So I’m playing a scholar type of character and I recently did the Making Your Name: Fighting Pits to get POSI, and when the option to get a scar came up, I thought it was just purely for the Quirk changes. So since I was trying really hard to keep Austere up I didn’t want to pick the Hedonistic choice and went for the chest scar. What I didn’t think would happen is that it would give a permanent “You have a scar” item.
This bothers me way more than it should. I just picture this frail scholar type character and it just doesn’t make sense for him to have a giant scar of any sort. Can I get rid of this item in any way?
Why not? Surely a frail character would be more likely to be scarred than a particularly tough character. A tough character wouldn’t get badly injured in the first place!
Yeah but I’m thinking of scars more as indicators of living a particularly dangerous life, which my character doesn’t. Well, not a physically dangerous one. I think I will literally change my cameo and start roleplaying a tougher character just so that the image makes more sense in my head.
Anyway it seems there is no way to get rid of the scar. Really sucks, I feel like you should be able to discard any item that isn’t important to something, or they should add some “heal your scars” storylet in the future.
.. while I really appreciate the dedication, just as a fair warning: this decision might make a lot of middle-to-late-game stories and activities extremely hard to pursue as they will entail high dangerous-checks as well ..
I’m afraid it is a baked-in part of the story that characters do end up being good at everything. Your frail scholar may end up being frail compared to other high-level characters, who are out there single-handedly bringing down giant monsters and the like, but they’re still going to be tougher than the everyday street toughs who hang around the fighting pits.
Although it is true that characters end up polishing all four traits/stats, that is the early game’s way of fitting them for various development stages. But it is certainly possible to mould characters so they are what you want them to be. The ambitions help in that respect, as does your choice of profession.
Perhaps you can think of the dangerous aspects of your character as an unavoidable duty? Something they cannot sidestep due to the nature of the Neath, which nevertheless does not impinge on their essential character? Or think of it as courage. Frail people can be brave – I certainly know some! (I can’t even remember a scar – the importance of these elements fades as the character grows.)
But I had a similar problem with the dishonesty/thieving aspect and ultimately managed to work my way around it. Now, I tend to think of it more as subtlety and canniness.
FB are generally good at offering ways through that allow people not to act in opposition to their profoundly held convictions (a rubbery card option was added to save players’ discomfort, and changes were made to the affaires the coeur at the palace for similar reasons).
Yes I actually had the same problem with Shadowy, since I’m playing an Austere type of character who is close to the Constables, to me it didn’t make sense he’d also be doing giant heists on the side. So far, despite what people are saying, I found it pretty easy to focus and specialize. I did every Watchful story I ever encountered so far, and my Dangerous was only like 20 that entire time, there were plenty of choices I couldn’t risk to take and that’s fine, they all worked out how I wanted them to.
I feel like some people never tried to rolepaly like this and so don’t even think about how it’d work, but it seems to work pretty well, and it feels natural to focus down on certain stats given the limited number of actions.
I mean, it’s pretty awesome you find playing FL like that fun and that you can (usually) roleplay exactly what you want. The early game certainly allows for ignoring any attributes besides one. That being said, once you finish the Making Your Name storyline, you will quickly run out of content like that. Most mid-late game stories (like your Ambition, Parabola, Zailing, Railway, Evolution, Roof) require a variety of skills. The only result of having e.g. very high Watchful and very low Dangerous will be repeatedly failing Dangerous checks that are necessary to progress, and ultimately raising Dangerous anyway, since you earn more stat points for harder checks. The game isn’t designed with specialized characters in mind.
But of course you do you, I and I think all the others in this thread just don’t want you to be disappointed if it doesn’t work out your way in the long run. The idea is very fun though, and I’m genuinely curious now how far you can get it.
I have already gotten PoSI and finished all the Making Your Name stories since I made this thread and so far nothing has changed. My Watchful is 170 and my Dangerous is 88, meaning the average Watchful check I get is like 90% and the average Dangerous is 50% and again that’s working out just fine. I don’t think this is really all that novel of a concept, I think you’ve exaggerated it a bit. I’m not entirely ignoring any stats, just focusing on some more than others, and then avoiding or delaying stories that I know are mainly revolved around the less developed stats. I think that’s the intended way to play, given how ambitions and careers work and all those types of specializations.
That’s cool! I have to admit it’s been a while since I knew exactly what’s going on in that part of the gameplay. My alt is in early game technically, but in truth I’m just methodically doing the motions to get to what I want to get to faster. If you don’t mind sharing in a couple months how your roleplaying approach is progressing, I’d be interested to learn : )