Cypher: One Note Characters

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

Ah, the Empathic Speaker who Entertains.

I was trying to create a bard character in Cypher System, and I came up with this combination, and she was heavily overloaded with social abilities but could not do much else.

She was a 'one note' character; please forgive the pun.

She couldn't do much else than break the will of people's minds in roleplaying and then assist in combat - cheering on other characters as they fought the bad guys. She could not make any potent attacks; all she did was cheerlead.

She felt useless in anything other than social situations, and then she completely blew those out.

So I redesigned her with an alternate ability, gave her a secondary that did not double up social, and let her make some combat moves. After that, she was 100% better, and I felt she could contribute in more situations than just social interaction.

She was weaker in social situations but still better than everyone else. The trade-off here is that she gained many new abilities to help out in combat and skill tasks and could contribute more towards the group's success in various situations.

This is one of those pitfalls in the system, especially for new players, where you would not know you fell into a one-note trap. Stop if you see something you pick, starting to double-up on powers and bonuses. Come up with an interesting secondary set of abilities and pick that instead. Is your bard sneaky? Does your bard animate objects into dancing forms when they play? Can your bard focus sound into powerful sonic attacks?

I see a few "let's play" videos about Cypher System, and I seen one where a player felt their character could not contribute meaningfully. This may be a character design issue, a refereeing issue - or both.

Don't be afraid to pause after your first few sessions, review characters with the players, and tweak their designs based on how things are going. This can be done through XP and buying abilities, but some designs can be so tragically one-note that they should be rethought, and the player's ideas about "what they are really doing in the game" factored into a design that makes the player happy.

Suppose you have a one-note bard like that, and the player is trying to sneak around and have fun being stealthy without any help from their character's abilities. That is a warning sign that a thoughtful redesign is needed to better reflect what the player wants from the game.