Hey all

One of my players' character mutated a bit - and got feel no pain minor mutation. Granted that gave her 1 Wound, but can you help me with disadvantages? Is it visible? Or comes to light only in special situations, like being tested by a doctor etc? Hit me with some ideas please!

And no, I don't want to be especially harsh, just wondering about it.

Breaking glasses when they pick them up and not realise they're crushing so hard.

After a fight some one finds there is still a knife stuck in the characters back (d5 wounds ignore Toughness when pulling it out unless accompanied by a -10 Medicae check)

The character starts to become sloppy in their movements, after all if they dont feel it when they're shoulder or leg hits a door or table edge when they move about they might suffer Agility negative modifiers..

Whilst out dining the onuon rings are little over done and essentially batter rings filled with scolding oil. Yummy, what will THAT do to their Fellowship score i wonder.

Basically, they become like Thomas Covenant in the (VERY Depressing) Stephen Donaldson " Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Saga ", who catches a form of Leprosy and through this becomes increasingly bitter, resentful and jaded.

Not to mention sexually repressed. And when he is (through wild magic) healed, the first thing he does is **** some one (the person that healed him) because he has full use of everything again and is suddenly able to feel and touch and experience, and is for a short while quite mad on the whole lost in sensations thing.

Personally i say let the character slowly develop the Jaded Talent, as well as Iron Will and even die Hard.

Then, start making his life miserable, take away all the things he likes, the foods ad drinks, the flavours, the touch of the joy-girls hand and lips so on and so forth. start staking up negetive modifiers, make his dice rolls in secret for him if need be.

then offer him a chance at Salvation, some one offeres to give him back all that he's lost, and all it would cost him is a small portion of that thing they call a soul and the promise to help out at some point when called on.

Then take away the Jaded, Iron Will & Die Hard, but reward him with extra fate points to sped and burn as he sees fit as often as he sees fit, keep track of what he spends, then have the person show up to collect their debt, with each point of fate he's used adding 1 to either Corruption or Insanity and each point he's Burned as D5 points split as he sees fit.

There was an "enemy" i think in the Ascension book, a kind of demonic/faustian debt collector that would be ideal for this as well

Great ideas! I'm definitely going to use some And the character is a she, and a psyker too. She's around rank 6 now, so quite experienced and not exactly sane either (Insanity around 40), so not sure about talents like Jaded etc... But ignoring obvious wounds in/after a fight - might give the rest of her team some food for thought...

I played a character that got this mutation. The charcter wont be aware of this imedetly and its dam dangerous. You dont feel you wonds, don realise you are wonded, you will try to walk on a broken leg. You might scrats you skin until you see warm blood tickling down. If you are wrining you fingers nervourlsy you might disjoint them and not notice it. It a bomb goes off near you you might belive that its just some one else blood is covering you when its actually your orn and most of your skinn was ripped off during the blast. Etc.

That one can be truly horrific.

A good mechanical way of simulating this mutation is for you to keep track of their wounds for them, but never let them know what their current total is unless they spend a turn and give themselves a good once over with a Medicae+30 check. You simply discribe any wounds they recive visually if they bother to check themselves out (or other PC's keep an eye on them).

I think you guys get a little hard. Yes, the name of game is "no pain". And a mono blade is called to be able to cut everything. In game-reality, you "only" get DS:2 and the "feels no pain" only gives +1 wound. 40K has a long tradition of giving something an ueber-description while the actual game effects are a different dish.

Thereby, I would say the character only develops are very dense/hard/scarred skin on the majority of his body. This is pretty visible and a inspection will reveal the fact that this is not "normal".

The things all of you describe are mali I would suppose for a game effect similiar to "cannot be stunned" (which is my way of interpreting "Feels no pain").

Gregorius21778 said:

I agree. This mutation - like very few others - is meant to give a positive effect. While all these ideas might sound funny at the moment, as a player I would soon be pretty pissed. "Feels no pain" is just the short name. Just like Iron Jaw, Catfall and Wall of Steel, you know. The description merely describes it as " cares little for injury or harm". So he might feel (and choose to ignore) it because he's tougher now.

I wonder whether you take the flavor text of all talents as literally. Rapid Reaction ("any situation" that would encompass all rounds not just the first). Foresight (hey it ought to be more than just a bonus, it's looking into the future and knowing "the consequences of any action" after all) or Total Recall (total is total, screw the test). There are plenty others where I'd start to argue if someone chooses to nitpick flavor text over mechanics - don't let me get into weapon names and descriptions ;-)

If you guys are really into such harsh drawbacks, you should heigthen the benefit.

In RT, a mutation with the same name offers +3 (or was it +5?) wounds and the "Iron Jaw" talent. If it comes to "does not feel at all", I think this would be more appropriate.

Yeah the RT version was +5 wounds and Ironjaw. Personally, I'm more of the opinion the brain has probably become bent to the point the mutant is jaded towards most levels of physical pain and can just 'terminator' on through thing that leave normal people squealing

The "don't let the player ever know their wound total or how many wounds of damage they've taken without a Med test" is really neat and inventive. Might cause some unique problems or roleplaying moments.

I also agree with the wounds thing as the most realistic downside, its not "feel nothing and be permanently numb" its "feel no pain" a big difference there.

If you do want a dissadvantage (I think I agree with Gregorious21778 that it does not really need one) the idea about keeping track of his wounds for him sounds good, although a bit of a bother.

In real life there is actually a few conditions that cause people to be born without the ability to feel pain, and it's kind of dangerous. Cut yourself somewhere and you won't know that you are bleeding untill you actually see the blood. And as children they can damage their hands by chewing on them since they don't get the propper feedback to teach them that its a bad idea.

