genuine question because it breaks the whole system if you can. if the police have a description of lucia and you switch to jason on the other side of the city, does the wanted level just sit there waiting for you to come back
or does switching not work while wanted, which would be the obvious answer and would also be a real limitation on a mechanic they are selling hard
Accepted answer
Nothing shows a switch while wanted. Your instinct that it must be restricted is the reasonable one, because otherwise the description system has an escape hatch built into the headline mechanic.
The obvious solution is that the wanted level follows the pair rather than the person, which would be thematically perfect and mechanically horrible.
a shared wanted level between two people who love each other is genuinely the most interesting bad idea anyone has posted here
Restricted while wanted is almost certainly the answer and it is the least interesting of the three options, which is usually how it goes.
oh thats a good point. its not just a mechanic problem its a story problem
if you can switch away while wanted then every chase becomes optional and the whole system is decorative
A shared wanted level would also mean you could deliberately switch to draw them away, which is either brilliant or a nightmare to balance.
It would also be a strange thing to allow narratively. Jason is not somewhere else in a neutral sense, he is a person who would presumably notice his partner being pursued by six police cars.