This is subjective rather than an objective flaw, but it's another thing I'd like to address:
the Virtue and Vice system.The system is basically the Morality/Action Point system for World of Darkness. There are 7 Virtues and Vices each, based off of the Heavenly Virtues and Deadly Sins. When your character acts in accordance with this Virtue or Vice, he regains Willpower. Willpower is spent to activate powerful abilities and add more dice to your dice pool.
Actually, the Vices are the same, but the Virtues are a little different. Now, some of the problems with the Virtues are that they aren't inherently "positive," or good qualities. Vices only work when your actions hurt others in a significant way:
Vices are basically taken out of control. A person with the Greed Vice is never, ever satisfied with what he has and needs MORE, while a person with the Pride Vice is incapable of admitting wrongdoing and will never back down from the most petty of conflicts.Now, the Virtues aren't necessarily good qualities: on the contrary, they can be furthered for bad ends. Fortitude is basically just unwavering conviction to an ideal or principle. And not all ideals are good ideals. And Faith is really just a belief that there's inherent order to the universe.
There are alternatives to the system in the Mirrors sourcebook, but the way that Vices are described risks putting characters in straightjackets ("you have the Lust Vice, meaning that you have almost no self-control over your baser urges").
In addition to Virtue and Vice, there is also
the Morality Score. Every player character has a score rated from 0 to 10, with a starting score, or average, of 7. Evil actions are placed at certain points on the scale. Minor things are higher on the scale, while more heinous actions are positioned lower. When you do an action lower than your current morality on the threshold, you have to roll dice with the risk of lowering your score. If the PC can justify the crime to the GM ("it was in self-defense! I had no other choice!") he can gain bonus dice to roll (keyword: bonus dice, not automatic success). People with lower moralities have a higher chance of picking up degenerations (mental illnesses and other unstable behavior), while supernatural characters suffer additional penalties.
The Morality Score can be good in that it gives consequences for PCs acting like dicks (kidnap and torture enough people, and your vampire's dark side takes over and you become an NPC at the extreme end). But many players and GMs are uncomfortable with placing actions on a defined scale, and its harder to get back your morality once you've lost it. Mortals can "buy" morality with experience, or gain it automatically with enough good deeds. Supernatural characters can only buy it. And buying morality's
expensive. Another problem is that the social and power structures of certain monster player organizations (vamps in particular) are made a certain way that high-morality PCs will get screwed over in the long run, while getting to low Morality is all too easy. Additionally, injuring another in self-defense is a Morality rating 7 crime, while murder's a Morality rating 3 crime, invalidating high-Morality combat character types. It's much harder to be a good person in the World of Darkness, and you're expected to suffer for it. It takes a narrow, specific kind of character to be high Morality, and the fellow PCs and Storyteller must be in on it to have a worthwhile and enjoyable game. Makes sense for the genre, but it's not to everyone's tastes.
From a mechanical standpoint, the ideal morality for many WoD groups is 5-6. Positive benefits of a high morality for supernaturals don't kick in until you've got an 8, while the major penalties for low morality kick in around 4.