If a character can have skills, can they also have anti-skills? Or let’s call them weaknesses. Some say that it isn’t our strengths but instead our weaknesses that truly define us. A player can choose weaknesses for a character during the character creation process, but a skill chosen as a weakness must be a non-proficient skill. Magic couldn’t be a weakness, for example, because it’s already a weakness to everyone except magicians. Any skill chosen as a weakness can never have any offense or defense dice associated with it for that character. They always roll zero dice and accept the consequences.

But weaknesses aren’t just limited to the lack of ability in a non-proficient skill. It could be fears, qualms, or something else that can severely limit a character in a certain way. All of these are, of course, at the discretion of the GM.

Why take weaknesses at all? Adding a weakness not only gives your character… well… character, it also gives them an extra skill point at the beginning of the game to be used on any other skill. Extra skill points at the beginning of a game could mean the difference between building the character you really want and building someone that’s pretty much the same as everyone else.

But be warned. Almost any weakness, even the most benign ones, can often be exploited by a savvy GM, so players should think twice about taking on too many weaknesses, even if they think they might be getting away with something for nothing. Either way, though, a character should never allow more than three weaknesses.

And for the purposes of Dice Mob, weaknesses can never be overcome. A character has it for life, so hopefully they can learn to live with it.