Question on aesthetics

[Neongelion]

Exactly how liberal can one get with aesthetics if they don't give the character any mechanical benefit whatsoever? For example, I know the clockwork prosthesis is illegal, but could I have one of my characters have a prosthetic arm purely for cosmetic purposes? I know this might seem like a dumb question but I'm not familiar enough with PFS to really know just where people draw the line with this kind of stuff.

[Mystic Lemur]

That would probably fall under the "no reskinning" rule. There are rules for non-magical prosthetic limbs, and claiming to have one with none of the listed downsides is a mechanical benefit.

[gnoams]

This falls under the massive table variance rule. Most people I've played with think interesting cosmetic descriptions are cool. But occasionally people get really worked up over "reskinning." The purpose of the reskinning rule is: don't confuse the GM or other players. So your halberd can have wires and gears all over it as long as everyone who looks at it can still tell that it's a halberd.
Some people, however, take reskinning to the extreme to mean everything must look exactly like the descriptions in the official pathfinder books. And of course there's varying levels in between. The good thing with descriptions though, is that it has no mechanical effect. So if you play with a table of players who get upset at your steampunk in their fantasy world, you can just not describe it to them.

[Imbicatus]

Just describe it as a regenerate spell that had a side effect. It's a "natural" arm, it just looks artificial.

[FLite]

Some of us GMs get nervous when it sounds like people's reskinning is being done to preestablish circumstance bonuses....

[Neongelion]

Well I should be more specific: I don't really want a steampunk looking prosthetic, more like a bulky, metal gauntlet that runs up to your shoulder, something like this. Given that this character (a paladin) wears medium armor and has a decent Dexterity (a +2) I was hoping it be pretty easy to justify having it ("I never take off this part of my armor for no particular reason").

But then I guess that might be considered using piecemeal armor rules which don't exist in PFS...hmm.

[FLite]

My biggest concern with this reskin is: what happens the first time the party has to mess around in a pool of flesh eating acid to grab the metal key at the bottom.

[BigNorseWolf]

Neongelion wrote:

Well I should be more specific: I don't really want a steampunk looking prosthetic, more like a bulky, metal gauntlet that runs up to your shoulder, something like this. Given that this character (a paladin) wears medium armor and has a decent Dexterity (a +2) I was hoping it be pretty easy to justify having it ("I never take off this part of my armor for no particular reason").

But then I guess that might be considered using piecemeal armor rules which don't exist in PFS...hmm.

Just get a locked gauntlet. That should emulate the "open hand" "close hand" feature of the prosthetics in the setting well enough.