I have a player who wants to take the following flaw, in VTM Revised edition. We are NOT playing V20.
SOFT-HEARTED (l-pT. FLAW) You cannot stand to watch others suffer. You avoid any situation that involves causing someone physical or emotional pain, unless you make a Willpower roll (difficulty 8). You must have a Humanity rating of 7 or above to take this Flaw.
This flaw has a requirement that the character have a Humanity rating of 7. Path ratings that high tend to go down during the course of play rather quickly - simply doing the day to day activities of being a vampire can jeopardize such a high rating.
So rather than asking what should be done IF the character degenerates, I am asking for what to do WHEN the character degenerates. I know of no rule that dictates what happens. If that rule exists, I would love to know. If not, what should I do?
The options I can think of are:
- Continue to enforce the flaw even after it falls below the threshold
- Keep the flaw on the sheet, and only enforce it while the character has a humanity above 7
- Remove the flaw from the sheet, and dock the character the XP required to buy the flaw off
- Ban the flaw (and similar flaws) outright to prevent this problem from happening.
I think I need to expand on the problem a bit for this to make sense to non-WoD/non-VtM players.
- At Humanity 10, 9, or 8, You are a saint. The book describes them as more human than humans.
- Humanity 7 is a typical human - hurting people and stealing is wrong but sometimes the speed limit is just too slow.
- At humanity 6 and lower... the sentiment changes to something more along the lines of "People die, meh." At this point, you have little moral trouble murdering.
So this particular flaw, with a humanity rating of 7 makes sense - you not only have moral issues inflicting harm, you also have a moral aversion to witnessing said acts. With a humanity rating of 6, you have absolutely no problem doing the deeds. So what of the flaw? Baring a rule from the book giving clarification, I am left with the four previous options to handle the situation.
A fifth option has occurred to me, as I was editing this question: I could not allow the character to degenerate lower than humanity 7 if they have this flaw. This is the least desirable option as it breaks many mechanics in the game.