Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-198.174.0.11-20130910201652/@comment-99.229.71.98-20150429113340

The way people have been talking about weaknesses does not work in skyrim, you've been talking about how there would be a chance of a spell failing, or triping or somthing like that. Where random effects like that can be good for pure role play, for a game thats trying to be balanced, it's a nightmare, for both the devs and players. As somone said above, having weaknesses where you have a chance of failing and causeing yourself harm, will deter players from useing it, making less build optons.

However weaknesses can be properly used, in a more, rock-paper-scissors style weakness. For example, in the destruction tree, after the specific elemental boosts(or added to them) there could be a perk that gives a large boost to that specific spell type, but also gives a weaknesses in resistance to another spell type, for example: %100 increase in lighning spell damage and %50 deacrease in frost spell resistance. Rather then making players have a chance of failure, they have a choice, the can either have a large increase in skill and and a increase in vulnerability or not. This choice method will make you more powerfull, until a certain enemy comes along making you change your strategy. The only problem with this method is there's nobody else to complment your weaknesses, other then folowers(and we all know how smart they are).

TL;Dr- you should talk about perks giving buffs as well as debuffs, so if you get that perk, you will be stronger and have a weakness