DFRPG In Other Time P... *AHEM!* Yadda-Yadda, Something About Claws and Stuff.

[Mr. Death]

Note: Unless you have the ability to conceal
your nature or change your shape (whether
through Flesh Mask, shapeshifting powers, or
the application of a Glamour), your claws are
always visible.

[Sanctaphrax]

I may not like it, but normal looking doom-fists aren't possible by RAW.

Which is dumb. Especially since Claws doesn't actually have to be claws. It can be anything, but for some reason even if your Claws are lightning fists they need to be constantly visible.

Part of the reason I rewrote Claws. A supernatural kung-fu master ought to be supported by the rules.

[Mr. Death]

I may not like it, but normal looking doom-fists aren't possible by RAW.

Which is dumb. Especially since Claws doesn't actually have to be claws. It can be anything, but for some reason even if your Claws are lightning fists they need to be constantly visible.

Part of the reason I rewrote Claws. A supernatural kung-fu master ought to be supported by the rules.

It can be easily. Human Guise is 0 refresh and hides such powers. (Technically the disguise goes away once you start to use them, but in the case of the kung fu master, that'd just be people realizing, "Oh, shit, he can punch through a tank.")

[Sanctaphrax]

Unfortunately, no. Human Guise just hides powers, and if you flub a Discipline roll everyone gets to see them.

[Mr. Death]

It says that -may- happen in times of high stress. In the case of a kung fu master (who, honestly, I'd expect to have high Discipline anyway), that might manifest in him losing his cool and hitting something too hard.

[Sanctaphrax]

Or maybe he's just really into the movie he's watching when suddenly the implausible deadliness of his fists becomes obvious in some unexplained manner.

Human Guise just hides things. It doesn't make those things any different, really. So your death-fists must still have a visible manifestation.

Which is dumb.

[Mr. Death]

It'd have to be a hell of a movie to make a seasoned, deadly, disciplined kung fu master do something like that.

And even in that scenario, I can think of a few ways off the top of my head: He gets excited and swats the arm of his chair, shattering it. He gets mad and stomps his feet, breaking the floorboards.

Blowing his guise doesn't have to mean that just glancing at the fists shows you that they're deadly.

[Mr. Death]

Actually, just realized an even easier way to have a Kung Fu character have Weapon:2 fists without incurring the 'can't conceal' thing: Inhuman Strength.

[Mindflayer94]

I'm currently play-testing a Naruto hack I made

[GryMor]

Actually, just realized an even easier way to have a Kung Fu character have Weapon:2 fists without incurring the 'can't conceal' thing: Inhuman Strength.

Or better yet, have both, with 'Human form' on the 'claws'. When he wants to use that effect, he concentrates his ki (or, if a nekoken practitioner, stares at a cat), goes a bit crazy and his fingers glow blue, shifting to lambent green after learning death touch (aka, poison upgrade).

[Sanctaphrax]

Whoops, forgot about this thread. My apologies.

My plan for a Mystic Martial Artist was Inhuman Strength/Toughness/Speed and Claws, plus some stunts.

And while you can rationalize your way around the silly restrictions on Claws, you really shouldn't have to. It's not like requiring Claws to be visible adds anything to the game.

[Mr. Death]

It makes sense, though. I mean, the power is, at its most basic, for blades attached to your hands that are the equivalent in damage to a sword. Anything else that's Weapon:2, you'd have to put a little effort into concealing (particular Weapon:2 melee weapons), and having them literally attached to your hands means you can't stick them in a pocket or a backpack to hide them.

[Orladdin]

Whoops, forgot about this thread. My apologies.

My plan for a Mystic Martial Artist was Inhuman Strength/Toughness/Speed and Claws, plus some stunts.

I'd love to play a character like that some time (I just have to actually have someone else run a game in my area).  I considered making mine a Jesuit Monk.  They're still around, after all.

And while you can rationalize your way around the silly restrictions on Claws, you really shouldn't have to. It's not like requiring Claws to be visible adds anything to the game.

It's not that requiring them to be visible adds anything; rather, allowing them to be invisible for free takes away something. 

It's not even remotely arguable that having non-detectable claws isn't strictly better than detectable ones.  Then, if one character can have invisible claws for free, why wouldn't every character want that?  All of a sudden, no one has claws anymore.  Everyone's just toting around inexplicably higher unarmed damage.  Furthermore, fewer beings would ever carry normal hand-guns or swords anymore, either.  Claws are simply better if you can spare the refresh.  Gruffs-with-guns?  Not anymore... and just-gruffs is far less interesting.

That's one sad thing about a system with less granularity like the DFRPG.  There should be an option and cost for having hidden or invisible claws, but a difference of 1 refresh is huge.

[Sanctaphrax]

Anything else that's weapon 2, you wouldn't spend Refresh on.

Claws is mostly analogous to Fists stunts like Lethal Weapon.

And Orladdin, your argument doesn't hold up. Human Guise is free. Human Form is cheaper than free. (Incidentally, the fact that Claws + Human Form is better than Claws alone annoys me.) And even when people don't have to look weird, they often do. Because looking weird is only a problem if the GM tosses you a compel, and that's free FP.

I can't overemphasize how important that principle is. In order to make it mechanically okay to make weird narrative decisions, you need to punish those decisions with and only with compels.

Otherwise you run into a few problems. One is the lack of granularity that Orladdin mentioned. Another is less freedom for character-makers. And yet another is a lack of interesting stuff like the nasty bat forms of RCVs.

Incidentally, saying that Claws is always visible makes it hard to simulate a number of things other than super punches. Like retractable claws, for instance. Sure, Human Guise works, but then your character gets unexplained impulse control issues.

I worry that you might be starting from the conclusion that the rules are OK and then trying to justify them. Think about it this way: if you were writing the game, would you add that restriction? If so, why?

[Orladdin]

...Think about it this way: if you were writing the game, would you add that restriction? If so, why?

Because the game was built to do one thing really well: faithfully reproduce the DV.  I would have written it the same way myself.  They wrote it that way because that's how things are in the DV.  Creatures that are nasty looking cover it up with ectoplasm (human guise).  Creatures that have claws actually have claws.  They don't just hit harder (unless they have supernatural strength, which is provided as a separate power).  Claws as a power was written to be claws.  If you want a supernatural judo artist, fine; but that wasn't what they were modeling with the game.  There aren't any in-universe that we've seen, and honestly, that's better covered with other powers (many of them already existing).

If you can mechanically go, "I don't like how this power works, I'm just going to make it strictly better than it was," why not just make every power as strong or ridiculous as we want?  Why have rules at all?  There are plenty of free-form systems that don't have mechanical rules for how they're run.  Why not play one of those instead?