At Last Forgot said:

Borrowed right out of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 . There're implants that shutdown the pain receptors in each game. The player doesn't get to know how badly injured their character is until the implants are turned off, or they keel over. Sure, you can see the knife sticking out between your ribs, and the slick sheen of blood oozing from the wound, but you can't actually feel it.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Any human being with the proper amount of adrenaline pumping through their veins will start to lose the pain sensation. Though this is closer in effect to morphine then actually losing feeling(you still feel pain on morphine, you just don't care)

I'm in the camp that believes there are already too many things out there in the dark grim universe of the 40k universe that we don't need to make things harder on players. Not every mutation needs to be bad or debilitating.

I demand that we send a strike force of SoB's to deal with the heretic LeBlanc!

Whoa didn't expect to start such a discussion, but hey - the more ideas, the better! I think that there is no such thing (in my version of the universe) as 'good' mutations. Each should be dangerous in some way. On the other hand, it's supposed to be a minor one, so the penalities cannot be too harsh. So I think I'll use the 'MG controls the wound number' variant, but also all pain-affiliated critical effects will be lessened or cancelled. This way other players may notice that something is wrong, but also can possibly save the mutant's life. For a few minutes longer...

Velvetears said:

You'll have to get past me, mate. And that's no small feat in and of itself. So back at'cha!

But in all seriousness, there are mutations that have little drawback to them. Most such are found in things like Abhumans, who are themselves nothing more than a stable mutstion of the human genome. Though, I suppose being larger than a Space Marine in Tactical Dreadnought Power Armor and denser then a block of adamantite could be perceived as "downsides."

-=Brother Praetus=-

Skie said:

What suggests to you that all mutations must be noticeable? Or have penalties?

It's your game, of course... but check with the player first. I'd be pissed if the DM starts reading stuff into rules that just isn't there and getting reminded of the arbitrariness every session (that is when injuries and wound score are involved). This isn't funny or anything. This is an attitude to deliberately try to turn just about anything into something negative to the player. Perhaps reconsider your assumptions that mutations must be dangerous or noticeable? Because I wouldn't follow.

Chester said:

While I can't really say what's on Skie's mind nor Skie's reasoning for his or her perceptions, I can point out that what little extra bad is read into the mutation is off set by a bit of extra good read into it as well in the part about pain affiliated side-effects of criticals being lessened or canceled. By Skie's apparent interpretation, the mutation isn't becoming worse, it's just doing more, both bad and good. The mutation it self, when taken at absolute face value is a touch boring to begin with if no part of it is expanded upon or further interpreted from what the book explicitly says (and wide swaths of that one sentence that describes it is begging for such). So, it's not a GM arbitrary interpreting a particular rule or aspect for the worse but a GM making said rule or aspect more interesting which defeats one of the greatest evils that any aspect of a game can be afflicted with; the word "boring."

Besides, what's the fun (or point) of a mutation if said mutation will never be noticed?

Graver I think your ability to read my mind is scary. Could you please ask for a permission for mindscans please?

The player in question won't mind, since a)it's my wife b) she knows that I'm a fair and experienced MG and c) as long as she's having fun she doesn't mind my experiments. But yes, that's what I meant Graver - plus, a mutation gained through accumulating corruption should be in some way bad. It wasn't a random effect it was, in a way, a cumulation of the character's dark deeds. That's why I'm seeking for something more than +1 Wound, which is a great bonus with no drawbacks.

On the other hand... This could also be a misleading temptation - 'Hey, I've seen terrible things, and done some bad things, and those only made me stronger! Means I'm on the right path! *talks to some more demons*' Just a late-night thought.

Its not that they dont know they are hurt...its that they dont "feel" it the same was normal people do...some people have a preternaturally high pain threshold level ( like those into the more extreme forms of BDSM can get...or say...for instance...a Flagellant or someone from a Death cult or ANY higher militaristic training ) WELL KNOWN fact...training for the agencies even at current.....includes serious physical punishment and torture to harden the person to its use and elevate the tolerance to it...so they VERY much DO "feel" it....they just are able to "shut it off" when it comes to the usual autonomic response from the body ( I.E. putting your hand on a just used seriously hot stove on accident...you wil be reaction jerk your hand away fast as ****....BUT one with feel no pain....would simply be able to "tolerate " it and force themselves to work through it to do whatever it was that required them to do that seriously painful action....Prime eXample...Lethal Weapon 1 movie...the albino Merc leader "Joshua"...in the nightclub..with the cig lighter....THAT is feel no pain...you do feel it..your just able to IGNORE it because your tolerance is amped up through mental/physical conditioning ( in this case due to mutation)...thats all..It doesnt affect anything else like sensations....anyone whos had higher level training understands the idea presented

Cobramax76 said:

But that is learning how to tolerate pain and honing your body. "Feel No Pain" is a mutation, an actual twisting of the flesh caused by the dark powers. I have to agree with the mindset that it's not going to be all nice and fluffy just giving the person the ability to be a badass with pain. They won't feel pain, at all, ever. They may feel some basic sensation, but if they do it will be dulled down and distant.

For the truly evil GM you may consider having it act like the real life nervous system disease "congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis" (CIPA) in which the person hurts themselves, touching things that are far too hot or falling down and not realizing they broke their arm in the fall. Or even worse, have it so they feel nothing. No pain, no pleasure. They will shrug off that bullet wound but when they get home they won't be able to feel the caress of their wife or husband or weird android-sex-machine (don't want to exclude anyone).