How often do you purposely nerf your own characters? Is it for

I made a character with 6 Constitution. They were a Mage, too, so they only got 4 vitality per level. I thought it was a fun gimmick, having to fear even weak enemies and do everything to keep myself out of harms way.

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>>49708945
What do you have against cars, OP?

My group sucks at optimization and the other players often pick up abilities or traits specifically for character flavor, even if when it's a mechanical downgrade to do so.

So I often build my characters intentionally handicapped in some way, because otherwise my character would en up being "too strong" and it would cause bad feelings at the table.

>>49708945

Pretty much every time I play a game where there's a significant difference between a well-built character and a less-well-built character, because my group tends to err towards the "gimmicky and weak" side of things, so I usually end up piddling away enough resources that I'm more or less even with them.

Usually I do it in a way that I can turn around and whip out full strength where suitably dramatic (or if the GM accidentally overshoots an encounter).

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>>49708985
Nothing, it's just the most obvious thing you could spend 250k nuyen on that doesn't benefit you most of the time. Other than a penthouse or something.

But now that I think about it, an adept could probably make a pretty good street racer in their downtime...

>>49708945
Just build on a concept OP. The power level of the character doesn't matter as much if they have a clearly defined role within the party. That's why my groups usually do character creation as part of the first session all together. So long as each character has an area to shine in then it doesn't really matter, and we all prefer gimmicky flavour characters anyway

>>49708945
Given the types of DM I play with, and the fact that D&D is all about making players powerful, I do it on occasion.

>>49708945
I once played a Fighter instead of a Bard in 5e when I had what basically amounted to Strahd's stats.

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Players for a new campaign I got going have kinda been self nerfing themselves. The problem is this is a DH 2nd edition game where they're trapped on a Space Hulk so I'm really worried if the players are going to be able to survive the campaign for much long.

>One player wants to start with flame thrower.
>Tell him if he just adds some negative mods to it to lower the scarcity he can use it
>Adds a shit load of negative modifiers so it will now explode in his face if he rolls a 81-100 a 9 on his damage roll, cuts the range in half, and now requires double ammo, along with other modifiers that weren't needed.
>One player purposefully puts nothing into combat skills, strength, or toughness because "I want her to be useless in a fight, lol."
>No one but the purposefully useless character trained Dodge because they think its overpowered.

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>>49710382
>being the objective of an escort quest

As often as the system permits.

Usually what attracts me to a specific build or character is how they mechanically function so I rarely go out of my way to nerf a character, usually they are more like side-grades.

I played an 86 year old human sorceror in a 3.5 campaign, 1 constitution. I was basically made out of cracked glass until level 5 or so. 10/10 would play again.

>>49708945
I think it's some inner-thingy I have, I just can't stand to even consider playing with something of a "Mary Sue" or some "flawless" character, so I tend to nerf myself so they can become a little more... Believable...