Aberrant RPG - How would you deal with people with lots of arms?

[iamthedave]

The extra arms body modification is pretty awesome, however you look at it. But I always felt it really just covers an extra pair. What if someone's doing a character inspired by Shiva, for example, or a spider, and has 8 arms? Or six? Or whatever?

I feel like just multiplying the extra arms benefit would be pretty broken. -1 from multiple action penalties is extremely good, -2 or 3 might be over the top.

Bonuses to grapple, climbing and other such checks seemed like a worthy approach. Or is it best to just say that -1 subtraction is enough for any number of arms?

If you're mildly curious, this came about because someone loved the idea of their mega-intelligent character solving 4 rubix cubes simultaneously (with 1 rubix cube per two limbs); and accordingly they have more than one 'face'. Pretty weird, but very Hindu. Apart from the rubix cube bit I guess.

[Einherjar]

Well, it's Constitutionally protected by the right to bear arms.

[Dawn OOC]

I'd certainly suggest Omnidexterity. I would limit the extra arms bonus too, mostly because when you have that many appendages waving around, there's an upper limit to what can be done without it just being awkward. YMMV, though.

[iamthedave]

Oh yeah that's an approach. Kind of have it work like a limited bodymorph; the extra arms expenditure lets them simulate a couple of other - most likely mega dex enhancement - abilities. Hmm. I see potential in that...

What's YMMV again?

[Dawn OOC]

Your Milage May Vary - as in, your experiences may lead you to a different conclusion. Just tossed that out there in case someone wanted to argue the Mega-Dex would render my argument obsolete.

[Courier]

Either limit the number of dots a character can take to 5... or better still, just limit it to *one* and let them take any number of extra limbs with it.

Example: Shiva the nova has 4 extra arms, she purchased Bodymod: Extra Limb(s) once. She gets a -1 for multiple actions and that's it.

[iamthedave]

Well, it's a body mod, isn't it? Body mods aren't really a 'power' as such, so they're in a kind of gray area. You could easily have a high-taint aberrant with loads and loads of arms to where they're some sort of twisted ARM BEAST.

hurray for Body mods.

[BlueNinja]

I've seen it done two ways:

1) Buying the body mod allows for any number of extra limbs (defined at purchase) and a single bonus.

2) Buying the body mod allows an extra limb or pair of limbs, and the bonus, and can be bought up to 5 times (as though it were a power).

While #2 is better from a mechanics standpoint, it never really caught on, probably because most people don't picture their PC as a giant spider.

[iamthedave]

Or ARM BEAST.

I'll play around. It pushes on being broken to go too far with it. I once built a character who may as well have been named Ms. Magimix, and all she had was Extra Limbs (2 extra arms), Multitasking, Quickness and high dice pools. She was reliably pulling off 6 + actions a turn.

[metaphysician]

I favor the "you can only buy it once" view. If you want to be able to do ten different things at once, you don't buy multiple body mods. You supplement your Extra Arms with lots of Mega Dex and Mega Wits.