Aberrant RPG - A question about aberrations and shapeshift

[iamthedave]

And hello, 'tis my first post.

I'm running an Aberrant game soon, it's going to be moderate to high taint because we're playing up the inhumanity of Novas, but one of the characters wants to use shapeshift/appearance alteration/copycat to be either harder to find or completely impossible to do so.

So, do these powers cover up physical or other aberrations or not? I'm inclined to think not given that Chiraben I think his name was is noted in one of the official adventures to always wear dark shades when using copycat because he has glowing green eyes.

Do you agree with that or play it differently?

And so glad I found this place. So much lovely new things to work with.

[Ravi FitzCoventry]

Heya, thedaveiam.

The ruling I personally use is that appearance changing Enhancements cannot cover up abberations unless the nova rolls more successes on an App+Disguise roll than his permanent Taint level, but Shapeshift can. There's also the Chimerical Abberation power which, combined with the Enhancements, can shift the abberations to something less obvious to assist in the disguise. Chiraben's an ugly spud, and not really a master of disguise despite his Copycat abilities. It stands to reason he'd slip up sometimes and be unable to cover his eyes.

Don't forget that even if covered up, any device or power/ability that detects quantum pollution is still going to go batshit if a high-taint nova is around. Such as the sensations Psiads get, for example.

[iamthedave]

I had been thinking of doing that, so yeah I will. I find that Appearance skills can be one of those stats people don't pay much attention to, especially once they've got those very powerful enhancements. I think making them need to use disguise to cover Aberrations will get some skill points over there.

Thanks for the suggestion.

On Chiraben: I seem to recall he was also somewhat psychopathic. Doubt he ever really put in the effort to figure out how to cover up his aberration...

[Dawn OOC]

Ravi hit it on the nose - Chimerical Aberation is the way to go if you want to shape-shift aberations.