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I've never used a flaw system, but I like the idea. Trade a flaw for an extra feat, with flaws having greater numerical disadvantages than feats have advantages. It gives new ways of both personalizing and perfecting your characters. It's also completely volountary to pick flaws or not, so they're very easy to ignore if you don't like then or don't want to bother. Do you think DnD next should have a flaw system? If so, should it work like I described or differently?

No. It's too difficult to generate flaws that affect all characters equally. If you want a flaw that affects your character very little, that's roleplay.

If you want a flaw that affects your character a lot, deal with the consequences.

Flaws are already implemented in a sense. Everything stems from ability scores, so you can just keep one ability score really low. The effect will be felt in-game if you have a charisma or dexterity of 8 to signify that you are antisocial or clumsy. Compared to the rogue with 18 dexterity, 16 charisma, and training in bluff, diplomacy, and acrobatics it will be obvious to everybody who has what flaw.

Apr 12, 2012 -- 9:38AM, wrecan wrote:

Apr 12, 2012 -- 9:34AM, Grolloman wrote:

You can have flaws that give penalties to the different defenses, that comes up ofter enough.

Not particularly.  Wizards, for example, can penalize AC.  It starts low and is never really high enough to go into melee. So why not improve your casting by taking some flaw that modifies your AC?  A fighter with low mental stats might take a penalty to Will since he's probably already got a low Will defense.

It becomes a tool for Min-Maxing, not roleplay.

And again I want to point out that this is entirely possible without a flaws system. One player in our group has a very low will defense. He compensates with interrupts, reactions, or other methods of removing status effects. But the most important method of compensation is that he has specialized in reducing enemy attack scores. Even though he can never take them down low enough that enemies can't hit him, he takes them low enough that the rest of the party is relatively unaffected and they can protect him while he is dazed or stunned or whatever.

This is an example of a character with an obvious flaw who has used already existing resources to compensate for it in a very effective and interesting manner. 

Apr 12, 2012 -- 9:53AM, Qmark wrote:

Apr 12, 2012 -- 9:38AM, wrecan wrote:

It becomes a tool for Min-Maxing, not roleplay.

This is all anyone ever needs to know about a "flaw" system.

I do agree, while a flaw system is great for role-play, it is not for all player, most will only see it as min-maxing, while good role-players will really take them on a basis of their characters, moreso, flaw should not add up benefits, they are just that, flaws, the only benefit is helping define a character.