This seems about the right place to post.

I've already asked and confirmed that fingernail alterations are not allowed, but this seems very contrary to most the other (possibly related) systems I can think of.

This comes up as I purposely sat out of a feature alteration / GALD service at the Spitfire and opted to do alchemy instead (yes, I really did). Ordinarily feature alterations are something I'd like but I find it an exercise in frustration in practice. When I first tried to get my fingernails done (at EG a couple years back) and was rejected, I did my eyes instead. Though no one told me eyes aren't limited to the 15/15/15 system until after, so I definitely could have done something a little more interesting with that one.

The reasoning I received both on the forums as well as from a merchant regarding fingernail alterations was that gloves would cover my fingernails, thus they cannot be altered.

Yet there was nail polish released at Ebon Gate (the same EG I got turned down), and it works fine with gloves (even if that's stupid).

Finger tattoos are always visible, whether one is wearing gloves or not.

Wearing and removing rings is not an issue with gloves, and the visibility and order have no relation to each other.

One might even say that permanently altering fingernails isn't sensible because they grow, etc, but this would contradict hair alterations which are very common. It should be fair to assume, in this example, that for hair and fingernails, a character could reasonably maintain a given look (e.g. if my character neglects his fingernails as a general rule, they will be raunchy all the time).

I think the logic that "fingernails are covered by gloves, and thus cannot be altered" is sound. My problem is nothing else in the game appears to work this way, and fingernails are being singled out unfairly. Am I using selection bias in my examples? Do gloves have any bearing on other feature, tattoo, or inventory systems? Perhaps there are other kinds of hand/finger alterations/tattoos which are equally prohibited under the same logic. If so, is there a reason for two systems which are clearly not unified for quite arbitrary reasoning?

I think I deleted my prospective fingernail alteration for my hoary old sorcerer, but imagine something along the lines of "jagged yellow fingernails".

Because fingernail polish was released in very recent years and is not a legacy item, I'd like to request that the blanket rules prohibiting fingernail alterations be lifted. If the rules will not be changed, I'd kindly request anything under ALTER (30 or 31 seem the most relevant) mention this ban at least. If this is the route we go (simply updating ALTER), let me know because I should try to summarize any other constructive suggestions as well to clarify existing rules.

The heart of the issue, as far as I can see, is that gloves are mostly pin-worn items. In the case of foot-related things, at least most footwear is indeed worn on the feet. So gloves are incapable of covering finger tattoos etc etc. But as long as this is the system we have, could we make it equitable?

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Thanks very much for the thoughtful and detailed reply!

>1. Gloves should not be pin worn, they should be "hand worn." If they're pin worn, they're either from a time before we had this many places to wear things, or they're made improperly.

Yes. I realized sometime after posting that most modern gloves are hand worn. I assume I was at least rightly recalling a time way back when they were pin worn, but who knows.

>3. Gloves don't cover hand tattoos, because there's no "hand" slot for tattoos. Technically, we should not tattoo hands because of this (yes, I know it's been done).

Hand tattoos are not a general slot, and should be covered clearly enough with the rules for "other" places. I recall it says like "not on the bottom of your foot." This would, anyway, be in a similar boat to fingernail alterations: maybe you can find a GM willing to do it, but it's generally not within the rules. Anyway, we're on the same page here.

>4. That being said, I just tested and confirmed rings do not cover finger tattoos, either. I'm going to go with "the tattoo is higher on your finger than the ring sits" for this one.

Or that rings are small and the tattoo is assumed to be large? Not like you ever know, anyway. My recent "leg" tattoo is designed on my calf (that's how it shows in the details). I assumed that the calf was the "leg" slot since there is a tattoo slot for "thigh" and "ankle", so "leg" was the part between those. Ironically, this tattoo is covered by my 'thigh-strapped' kit because the kit is worn on my "leg"! This is amusing from a mechanics perspective more than anything.

>5. Nail polish is not covered by gloves because it affects the unique slot in your features, and nothing covers that except other unique feature slot things.

Yeah. That's why I want to be able to alter my fingernails in a similar feature slot!

>So, while this doesn't answer your fingernail alteration question, I hope it explains the set up reasons behind a few things. I don't think this is a quick fix, because I don't know the coding mechanics behind these systems (features, tattoos, "wear spots") and how they interact. The inconsistencies do make me twitchy. No promises, but I will look into it.

Definitely for me, it's the twitching part!

Had a great time at the Spitfire regardless of feature alterations, and used 9 of my 10 slots (kept one open to the end just in case!)

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