Cosmetic Question

[vitruvian]

If you change your race, you're changing your racial template. If you can't change your racial template, you can't change your race.

And with Cosmetic Morph, you wouldn't change your race or racial template to that of an elf - you'd just look like one.

There's nothing in the language of the limitation itself to suggest that you can't look like an elf, or other races of relatively similar size and shape to human - you just don't gain any of their abilities or weaknesses. So, you can certainly have pointed ears, they just won't hear any better; you can look somewhat bigger and stronger, but your ST won't actually go up; you can even look like you have a tough or armored hide, but your skin won't be any harder to pierce.

[Hobbes]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

I believe the official ruling for Cosmetic is still that it is only for disguises. Check Kromm's and Ellie's responses in the Cosmetic Shapeshifting Questions thread. I'd add that Cosmetic doesn't make much sense for AF in light of the official rulings.

Thanks for the link. I missed that thread on my search.

If that's the official ruling, then the limitation should be worded more clearly. Furthermore, it makes buying cosmetic anything completely overpriced. In the case of Morph, you can get Elastic Skin for 20 points, so that means you're paying another 30 points just to match height and build. At most, I think that would be worth another 10 over the cost of ES.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Hobbes

If that's the official ruling, then the limitation should be worded more clearly. Furthermore, it makes buying cosmetic anything completely overpriced. In the case of Morph, you can get Elastic Skin for 20 points, so that means you're paying another 30 points just to match height and build. At most, I think that would be worth another 10 over the cost of ES.

As shown by the responses in that thread, there are some perceived issues with the official ruling.

Cosmetic Morph does look expensive compared to Elastic Skin, but there are some factors that account for at least some of the greater cost:

• No skill roll required. Morph works perfectly by default, while ES needs a successful Disguise roll to impersonate someone.
• Memorization. Morph allows the character to impersonate anyone they can see or touch or that they have memorized (memory 'slots'= IQ). ES does not specify a mechanic for this, but a roll against IQ (to remember who you are trying to impersonate), possibly modified by familiarity and how long ago you saw them, seems appropriate.

Considering these, plus the potential to shift build (as you stated), I don't think Cosmetic is greatly overpriced.

[Gurps Fan]

Powers states (p.111) Cosmetic Shapeshifting can have the Glamour
limitation. Powers also says Cosmetic Shapeshifting with Glamour can be
enhanced with Selective Effect, to represent a "What man? You're talking
to a dog!"-like situation (p.105).

Therefore, Cosmetic Shapeshifting must permit turning into a member of
different races, like human into dog.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Gurps Fan

Powers states (p.111) Cosmetic Shapeshifting can have the Glamour limitation. Powers also says Cosmetic Shapeshifting with Glamour can be enhanced with Selective Effect, to represent a "What man? You're talking to a dog!"-like situation (p.105).

This allows for instead of a physical cosmetic change that you have an illusionary change.

Originally Posted by Gurps Fan

Therefore, Cosmetic Shapeshifting must permit turning into a member of different races, like human into dog.

Cosmetic specifically does not permit changing your racial template.(Basic p.84)
However, invisibility could easily have someone seeing a dog while your allies see you.

[vitruvian]

Cosmetic specifically does permit changing your racial template.(Basic p.84)

Cosmetic specifically does NOT permit changing your racial template is what I believe you meant to say.

That's fine; however, remember, your racial template is the list of traits (advantages and disadvantages) that make you a member of your race - say Magical Aptitude and Unaging for an Elf, or Strikers for a Minotaur, or extra Lifting ST and racial skill with mining for a Dwarf. The fact that you cannot change your template IN NO WAY means that you cannot change your APPEARANCE to match one of these races.

However, invisibility could easily have someone seeing a dog while your allies see you.

Which is completely irrelevant, since you were responding to a point about how Glamour interacts with Cosmetic Shapeshifting, not with Invisibility.

As written in Basic, the Cosmetic limitation simply restricts you from having any functional changes to your abilities based on your changed shape, but does not otherwise restrict you in what shapes you can assume. Racial appearance is not the same thing as a racial template.

