Starfinder: VOID Drawbacks

Abrasive Attitude

You have a way of rubbing people the wrong way when you speak. This could be due to your natural belligerence, boastfulness, uncouthness, or other personality flaw.
Detriment: When using Diplomacy to change attitudes, you must add an extra 5 to the DC.

Albinism

You lack pigmentation in your skin, giving you a distinctively pale appearance. Your skin is very sensitive to sunlight.
Detriment: You must make a Fortitude saving throw for every hour that your skin is exposed to direct sunlight. The DC is 15 +1 for every hour that you’ve been exposed. A failure causes 1d4 hit points of sunburn damage.

All Thumbs

You aren’t very coordinated when it comes to fine manipulation.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all Disable Device and Sleight of Hand checks.

Animal Antipathy

Perhaps you have a bad smell. Maybe they can detect the way you truly feel about them. Maybe they just don’t like you. For whatever reason, you have trouble dealing with animals.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all Handle Animal and Ride checks.

Bad Luck

Whenever you need luck most, you can count on it not being there.
Detriment: Once per session, the GM can negate any success, even if it was a critical hit. This will usually be when you desperately need to succeed.

Bad Shot

You are unpracticed or inept at making ranged attacks.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all ranged attacks.

Bleeder

Your body has trouble stabilizing. When dying, you continue to bleed until you are dead.
Detriment: You cannot stabilize while dying. Unless you are treated or healed, you will continue to lose one hit point every round until you are dead.

Clumsy

You are exceptionally uncoordinated and tend to slip at the most inopportune times.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all Acrobatics checks.

Cold Aversion

Your body has a hard time adjusting to the rigors of very cold climates.
Detriment: You suffer a -2 circumstance penalty to all saving throws and skill checks in temperatures at or below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. You also suffer an inherent -1 penalty to saving throws made against cold-based spells, damage, and area effects. Cold-weather clothing alone will not remove this penalty.

Cowardice

You are a coward. You usually choose the safest position in a marching order and rely on others to protect you.
Detriment: Cowards never initiate combat, even when it is to their advantage. You will always maintain a defensive position until attacked. If you defeat your foe, you will attempt to hide or flee rather than engage another foe.

Easily Read

You wear your heart on your sleeve. Others can almost read your thoughts.
Detriment: Your opponents get a +4 to their Sense Motive checks when using it against you.

Fanatic

You are so committed to one philosophy or religion that it blinds you to others.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty to any Knowledge checks when researching histories, religions, or even arcane lore at odds with your own faith. In addition, you will refuse personal aid from any cleric or druid that is contrary to your faith..

Frail

You are weaker than normal, either due to illness or genetics.
Detriment: You have 3 less hit points than normal.
Special: This drawback may be taken multiple times. A character may only take this feat if doing so will still leave him with at least one hit point. For example, a character with 8 hit points may take this drawback twice, but a character with 6 hit points may only take it once.

Gullible

You are easily persuaded and manipulated by others.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on Diplomacy and Sense Motive checks.

Hard of Hearing

You have lost part of your hearing, making it difficult for you to be aware of all sounds surrounding you. You also have a problem being stealthy.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on sound-based Perception checks and Stealth checks.

Heat Aversion

Your body has a hard time adjusting to the rigors of very hot climates.
Detriment: You suffer a -2 circumstance penalty to all saving throws and skill checks in tropical or desert conditions (or in artificial conditions of extreme heat, such as steam baths). At the GM’s discretion, you may suffer these penalties in any area where the temperature is above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. He also suffers an inherent -1 penalty to saving throws made against heat-based spells, damage, and area effects.

Honest

You have trouble telling lies or concealing the truth.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on Bluff and Intimidate checks.

Impatient

Your character is notoriously incapable of focusing his attention long and hard enough to accomplish tasks requiring great dedication.
Detriment: Your character may never ‘take 10’ or ‘take 20’ on any skill check, no matter how much time he has.

Intolerance

You have a particular hatred for a certain class, race, or culture.
Detriment: You take a –4 penalty when making skill checks against a particular group. The GM should limit this feat to frequently encountered groups within his campaign

Lame

You walk with a discernible limp.
Detriment: You only move two-thirds of what is normal for your race. A lightly armored human, for example, would move 20ft rather than 30ft.

Marked

You have been convicted of a crime in the past (whether you were guilty or not) and bear a lasting mark from the punishment. This mark could be a distinctive scar, tattoo, or missing body part. People treat you as a criminal. This drawback may be coupled with another (missing hand, for example), in which case the other drawback is the mark.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty to all Bluff and Diplomacy checks when dealing with people that would recognize the mark (which is most of the time). You also add an extra 5 to your DC when trying to change an NPC’s attitude.
Special: You get a +2 bonus to Intimidate if the victim recognizes your mark.

