[Railstar]

Slight necro… Recently I came across a clear example of Callous as a disadvantage, which definitely seemed relevant to this discussion.

Tywin Lannister.

Long-term, continued association with him leads to loyalty penalties from his harshness. All his children have suffered it, with him psychologically tearing them apart the moment they backtalk him. So that’s -3 to Influence skills and -1 reactions with them. It’s of course offset by his Status, Charisma, and other traits, but it’s still a long-term problem. Sooner or later everybody ends up harbouring resentments against him.

Meaning as soon as House Lannister enters decline, people are ready to turn against him.

Aside from that, his pushing his goals might qualify as Selfish & Stubbornness, but the point is he doesn’t care what they want, which leads to bad decisions – he pushes Jaime to be the son and heir, Cersei to be the good wife, and Tyrion to be out of the way and not upstage the children he cares about.

I think his problems were less from a single disadvantage than the “disadvantage soup” combining together to something worse than the effects of any individual one. But Callous is part of the problem because he doesn’t give much weight to how they feel about his plans for them, and instead of channelling their drive towards something more constructive he instead keeps on pushing them towards things they don’t want to do or be.