Glamour, Supernatural Features, and Appearance

[Bruno]

I'm tinkering around with a Mummy player template for a Monster Hunters game, but this isn't dealing with something specifically MH so I'm not flagging it. But it has thrown up an interesting situation that I'm trying to sort out:

The Shrouded Dead are mummies, and naturally look like walking corpses. They smell faintly of preservatives (formaldhyde, incense-like herbs, wet peat etc). You might confuse an Egyptian preserved mummy for someone wearing too a cheap Old Spice knock-off, or smoking dubious herbal preparations, but you'll remember he smelled unusual. They'll get sniffed out by a vampire/dhampir or werewolf very quickly and you can train dogs to detect them by preservative type. They're probably also room-temperature.

The idea was that they project an illusion of their living appearance so they can pass for human - but the illusion can be disrupted if they're stunned or knocked out (or with a counter-spell, or by contact with a holy object), and they smell funny all the dang time. They're better off than a demon, but not as well camouflaged as a demonspawn.

You can't combine Monstrous or otherwise obviously-not-human appearance and Supernatural Features like No Body Heat or Smells Like Corpse Preservatives, and I'm not sure Alternate Form (Cosmetic-50%; Not When Unconscious or Stunned, -5%) can really change your Appearance level from Monstrous to anything else.

I'm thinking the Monstrous Appearance needs a Mitigator limitation ("reduces Monstrous Appearance to Supernatural Feature(s), requires Alternate Form") - so if the Supernatural Features come to -10 points, the Mitigator goes on the -10 points to "downgrade" SF to Monstrous. I'm eyeballing -65% for the mitigator because it's not as obviously targetable as glasses or easy to cut you off than a daily pill, but it's easier to mess with than a monthly treatment.

[PK]

Your idea of treating the glamour as a base-10-point advantage is the way to go, in this instance. You have Monstrous [-20] normally. But your glamour lets you remove Monstrous [20] and replace it with Supernatural Features [-10], for a net 10 points. So you'd end up with:

Appearance (Monstrous) [-20]; Glamour* (Not when unconscious or stunned, -10%) [9].

* A custom advantage to represent replacing Monstrous with Supernatural Features.

[Bruno]

Huh. Yeah, that works.

If the Mummy wants a different appearance ("I was the envy of the Lower Nile!" or "I was so ugly they beat me, put me in a sack and threw me in the bog" they adjust the 10 point difference appropriately.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Huh. Yeah, that works.

If the Mummy wants a different appearance ("I was the envy of the Lower Nile!" or "I was so ugly they beat me, put me in a sack and threw me in the bog" they adjust the 10 point difference appropriately.

Exactly. A "handsome" mummy might have:

Appearance (Monstrous) [-20]; Glamour* (Not when unconscious or stunned, -10%) [20].

* Custom advantage that replaces Monstrous with Supernatural Features and Handsome.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Your idea of treating the glamour as a base-10-point advantage is the way to go, in this instance. You have Monstrous [-20] normally. But your glamour lets you remove Monstrous [20] and replace it with Supernatural Features [-10], for a net 10 points. So you'd end up with:

Appearance (Monstrous) [-20]; Glamour* (Not when unconscious or stunned, -10%) [9].

* A custom advantage to represent replacing Monstrous with Supernatural Features.

Is there ever a time when simpler isn't better? I was thinking like B, that an AF was called for, but just conditionally limiting the change in Appearance is so much easier... Well done!