Since it's hard to see how you could mimic, say, a four-legged beast without getting the benefits of Four Legs, one could reasonably assume that it does include a less stringent version of Retains Shape - less stringent because you *could* have additional limbs (showy wings, extra arms, a tail, etc.) that looked convincing but weren't actually capable of serving any function (like flying or gliding, actually holding anything, or serving as a limb or striker), just as you can have fur that doesn't give you DR or Temperature Tolerance, extra muscles that don't increase your ST (necessary if you can look like any member of your race, even Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime), etc.

So, you could look like a schnauzer, including your arms looking like front legs with paws, but you wouldn't be able to get around on all fours any better than a human being can normally crawl around in that position.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

Which is completely irrelevant, since you were responding to a point about how Glamour interacts with Cosmetic Shapeshifting, not with Invisibility.

Good point.
Since Cosmetic normally includes Retains Shape and Mass Conservation, (at least that's the impression I got from the earlier thread), the dog example is something which cannot normally be done with just Cosmetic Shapeshifting, so we have look at Glamour in there.

Therefore, perhaps Glamour can be considered an enhancement/limitation on Cosmetic, since it would be allowing it to look like it's doing things it normally can't, but at the same time it further limits as it sacrifices the ability to also fool machines.

This would mean a normal Cosmetic Shapeshifter cannot look like a dog, but a Glamour Cosmetic Shapeshifter not only can look like a dog*, he can look like the Satyr the OP wanted.


*(That'd be a pretty big dog though.)

[Hobbes]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

Cosmetic Morph does look expensive compared to Elastic Skin, but there are some factors that account for at least some of the greater cost:

You make a good case, but not 30 points worth IMO. The factors you mention in no way justify paying more than twice the price for the benefit they provide. I realize this is a subjective judgment, but you'd be better off taking Elastic Skin, Eidetic Memory and a high Disguise skill for the points. It would be cheaper and useful outside of self-change (disguising others, the normal benefits of EM).

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

This would mean a normal Cosmetic Shapeshifter cannot look like a dog, but a Glamour Cosmetic Shapeshifter not only can look like a dog*, he can look like the Satyr the OP wanted.

Glamour can definitely do what I am asking, but it further muddies the water on how Cosmetic works. The Glamour modifier never states that it changes the outcome of Cosmetic, just the way it works.

It is explicit that you cannot use Cosmetic shapeshifting to be another race, but I cannot accept that you can't use it to look like another race. A Hollywood prosthetics artist can make a human look like a Satyr without having any non-human traits; why should Cosmetic shapeshifting be unable?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fabricati

... About the only counter-example I can think of for that, Rev, is the abovementioned Elf example. They're about the same SM as a human, and except for a few cosmetic features, look a lot like a human, too.

At the same time, the racial templates are very different, and a human that looks like an Elf... Would probably be caught out... With all the nastiness that may imply... Hm.

I think elves are within the range of things achievable with Morph (Cosmetic). That is, as far as outward form goes. Basically, Cosmetic lets you do anything you could do as a "man in a rubber suit" with an unlimited budget for costume, makeup, and maybe light prosthetics. So you could be an elf, a Star Trek alien, or a classic Hollywood wolfman. But for anything that would require an animal, or a mechanical model, or computer animation, forget about it.

On the other hand, you could, for example, have cosmetic angel wings that just didn't let you fly because the aerodynamics was wrong.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Hobbes

It is explicit that you cannot use Cosmetic shapeshifting to be another race, but I cannot accept that you can't use it to look like another race. A Hollywood prosthetics artist can make a human look like a Satyr without having any non-human traits; why should Cosmetic shapeshifting be unable?

I've never heard of a Hollywood prosthetics artist be able to pull off backward folding knees. I figured that the bottom half of the satyrs in Narnia were done with F/X; though I suppose you could strap the actors feet up behind their butts and give them backward bending prosthetics, like some of the sprinting artificial spring/legs.

Seems a bit much to allow though under cosmetic, it'd be sort of on the lines of having someone change into a one-eyed, hook handed, peg legged pirate, and having the prosthetics shape into being during the transformation. Doesn't strike me as cosmetic. Even that shapeshifting guy in the Harry Potter stories with the morphing juice had to use the real guy's prosthetics.