Flaws are disadvantages that pose challenges to a character’s nightly existence and provide a player a few extra experience points (XP) to spend elsewhere on her sheet. If you don’t see any that suit your character, you can create your character and play without adding any to your sheet. Flaws add up to 7 XP to your character, but also give that character a notable disadvantage in the game. Flaws are designed to be interesting, signifi cant, and to exemplify your character’s troubled past or personal prohibitions. You should try to roleplay your character’s flaws as much as possible, helping the Storyteller create a rich and detailed chronicle. Perfect people are no fun to roleplay, and characters with authentic-feeling traumas, biases, and failings bring life and vibrancy to the game.
A Storyteller may choose to include or prohibit any merit or flaw that she feels is inappropriate for her chronicle. Merits can be removed from a character sheet or flaws may be added to that sheet (either temporarily or permanently) as the Storyteller sees fit, so long as a character never has more than 7 XP of merits and does not receive more than 7 XP from flaws at any time.
To remove a flaw from your character sheet, you must spend XP equal to twice the original benefi t of the flaw. A 3-point fl aw requires 6 XP to remove, and so forth. If you have any questions about whether a specific merit or flaw is appropriate to be removed during the play of your chronicle, speak to your Storyteller.
Inappropriate Flaws
Players cannot purchase flaws that do not impact their characters. Such flaws include:
- Flaws that duplicate a clan’s innate weakness, such as purchasing the Bound to the Earth flaw on a Tzimisce character
- Flaws that are inappropriate to the character’s creature type, such as purchasing the Beast in the Mirror flaw on a character who is a ghoul Flaws that are negated by a power or merit the character possesses, such as purchasing both the Deep Sleeper flaw and the Blind the Sun technique
- Flaws that are made irrelevant by circumstances of plot or setting. You cannot have a flaw that requires you to fear all Ravnos, if there are no Ravnos allowed in your Storyteller’s setting.
- Merits and flaws that are diametrically opposed in story or in mechanics. A character cannot purchase Acute Sense: Hearing and also possess the Hard of Hearing flaw. If you gain a power or ability that negates the detriments of a flaw your character possesses or makes that fl aw insignificant, you must immediately buy off the flaw. Players who are forced to buy off a flaw in this manner may go into debt if they do not already possess enough earned XP to buy off the fl aw; if you go into debt for this reason, the next XP earned by this character must be entirely allocated to repaying that fl aw, until the experience debt is resolved.