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Old 03-26-2016, 06:24 PM   #1
Bruno
 
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Default [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

The bonus to detect or understand your mutations doesn't really apply to some of them.

Posit, for a moment, a mutant with the following traits.
  • Brainy
  • Hound Nose 1
  • Razor Claws
  • Rubber Neck
  • Thick Hide 1
  • Toothsome

He has Freakishness 18, good for three distinctive features to give people a +3 to identify that he's a mutant.

I... kinda think people figured that out around the time he had that second head. Similarly, you really don't need a bonus to figure out what two heads do. Or pointy teeth, or scaley skin, although knowing he has retractable pointy teeth and claws, and exactly how protective that skin is, is another thing.

This character has a few not-obvious traits (Hound Nose and Rubber Neck, and the Razor Claws sometimes aren't visible) so there's things to detect, but you could just as easily end up with a pretty Freakish mutant with nothing but Morphology mutations.

What do you do with that baked in Distinctive feature? It's almost nothing but a Disguise penalty at this point, and I feel my example guy needs more than a petty -3 to disguise himself as someone else, unless that person is also a scaly two-headed toothy mutant.
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Old 03-26-2016, 07:20 PM   #2
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

Only morphology mutations are automatically detectable -- in your example, Brainy. The bonus from Freakishness applies to rolls to identify his other mutations, using rules that will be in ATE2.

If someone has only morphology mutations, the "bonus to identify other mutations" part isn't applicable, sure, but all of the other modifiers from Freakishness are.
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Old 03-26-2016, 10:24 PM   #3
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

It might also be that his Freakishness also affects the ability of others to detect he's a mutant using methods other than sight.

The Brotherhood of the Pure might find that his mutant brainwaves show up more clearly on their Pure Thought detector.

The mutant-hunting rednecks down in the holler might find that their mutey-hound, Bessie, can sniff him out real good.

His mutation may affect his glands and secretions, meaning that people might be more easily able to determine he's a mutant from his fingerprints or blood stains.

Rather than giving "two heads" an exceptionally high Freakishness score, he's got a mutation that is both visually apparent, and 'pings' all the mutant detection methods just like fast healing and claws. I'm not saying it's the only way to run it, but it's not immediately evident that it's wrong, either.
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Old 03-27-2016, 09:58 AM   #4
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

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Originally Posted by Mister Negative View Post
It might also be that his Freakishness also affects the ability of others to detect he's a mutant using methods other than sight.
That'd certainly be reasonable, yes. If, for whatever reason, someone couldn't see that he had two heads, Freakishness should add to whatever sense/sensor/method they are using to identify mutation.

Quote:
Rather than giving "two heads" an exceptionally high Freakishness score, he's got a mutation that is both visually apparent, and 'pings' all the mutant detection methods just like fast healing and claws. I'm not saying it's the only way to run it, but it's not immediately evident that it's wrong, either.
I think you're missing that Brainy does give an exceptionally high (relative) Freakishness score. But as the rules say, this isn't because people have to roll to identify the person as a two-headed mutant -- it is immediately obvious to every non-blind person that this is a two-headed mutant! Instead, it is explicitly a relatively high bonus to identify all of his other mutations by sight. (Though I agree with your interpretation for other, non-visual methods of identification.)
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Old 03-27-2016, 11:06 AM   #5
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

What should be the routine, then, for a character who is intended to have non-hidden traits? Other than probably an Appearance problem and an always-on Social Stigma.

Skin like an alligator, two heads, dog snouts on both heads, big jagged teeth, owl-like talons, and 360 vision explained by "has multiple heads and eyes on the sides of the heads".

Remove the switchable from Claws and Teeth, put a Nuisance Effect on DR, any changes to Freakishness?
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Old 03-27-2016, 08:51 PM   #6
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

My suggestion in my upcoming mutation article is to represent ultrafreaky, obvious NPC mutants by reading the point cost of the mutation as its Freakishness. So Boosted Hemoglobin gives Freakishness 8 instead of 2 and so on. Since NPCs don't really track points, it's an easy switch to flip.
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Old 03-28-2016, 07:05 AM   #7
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

What about PCs that are obvious mutants, such as Gamma World's mutant animals and mutant plants? And/or Enemy NPCs that are obvious mutants, for whom you do need to track points?
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Old 03-28-2016, 07:28 AM   #8
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

Gamma World, TMNT: After The Bomb, and suchlike are the kind of context I was thinking of. RIFTS isn't an After the End setting because society is well developed, but there are nations in that setting where the Freakishness rules would be perfect, but include obvious mutants as well as hiding ones.

The Freakishness rules are really tempting to port out to other contexts.
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Old 03-28-2016, 10:32 AM   #9
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

I probably wouldn't use Freakishness for PCs with whom every mutation is screamingly obvious to even a casual viewer. I'd just give them all Appearance (Monstrous)* and Supernatural Features (Obvious Mutations) [-10] -- the latter being the equivalent of Unnatural Features 10, where you simply cannot disguise yourself or avoid standing out, and anyone can identify you and your specific mutations at a glance. And yes, add Always On to specific mutations where appropriate.

* Assuming mutants are uncommon and feared. If half the wastes are mutated, then mutants become just another "race" that people will be used to.
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Old 02-25-2017, 02:58 PM   #10
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Default Re: [ATE] Freaky Freakishness

Quote:
Originally Posted by PK View Post
* Assuming mutants are uncommon and feared. If half the wastes are mutated, then mutants become just another "race" that people will be used to.
I just started an ATE campaign (well, we only created the characters so far :) ), but in our world, one of the reasons for the destruction of civilization was some mutagen pandemic that turned people into, basically, mutant zombies (so remove the "undead" part and replace it with "mutations").

So lots of people got exposed to the virus but not everybody was firmly either in the "zombie" camp, "dead" camp, or "immune" camp. It's more of a gradient, and as a result you have a whole bunch of "high functional" mutants who only have a few mutations but are able to retain their "humanity". The more mutations you have, the more chances you have to become part of the mindless zombie hordes... so it's a riff on the usual "the monster within" theme that you find in most Vampire related stories, or even in stuff like iZombie.... which is to say that yes, half the wasteland inhabitants have mutations, but most non-mutant people would still react negatively to them because they fear they could turn to "zombie mode" at any time (the fact that it's not well understood how mutations work doesn't help this kind of social stigma).

My players currently have only a few mutations (all under Freakishness 6), but I'm trying to figure out how to model this concept, for when they will probably add mutations along the way. I'm open to suggestions :) (I'm currently looking at sanity rules from GURPS Horror as inspiration for this)

Generally speaking, though, I'm a bit confused by "Freakishness" (to me it's definitely the weakest thing in an otherwise excellent GURPS sourcebook). It seems to be a stat with too many "holes" -- it's not very useful for mutations that are already very visible, it's not clear how many levels of Freakishness to assign to any mutation we come up with, and the only thing it seems to be good at is basically forcing some kind of physical deformity to otherwise "invisible" traits like, say, Regeneration or Night Vision or whatever... and even then, I find that it's too "weak" since you need a pretty big list of mutation traits to even get a couple of deformities (12 levels of Freakishness, which easily maps to 70+ points of Advantages).

Instead, I'm thinking of equating Freakishness to the point cost of the Advantage, so that just getting, say, Night Vision, will pretty quickly get you bulgy eyes or something. I guess it's one of those things where I want a world where mutant PCs only have a few mutations, whereas maybe the assumption in ATE is that mutant PCs can have a dozen mutations or more?
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