Would it be reasonable to mod in backgrounds that have preset mutations? You would be able to pick backgrounds like Lizardman with some notable traits from the lizard mutation category. There could be cross mutation backgrounds like: Squid(…man?) with tentacles, a tail fin and other cephlapod or fish mutations throw in. Not just the positives, you would get a mix of good and bad mutations that (I hope) you can’t get rid of. If you are a Beastman you are a carnivore for example.
This would be more intesesting for RPing a mutant, you can already start with mutation traits, but these cost points and are typically flavored as: You were experimented on before the cataclysm. Otherwise you are a mad scientist or someone that drank some questionable substances from a lab. The flavor for this mod would be along the lines of: That you mutated naturally, or a scenario a bit after the cataclysm and you are mutant offspring. Thoughts?
Flavor wise it just doesn’t really work. Mutations were pretty much confined to labs only prior to the Cataclysm, which is why only the lab experiment professions can show up with them. As such I don’t think it’s that likely it would get mainlined, though depending on the quality and theme you went for it certainly might make it in as a mod (look at the D&D professions mod after all).
That said I’m not sure if you can actually define starting mutations with professions yet, but if you can’t it’s definitely something I’d like to add sometime, even if it only ends up being used in mods and not at all in the mainline.
Hm, it is possible to add “forced_traits” in a json for a new scenario, so what you want to do should easily be possible.
Apart from lore-issues though, you also have to consider balance aspects. Starting with full night vision is a huge perk that you have to (?) counterbalance one way or the other.
Recently I created a “Spider-Man” scenario which gave me pretty much all the spider mutations but I had the conduct of starting and moving only in the city (not that hard with city size 8). It was really fun to stay in your firestation during day and roam the city at night.
One more thing is (IIRC), that your starting traits/mutations are not taken into consideration when taking mutagen. So if you start with a ton of spider mutations, you still might get random mutations after chugging down that mutagen.
Yeah, professions support having just about anything as a starting “trait”. Trait-status is what makes it not count for category strength and serve as baseline for Purifier.
I imagine it’ll take some reworking to get these sorted out.
Thanks for the replies! I’ll need to test out trait interactions before I try making any outlines for mutations. Things like trying to stack the lizard’s cold debuffs, or stacking both easy to track traits. I would probably just add these as challenging backgrounds that promote a different mechanic. It could be quite interesting to try and keep warm as a lizard! There could be high point cost backgrounds as well, but I would probably need to try the existing backgrounds with 5+ cost first to see what a 5 cost background’s power level is at.
Also, how agressive can you get npc’s to be with mutations? Are they ever likely to attack on sight? You could pull off a predator/ monster theme with sapiovor and culler. I have no problem giving full post threshold traits for this if they fit the mechanics I am going for. If I could make the flavor fit, then you are a new species and not just a mutant. Thus you could break the threshold of a different category… unless the threshold lore is different from I expect. I really should read all the lore, but there is quite a bit of it.
A roadrunner skater with bad knees might be another idea. Trying to make flat ground speed very high, while making rough ground speed a crawl. You would probably need to disincentivize just staying in a city permanently though. You might have to house rule world gen options to make some of these work… Maybe require fast zombies to counter balance your speed a little.
Anyone know how strong the more combat centric traits are practically? Things like claws, fangs, talons and horns. I remember trying out hooves and wrecking any of the low level zombies, but that could have been the martial art or the starting skills doing the work.
Not possible to change right now. As we improve the NPC framework stuff it should slowly become more possible to control things like this, but as of now it’s basically totally hardcoded.