In Anima: Beyond Fantasy, at character generation, through Disadvantage use (up to the limit of three Disadvantages), you can end up with nine Creation Points with which to buy Advantages, many of which cost one Creation Point.
The sheet given by the devs has five slots for Advantages.
Is this an actual cap that I've missed, or just one of the many design flaws?
Advantages have no cap on the number you can take.
Your only limit is the number of disadvantages that you can actually receive points from, which is 3. Given that the book has optional rules for spending your attribute points on advantages, It seems logical that it is intended that you could theoretically continue to gain more.
To quote the book:
Each character can acquire Advantages and Disadvantages from the following lists. Each Advantage or Disadvantage grants benefits or inconveniences as described below. Players can spend up to 3 Creation Points (CP) on the Advantages that he chooses and believes most appropriate. The cost of the Advantage indicates how many CP a player must spend to gain it. Some Advantages have variable costs, which mean that they grant greater benefits according to the number of CP spent on them. Disadvantages function in a similar manner, but instead of costing a player CP, each Disadvantage gives a player Creation Points he can spend on other Advantages. In this way the benefits and inconveniences balance out: The more advantages you have, the greater your problems will be. Players can choose up to three Disadvantages for a character – although they don’t have to choose any. Unless specifically stated otherwise, players may choose each Advantage or Disadvantage only once.
In short, yes the sheet doesn't have enough space for some characters, especially once you consider that you can acquire more over the course of the game.
To give an example, my current existing character started with the following advantages, using a total of 7 CP. 3 from the initial points you get, and an additional 4 from disadvantages.
Total Accumulation - 2
Martial Learning - 1
Martial Mastery -2
Innate Power - 1
Ambidextrous - 1
And had the following disadvantages:
Deep Sleeper - 1
Serious Illness - 2
Severe Allergy - 1
You are technically right, you could have 3 disadvantages of 2 points each and have as many as 9 creation points. But you are not expected to take this kind of path, since most of the 2 point disadvantages are quite crippling.
Remember that the type of disadvantage is important, since you can only spend the points earned in that type of advantage, for example, you can only spend a background disadvantage (like enemy) in background advantages.
In my experience it is only worth it with the Wizard-Mentalist archetype, since you are already quite heavily pressured in picking up The Gift and some kind of Access to Psychic disciplines (be it all or one). But as usual it depends on the time of game you play.
