Heres thread for suggestions related to traits, perks and negative abilities - new ones or how the old ones should be changed or tuned.
My idea for negative trait / perk:
Screamer - +4 character points. This character has 1/5 chance to scream loudly if shocked. Screaming happens when character has positive mood but sees/experiences something disturbing (negative mood protects against screaming as character expects something bad.) OR when character gains mutation (AARGH! TENTACLES!!!) or when injured moderately. Screaming has cooldown of 100 turns.
Obiviously screaming makes noise which in turn leads to more reasons to scream… 
Hommage to zombie movies.
I think truth teller should only be worth -1 (IIRC it gives -2 at the moment) as its not really much of a handicap.
[quote=“DeepEnd, post:2, topic:421”]My idea for negative trait / perk:
Screamer - +4 character points. This character has 1/5 chance to scream loudly if shocked. Screaming happens when character has positive mood but sees/experiences something disturbing (negative mood protects against screaming as character expects something bad.) OR when character gains mutation (AARGH! TENTACLES!!!) or when injured moderately. Screaming has cooldown of 100 turns.
Obiviously screaming makes noise which in turn leads to more reasons to scream…
Hommage to zombie movies.[/quote]
I believe there is a mutation of that kind already, but this is different from that to be interesting.
A modification to animal empathy. Give you a small morale hit if you witness the death of an animal. Animal empathy might need a bit more of a buff to make up for it though or that might make it more of a negative trait.
+2 Arthritis: You temporarily lose 2 points of dexterity and suffer pain for a period of time as your arthritis is acting up. Can be corrected with medication.
+1 Minor addiction: You start the game addicted to a minor drug (such as caffine or nicotine) chosen when taken (like martial arts)
+2 Major Addiction: You start the game addicted to some major drug (oxycodene, cocaine, meth) chosen when taken.
+2 Pessimist: Your baseline morale value is -10 Cannot be taken with optimist.
-1 Focused: It takes 10% less time to perform crafting, construction, or car mechanics tasks. However you also pay less attention to your surroundings, and you are less likely to be interrupted by seeing monsters. (Getting attacked or dangerous weather still interrupts as normal)
+2 Unfocused: You take 10% more time to perform crafting, construction, reading, or car mechanics tasks. You also have a small chance per period of time to ‘lose your focus’ and interrupt your task for no reason. Cannot be taken with Focused.
-2 Intuition: You have a sixth sense for danger. When powerful creatures such as hulks are active on the map but not visible, you have a chance to ‘Sense danger’. Map tiles such as mines can also cause you to sense danger. You can also ‘Sense something evil’ when entering an area that can potentially spawn sub-primes. Sleeping in an area for the first time will also give you a general feel for the safety of the area. Taking in consideration spawn possibilities.
Grieger, that intuition trait sounds awesome. I’d love to see that, but it would have to have a range larger than LOS. and running into a hulk three steps away is always fun with a capital F.
[glow=green,2,300]Snappy dresser[/glow]: -1/-2 No matter what it is, you seem to pull it off with pizazz. So the world has ended, you’re still the best-dressed pimp in the city. It’s easier to find clothing that fits you and being well dressed gives a small morale boost as long as none of your clothes are tattered.
Additionally you gain a bonus to something depending on how well dressed you are. (Depends on current clothing. E.g, wearing two or three pieces of kit—
e.g army, three of these
Rambo – (rucksack, pants, helmet, boots/Steel boot/tank top/Sunglasses) = Firearms, Rifles, cutting, traps and survival.
G(entle)Man – Suit, Top hat, polo/ dress shirt, Glasses = Speech, Barter, Unarmed, Per+ and Int+ Bonus.
Gangster – Hoodie, cargo pants, T-shirts, cargo shorts, sneakers, bandana, (Alternatively Suit, shirt, Fedora/Pimp hat and dress shoes)
– Melee, Piercing, SMG, Dodge.
Technician, jumpsuit/hardhat/leather gloves/safety goggles/dust or filter mask/wrench/screwdriver/hammer/ –
Bashing, Mechanics, Electronics, Traps.
If a piece of clothing drops to shredded or tattered, set bonus is lost and a morale penalty until you get rid of it.
I just added Self-Aware. It allows you know your exact hp, and costs 1 point.
(I may have also edited some defaults and removed a trait…)
I like the change to self-aware/HP Ignorant it’s not a huge enough change to throw anyone off (who really cares exactly what their HP is) But it’s cheap enough for folks who can’t live without it.
I’d like to make another suggestion for a ‘trait’ change, this one’s actually a mutation but traits and mutations appear to be the same exact things when it gets down to it.
I would like Carnivore to work more like herbivore does. Herbivore at least lets you eat stuff you aren’t supposed to be able to, you just throw it up immediately. Carnivore just outright says no, you can’t eat that and won’t let you. Even when it’s something that doesn’t really seem like it would be forbidden, like royal jelly for example.
As it stands now Carnivore and Herbivore seem to be going about things in completely different ways, and I actually think they may have been programmed by different people. Herbivore can be lived with, Carnivore falls under purify it NOW, since it blocks out meds.
You could just add an omnivore mutation.
