[House Rule] Swallow Whole advantage

[Adelus]

I've made several threads in the past, and one most recently here, where the topic of modeling the ability for creatures to swallow targets whole come up. So I've decided to take another swing at it, and figure out how to do so in a manner that scales up and down.

Instead of directly kludging something together with existing advantages, I figured I might as well invent one based on the usual approach - Constriction Attack with Engulfing. I figure it also reads better on a sheet to have, say, Swallow Whole X [Y] rather than a heavily kludged together Constriction Attack or Stretching.

Constriction Attack with Engulfing lets you effectively pin a target of your SM or lower who fails to break free before you start rolling for damage. While this is great, it doesn't effectively model two things very well:

1) Being able to eat something bigger than you are. See: Kirby & Yoshi (Nintendo), Fleeches (Oddworld), Guu (Hare & Guu).
2) Being able to eat things smaller than you are, but only up to a certain SM.

While I had tried before to model an idea like this with Stretching for consumption purposes only, having to throw Reduced Time onto it so it can work as an instant combat ability - like Constriction Attack does - makes it far too expensive in comparison to just taking Constriction Attack.

I'm currently toying with two bases, based on two comments by Bruno in earlier threads (I'll try to dig those up in a bit later); Either you can swallow something with relative SM-8 to you, or the cutoff is -12 with some leeway for -11 and -10 with higher risk of choking. I'm leaning towards the first at the moment, and this is roughly how it looks and works:

Swallow Whole [3/level]

This advantage represents the ability to more capably ingest objects or targets than standard for your species. Unlike Born Biter, this does not increase the relative SM of your mouth when it isn't being used to consume something - the nature of this ability is either elastic or space-warping of some kind.

Each level increases the SM threshold for swallowing something whole by 1, and stacks with Born Biter. For a default humanoid, this is SM-8. Use your modified SM for the purposes of bites, grapples, and determining whether your bite attacks apply Large-Area Injury or have an Area of Effect. On any turn where this ability is active, your mouth can be targeted as per it's modified SM, but when it is not being used in this fashion it returns to normal size.

Swallowing something whole works functionally as is described under the Engulfing modifier for Constriction Attack, administered via a bite attack or any other equivalent method of ingestion (Blob-like absorption, DBZ Cell-style tentacle, etc.)

Ingesting large objects or targets should result in your stomach/torso getting a boost to relative SM to be at least as large as the ingested targets, though any attacks that cause injury may also injure the targets inside. Possession of this ability also justifies your body being elastic enough to contain what you eat within your SM limits, but does not itself confer any other special defenses.

Modifiers

Hidden, +50%: Your stomach has space-warping properties. For each level of Swallow Whole with this modifier, reduce the effective SM of any object inside it by one for the purposes of targeting or visibility from outside of your body. For instance, 8 levels of it would reduce the effective SM for an SM+0 creature to SM-8.

Warping, +25%: Your mouth does not become easier to hit while it is in use, but remains the same size for the purposes of attacks being directed at it or determining visibility. This can represent space-warping inhalation abilities, or shrinking targets just before ingestion.

Muffle, +10%/level: Your body is capable of muffling sound generated from within more efficiently. For each level taken, reduce the range by which sounds generated inside can be heard by a step on the Hearing Distance Table (p.B358).

Weightlessness, +25%: While the weight of anything you have ingested causes you encumbrance, it is not detectable and has no effect on the outside environment.

For a creature with humanoid proportions of any given SM, 8 levels is sufficient to devour something of the same size - and at 24 points, is effectively equal to Constriction Attack with Engulfing, minus the crushing damage element.

That all said, I was hoping for some comments/criticism, and possibly some discussion on what issues it has as-is, and with some other things I'm having trouble with:

1. What are fair prices for the modifiers?
2. Are the modifiers themselves sensible?
3. What are some ideas for new modifiers?
4. How would/should this behave and affect grappling? Particularly size-related grappling bonuses if actual SM is low or normal and effective bite SM is much higher.
5. How should stomach capacity be handled? I was trying to avoid getting into volume too much and sticking just with weight limits, so a multiple/divisor of BL? And how should an increase of weight limits or increasing the multiple directly be handled?
6. The utility of carrying things in your stomach - and the hazards associated - compared to buying Payload. Also, the fact that Payload does NOT have an effect on your encumbrance, while this does.

[lvalero]

A couple of ideas

Limitation: leave visible marks. Each time you consume a victim there is a visible mark on your body. For example twisted faces over your skin that appears to be screaming. if not hidden by clothes or other means, people will react to you as if you have Odious Personal Habit: Eats people!

Enhancement: sleep attack. When you consume your victim, make some opposed will roll. If you win the victim is in coma. This is inspired by dragon ball villain Buu. By the way Buu tranforms its victims into cookies before eating them!

