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Physical or Psychological Disadvantage?


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Re: Physical or Psychological Disadvantage?

 

Amnesia is listed as a psychological disorder in the DSM-IVTR. So if you're going by the literal definition, it's a psych lim. If you want a more game-friendly definition, it depends. If it's something you can't physically overcome, no matter how hard you try, it's a physical limitation, like Karmakaze said.

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Re: Physical or Psychological Disadvantage?

 

My rule of thumb: if it affects how a character acts, it's psychological. If it affects what a character does -- or doesn't -- it's physical. If it affects how people react to the character, it's social.

 

My "rule of pinky" as I jokingly call it goes like this: if the above rule causes conflicts, rule by the kind of problems this causes the character.

 

Take myself as an example. I'm noticeably eccentric, to the extent it causes social problems for me (I annoy people, people stop bringing up certain topics around me, etc.). On the surface this might sound more psychological, but the problems it causes are not of the "do I do this, or this?" variety -- they're of the "who and how badly do I annoy?" As such, this is properly a social disadvantage.

 

I'm somewhat nearsighted & mildly 'cross eyed'. This does not affect me socially -- it's slight enough to be imperceptible to anyone but an eye doctor doing a test on me. However it definitely affects my abilities, such as hitting a moving baseball with a bat (because I have to guess which ball is real). As such this is a physical disadvantage, and a slight one at that.

 

I have an associate who is manic depressive; she is (mostly) able to control it with medication. While the cause of the symptom is physical and could be perceived as being a Dependency, I'd rule it as Psychological -- because the problems are caused in decision making.

 

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One major cavaet to the above is that I'm very careful about allowing either "double dipping" or "tomato effect" -- allowing the character to get disadvantage points for the same thing twice, or allowing 'extra' disadvantage points for a category by redefining the category (the way tomatoes are legally considered vegetables in order to avoid a tax).

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