Morph Shapeshifter - Different Forms Having Different Advantages/Talents?

[EldritchBagelGod]

So, I looked around for a similar topic with no real success, which is why I'm making my own.

I'm currently making a shapeshifter, specifically with the morph advantage, and am looking at how to handle different forms having slightly different advantages. There are a few, but Voice is the easiest example I have: It's not part of the racial template for the form, but is instead a minor edit the shapeshifter is doing to make the form more appealing. Morph seems to be pretty specific that it only changes the racial template, with extra points only being allowed to make appearance changes and go towards using a more expensive racial template, so...

How would you handle this? The only option I could really find myself or see anyone mentioning was modular abilities, so for the Voice example having the +50% physical modifier and likely some custom accessibility limitations, but all the posts I could find were from 3-5 years ago, and...I don't know, it would probably work, but it feels like a rather more heavy handed solution than I was looking for, not to mention pretty expensive. 35 points using super memorization's 5+3 as a base +50% physical = 53 points in order to have 10 flexible points for voice to be an option, even stacking on limitations after that to bring that back down it's pretty expensive.

On a related note, if some forms were created with a specific goal in mind, ie "this form is specifically made to be a really good merchant", would that again just be best handled by modular abilities being used to put points in a skill or talent for that?

Finally, though somewhat apart from the other two and I didn't really have room in the title for it, how would you price an enhancement on morph that's basically "It just has to be a race/individual you've seen before, you don't have to be actively looking at it/them or have one of that race memorized"? The idea is for them to be able to create throw away forms on the fly, that their memorized forms are specific characters they portray, rather than having to use one for each race to save them for later. I like the idea of the memorized forms = IQ limitation, but even removing that just means you don't have a cap on the number of forms, you still have to shift into the form once for it to count, so I'm not sure how to manage that or what it should cost.

This would be paired with the retains shape limitation, so it's only for other humanoid races and not animals or whatever else. That being the case, I could see an argument for the inverse, that all humanoid races should count as modifications of the same "memorized form" (even if they have different racial templates), and that only being able to turn into ones you've seen would actually be an accessibility limitation instead. However, I've been interpreting it as "each racial template you want to use has to be in one of your memorized slots"

I'm also thinking of combining it with a limitation like "it takes more time (like a day or two of working at it) to get the form down and add it to your memorized list", maybe with impersonation taking even longer since you have to get it to match rather than creating a new one from scratch, which could probably be handled with an increased time/takes preparation limitation, and then I guess just not being worth as much since it would only apply to the 1 minute memorizing and not the 10 seconds to shift? But then you could totally imitate someone without that, so maybe imitating someone has a separate time penalty to shift into them to begin with, or requires an hour and a successful roll to do it, and then you add it to memorized and can take it again after that via the normal 10 seconds?

Hopefully there's a fairly simple solution to this stuff that I'm just missing here, haha.

[naloth]

What I built for a recent supers race was:

Morph (Active Change +20%; Improvised Forms +100%; Mass Conservation -20%; Needs Sample, Touch -5%) [197] + Morph Pool (individually sized 1 point per pool point).

In game terms it allows a member of that race to learn up an IQ number of racial packages, allowing them to create a new form that combines any traits off any forms that it has learned.

Example: let's say this morph has a morph pool of 10 points and knows the forms gorilla and cat.

It could shift into an improvised package of ST+5 (gorilla, NFM from cat -40%) [30], Claws (Sharp) [5], Night Vision 5 [5], and No Fine Manipulators [-30]. Total 10 points. He'll take on both gorilla and cat traits in appearance, but retain the same mass.

Active change means that while it still takes 10 seconds, the morpher can still act normally during those 10 seconds.

I'd accept that you can only morph traits with a particular power modifier for 0% instead of racial traits.

I'd also accept that you can morph individual traits that members of that race has instead of racial templates for 0% as well (which seems like a big limit, until you figure that it can be combined with a number of other limitations).

[AlexanderHowl]

Improvised (+100%) for morph only allows physical traits, so you cannot modify the IQ, Per, Will, mental advantages/perks, or mental disadvantages/quirks of a template (which, coincidentally, includes Talents). Modular Abilities (Cosmic Powers) or (Slotted Cosmic Powers) is probably the best version (with the former if you want to make lots of changes wand with the latter if you just want one change), if you want both physical and mental traits. Morph (Improvised) would probably work best if you want just physical traits though.

One possibility would be to take Modular Abilities 15 (Slotted Cosmic Powers; Physical, +50%; Trait-Limited, Alternate Forms Only, -30%) [99]. The advantage over Morph is that you do not need to memorize any forms (the disadvantage over Morph is that it becomes very expensive to improve beyond 0 CP forms). You could then add Modular Abilities 10 (Slotted Cosmic Powers; Physical and Mental, +100%) [114], which would allow.you to add 10 CP of traits to any template. Of course, Morph becomes cheaper beyond a certain point.

[EldritchBagelGod]

Improvised (+100%) seems like a possible solution, though if that was the solution I used, I'd want to stack on a limitation that essentially nullifies it's intended use and only lets it be used for a certain pool of advantages, since the shapeshifter isn't supposed to be able to mix and match racial traits (yet, at least, that might be a valid upgrade later I guess).

Switching entirely over to modular abilities is possible, but these are supposed to be minor changes to tie in with the taking on another racial template, and that still has the problem of allowing them to mix and match. Overall, modular abilities just seems really expensive for what I'm wanting here.

I noticed as I was checking these out, the Switchable (+10%) enhancement might be a way to manage this, to just buy the perks the shapeshifter could apply to various forms and then have that on all of them. Perfect Balance [15], Flexibility [5], and Voice [10] as an example would only be [33] points in total to have with switchable on all of them, far less than the [105] to have all those active at the same time via modular abilities. Would that work well, or are there other issues with that I'm not seeing?

I'd still need modular abilities for the talent thing, but a single rank of a talent for a small group of skills is only 5 points, and it'd just be one slot, so modular abilities would only cost 5 + 5*3 = [20] points total, plus a limitation for talents only and likely an accessibility "can only change as part of using morph", the price seems like it'd be pretty manageable.

[AlexanderHowl]

You could also always add Maximum Duration for those type of things (since they are beneficial and switchable with Switchable). A maximum duration of 10 minutes would be worth -50% (-40% after Switchable).