Enhancement: access to memories. Make IQ roll with a penalty based on how strong is the memory. You can remember things or skills of your consumed victims. This is like diablerie of vampire the masquerade.

Enhancement: acid attack. things consumed receive a cyclic toxic attack of your digestive acid.

[Adelus]

Originally Posted by lvalero

A couple of ideas

Limitation: leave visible marks. Each time you consume a victim there is a visible mark on your body. For example twisted faces over your skin that appears to be screaming. if not hidden by clothes or other means, people will react to you as if you have Odious Personal Habit: Eats people!

This works; would it be a form of Nuisance Effect?

Originally Posted by lvalero

Enhancement: sleep attack. When you consume your victim, make some opposed will roll. If you win the victim is in coma. This is inspired by dragon ball villain Buu. By the way Buu tranforms its victims into cookies before eating them!

To me, I don't think this needs to be a part of the ability itself; if you have the power to put people to sleep within your body, I'd just buy that as an Affliction with the appropriate modifiers and then slap Internal from Biotech on it for 1/5th cost.

Originally Posted by lvalero

Enhancement: access to memories. Make IQ roll with a penalty based on how strong is the memory. You can remember things or skills of your consumed victims. This is like diablerie of vampire the masquerade.

This is another case like the above; for this I would use a combination of a modified Racial Memory (where you remember things your victims knew, not your ancestors) and a Modular Abilities limited to only the skills or powers your victims knew (like how Kirby does it).

Originally Posted by lvalero

Enhancement: acid attack. things consumed receive a cyclic toxic attack of your digestive acid.

This is also an internal Innate Attack. You can get some pretty nasty damage on the cheap if you are willing to engulf someone first.

Corrosion Attack 1d (+45%) (Aura, +80%; Internal, *1/5; Melee Attack: Cannot Parry, -5%; Melee Attack: Reach C, -30%) [3]

Though as others have noted default acid damage would be something on the order of a point of damage every minute or five, and the real threats would be suffocation first.

[Ketsuban]

One thing that struck me is that it seems odd that Muffle is an enhancement here whereas Exposed (which one could argue would have an effect on how audible noises inside the vehicle are from outside) is a limitation on Payload.

People-inside-people are really just a fleshier version of vehicles-as-characters, which have a lot of unanswered questions. I suspect we need to compile a list if we want this to actually be viable before GURPS Vehicles 4e comes out.

[Adelus]

Originally Posted by Ketsuban

One thing that struck me is that it seems odd that Muffle is an enhancement here whereas Exposed (which one could argue would have an effect on how audible noises inside the vehicle are from outside) is a limitation on Payload.

People-inside-people are really just a fleshier version of vehicles-as-characters, which have a lot of unanswered questions. I suspect we need to compile a list if we want this to actually be viable before GURPS Vehicles 4e comes out.

Payload deals more with the storage-side of things, and having an exposed payload means that those things are more liable to be damaged or observed, which isn't so great for smuggling or subterfuge. I don't actually know if there are rules for how obstructions interact with hearing range.

I do know the rules for Internal, x1/5 and the Internal (One Area Only), -50% modifiers are from Biotech, and specifically the part about Biovehicles. THat might be a good place to look concerning Characters-as-vehicles. Though I do share the sentiment that GURPS 4e VDS can't come soon enough.

EDIT: Also went and added some values for the modifiers I've been thinking of, if anyone wants to suggest changes.

[Adelus]

Apologies for the bump, but I had some extra questions to throw in regarding Payload's interaction with all this and modifiers for it.

Payload by default provides an enclosed, internal space for storing objects that don't count against encumbrance. Since Exposed, -50% cancels out the enclosed part, it seems that -50% for Counts Against Encumbrance seems about fair if you wanted it to simply represent having space hollowed out for storing occupants or objects without extra support that keeps it from counting against carried weight.

Right off the bat that's 0.5/level, but it doesn't seem to entirely cover everything. If the payload is supposed to be in the stomach, that means that anything inside is subject to possible damage by acids, the stomach muscles, the humidity (poor place to hide spellbooks)... and conversely, anything that interacts with the body's digestive system like potions, poisons, drugs, or other toxic materials that seep out of containers would cause immediate effect on the body. You'd have to at the very least make sure you don't mind losing whatever you put inside for storage purposes, or go to extra efforts to keep objects protected from the environment and vice-versa.

What would, say, Hazardous to Contents and Subject to Metabolic Hazards end up costing as limitations? Could it bring Payload down to -80%?

Though on the other hand - is Payload really necessary, or to what extent is it necessary? The RAW method of engulfing through Constriction Attack (Engulfing) doesn't seem to make any mention of limits on how many targets can be engulfed (save for the fact they count as carried encumbrance) or that Payload is necessary at all.