I could be wrong but I suspect that strong willed individuals wouldn't make good meat puppets.

Generous applications of Control Emotion, Influence, Compulsion, and mind-breaking psychiatric therapy can do wonders =D

Once the adept has been broken to the point of no longer knowing who he or she is without the persona-chips, the rest is easy. Just make sure that the adept doesn't have a mentor spirit - that could screw things up. Well, unless it's Seductress of course - then you might end up with a willing meat-puppet...

All true, but why bother when it's cheaper and easier to just use people who don't have that kind of will power and ego?

Because those people can't change their face, hair, ethnicity, and metatype on command. The puppet would be expensive and require extra maintenance, yes -- but it can be EXACTLY what the customer wants, both body and personality.

It isn't economically viable to have EVERY possible type of body as a puppet, and if you want to cater to the really high-end customer (those with the high-end cash-flows) it will be very economically viable to keep a highly customizable puppet (pretty much anything metahuman can be tailored within 24 hours) on hand.

Want to take out some agression on your ex-wife? No problem. Want the flavor-of-the-minute latest reality-show star-to-be? Sure thing. Do you get off on albino trolls covered in warts? Here you go!

And if you have darker tastes - say, relatives, or maybe you want to have sex with your identical copy (for that ultimate level of self-gratification) - just supply full body scans and personality info and we'll have it for you in a few days!


It won't be common; but it WILL pay off!

Note: You can have several repeat customers with very special tastes using only one meat-puppet, and still have it available for any other customer who comes along. That 'Christy Daee' puppet will not maximize it's profits most days, after all - and eventually it will go out of style (Hopefully not before the doll itself is in need of replacement, but who knows?)

Wonder what it would take to have a modular cyber-skull. Raise or lower the cheek bones, adjust the brow ridge, and other things of that nature.

That is in Spy Games, the Jigsaw-Skull.

Thanks. Now I know what I'm getting next.

Most parlors are going to be looking at the bottom line a lot.

It's cheaper to slap a basic jack, filter, maybe commlink in a puppet. Give them some basic biosculpting if they are close enough to a popular item of lusting fans.

Going full out in implants and necessary magic for some means higher costs and a slimmer client base that can afford it.

The average Jhon isn't going to want to spend a month's rent for an hour of play, but they will spend a bit for a romp with a customized toy that has the right personality, metatype and looks good.

How common could it be? How many adepts are there in the world? Then how many would have the right combination of powers? And then the costs of "Generous applications of Control Emotion, Influence, Compulsion, and mind-breaking psychiatric therapy," and the fact that if you want to maintain their powers, any implants will need to be of the highest quality, and it seems like these would be very high end, indeed. Isn't there a spell that'll get you the same effect as the required adept power?

What are the limitations of changing appearance via adept powers? You could still only do one metatype, right? Can you change hair length and color? I'm not sure what the limitations are in SR4.

The better way would be shapechange spells but even then it has limits.


One reason the trix brothels work well.. no limits

With 'Master of 1000 Faces' from Spy Games (and the requirements for it: Facial Sculpt, Melanin Control, Keratin Control) you are 'limited' to any metatype of your choice and any range of hair/eye/skin color, hair length, horns etc etc (as normal for the respective metatype). So basically, anything but changelings and non-metahumans.

Shapechange spell only works for non-sapients according to RAW, though. But Physical Mask can work, or a custom spell.

It would probably be cheaper for someone to arrange to kidnap your ex-wife.

Depends on the Ex in question. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Wouldn't an adept who's bunraku-slaved quickly lose her powers, due to deteriorating holistic health?

Reminds me of a bit of shadowtalk from one of the classics, about a troll using physical mask to seduce a target and then drop the spell once he had the target in private...

Consider the number or adepts in the world
Now consider the number with the adept abilities in there
Now consider how much more useful they would be as agents operating in corporate/shadows/underworld than on their back

Physical mask or the like would be used (it has limits too, but I can see a souped up alter metatype manipulation change spell too), rather than trying to find what amounts to a fraction of one percent of the world population and enslaving them for a bed toy (at very high maintenance and operation costs)

Why bother with magic/cyber when you can get her a new face with some dirt cheap surgery? I'm pretty sure they can just put them into some surgery box, select a program and wait a few hours to get her a new face and body.

The adept *can* be used for more than a bed toy though, with skillwires and persona chips and the adaptability of their appearance. Besides, that adept would surely be used as someones special spy to begin with - that person isn't going to turn her into a bed toy (well...not like we talk about anyway), but what will the competitor do with her? Taking the ultimate chameleon spy and trying to turn her against her employer and set her loose in the world...not cost-effective. She'll likely end up right back where she started, and with a grudge. Killing her? Sure. That's viable, and might be fun. But if you enslave her, demean her and make money off of her you've accomplished the same thing as if you'd killed her (your competitor doesn't have her anymore) and you can cash in on her for years and years (and if you can manage to arrange so that your competitor actually pays you to demean his or her ex-spy without knowing it's her...priceless!)

Maintenance and operation won't be 'very' high -- just somewhat higher than your standard meat-puppet. Acquisition cost will likely be high, but considering you can probably charge thousands of nuyen for each session with a rich client with special tastes, and 'standard' fare for more common tastes, there's a lot of money to be made.

Don't underestimate the lure of having something truly unique, something no one else can replicate, that you can offer your clients. Really wealthy people spend insane amounts of money to acquire unique or special things - even if they aren't inherently better, more useful or more cost-effective than the other options.

Compare having a caged Pixie, for instance, or an original da Vinci in your bedroom.

If your hacker can get into their personafix machine, this is an interesting way to sneak an ally inside an enemy's wall: they dial up FemDom, and get Assassin [or SID 6.7]. Seems like there's a run in there somewhere.

Slowly turning this into Dollhouse, the hidden years.

SID 6.7? How outdated. That's so 50s, man.

We're on SID 10.1 now, and he scares the hell out of Bubba The Love Troll.

I think you're wrong there.

If he/she can "serve" clients 5h / day that's a maximum.

You'll eventually need some aug not to sleep too.

20 hours a day, 10 hours active working.

Got to remember they run all day long, so the sleep regulator is 10k.

But they have a downtime of maybe 30min between clients (shower, get dressed) with a bit of a wait. So figured half a day active.

You get pretty sore doing that kind of work 10 hours per day, though -- unless you are applying extra care and maintenance on your puppets, you can probably only expect around 4-6 hours of active work per day. It's probably more economical to charge customers for an hour - many will be 'done' before the hour is up; you'll need less down-time, and you'll have less wear and tare on your puppets while making the same amount of money.

Some of these issues - and similar issues of exhaustibility - can be resolved by including genital implants in the budget. Some of these issues cannot be so resolved. The condition and longevity of your merchandise will depend on the care it's given and the wear it receives; it all depends on how you choose to manage your investment.