Mental Flaws

Mental Flaws

Mental flaws refer to struggles with mental or philosophical pursuits or contests that characters may possess. These may range from very simple flaws, such as those that indicate a character has a perceptive disability or has trouble reading a certain language, to very complex and supernatural ones, often possessed by only a few beings in the world at any given time. Flaws always represent either an innate quality of a character, a situation they have encountered that has permanently affected them, or an outside force that causes them grief.

Mental flaws are broken down into flaws belonging in the realm of Intelligence (flaws involving knowledge or lore), Perception (flaws involving using a character's senses), and Wits (flaws involving reflexes and reactions).

Intelligence Flaws

Absent-Minded: This character is prone to forgetting details and information that inevitably turn out to be important later.

Amnesia: This character remembers very little about their life before a certain point, making it difficult to know who they are or whether anything from the past will affect them.

Control Freak: This character tries to do everything themself and refuses to relinquish control, often leading to friction with others.

Curiosity: This character finds unanswered questions or riddles irresistible and acts to solve them whenever possible.

Dangerous Bias: This character has a particular powerful prejudice or bias that massively clouds their judgment whenever it comes into play.

Dead Inside: This character cannot feel much in the way of joy or happiness and often gives up in difficult situations.

Driving Goal: This character has a deeply-held goal that prevents them from giving up no matter what lengths they are driven to.

Emotional Isolation: This character struggles to connect emotionally with others.

Extreme Paranoia: This character is convinced that the entire world is trying to sabotage or destroy them and views everyone and every event with maximum suspicion.

Flashbacks: This character flashes back to previous trauma when they are too heavily stressed.

Ignorant: While this character isn't necessarily any less smart than anyone else, they have a huge gap in their knowledge that most other people consider basic information that everyone knows.

Illiterate: This character cannot read or write, making navigating the modern world very challenging.

Intolerance: This character has an irrational dislike of something and lashes out about it easily.

Isolated Upbringing: This character has very little knowledge of the world outside of the home or community they grew up in.

Low Self-Esteem: This character has difficulty accepting their own value and becomes easily obsessed with their failures and flaws (real or imagined).

Misinformed: This character knows something that is simply untrue (for example, a conspiracy theory or dangerous folk remedy), but cannot be convinced otherwise.

Obsession: This character has a consuming obsession with a specific idea, item, or person that interferes with the rest of their life.

Overconfident: This character repeatedly underestimates others or overestimates themself, or even disastrously manages to do both at once.

Phobia: This character has an irrational fear of a specific thing and panics whenever exposed to it.

Religious Hysteria: This character is fanatical about their religion and often claims to have direct knowledge of what their deities want to happen or claims to have seen exclusive visions that only they can interpret.

Rural Fear: This character is terrified of the wilderness and avoids outdoor activities as much as possible.

Slow Learner: This character is as intelligent as most people, but has to spend a significantly longer period of time learning new information or skills.

Superstitious: This character believes in a certain superstition or group of them that they observe scrupulously, even when there is no evidence that it matters and it causes them significant inconvenience.

Technophobe: This character is severely intimidated by any technology they did not grow up regularly using and may panic, let alone be able to succeed, if forced to use any.

Uninsured: This character has no insurance (or isn't allowed to get any) and must deal with all emergencies without help.

Perception Flaws

Anosmia: This character has absolutely no sense of smell or taste.

Blind: This character is fully blind and cannot successfully interact with purely visual situations without accommodations.

Color Blind: This character is color-blind and often cannot distinguish between different shades.

Confused: This character has difficulty understanding what's happening around them or untangling complicated stimuli.

Deaf: This character is fully deaf and may require interpreters or alternative communication methods.

Dyslexic: This character struggles with printed materials, which they have difficulty interpreting without mistakes.

Gullible: This character believes most things they are told without question and has trouble believing that anyone would want to deceive them.

Hard of Hearing: This character is very hard of hearing and usually cannot hear as well as others even with accommodations.

Insensitive: This character has trouble reading or understanding the emotions of others and often hurts them unthinkingly.

Missing Eye: This character has only one eye and may have trouble with depth perception and other visual tasks.

No Direction Sense: This character gets lost almost every time they go anywhere they do not know well, and cannot easily find out where they are even with useful landmarks or maps.

No Sense of Smell: This character has no ability to smell, no matter how strong or important the scent.

No Sense of Taste: This character cannot recognize or distinguish between tastes.

One Eye: This character has only one eye and struggles with depth perception and balance.

Overstimulated: This character is easily overwhelmed by too much sensory input and cannot focus in busy, bright, or noisy areas.

Poor Eyesight: This character has severely limited sight and may not be able to see as well as others even with aids.

Poor Judge of Character: This character is very bad at realizing that someone may caue them problems in the future, often making friends with dangerous people while mistrusting others who might help them.

Poor Night Vision: This character has terrible eyesight in the dark or even in low or dim light.

Poor Sense of Time: This character has very little intuitive sense of the flow of time and seldom knows how long things take or how to estimate for the future.

Socially Oblivious: This character cannot read subtext or pick up on subtle hints, forcing them to go only on what people actually tell them or do in their presence.

Wits Flaws

Addiction: This character is addicted to something to the point that it causes problems in their life and losing access to it severely affects their ability to function.

ADHD: This character struggles to focus and is easily distracted, often finding that they must get up, physically move, or do various tasks in order to avoid collapsing in frustration.

Audit: This character is currently having their finances audited and cannot use them to make any major or sketchy purchases.

Blabbermouth: This character is terrible at keeping secrets and prone to blurting out any important information they have.

Cannibal: This character is compelled to consume human flesh.

Children: This character has children that they are in charge of taking care of, frequently interrupting whatever else they are trying to do.

Chronically Late: This character is constantly late to everything, no matter how hard they try.

Compulsion: This character has a compulsion to do something specific (for example, always hiding their money, or always sleeping with people with a certain hair color) and must attempt to do so or suffer mental breakdown.

Depression: This character is depressed and believes that they always will be, no matter what they do or how they try.

Gambling Addict: This character cannot get enough of games of chance, causing them to inevitably lose large amounts of whatever resources they have.

Impatient: This character needs immediate gratification in basically all situations.

Incompetent: This character is terrible at an important skill that they usually cannot avoid needing to attempt, and worse is not aware of how unsuccessful they are every time they try.

Jaded: This character has seen a lot of terrible things and no longer responds emotionally unless seriously shocked.

Lazy: This character has trouble caring about doing things and will often ignore important opportunities or situations unless forced.

Lustful: This character loves sexual and sensual pursuits and is extremely easy to seduce, often not even bothering to vet potential partners ahead of time.

No Internet Access: This character has absolutely no ability to seek information technologically and has to rely on old-fashioned methods like books and interviews.

No Phone: This character cannot be easily contacted by others and is often hard to find in a crisis.

Obsession: This character is obsessed with an object or person to the point of having trouble interacting with anything else.

Primary Breadwinner: This character earns all or most of the income for their family and has little ability to spend money or time on anything else.

Terrible with Names: This character continually forgets peoples' names and has to work hard to remember them long enough to effectively make new contacts.