Minority Culture

You belong to a smaller culture within a primary culture that has certain rules and taboos that easily distinguish it from the primary culture. You unintentionally but easily offend members of the primary culture.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty to all Diplomacy checks against members of the primary culture. In addition, you add 5 to your DC when attempting to influence the attitudes of members of the primary culture.
Special: GMs should be careful when allowing this drawback. A “primary culture” is the dominant group within a particular campaign. If the campaign takes the characters throughout the world, then this drawback should only be available if the particular minority group is a minority culture throughout that world. “Culture” should be loosely defined. If most of the campaign takes place within the walls of a noble’s castle, then a PC peasant farmer could be considered a “minority culture.” Similarly, a “minority culture” is not necessarily the disadvantaged one. If the PCs are mostly pirates, then a PC noble forced into joining them could be considered from a “minority culture.”

Missing Hand

You have lost a hand in combat.
Detriment: You may not use a two-handed weapon. You may still use a shield. You also take a –2 penalty on all Climb, Disable Device and Sleight of Hand checks.

Mute

You cannot speak.
Detriment: You take a –4 penalty on any skill checks that would normally require you to speak. While you may continue to learn new languages, you may only understand them, not speak them.

Oblivious

Your mind wanders so much that you fail to take note of what’s going on around you.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all Perception checks.

One Eye

You have lost the use of an eye. This hinders your depth perception as well as hinders your ability to engage foes on your blind side.
Detriment: You take an extra –1 penalty per range increment when using a ranged weapon.

Short

You are unusually small for your race.
Detriment: Humans, elves, and half-elves are treated as halflings for purposes of tactical speed and reach. Short half-orcs are treated as dwarves. Short dwarves have a tactical speed of 15 ft. and a natural reach of 0. Short gnomes and halflings have a tactical speed of 15 ft. (or 10 ft. when wearing medium or heavy armor) and a natural reach of 0.

Slow Healer

It takes you longer than normal to heal.
Detriment: With a full night’s rest, you only recover 1 hit point for every two character levels. Magical healing effects are also halved.

Slow Preparation

You are unusually slow when dealing with certain formal rituals of magic, including preparing your daily spells from your spellbooks.
Prerequisite: This drawback is only available to spellcasting classes.
Detriment: You must spend 2 hours (rather than 1) studying your spellbooks in order to prepare spells for any given day. You must spend at least 30 minutes when studying a smaller portion of your daily spell allotment.

Slow Reflexes

You have slower than normal reflexes.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all Reflex saving throws.
Special: You may not take the Lightning Reflexes feat.

Spineless

You have a weaker will than normal.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all Will saving throws.
Special: You may not take the Iron Will feat.

Taboo Proficiency

Due to cultural, personal, or religious restrictions, you have not been trained to use some weapons or armor normally available to your class.
Detriment: You do not receive one of the starting weapon or armor proficiencies normally available for your class.
Special: You may negate this drawback at any time (including character creation) by selecting the taboo proficiency as one of your available feats.

Uncomely

You are particularly unattractive to most people. Note that you may not be physically unattractive, but you may belong to a group that is disliked by most people in the setting.
Detriment: You take a –2 circumstance penalty on any Bluff or Diplomacy checks when dealing with someone of the other gender.

Weak Fortitude

You are weaker than normal.
Detriment: You take a –2 penalty on all Fortitude saving throws.
Special: You may not take the Great Fortitude feat.

Anxious

After suffering terribly for not being tight-lipped enough as a child, such as when you accidentally exposed your family to enemy inquisitors, you developed a habit of being overly cautious with your words.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on Diplomacy checks and must speak slowly due to the concentration required. Unless stated otherwise, you are assumed to not be speaking at a volume above a whisper.

Attached

You have a strong emotional attachment to a person or object that you’re terrified of losing.
Effect: The GM chooses the object of your attachment. Whenever the object of your attachment is either threatened, in danger, or in someone else’s possession, you take a –1 penalty on Will saves and a –2 penalty on saves against fear effects. If the person or object to which you’re attached is ever lost, killed, or destroyed, exchange this drawback for the Doubt drawback.

Betrayed

You were reported to a dangerous authority and narrowly escaped death. You second-guess your instincts constantly, leaving you never sure whether or not to trust someone and endangered if you encounter that group’s agents again.
Effect(s): You can roll twice and take the lower result on Sense Motive checks to get hunches. You cannot reroll this result, even if you have another ability that would normally allow you to do so.

Burned

You were badly burned once by volcanic ash, torch-wielding mobs, or some fiery accident, and the scars pain you terribly you whenever you are too near to fire.
Effect: You take a –1 penalty on saving throws against fire effects.
In addition, whenever you are adjacent to open flames or are on fire, you take a –1 penalty on all attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks until you spend an entire round away from fire. These penalties are not cumulative. (An instantaneous fire effect adjacent to you or affecting you causes this penalty to apply until 1 round after it is gone.)

