BCZ Retrospective XVIII: Design Flaws

Flaws, Drawbacks, Negative Traits, whatever you want to call them, point-buy systems usually include negative abilities to go with the positive ones, which give extra XP instead of having a XP cost. There are two reasons that I didn't do them until BCZ:

1) Most of the time, the builds that take these builds are the ones that don't care about the penalty. This is the equivalent of putting all your points in Might and dumping Systems to 0, except you're doing it multiple times per PC instead of just once. While I think that BCG is a game that encourages a degree of system mastery, I didn't want to give people 60+ points of free stuff by handing out half a dozen easily ignorable drawbacks.

2) The other type of character that takes negative traits are the ones who want to use them for roleplaying, usually for plot or social drawbacks like being hunted down by ninjas or having to take care of a little brother. I do not like this approach, because getting your own subplot about having to deal with assassins or your baby brother isn't a drawback, it is a reward. Every character is supposed to have personal subplots, one or two of them shouldn't be getting free XP for them. For these characters we already have Genre Themes. This way, everybody gets GP from actually roleplaying those so-called flaws, instead of free XP that is only as much of a problem as the GM is willing to make it.

For those reasons, I decided not to have any negative abilities until BCZ, where I could add a sidebar explaining when and where to allow them. By hiding Design Flaws behind these two layers (putting it in an expansion + the aforementioned sidebar), instead of putting them in the core book, it minimizes the odds of them ruining games having one or two characters that are leaps and bounds more powerful than all the others.

Even then, there are only six of them. Turns out that writing Design Flaws that aren't 100% free points is pretty hard! Let' see how well they turned out:

Unarmed
...Okay, this isn't the best start. Unarmed is almost free points for one kind of PC: Full Support builds that don't care about Weapons and Might Tests. For everyone else, it is a serious building challenge. The only problem that the Full Support builds suffer is they can't contribute to Synchro Attacks, which is probably worth 5 MP, not 10, but it's better than nothing. Still, it is only fair that Full Support builds get one Design Flaw they can work with when Meleeists get their own.

Berserker
I quite like Berserker, as it presents difficult tactical circumstances on you, which you can play around by carefully choosing your Weapons and mobility options. This is easier for a GM to exploit by deliberately placing annoying damage sponges in front of the Berserker, which I consider a good thing as otherwise it is basically free 10 MP when you're a Duelist build. Arguably, this could be worth +100 MP because it lets the GM place the closest enemy unit behind fifty instances of Extreme Terrain, but then the Berserker's problem isn't the Flaw, but the dickishly murderous GM.

Miniature Model
There are two issues with Miniature Model. The first ist that, like with Berserker, if you carefully balance your mobility and range options, this is a free +20 MP. I think 10 MP is a small enough amount that I can afford to give it to people willing to jump through some hoops. But 20? That's a little too much. In hindsight, this shouldn't round up the Weapon Ranges. The second issue is that Page 8 of BCG says that, when you have to do multiple operations on the same statistic, you should always first halve then add or substract further modifiers. This means that Miniature Model doesn't affect the extra movement from Overbooster or the extra range from Long Range. Note to self: In the future, always halve at the end instead of at the beginning.

Limited Battery Time
This is a common mecha genre convention, which is good for it because it went through like 5-6 different versions and I would have scrapped it if the trope wasn't so ubiquitous. Some of the versions include: Rolling Systems or taking Damage equal to Tension, spending Energy equal to Tension or taking that much Damage and deactivating after a fixed Tension number. They were all very wordy, super unfun to play with, and some of them could be easily built around to give free 20 MP. This version is much harder to exploit, as Tension is a very significant bonus after Turns 1-2 and losing a fixed Level of Threshold each Turn is simply brutal. It makes you want to try really hard to use those 20 MP to end battles ASAP, but it is hard to blitz enemies without using Tension buffs, so it provides a decent buildaround challenge.

Precious Snowflake
According to some, this is 30 Free MP, because you don't need Antimaims to play the game. Others would say that this is a trap because there's no way 30 MP can compensate for the inherent randomness in losing all your important stuff by Turn 2. Perhaps the truth lies... Somewhere in the middle. *Jumps down a chasm*

Walking Coffin
Would you believe me if I said this used to grant 60 MP? The reasoning was that, even if you you could spend all of it on Defense/Threshold, you would only be a very strong unit at low PLs but you'd still be very vulnerable at high PLs. To be fair, it didn't have the Active Defenses clause at the time, so not even Absolute Barrier could save you. At some point one of my playtesters made me see reason and this was a terrible enabler for glass cannons with a billion ways to kill everything and everyone in Turn 1. The final version of Walking Coffin is a lot better at representing the type of unit that it is named after (ATs from Votoms), because you have to bust your butt to avoid taking Damage basically ever.

I started writing this thinking I'd be a lot more down on these, but I actually rather like them. There's only one real dud (Miniature Model) and arguably Unarmed could be a little bit harsher, but I think all the others are in a pretty good place where you have to get creative to play around the drawbacks and even if you do success is not guaranteed.

Next: New Features

Gimmick Out.