Temporarily mitigating a character's odious personal habit

[khorboth]

As another alternative, if you're using rules where you can use character points to buy successes, I'd probably allow the use of a character point to suppress an OPH for a scene. Again, only if appropriate to the narrative.

[Anders]

Interesting suggestion. Yeah, spending a character point to nullify a disadvantage for a scene would probably be fair.

[whswhs]

I might go further than that, and say that if you are trying to buy off the OPH—but only then—you can spend one character point to buy it off once. And that counts toward buying it off permanently. The character points accumulate, and when you reach enough character points to buy off the whole thing, you've done so.

This could be combined with a required roll, perhaps against Will. With the requirement for a character point expenditure, it seems less abusive.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I might go further than that, and say that if you are trying to buy off the OPH—but only then—you can spend one character point to buy it off once. And that counts toward buying it off permanently. The character points accumulate, and when you reach enough character points to buy off the whole thing, you've done so.

This could be combined with a required roll, perhaps against Will. With the requirement for a character point expenditure, it seems less abusive.

I still think that given the wording of the disad, a rare exception is fine, more so if coupled with much grumbling.

Keyword being "rare". Once or twice in a campaign would be fine for me. Certainly not once per session.

A will roll to see if you can resist reverting to standart too soon is one thing, paying one cp for temporarily not doing something that you *usually* do seem excessive for me.
Unles you want to do it often, in which case I would certainly allow paying 1 cp per occurence until the OPH is bought to quirk level.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

I still think that given the wording of the disad, a rare exception is fine, more so if coupled with much grumbling.

Keyword being "rare". Once or twice in a campaign would be fine for me. Certainly not once per session.

A will roll to see if you can resist reverting to standart too soon is one thing, paying one cp for temporarily not doing something that you *usually* do seem excessive for me.
Unles you want to do it often, in which case I would certainly allow paying 1 cp per occurence until the OPH is bought to quirk level.

It doesn't necessarily do harm if it IS rare. The trouble is that you have to keep it rare, rather than having the player assume that what you let them do once is a binding precedent.

Though OPHs aren't always concealable. Someone who has OPH (chain smoker) may be able to resist smoking for an hour or so, but their fingers and/or teeth may be discolored, and their hair, skin, and clothes may have an odor. (I've noticed odor in my clothes and hair after just spending an hour or two among smokers . . .) OPH (bites nails) can't be concealed until the nails grow back.

On the other hand, some OPHs or ORHs aren't practiced constantly; the problem is that you're infamous for doing it even if you aren't doing it right now. If you have ORH (eats brains), people will fear and loathe you even if you're not eating anything right now.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by phayman53

One of the disadvantage options listed for DF Scouts is "Odious Personal Habit: Unwashed Bushwhacker" [-5] for a -1 to reaction rolls. There are other disadvantages like this where a character's normal appearance or behavior is a disadvantage, but realistically it would be something that was possible to mitigate with some effort. Most people have seen the scene in a movie where the normally disheveled or otherwise uncaring about his or her appearance character cleans-up for a special occasion and is actually quite presentable/attractive. Another example of this is Aragorn in LotR, who normally is dirty and poorly dressed because of his life as a ranger, but when he on rare occasion (at least before the end of the books) cleans-up, he is actually incredibly lordly.

Aragorn didn't have an OPH though. He was simply dressed and groomed at a status -1 level while being a ranger...largely to minimize his expenses since he was dirt-poor despite his royal lineage. Someone who had that OPH would make a terrible fuss about being cleaned up and would still act like a slob after being cleaned up.