What, in your opinion and style of play, is the worst, most crippling disadvantage?
For me it would easily be Lv.2 Implant Rejection, unless you are egocasting constantly it robs you of so many advantages and styles of play.
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The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Sat, 2012-05-05 23:40
#1
Whitekurama
The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Sun, 2012-05-06 07:05
#2
Xagroth
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Modified behaviour at its max is quite... limiting. More even than the implant rejection. But considering all those can be, eventually, "cured", I'd say the worst disadvantage for a long game would be being an Async, since it makes oh so easy to be turned into a mad creature (and there is no cure for being Async! You suffer most of the disadvantages at all times). Yeah, its a two-edged sword, but its one you cannot drop nor change, which makes it, from my point of view, the worst problematic of all "disadvantages".
Sun, 2012-05-06 07:27
#3
GreyBrother
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Well, but being an Async HAS its benefits, yeah.
Bad Luck, i find the worst disadvantage. Nothing is worse than giving the GM more tools to screw with you and your associates.
And its pretty expensive to buy off too.
Sun, 2012-05-06 12:04
#4
King Shere
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
I say it mostly depends on the GM and the areas the campaign takes place in.
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Plutarch
Sun, 2012-05-06 12:48
#5
Xagroth
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
That is not a disadvantage, it is the surest way to make the other players to hate you (if the GM is evil enough), or to turn the game into a comedy (a black comedy, but...). For extra laughs, get a morph with the Lemon trait...
Sun, 2012-05-06 15:00
#6
Decivre
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
As the usual GM, I must say that the worst negative trait in the books I can think of is Enemy. In Eclipse Phase, having the enemy trait is like having a giant walking case of herpes that follows you on your every step and works in every possible way to screw you over. Much like herpes, killing them will only make them leave you alone until a backup is restored.
It's kind of a mixed bag. If you have very little moxie (as in you never put any points in it), then Bad Luck becomes a relatively weak negative trait. If you're like me and max out your moxie early... it's definitely one of the worst damn negative traits to have.
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Mon, 2012-05-07 13:25
#7
WooMod
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
There are people who don't max out moxie?!!?!?!
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Mon, 2012-05-07 13:39
#8
Tyrnis
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
In my small sample of Eclipse Phase players, I've had multiple players who only had moxie 1. I don't quite understand it, myself -- I don't max it out, but I generally do get at least a moxie of 4 or 5.
As for enemy, I've never understood that being a flaw. A trait on my sheet tailor-made to make the story focus more on my character and to make things more interesting for me as a player? And you'll give _me_ points for it? Sign me up. What would any hero be without his rogues gallery (or vice versa, depending on your preferred perspective)?
Mon, 2012-05-07 14:22
#9
Decivre
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Yes there are; they take the Bad Luck trait. :P
It doesn't necessarily need to focus on your character. While the enemy is certainly your enemy, that doesn't mean he will do everything to hinder you, but ignore your allies. "The friend of my enemy is my enemy."
That said, it's a powerful flaw because it tacks on an extra obstacle to be placed in nearly every mission. It's also a powerful flaw because the enemy [i]does not have any power limitations or specifics[/i]. Here is an actual conversation I had with one of my players.
"Hey, can I take the Enemy trait?"
"Sure, I have four pre-made enemies for you guys to choose from."
"Name them."
"Apollo, Vedus the Broker, Alan Devans, and the mystery box."
"The mystery box?"
"No name, just a mystery enemy for you to fight."
"What is that character?"
"Not telling you."
"What are the other characters?"
"Apollo is a soldier in the Ultimates. Vedus is a broker of the inner system that deals in illegal goods. Alan Devans is an agent for an organization you don't know about."
"So can I make up a different name?"
"Sure. Hell, pick one of these four characters, then you get to rename them."
"Rename them anything?"
"Sure."
"Can I name them 'Poopsie'?"
"The mystery box is perfect for a character named 'Poopsie'."
"Fine, I take the mystery box."
"Do note, you don't get to take back your choice."
"That's fine, I'll take it."
"Congratulations. Your enemy is an exsurgent async named Poopsie."
"Wait, what?!"
"He produces black holes with his mind. Enjoy."
"I... don't think I want that."
"You picked it. You're kinda stuck with it."
"What was Apollo again?"
"A soldier."
"I'll take Apollo."
"Sure. He's now an exsurgent async named Poopsie."
"That's not fair."
"It's as fair as you taking back your choice. I told you that you couldn't."
"I don't want the enemy trait."
"That's fine. You either get Poopsie and points, or just Poopsie. Your choice."
The rest probably couldn't be posted on this board. Lots of offensive language.
