Merits & Flaws

Due to some physical condition, you’re less able to deal with certain situations than most other people seem to be able to do. And if all of that sounds very conditional, that’s because the specifics of this Flaw depend a lot on the following circumstances:

• What sort of condition you have.

• How much it gets in your way.

• Whether or not other people can tell that it gets in your way.

Literally speaking, an impediment interferes with your path by “blocking your feet.” System-wise, this Flaw reflects any sort of impairment that’s based in your character’s physical situation. That includes neurological and internal chemical conditions like autism, dyslexia, chronic fatigue, significant allergies, and other maladies that may be “invisible” to others but which are rooted in the physical body, as opposed to in the psyche or the spirit. Such conditions might be linked to psychological and /or spiritual health too; those elements are interrelated, of course. For the purposes of this Flaw, however, an Impediment is something that hampers the character’s ability to function in the physical realm.

Story-wise, an Impediment can be any body-based condi­ tion – obvious or not – that interferes with your character’s ability to do stuff. Examples of obvious Impediments include a missing limb, a limp, a bent spine, missing teeth, heavy scarring, deformed features, and the like, while “invisible” Impediments would include chronic pain and /or fatigue, poor eyesight, asthma, internal tumors, sensory processing disorders, and so forth. The more that condition impedes your character, the more this Flaw is worth:

• (1 point) Like chronic headaches, impaired vision, minor arthritis or a few missing teeth, the Impediment presents occasional inconveniences but is not a major hassle in your life unless something worsens the condition or removes the things (glasses, dentures, pain reliever) that you use to compensate for it.

• (2 points) As with dyslexia, high-functioning Asperger’s syndrome, chronic fatigue or pain, poor or deteriorating eyesight, or other internal obstacles, your Impediment presents constant but not insurmountable problems. In certain situations, you may suffer a +1 to difficulties that deal with that element of your life.

• (3 points) Your Impediment – severe migraines, signif­ icant autism, allergies or asthma, missing fingers or an eye, near-deafness, palsy, Tourette’s syndrome, deterio­ rating limb(s), and so forth – significantly impairs several elements of your everyday life. System-wise, you add +1 to difficulties related to your Impediment.

• (4 points) An inescapable Impediment – missing limb, profound deafness or autism, near-blindness, malformed bones or connective tissues (as with EDS, mentioned above), severe arthritis, gnarled hands or feet, and sim­ ilar obstacles – forces you to try working around that condition on a daily basis. Under most circumstances, you add +2 to difficulties related to that Impediment, and certain situations (like a nasty allergic reaction) might damage your health and endanger your life.

• (5 points) Thanks to a profound physical condition – partial paralysis, constant and severe pain, advanced cancer, the inability to hear or speak, muscular-skeletal deterioration, major sight-loss, and other maladies – you’re unable to function in most ways that people take for granted. Add +2 to physical difficulties unless you’ve got a reliable way to compensate for that handicap, and assume that you simply cannot do certain things at all.

• (6 points) For whatever reasons, your condition is so ad­ vanced and severe that you need major work-arounds in order to function in the everyday world. Many physical feats are beyond you, and you add +2 or even +3 to difficulties of things you can do but only with a major effort.

The Flaw reflects practical impairment in the character’s life; if your mage has a cybernetic arm that acts like his original arm only better, then that character is not impaired until or unless that arm breaks down. If someone cures this condition with magick or some other treatment, then the character loses this Flaw.

All forms of Impediment are not created equal, and so one “blind” person can function in the seeing world better (that is, with fewer points in the Flaw) than another visually-impaired person (with more points in the Flaw) can do. The Impediment’s value may also reflect several different conditions that, taken together, impede that character’s ability to function “normally” more than any single condition does. As an example, this author has dyslexia, dyscalculia, poor vision, and two chronically injured knees; does this stop him? No. Does it slow him down in certain respects? It sure does, and so the total of his “Flaw” would reflect the amount of difficulty that these conditions, all told, present in daily life.

This Flaw serves as a catch-all for previously published Physical Flaws like Blind, Deaf, and especially the pejorative Lame. Unlike many of the labels applied to such “handicaps,” the Impediment Flaw does not carry any form of judgment on the part of the game itself; although characters (and players) might think less of a “lazy” person with five points in Impediment due to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the Flaw itself is not intended in any way to be an insult against people with such conditions.

On that note, an unobvious Impediment may present significant social challenges; a person with Tourette’s Syndrome may seem perfectly healthy even as her brain misfires, with the only visible symptoms being “inappropriate” sounds or actions. (See the Mental Flaw: Inappropriate, p. 46) That mage with CFS could be considered “too lazy to get out of bed” by people who don’t see her body sabotaging her from the inside out. And so, the value of the Flaw – with the Storyteller’s approval – might reflect a penalty to social-based rolls instead of physical ones in certain situations. (“Why weren’t you at work again?” “I couldn’t take ten steps without falling over.” “Yeah, right…”)