I can see being mutated turning you into a herbivore/carnivore (e.g, changes to teeth structure, digestive systems, highly acidic saliva that allows a spit attack etc.) but as humans are pretty much omnivores as it is I think it would be easier to mutate into some kind of all-devouring omnivore than forcefully mutating your teeth until you can’t eat anything but meat. Make it a more likely mutation to get if you take the gourmand trait, alongside the acid spit.
Also hunger should allow you to eat things you normally wouldn’t-- e.g unless there’s a cannibal trait you can’t eat human flesh unless starving or very hungry. water would be exempt-- I’m pretty sure anyone would drink from a toilet if they were thirsty enough and there was no other option.
Also on the self-aware thing… honestly I’m used to seeing my exact hp (i.e I never took hp ignorant, always had enough points anyway.) but honestly with fast healer even medium damage is healed by a good sleep. heavy damage with a first aid kit, etc.
I agree with the suggested carnivore changes.
Actually, I think I may change both carnivore AND herbivore so that there is no penalty to eating plants/meat, they simply hold no nutritional value for you, so eating them doesn’t serve much purpose.
Except… damn, no, that wouldn’t work, because there are morale effects from eating, say, chips, that a carnivore wouldn’t get, and that would give them the ability to eat INFINITE CHIPS. Hmm… I’ll have to think about it.
well, eating veggies as carnivore should add a very little nutritional value, but impose a ugly morale penalty. and same effect for herbivore.
also if carnivore should be changed, id say it should give morale bonus for eating raw meat - for eating what suits you. same goes with herbivore.
Ditch Ugly and Truth Teller until the NPC faction system gets fully implemented. As is they’re obvious power buys. Does anyone make a character without those two negative traits?
They’re something-for-nothing, essentially. Any NPC you really want to make happy you can usually just run a quest for, or just badger repeatedly for a free item until they cave and give it to you.
On the flip-side, I think balancing run speed and AP for characters is in order, as Fast Runner and Quick are fairly essential traits everyone uses and end up costing 6 points. Either making them cheaper (2pts a pop?) or removing them and making run speed/AP tied directly to Dexterity (and thus improving the importance of it) might be more balanced.
My min/max build is:
Heavy Sleeper (Never had a problem with it)
Poor Hearing (Very minor issue)
Trigger Happy (If I’m using an automatic, I -want- to be firing burst)
Weak Stomach (Never really an issue - except with mutations, it always seems to go to nausea)
Wool Allergy (Not even an issue when it was cold)
HP Ignorant (No longer viable)
Truth Teller (Why not?)
Ugly (Only an issue with the mutations)
Parkour (Awesome)
Quick (Awesome, even better with mutations)
Night Vision (Awesome, OP with mutations)
Packmule (Love my carry capacity)
Fast Learner (Generally better than the points spent in int)
On a slightly offtopic but generally on topic point - skills at char creation.
1 point for the first level seems fine, but 3 points for the second is nuts. 3 points in any stat is so much harder to get than the second level of a skill, for so much more benefit. Even if it were 1 point per skill level, I would still prefer to spend my 6 points on stats rather than skills.
Not that you get two skill levels per point buy, and 4 in a given skill makes you pretty damn good at it…
But I agree, it should probably be reduced to 2. I think I might go through and rebalance a lot of the numbers…
Two ideas for negative traits -
Kosher/Halal food only. Massive morale penalties for eating anything not kosher or halal.
I don’t have anything against those religions, but when you start to incorporate aspects from any faith, it creates an image of either preference or bias against.
It’s a really, really bad idea to open that can of worms.
I don’t see being able to pick a dietary restriction demonstrating any bias for or against. I just don’t want to have to go through and mark foods halal or kosher. 
It’s a bias when you’re representing aspects of one religion or social group without incorporating others/all others.
[quote=“An0n3, post:12, topic:421”]Ditch Ugly and Truth Teller until the NPC faction system gets fully implemented. As is they’re obvious power buys. Does anyone make a character without those two negative traits?
They’re something-for-nothing, essentially. Any NPC you really want to make happy you can usually just run a quest for, or just badger repeatedly for a free item until they cave and give it to you.
On the flip-side, I think balancing run speed and AP for characters is in order, as Fast Runner and Quick are fairly essential traits everyone uses and end up costing 6 points. Either making them cheaper (2pts a pop?) or removing them and making run speed/AP tied directly to Dexterity (and thus improving the importance of it) might be more balanced.[/quote]
Truth Teller, yes; Ugly, no. Got tired of becoming horribly deformed after indulging in Mutagen. Try Light Step instead of either FR/Quick; it seemed to work well enough.
Good to know that 4 is considered a good skill level. As for skills–two points per character point is the least I’d want. Since stats/perks are pretty difficult to come by, starting at rank 2 rather than 0 makes sense for combat or other dangerous-to-level skills.
I wouldn’t call it bias - I deliberately didn’t name the perks Muslim or Jewish for that reason.
Otoh, looking more into it, because of the slaughtering process, etc, marking meat properly Halal/Kosher would be a coding nightmare. Not to mention working out if Eldritch Horrors are kosher.