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Mon, 2012-05-07 18:38
#10
nerdnumber1
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Kinda a dick move, but yeah, enemy means you have an extra threat often beyond the normal parameters of the mission. Especially in the sort of game Eclipse Phase is, an enemy can do all sorts of terrible things to you, especially if you have a particularly sadistic GM. At that point, no level of paranoia is unjustified.
Tue, 2012-05-08 00:04
#11
Tyrnis
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
While other PCs may get caught in the crossfire from time to time, sure, if Player A takes a flaw, player B shouldn't generally be suffering much of a penalty from it if they didn't also receive the points. If you're using one player's enemy (or any other flaw) in a fashion where it's going to negatively impact everyone on a regular basis, then the rest of the group should have some say in whether it's allowed at all and be compensated accordingly if it is.
Also worth noting that the enemy trait is a means of penalizing the _character_, not the player, and it sounds like you may have been crossing that line based on what you describe. It should be adding to the _player's_ enjoyment of the game. For my part, I'd seriously consider walking away from a game where a GM wouldn't allow me to retract a flaw that I'd thought I wanted if I realized that it _wouldn't_ actually be something I'd enjoy once the full ramifications were explained. 'But I told you you couldn't change it if you agreed' makes a poor excuse for penalizing a player in a way that makes the game less fun for them. Granted, in this case, it also sounds like the player was not-so-seriously fishing for easy points. Hopefully this was someone you knew well enough to be confident would have a lot of fun with the enemy that you created, despite the ranting that ensued, so there was never an issue with the game being less fun for said player.
On a somewhat related note, I think having an exsurgent asynch as an enemy could be a blast in a Firewall game, and it's the sort of thing that I could build a character around quite easily. Yes, it almost assuredly means my character is going to die messily at least a couple of times, but it's also likely to make for some fun nights at the table for me.
Tue, 2012-05-08 01:33
#12
Decivre
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
It's not really a dick move. The enemy trait is one of the most valuable negative traits in the book. If you don't make it worth your while, you are giving your players free points... points that you didn't give people who took cheaper disadvantages.
Is it a dick move to make your players play out their addictions if they take the trait?
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Tue, 2012-05-08 01:53
#13
Decivre
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Almost every negative trait has the potential to punish the entire party. Whether its doing so by having an enemy that risks your teammates lives, or an addiction that pushes you to steal from them, or a mental disorder that makes you useless to the team at the most inopportune times, your negative traits always have a possibility of making life harder for your group. It goes with the territory. If someone takes a trait and doesn't play it in a way that could be detrimental, he either took a trait that is largely mechanical in nature (frail, any number of penalty-based traits), or he took it with no expectations of roleplaying a character with that trait, solely so they could get freebie points.
Don't want to be a burden? Don't take any negative traits.
Do note that was a dialog occurring prior to any games in that campaign. Furthermore, I tend to play my asyncs as excessively insane and erratic... moreso as exsurgents. As such, Alaris (the name they finally decided on for the async) tended to be more of an act of god in the scenarios she was involved in than a targeted enemy. When she followed the character to a habitat, she made life problematic for everyone... the team, the target, and everyone in radius.
I'm not in the game to kill my players or make them suffer. If I wanted to do that, I'd retrofit my basement into an S&M dungeon and we'd roleplay there. I'm in it to do some interesting stuff, and that was the point of having such an enemy. I didn't get any complaints once they actually encountered her... she made for some intense and exciting scenarios.
Definitely, just make sure that you play them as a risk to everyone and everything. The character I made had the power to create singularities with her mind, creating gravity wells at will. She altered orbits, collapsed habitats... you name it, she did it. Their first major mission involving her was simply about getting her out of the Solar system and on an uninhabited exoplanet. From there, it was an intense chase from world to world as she destroyed location after location, ironically culminating in her critically failing a psi roll and turning into a singularity herself.
Nothing screams intense like a high speed race to the nearest Pandora gate to escape a collapsing star system.
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Tue, 2012-05-08 07:36
#14
Xagroth
Re: The Worst Disadvantage? (In your opinion)
Sincerely, so many games have added the "enemy" disadvantage for so long, I tend to see it as an extra than as a disadvantage per se, specially after looking into the 7th Sea "background" pool (which was where you could find almost all of what tends to be called "disadvantages". Bad Weather Jack was... interesting XD).
I tend, however, to limit the amounts of enemies the group can get, and the amount of points they get from them (when you have a variable value for the enemy, like in Legend of the 5 rings), so the enemy doesn't mean an automatic death sentence to the whole group at the start of the game, or I don't need to spend a week making NPC's tailor-made to each player's toon (another option, of course, is to split the bonus points across all the players!).