Re: Puma People abilities

From: Norbert Franz <norbert.franz1_at_...>
Date: 18 Mar 2005 16:26 GMT

"Stephen Tempest" <e-g_at_...> wrote:

> <    "Norbert Franz" <norbert.franz1_at_...> writes:

>
> >Speaking of the Puma People, I think every self-respecting
> >Puma hero will try to train up their Shapechange
> >ability first, as it's a bit cumbersome to roll vs. a resistance of 14 every time (and fail quite a lot of times, if the contest is 17 vs. 14).
>
> Mind you, I'd have thought that no self-respecting Puma Person would
> ever fail their shapechange ability (HQ p 63)...
>
> - *unless* they were in a stressful situation, or rushed, or under
> some harmful outside influence (alcohol, magic, etc), in which case an
> ability roll would be called for.
>

Hello Stephen,

  thank you. That will indeed clear up a lot of things... "in stressful, dramatically appropriate situations" is the way to go.

  I have one more question that always comes naturally with shapechanging characters: When you other Narrators have a shapechanging character in the game, does their clothing transform with them as a default?

To me, that is sort of the difference between what I call "comic book transformation" and "fantasy transformation":

Comic-book style:
  The shapechanging hero goes into his animal shape and his clothing and regular small possessions carried on his person just merge with his "essence" and will re-appear as normal when he goes back from animal shape into human shape.

Fantasy novel style (or "Incredible Hulk" style):   The shapechanging hero goes into his animal shape and his clothing falls to the ground (if he transforms into a mouse, for example), or gets ripped apart (if he transforms into a bear or something equally big). When he transforms into his human shape again, he'll be naked.

This would only affect how much time the shapechanger would have to spend retrieving their stuff again, and how much nudity there is in your game. ;-)

• Norbert