"ugly" or "pretty" trait from bionics or other misfortunes should be ignored if face is covered/hidden by a %

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I think a pretty cool mechanic would be if you could hide your ugliness (such as from bionics gone wrong or other misfortunes) from NPCs by using face coverage like some pre-modern age horror antagonist (such as the invisible man or the Phantom of the Opera). You could use hockey masks, guy fox masks, rioter masks, etc. sort of like how nearsighted people rely on glasses.
However using masks would also prevent somebody from using beneficial face traits like “pretty” or possibly “fey eyes”

2 Likes
2

You do realize that it would reduce trust of any stranger NPC to oblivion? Like:
“Hello I’m a friendly survivor, don’t mind the Friday 13th mask on my face, it’s a family heirloom, so I won’t remove it.”
“Yeah, right, have a bullet to the face, freak”.

2 Likes
3

When does any one take of their filter/dust/gas/pba/survivor mask to talk to people anyways? Is there a mechainc in play that applies?

4

Considering how much this game seems to value realism in its mechanics (not actual lore, mind) that wouldn’t seem to be far-fetched.
And do you really expect somebody to trust you better if your face looks like a road map of hell? They’d probably shoot you on sight thinking you were a monster instead of just telling you to keep your distance. Considering the alternative I think they’d prefer you to keep the mask on.

And to be fair do you really think other survivors would be all that trusting of people in general in a world like this?

5

I agree with mr_sep on this one. I’'d also like to point out that I’m pretty sure most of the traits affecting social standing with npcs, (“Badly Deformed” or “Grotesque” come to mind) are not something you could just cover up with a mask. With the facial distoration cbm and elf eyes being probably the only exceptions.

6

Could apply it to the one holographic face bionic thing, been too long and don’t remember the name.

7

This could be more usefull to hide extreme mutations from people, so that if a mutation you have is hidden under your clothing the NPC won’t react to it but could be offset with a “looks shady” debuff towards their trust.

4 Likes