Flaws Can Be
Character-Defining

Flaws are not decoration. In the right hands, a well-chosen flaw can drive a story in directions no one expected. The right flaw makes a character impossible to forget.

I’m sure you’ve seen them many times: characters in movies, TV shows, video games, books, and even at your own TTRPG table who have a flaw that serves as nothing more than decoration. There’s the mysterious stranger who wears an eye patch but never explains how he got it; the villain (I’m looking at you, Lex Luthor from the new Superman movie!) who is evil and obsesses over the hero, but never explains why; or the jolly adventurer who gets drunk as soon as the sun rises, and has his last drink before he closes his eyes for the night. Just for fun.

Flaws, whether they be physical ones or the more intangible character flaws, can not only help make a character memorable, they can help to drive a story in directions you never expected. Think of the central themes in Hamlet and Macbeth, as Hamlet bases his decisions on his insecurities, and Macbeth’s are rooted in his arrogance.

Here’s a neat adventure with interesting flawed characters your players will love:

Smile, Smile, Villain!

A dark 5e adventure, plug-and-play for any campaign

The idea of designing a character begins with the physical: for me (coming from a world of comic books and it being a visual medium) this comes as no surprise. After all, we as humans rely on our sight more than almost any other sense to help us define our world.

But imagine a character like Wolverine (healing factor, adamantium claws and skeleton, heightened senses) remaining just a flat set of abilities… he would not be popular at all. When he was first introduced in the Hulk comics, it was a cameo appearance for a fight. And the design was cool and all, but it wasn’t until he made a comeback in Giant-Size X-Men that readers got to learn of his temper, his bluntness, and his willingness to walk away from anything.

This meant that he met people he cared for, only to lose them over and over again. In the military, his entire platoon would be killed, and he would be the sole survivor. This kind of life changes a person; it makes them put up a wall, preventing them from letting themselves care too much about anyone. And this also leads to frustration, because nothing is under his control, and frustration leads to anger.

And it is this “character-defining” quality that makes Wolverine who he is, and it’s why other successful characters (like Captain America, Thor, and Hulk) fail when they are introduced in other mediums as a different race, sex, age, or individual. Imagine an angry wolverine who is 10 years old, or a female version who just happened to develop abilities in her teens… it just doesn’t work!

For another example, we see something a little different in the hit TV show Breaking Bad. The lead character, a teacher-turned druglord, is so concerned that his cancer diagnosis will leave his family in a state of financial freefall that he also stops caring about anything else but them. And this obsession eventually causes a form of tunnel vision that leads him to exclude even his family, making his sole focus making money even after his family has already turned its back on him. If they were to make a spinoff with a similar plot, the character would need to have a completely different motivation and different character flaws for it to work (unless they have the exact same background), otherwise viewers would on an unconscious level know that something just doesn’t make sense.

In a TTRPG, player characters and NPCs can easily become like those in a video game: flat and one-dimensional. After all, many sessions are focused on just clearing a dungeon or getting the next job. But the flaws of a character should be serving as the rules of behavior: they are not just a random quirk, they are patterns that show up in decisions, reactions, and relationships. For example:

Just this week with our gaming group one of our players had their character betray our group, simply because that is what his character would do based on his upbringing and history. We were all ticked off, of course, and it completely changed the campaign where we had to choose to ally ourselves with the good guys, or remain loyal to him and become the bad guys. We chose to remain good, and now the GM has to split the gameplay to us and him.

But his character at this point was at a crossroads, and this player chose to continue to play him the way he had always been in his history, rather than taking the opportunity for his character to take a step back, look at how this kind of decision has negatively affected him in the past, and make a difficult decision to go against his instinct and show some growth. It would have been a powerful role-playing moment, but it instead had us all yanking our hairs out.

In Moby Dick, Ahab’s white bone leg is more than just an ornament. It tells of his prior encounter with Moby Dick, the color keeps the white whale in front of mind, and also reminds everyone around him what his likely decisions will be in certain situations, as he is driven by obsessive revenge.

One problem many players and GMs may run into when running a flawed character is the idea that these flaws should be permanent. Good characters have flaws; great characters have arcs. This means that the flaw is something the character must learn to overcome in order to grow and succeed. For NPCs, this may not be the only option for a good arc… a character may be like Macbeth or Daedalus, who rely on their flaw as a crutch that gets them through life, until a major conflict forces the flaw to become hamartia (hubris or paranoia) that leads the character to certain doom.

So, picking an interesting flaw for a character can be very easy; rather than rolling on a random table, find what the character’s strength is and make the flaw a shadow of that strength. For example, Othello, another tragic Shakespearean lead, has the strength of being a celebrated warrior, making him a powerful protector. But this becomes his downfall as he tries to protect his beloved Desdemona to the point of deadly obsession.

In the movie Fight Club, the nameless narrator looks up to the free-spirited Tyler Durden. Durden leads the narrator into countless reckless situations, including breaking into medical facilities to steal out of the garbage, as well as the movie’s namesake: a secret club in which men fight to get their aggression out after rough days at work and life. But in the climax, the narrator discovers that Durden’s “free spirit” comes with a serious flaw: emotional detachment. And this flaw leads to deadly consequences.

French fries are delicious when they are deep fried in oil because it makes them crispy on the outside and soft on the inside… not to mention the flavor! But this oil is also what makes them soggy and gross if you don’t eat them right away.

Here’s a test for character-defining flaws in your NPC or PC: