Bulldrek v3.0

So I have a question on auras.

If someone had Multiple Personalities, would each personality have a different aura to it?

I have a player that wants to play a character with Multiple Personalities. It's an interesting concept, but I'm trying to determine if people would be able to recognize the different personalities by their aura.

My personal stance is that it would to a degree, but I'm curious what other people think and why.

In my opinion, it would depend on the degree of difference between the personalities. If the personalities had vastly different personas, skills, and abilities - say, educated intellectuals vs ignorant savges; magic-users vs the mundane - then the auras would look significantly different.

Otherwise, if the personalities share a common skill-set and a common pool of memories, I wouldn't make the differences in aura much more pronounced than differing moods.

Otherwise, if the personalities share a common skill-set and a common pool of memories, I wouldn't make the differences in aura much more pronounced than differing moods.

I was thinking something along those lines actually. The auras /look/ different, but if you could set them side by side and compare you would realize it's the same person. Kind of like if you dye someones hair, change the style, shave their beard, etc the person is almost unrecognizable. But if you put pictures of them side by side, you realize it's the same person.

here is a question to go with that...if someone had multiple personalities...could one personality be a mage that cast spells and the other simply be a physad. The mage personality couldn't use the physad skills and vice versa.

Techincally, yes. However, from a mechanics point of view, I would make you treat them as two separate characters. IE, you'd have to spend points for both a Mage and an Adept. Also, Initiating would only affect one of them at a time.

My thought was one character with the points split between the two abilities. I mean technically your sharing the same essence so if one personality gets cyberwear it does affect both on an essence level.

I'd say that the auras, as mentioned above, would be close enough that a good aura-reader could tell they were the same. However, at a glance they'd have a different texture or feel or color or however you want to describe it. Similarly, if you looked at their faces you'd be able to tell its the same person, but from a distance they'll probably move differently, have different gestures and mannerisms and such.

As for Mage/PhysAd or Mage/Mundane... Multiple Personality disorders usually don't grant access to additional skills and such -- however, one might know that a skill is available and another might not, so when they consider their available options they'll overlook the fact that they can do certain things.

"There's a bomb here!" "Throw it out the window or something..." "But... uh... you're an expert demolitions specialist..." "I am not." "Try it..." "Oh, look, I accidently defused it." "Dude, we know Japanese!" "Sugoi!"

On the other hand, only one personality may be able to shape the essence properly for magical ability. If you wanted to split Mage/PhysAd abilities, though, I'd use a Phys-Mage that makes excuses for why his abilities on both sides are reduced -- probably whatever the original trauma was that caused the initial fracturing of personalities. Such a person would also refuse to accept that he still has 6 points of essence (or however many he has). Both aspects would swear up and down that he was scarred and that injury reduced his essence capacity.