have the character suffer a permanent setback die to all checks involving that Characteristic instead, with a corresponding reduction in XP refund as well. Agility I could see being worth a 10 XP return since it covers the most frequently used combat skills as well as piloting checks, while the rest would only be 5 XP. I'd also set a hard cap on how many of these flaws (beyond "once per Characteristic") a PC could take to avoid attempts to farm bonus XP by taking penalties to Characteristics that the player has no intention of really focusing on. Frankly, I'd cap it to only being able to take one such flaw.

I'd make all the characteristic flaws worth the same still and leave it up to the player to get one of the talents to help remove setback dice for that skill if they really wanted to be able to use it. Agility is a powerful characteristic, but not every character concept is going to care about it (a pure melee character or a non-combat talker for instance).

I'm not sure about the "game the system" argument. If you were only concerned with min/maxing, selecting the droid species would seem to be a much more efficient use of XP, as each flaw as described would yield at least 5XP below what the given characteristic reduction would be otherwise worth.

For example a human that took all of the "characteristic" flaws above would net 90XP, putting his starting total at 200. So he'd have the same base characteristics as a droid with 25 more XP. The droid gets one more free skill point than the human, and unlike the human, the droid's three bonus points can be spent on their career and specialization skills. So that’s worth 5 points or more. ...down to a 20 point gap.

The droid gets a tier 3-5 talent for free... that's 15-25 points, depending on what the droid player is going for. Then, you’ve got the immunity to toxins and poisons, the cybernetic cap of 6 (!), and they don't need to eat, sleep, or breathe.

Droids are immune to mind altering force powers, but cannot use the force. And I guess that brings me to where I agree with Donovan. With no limits on flaw options, you can carve out exactly what you want from a character. That is a sort of "gaming the system" concern. Furthermore, it reduces the various species to mere aesthetic choices.

Ultimately, I agree. This should be capped to a single selection or -at the very least, GMs should allow it to be used very sparingly. You might think that adding flaws would make for very unique characters and story, but imagine a player party in which every …character …had.

Wait! This is the plot to The Five Deadly Venoms! …are you trying to make a 5DV Star Wars mash-up, Endrik?!

Hell, I think I’d play.

I'd change "Introverted" to "Socially Awkward." They aren't the same. I am a natural introvert in a profession that requires me to be good with social interaction, public speaking and communication. My introversion isn't a hindrance to what I would consider to be my "presence" in those types of skills. All it means is that I need to be by myself from time to time to recharge my batteries.

On the other hand, I know many extroverts who are socially awkward, that like to be around people, talk a lot, but inevitably make people uncomfortable or uneasy.

So I like it, but I'd simply change the name.

Dono: That was one of my biggest concerns. To combat that, I'd probably put a cap on only being able to take one of those characteristic impacting ones. I also do like the idea of weighing them all a bit differently (they even weigh Brawn as a heavier stat in character creation, by looking at what the Bothans and Twi'leks get vs. the Rodians.) I'm thinking that the Brawn and Agility one will refund 15 EXP(I still want diminishing returns for all the flaws. They should all penalize more than they grant, I think, since they are optional) and the other stats will do 10, since they are more easily avoided by non-combat classes than physical stats. Even non combat classes can get shot at or have to cross a tight rope. A combat class can much more easily avoid social or intellectual situations.

I don't really want to just add a setback die, though, since that defeats my initial goal. While 2 is certainly Average for the species, I think people should be able to be below average. As I said, I'm a human, but I definitely don't have a Brawn of 2. If you could have 0 in a stat, I might even say that I have that.

Krieger: As some other people said, the Obligations and Motivations are much more effective systems to do less tangible character flaws. These are more concrete flaws that impact game mechanics to grant additional experience, which can in turn be used to enhance less tangible role-play elements.

Agatheron: Excellent point. I'm going to alter that further a little bit to make it sound more severe, and call it "Socially Inept" instead, since awkward implies.

