Gradual Mutation

[Adragis029]

This was covered somewhat in my suggestion for mutation flavour text, but I thought it’d be helpful to separate the two.

The basic idea is that gaining a mutation is over a period of time after mutagen intake, with symptoms manifesting due to the bodily changes (feathers/spines pushing through the skin, night vision causing pain and temporary blindness in sunlight during development, etc.) much like a regular disease.
This would also allow, perhaps, for something akin to ‘prevention’: if your character suddenly feels horrible when they go outside (but not enough to affect stats) you’re gonna drink some purifier, which might auto-cure developing mutations with priority over ‘settled’ mutations.

The effects would likely manifest perhaps a few hours to a couple days after consuming the mutagen, and be almost universally negative (some exceptions might include developing traits like Slimy, which would likely just increase wet benefits for a while and leave no trail while you’re covered in only a thin layer of mucus).

That’s the gist of the idea. I am aware I’ve brought this up already.

[kevin.granade]

I’m on board with this, though I doubt we’d add mutation-specific symptoms, that’s a hell of a lot of mutations to add symptoms for, and the sub-feature of allowing selective purification is definitely not a good idea, mutations are supposed to be somewhat random, if you can pick-and-chose cheaply, it makes them much better than they are supposed to be.

[Adragis029]

Wasn’t really pick-and-choose, just, ‘will get rid of mutations that are developing rather than ones you already have’.
Although you’re right, that’s basically a quick backspace button.

Although if not symptoms, at least flavour text of some sort which pops up now and then would be nice. Generic mutation sickness is fine as long as it SEEMS well-planned.
I’m probably massively underestimating the difficulty of coding different mutation symptoms.

[kevin.granade]

Here’s my reasoning, if you have mutation specific symptoms and purifier targets “incipient” mutations instead of existing ones, it means you can just alternate mutagen and purifier until you get a symptom for a mutation you want, or you at least get a symptom for a mutation that you want to avoid.
I don’t have a problem with “oh shit, I got exposed to mutagen, but I want to keep my current mutations”, it’s the combination of targeting new mutations and being able to tell what those mutations are going to be that’s the problem.
So basically by the time you get symptoms, it has to have progressed past the point where you can target the new mutations for removal. Then we’d have both the features you’re asking for without making acquiring a certain set of mutations much easier.

Each set of symptoms wouldn’t be hard to add individually, there are just a lot of mutations.

[Adragis029]

Well, most symptoms are likely to be just infrequent pain. It’s very likely you’d only need two or three symptom sets to match things, and some basic intensifying flavour text. My example for night vision would likely apply to all the night visions, spines growing and fangs growing are likely both gonna just cause pain, etc. etc.