Bodysculpting

'Barbie' and 'Ken' models

Bodysculpting, also known as biosculpting, bodyshaping, Body Design or just sculpting, is the alteration of one's appearance through advanced cosmetic surgery and the use of vat-grown tissue or special cybernetics. The early 21^st century saw great advances in this field, and doctors can now change someone's entire body in record time.

Scope

Bodysculpting is practiced around the world, and accessible enough that it can be bought off-the-street at "body salons" or skilled ripperdocs (local conditions permitting).

A bodysculpt surgeon can do the following to a patient:

• Change eye, hair and skin color
• Change the shape and size of any body part
• Change height
• Change biological sex
• Add or remove skin wrinkles and blemishes
• Add or remove hair on any part of the skin
• Add or remove fat
• Add or remove non-human features such as fur, fins and tails (see Exotics for more details)

There are limits to bodysculpting, where more powerful cybernetics must take over. Notably, bodysculpting cannot change one's voice (which requires AudioVox cyberware) or muscle mass (which requires Grafted Muscle).

Cyberpunk 2020

There are three main uses for bodysculpting: becoming more attractive, radically changing your appearance, and becoming an Exotic.

Increasing beauty is fairly straightforward. One can either go for the most "conventionally attractive" look possible, whatever that may be for the culture(s) they live in. Or they can build off of their pre-existing features. Think of how top celebrities usually have some "uniqueness" or "distinctiveness"; they don't look like every pretty face on the street. Incorporating your unique features into a new look can make you more handsome than erasing them. Either way, after the surgery, a larger number of people will think you're hot. This type of surgery costs 600eb for every point you're raising your ATTR stat by (thus a total range of 600–4,800eb.)

Among the rich, specific facial features are now fashion trends, just like types of clothing. Trend-chasers might visit a sculpt doc at least once a year.

Bodysculpting can make you unrecognizable from your previous self. Fugitives can use it to throw off pursuers. There are people who get sculpted to resemble a celebrity, fictional character or historical figure. Posergangs revolve around this practice, with every gang member sculpted to look the same. And powerful figures like politicians can use sculpted decoys to fool assassins. This cost of this surgery ranges from 1,200 to 5,000eb. Cheaper sculpts will not make the patient look exactly like the model, and can be detected by observers who succeed on a Notice skill check. It's unclear whether this check can be made on any bodysculpt recipient, or only those who are trying to resemble a specific person or whose old face the observer knows.

Bodysculpt jobs that emphasize the alien or inhuman, such as animal-like bodies, are called Exotics. Exotics sometimes bolster their new form with cyberware. For example, a catlike Exotic might install LowLite and Scratchers to represent a cat's night-vision and claws. The cost of an Exotic sculpt is 3,000–10,000 eb per feature. Due to the great expense, it's sometimes used as a status symbol.

Cyberpunk 2013

Bodysculpting works much the same in 2013 as in 2020. However, the prices are different: 4d10 x 100 eurodollars for an appearance change, or 1d10 x 100 to gain one point of ATT. Additionally, there's no mechanic for noticing a bodysculpt, nor any mention of Exotics.

Cyberpunk V3.0

In the non-canonical Cyberpunk V3.0, bodysculpting in the 2030s is identical to its 2020 iteration. There's also the "Reefer" group, who can use advanced DNA manipulation to (among other things) change their entire look in just 17 minutes.

Cyberpunk RED

In 2045, advances in the field of bodysculpting have made it no longer possible to visually spot a sculpt job. Cheaper production of artificial tissue also decreased the surgery's cost: 500eb for a normal sculpt, and 1000eb for an Exotic one.

On the other hand, the increased proliferation of bodysculpting (and the removal of the Attractiveness stat) means that it can no longer mechanically improve a character. A bodysculpting surgery takes 4 hours and requires only one surgeon.

Cyberpunk 2077

Main article: Cyberpunk 2077 Character Customization

In 2077, V can receive bodysculpting at any ripperdoc for free. This is likely a game-design choice rather than reflecting in-universe conditions, as free surgery would be highly unusual for the ultra-capitalistic Dark Future. V cannot change their sex, height or build, nor become an Exotic; these are also likely design/programming choices given that Claire had a sex change.

Based on the computer file "Clients", bodysculpting is now able to change one's voice.

Drawbacks

Most bodysculpting only changes the outward physical form, not the genes which determined appearance in the first place, as explained in "Raymond Chandler Evening". Thus, if a person's genes are propagated (such as by cloning a limb or conceiving a child), it will be their original appearance that has an effect, not their sculpted appearance.

In Red, an Exotic bodysculpt incurs 4d6 Humanity loss. This is because, although you're not putting in cyberware, you're still voluntarily changing your body to something much different from any natural human. In other editions, there's no Humanity cost by default, but the expanded Exotic system in Chromebook 2 has various costs ranging from 1d6/2 to 19d6. The latter book also describes therapy that clinics provide (for a price) to restore some Humanity and avoid the Exotic immediately going insane.

The massive skin grafts involved in certain Exotic procedures (such as adding fur or scales) carried a 10% risk of skin cancer. However, this risk was eliminated by 2045.

Finally, as with any surgery, there's a risk that the surgeon will cock it up and you'll get injured, infected or not look how you wanted to. The Fabulous Mayhem gang provides an example of this.