Character Handicaps

[DatBerry]

Today I bring you all another new, great suggestion, the bastard child of mechanical character skills, Character Handicaps.

One of my biggest issues with playing an unskilled character was how hard it was to mechanically fail, especially high intensity actions like fire fights, not being able to mechanically butcher surgery without stabbing the patient like a lunatic. the list goes on, I'm sure I'm not the only one here.

What this thread is suggesting is a tick box you are completely free to ignore and continue being the mary sue snowflake you are, and it would add a hardcoded debuff to the skill you chose.

examples:

Cooking handicap: random chance your food comes out burnt, lowers nutriments in dish

botany: all your plants mutate to the worse, and their stats are debuffed almost always, you only harvest one fruit per plant

CQC: your punches are likely to mess, do less damage and unlikely to knock out, your disarms are weaker and so are your pushes, your grabs are easy to resist out of and tabling takes some time.

weapons: accuracy debuff, jam chance increase even from 0% weapons like MK58s.

EVA: your movement outside gravity is that of a drunk person, you might accidentally turn off your oxygen when turning it on.

construction: you might fail your construction, or construct the wrong object, repairing is likely to fail, welding damaged walls would drop the sheeting off etc etc.

electrical engineering: a high chance to cut a random wire instead of what you were aiming for, likely to electrocute yourself on any wire, insulated gloves aren't fool proof when hacking.

Atmospheric: the air alarm, oxygen tanks, and pipe UIs are all in ancient greek languages with randomized effects for touching buttons

Complex Devices: anything high tech has a chance to get broken, jam or explode when touched by this klutz.

IT: This guy still uses floppy disks, computers are inaccessible to them, they can only look at already open consoles, but buttons they click will lead to bad things like C: drive formatting.

genetics: removed for now, but if this person hits the clone or scan button, expect a freak out of the cloning machine.

chemistry: all chemical names are scrambled, clicking one option might actually add a different chemical and the amount might also be random

science: anything printed out is broken, nothing of value is received when they analyze things.

medicine: any chemical you inject will have a reduced healing effect, injecting with a normal needle has a high chance to break it.

anatomy: surgery steps almost always fail, you can't splint properly, you can't fix dislocated limbs.

virology: everything explodes im out of ideas

these are just examples of how it would works, and i believe it would give a lot more options when roleplaying conflict and incompetence.

[Azande]

I like this idea, but it'll lead to Heads of Staff demoting anyone with a disability that makes their work poor, aka a surgeon with a surgery handicap.

[DatBerry]

I like this idea, but it'll lead to Heads of Staff demoting anyone with a disability that makes their work poor, aka a surgeon with a surgery handicap.

 

This a player toggle only option, if you're making a surgeon who doesn't know what he's doing then you need a really good backstory on how he managed to cheat his way through med school and specialization.

This is really just a way to force mechanics to follow your character's incompetence, it's not supposed to be some kind of genetic issue or character trait.

[Pacmandevil]

>IT: This guy still uses floppy disks, computers are inaccessible to them, they can only look at already open consoles, but buttons they click will lead to bad things like C: drive formatting.

Don't we ONLY use floppy disks?

[Scheveningen]

I don't think this is worth doing without introducing SDCIWC attributes and several P&P traits on top of that. Only introducing smaller nuance traits doesn't quite add enough interesting depth to roleplay or gameplay mechanics, it merely inconveniences people in certain niche situations.

Who would even pick any of these flaws? You'd only pick a flaw in D&D simply to get another beneficial trait. Features should be useful with their own added depth, otherwise we get nowhere better than what Bat People were. I shudder at the thought of them again.

[Diggey]

Only introducing smaller nuance traits doesn't quite add enough interesting depth to roleplay or gameplay mechanics, it merely inconveniences people in certain niche situations.

Who would even pick any of these flaws?

 

I would certainly pick some

my characters wouldn't be able to do certain things and if forced to do them there should be consequences

I don't work on a benefit basis,even in D&D I regularly make suboptimal characters

it's fun

You'd only pick a flaw in D&D simply to get another beneficial trait. Features should be useful with their own added depth, otherwise we get nowhere

what's with the need for powergaming?

[Scheveningen]

Corporations employ people without disabilities over people with disabilities. It's not powergaming. It's common sense.

[Zundy]

Surely this isn't "flaws"in the d&d sense, but more to represent a lack of skill? In my opinion these "flaws" should be default on any skill a character has below Amateur but having them as player toggles is a start.

[Diggey]

Corporations employ people without disabilities. It's common sense.

So you are suggesting...

that in order to become a Nanotrasen employee you have to have...

• a cursory understanding of spaceship construction
• heavy machine operation
  
• chemistry
  
• material sciences a branch of chemistry
  
• virology
  
• first aid (this one might be legit)
  
• you have to have at least basic knowledge of how to accurately operate a spacesuit
  
• be able to use Space Dos
  
• be able to grow plants professionally and understand a plants needs (which many botanists I see play don't even have :'D)
  
• have a cursory knowledge of CQC
  
• be trained with firearms
  
• be educated about the elaborate physics of atmospherics
  
• in general be capable of destructively analysing and designing complex machinery

All to be allowed to get the janitor job over that one other guy who unfortunatly didn't quite get that physics degree over the course of his 23 year life

[Guest Complete Garbage]

This is completely unnecessary, when we can just assign arbitrary flaws to our characters and RP it out without mechanical enforcement. Your argument about "people *can* do everything mechanically so they *must* ICly be able to" is just dumb-- that side of things is enforced directly by the server administration.

[Dreamix]

Character handicaps? More like, character complete retardations haha

Character handicaps make no sense without a skill-point system. Even if you choose a few handicaps, they barely change the game at all (ex. why would an engineer make chems or do surgery, anyway?) or make your character look like a complete dumbass. No sense to waste your time with this, huh.

[Kaed]

Did anyone actually read the original suggestion? You know, including the part about 'this is completely optional and for flavor on your character?'

I guess a lot of people just knee-jerked a reaction on what they thought the thread was about after skimming it, which was apparently 'forcing people to have handicaps'.

I think it sounds like a fun idea to implement.

[Scheveningen]

Did anyone actually read the original suggestion? You know, including the part about 'this is completely optional and for flavor on your character?'

 

You mean "fluff mechanics that are optional and otherwise add nothing interesting but pure negatives to the game"?

Why would you even add them, even. Isn't it easier to just roleplay these things out?

[Arrow768]

Corporations employ people without disabilities over people with disabilities. It's not powergaming. It's common sense.

 

At least in Autria we have equality laws forcing corps over a specific size to employ disabled people or pay a fine.

So Corporations do employ disabled people, even if its just for the sake of not having to pay a fine.