Condescending

Raised with the assurance that only those like you are truly worthy of respect, you have an off-putting way of demonstrating that you look down on those not of your race and ethnicity or nationality.
Effect: You take a –5 penalty on Diplomacy and Intimidate checks to improve other creatures’ attitudes toward you.

Cowardly

You might face dangerous situations with bravado, but you are constantly afraid.
Effect Your base speed when frightened and fleeing increases by 5 feet, and the penalties you take from having the cowering, frightened, panicked, or shaken conditions increase by 1. If you would normally be immune to fear, you do not take these penalties but instead lose your immunity to fear (regardless of its source).

Cruelty

You were rewarded as a child for flaunting your victory over others as completely as possible, and you discovered you enjoyed the feeling of rubbing your foes’ faces in the dirt.
Effect: Whenever you are engaged in combat and there are dying or helpless foes within 30 feet, you take a –2 penalty on attack rolls against foes who are neither dying nor helpless.

Dependent

You are dependent upon the acceptance of others.
Effect: Whenever you fail a Diplomacy check, you become shaken for 1 hour.

Doubt

You lack confidence in your abilities or confidence in the universe at large.
Effect: Whenever you fail a skill or ability check, you take a –4 penalty on that type of skill or ability check for the next hour.

Empty Mask

You have spent so long hiding your true identity to escape political enemies that you have lost much of your sense of self.
Effect(s): You take a –1 penalty on Will saving throws against compulsions. This penalty increases to –2 against foes who know your true identity.

Forgetful

You are easily distracted and prone to forgetting important things.
Effect: Whenever you leave a location you have been at for longer than 1 hour, you must attempt a DC 10 Wisdom check. If you fail, you leave behind one random mundane item (a purse of money counts as an item).

Helpless

You once stood helpless as great harm befell a loved one, and that paralysis sometimes returns when an ally is in a dire position.
Effect The first time per combat encounter that an ally within 30 feet falls unconscious or dies as the result of an attack, you are dazed until the end of your next turn.

Impatient

You love leaping into battle at the earliest opportunity, and it frustrates you to wait for others to act.
Effect You can’t delay or ready actions, and if you are the last of your allies to act in a round of combat, you take a –1 penalty on ability checks, attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks.

Infamous

You were publicly linked, truthfully or not, to a crime of significant infamy. You draw attention wherever you go and risk imprisonment or worse in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed.
Effect(s): You and your apparent allies take a –4 penalty on Diplomacy checks to interact with law-abiding citizens (except enemies of the authority that accused you).

Insatiable

You have become so accustomed to binging on the finer things in life that you find going without such excess particularly strenuous.
Effect Goods and services cost you 10% more (and can’t be paid for by allies), and you need twice as much food and liquid as normal for the purposes of preventing starvation and thirst.

Lonely

You are far too easily convinced of the friendly intentions of others.
Effect(s): You take a –2 penalty on Sense Motive checks and on Perception checks to see through disguises, and on saving throws against charm spells and spell-like abilities.

Loner

Raised by pirates, bandits, or other troublemakers unwilling to stick out their necks for you, you are accustomed to operating on your own. The presence of allies can easily become a distraction to you, and you do your best to keep them out of your space.
Effect: You take a –1 penalty to AC and on attack rolls while adjacent to allies or when taking the aid another action.

Mark of Slavery

You were enslaved for part or all of your youth, and marked as such with a brand or tattoo that still reminds you of how you were punished whenever you failed to do what you should.
Effect: Whenever you fail a skill check, you take a –2 penalty on any skill check or attack roll you attempt before the end of your next turn unless it is a part of retrying the failed skill check.

Meticulous

You plan and prepare everything in detail, and aren’t good at improvising when things don’t go as planned.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on skill checks for skills with which you’re untrained.

Misbegotten

Whether due to the influence of malign magic, disease, or the scorn of the gods, you were born with a troublesome deformity that interferes with your movement.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on all Dexterity-based skill checks.

Naive

Your perception that everyone is innately good does not bode well in the heat of battle, when less scrupulous foes might take advantage of your misguided optimism.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty to AC against attacks with improvised weapons and a –2 penalty to CMD against dirty trick combat maneuvers.

Nervous

Living under constant threat of death or worse from your oppressive government, your nerves have frayed terribly.
Effect: Whenever you take 10 on an ability check or skill check that imparts any penalty for failure (aside from wasted time), you treat your check as if you had rolled an 8 instead of a 10, even if you are able to take your time.

