The Fun of Flawed Characters

Sometimes the perfect character is not the best character. In my experience some of the most memorable and fun characters are the ones who are flawed. I feel that drawbacks, weaknesses and personality quirks are some of the best sources of role play in any game.

While any experienced gamer will tell you that you need to design a character that is good at what he/she does, the strive for perfection should be avoided. It is the weaknesses and drawbacks that lead characters to rely on one another, form bonds, and make characters more realistic. Real people have real problems and are usually not perfect. Plus having a flaw gives you more opportunity to roleplay instead of rollplay. Furthermore, as I will show, having character flaws can allow people to have fun rather than gripe when they make mistakes or have unlucky streaks.


The example I will give is from a campaign I ran last year. The character was an old wizard, So old in fact that he had forgotten more about magic than most will ever know. He had before senility been a mighty and famous caster but now was struggling with the most simple spells (returning to level 5). The player had designed this character will comedy in mind and played him well enough to be entertaining but not enough to be a burden or a distraction. Needless to say having a crotchety old man running around with young adventurers led to a lot of fun conversations and NPC interactions. What really made this character memorable however was how the character handled failure in combat and stressful situations. Instead of getting frustrated he roleplayed the character forgetting the words to the spell, casting the wrong spell (like a harmless illusion or cantrip) or reaching into his bag and pulling out the wrong components. Furthermore when critical successes occurred he roleplayed moments of clarity where the other characters got a glimpse of his former glory. In this way by designing a character with a major flaw he turned in game failures from a source of frustration to a source of comedy and entertainment for the party.


The principle is that flaws make characters more interesting and therefore encourages more roleplay. Think about most of the movies, comic books, and books you've read. What makes you feel a connection to the characters is not how they are perfect but how they are flawed. This is especially true in western pop culture where we LOVE our anti-heroes.

As a storyteller you should encourage your players to give their characters drawbacks that enhance the game with memorable moments and stories. You can encourage this by offering rewards to those players that give their characters meaningful drawbacks, skeletons, flaws. Even if these flaws do not have huge combat or mechanics consequences they will enrich play.