Everyone: Remember, as the GM, you would be encouraged to limit flaw selection to prevent metagaming. Basically, if someone was trying to min/max obviously, and you were worried about that, have them describe to you why they chose the flaw and how it makes sense, and how they are going to play that up in how they play their character. Feel free to add a limit based on number of flaws taken or based on experience gained from flaws. Or, if you are truly worried about metagaming, remove the ones that you could see having no effect on characters. For instance, for pure combat characters, disallow the -1 Intellect or Presence options (Cunning still affects some important skills for combat dudes, like Perception and Cool for ambushes and ambushing. Willpower also affects Strain, Vigilance, and Discipline, all also important.) As the GM, your say goes, and as long as you explain your reasoning, the players will be okay with it.

And, if the players throw up a fuss about it, kindly remind them that this is an OPTIONAL rule set within the systems, and they don't have to take any of them. If they keep throwing a fuss, consider not using the rule set with that player/the group he's with.

I've edited the original post a bit to reflect some of the excellent ideas I've been given so far. I tweaked a few other EXP costs, and I also made a partial blindness and a partial deafness one. But Keep the good ideas coming coming! And, if you have other suggestions for Flaws, please share!

I would highly be interested in this IF it was balanced and didn't lead to some game breaking issues. So, kindly go playtest it rigorously for the next few days, make a PDF, and post it back here by the end of the week.

First, you could make it simpler. I can see why you might want, say, a Human to be able to start with Brawn 1, but if I were GMing the game I'd say fine, and you would get the XP that it would cost you to go from Brawn 1 to Brawn 2, i.e.: 20 points. All stats would be treated the same. If you want a weak Wookiee (Brawn 2) you get 30 XP. Simple.

Second though, I wonder why there is the assumption that flaws would be worth XP, at least directly. Did your flaw force you to grow in a different direction? If so, that should just be part of your character, maybe tied into Motivation or Obligation somehow. The weak Wookiee is probably the laughing stock of Kashyyk. Maybe, being weaker, they resorted to using their claws, and now they're obligated to someone for getting them off planet, or are motivated to make up for it. Mechanically then, the XP is derived from Obligation rather that a strict trade off of characteristics.

Lastly...does anybody think Blind is worth only 30 points? There'd better be a good story...

Sturn: I won't be able to reliably play test this until September, but I will be using these if my group wants to at that point, and I'll certainly report the results back here then!

Whafrog: 1. That would be simpler, but I want to give diminishing returns for having lower stats. Just letting people shift their skills around trivializes the selection of race too much for my liking, and giving diminishing returns for stats helps keep that decision matter more.

2. Because if you didn't award people with EXP for reducing their stats voluntarily, no one would ever do it. By offering the EXP as an incentive, they are more likely to play towards what their character thematically is without being gimped. Being a madclaw would be an obligation-based thing, but people who are naturally weaker excel in other things naturally. For example, I may have a brawn of 1, but that doesn't mean that I'm strictly worse than people who are stronger than me because of it. My traits focus on what I'm good at, and that extra EXP signifies the adaptations that you have made in spite of your natural deficiencies when compared to other members of your species. It is just a mechanical representation of adaptation.

3. I considered making Blind cost more, since it is extremely debilitating... but I'm reluctant to make it much higher, since a 30 can buy you A LOT of things. But, I'm definitely considering it. What would you suggest would be a safe height to bring it to? Keep in mind that I'll probably be increasing Partial Blindness as well, to be half of what the Blind one costs. Would perhaps 40 be high enough, do you think?

Regarding the cost differential, I wasn't clear, I understood why you did it, but it just seems too crunchy for this system. If the player asked for that kind of characteristic flexibility, I think I'd just demand a good story, or maybe a little extra Obligation, and give them the XP equivalent. Otherwise it just feels sort of arbitrary.

For the blind cost...honestly, no idea. It could see it making a nifty story, but I think it would work better under the Obligation mechanic than an XP trade off. Rough places like Tatooine wouldn't accommodate it very well, you'd probably end up obligated to someone (a devoted friend?) or something (a seeing-eye Rancor? ) to help you get around.

See, I don't really see "Being Blind" as an obligation. The devoted friend could have an obligation to the blind person, but I don't really see it going the other way around as much. I mean, you can do what you want obviously, but I don't think I'd do it that way.