Oblivious

Whether because you are an avid daydreamer or you are accustomed to everything being handed to you and spelled out for your benefit, you pay little attention to your surroundings and other people.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on Sense Motive and sight-based Perception checks.

Overprotective

In your youth, you saw a younger friend or loved one suffer a grievous injury or die, and you blamed yourself for not having been there to help, even if there was nothing you could have done.
Effect: If one of your allies should fall unconscious from hit point damage, you take a –2 penalty on attack rolls and skill checks as long as you are farther than 10 feet away from your fallen ally.

Paranoid

You believe that someone or something is always out to get you, so you have a hard time truly trusting anyone.
Effect: Anyone who attempts an aid another action of any type to assist you must succeed at a DC 15 check instead of the normal DC 10 check.

Power-Hungry

You’re addicted to power.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on Will saving throws against charm and compulsion effects if the creature creating the effect promises wealth or power.

Pride

You can’t abide challenges to your dignity, authority, or honor.
Effect: When someone threatens, accuses, or challenges you, you take a –2 penalty on Diplomacy checks and Sense Motive checks involving that creature until the creature apologizes to you.

Provincial

You have only one way of looking at things: the right way.
Effect(s) You take a –2 penalty on Diplomacy checks and Sense Motive checks made against all creatures whose religion or alignment differs from your own.

Righteous Indignation

You have difficulty controlling your temper after living in inhuman conditions.
Effect(s): Whenever a foe provokes an attack of opportunity from you, you must take it unless you succeed at a Will save against a DC equal to 10 + your level. You take a –1 penalty on Will saving throws against spells with the emotion descriptor that do not also have the fear descriptor.

Scarred

An injury left you horribly, visibly scarred, making it more difficult for you to hide your true face, and also making most people distrustful of you merely due to your appearance.
Effect You take a –5 penalty on Disguise checks and a –2 penalty on Bluff checks.

Secret Shame

You have a terrible fear of the public at large, a group, or an important person (such as your order of knights, your liege lord, your family, or your lover) learning a shameful truth about you.
Effect(s): You take a –1 penalty on saving throws against fear effects, and the DC of any Intimidate check to demoralize you is reduced by 1. If you would normally be immune to fear, you do not take these penalties, but instead lose your immunity to fear (regardless of its source).

Self-Doubting

Your ever-present fear of failure causes a downward spiral.
Effect The first time each day that you fail a Will saving throw or skill check, you take a –2 penalty on the next Will saving throw or skill check of that kind.

Sentimental

You are sentimental, and your thoughts often stray to the past at inappropriate times.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on Perception checks to avoid being surprised and on Reflex saving throws to avoid traps or hazards.

Sheltered

Brought up in courtly environments and knowing little of violence, you have trouble getting accustomed to it.
Effect: Whenever you have less than half your maximum hit points, you are shaken.

Sleepy

You must sleep or rest for at least 12 hours each night to get the benefits of a full night’s rest.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on saving throws against sleep effects.

Stigmatized

You were kept at the periphery of society for a long period of time, so that even when you are among strangers in a new place, you feel the weight of your missing socialization.
Effect You take a –3 penalty on Diplomacy checks to gather information or improve a creature’s attitude.

Too Many Secrets

You’ve told too many lies, and made up too many cover stories, and now even you can’t keep it all straight. The lies have become reality to you, which makes it difficult to think of a new convincing lie. You hesitate at crucial moments when trying to fool those around you, and likely shouldn’t be in the field at all anymore.
Effect(s): You take a –2 penalty on Bluff checks and saving throws against illusions.

Unlearned

You have always had difficulty learning and retaining information, and know very little about the world beyond the obvious and what pertains to your profession.
Effect: Choose one Knowledge skill. You cannot attempt untrained Knowledge checks with any other Knowledge skills, even if the check’s DC is 10 or lower. If you have access to a library that covers a specific Knowledge skill, you may attempt an untrained Knowledge check with a –2 penalty.

Vain

You are sensitive about the way others perceive you.
Effect: Whenever you fail an opposed Charisma-based check, you take a –2 penalty on all Charisma-based checks for the next 24 hours.

Vainglory

You compulsively seek recognition for your deeds, making it hard to act with subtlety.
Effect(s): You take a –1 penalty on Bluff, Disguise, and Stealth checks, and the save DC of any illusion you create is 1 lower than normal.

Warded Against Nature

Effect: Animals do not willingly approach within 30 feet of you, unless you or the animal’s master succeeds at a DC 20 Handle Animal, Ride, or wild empathy check. Animal companions, familiars, and mounts granted by your class abilities are immune to this effect.

Xenophobic

You have a hard time understanding and trusting those with unfamiliar ways and appearances.
Effect: You take a –2 penalty on Diplomacy and Sense Motive checks made against creatures of a different race or from a different culture.