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Old 09-05-2013, 12:45 PM   #1
b-dog
 
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Default Spiritual Hit Points

I want to make a Hit Point system for the spirit of a person. There are some spiritual monsters like demons and ghosts that do not cause physical damage but instead cause spiritual damage. I define that Hit Points to be the health and well being of the physical body of the PC while Spiritual Hit Points are the health and well being of the spirit inside the physical body. The spirit can be destroyed just as the body can in my gameworld. I would consider to give a bonus to spiritual hit points to clerics with Power Investiture or holy warriors with Holiness. When a spirit has been damaged by the forces of evil enough then there is a penalty to cast spells for those using clerical magic or holy powers due to them being tainted by evil. Does anyone have any ideas for how to ceeate such a system? I want to have three categories of Hit Points; body, mind and spirit with body being normal Hit Points and mind being mental Hit Points. What do you think? How would you go about making something like this? Thanks.
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Old 09-05-2013, 01:00 PM   #2
simply Nathan
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

Regular HP on things that are Insubstantial, since the ghosts and demons as you mentioned are under that; Insubstantial with various modifiers. Individual souls might also have forms of Injury Tolerance such as homogeneous souls, eyeless souls, bloodless souls, and so on.

Just make a parallel track of HP for the insubstantial parts of the people as a zero-point feature
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Old 09-05-2013, 01:08 PM   #3
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

Does Psionic Powers talk about HP for the astral body as being seperate from the HP for the physical body?
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Old 09-05-2013, 01:48 PM   #4
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

Mental HP (MP) would probably be based on Will rather than ST, but spiritual HP (SP) is difficult to come up with. Basing it on Per might work (Per is the closest GURPS has to D&D Wisdom, which is what I would go off of in that system). Alternatively, you could have MP be based on IQ and SP based on Will. Magery (and similar traits) might add to MP, while Power Investiture (and the like) would add to SP.

Dropping below 1/3 MP would penalize Will (or IQ) much as dropping below 1/3 HP penalizes DX. At 0 MP and lower, you risk falling unconscious, rolling against Will (or IQ) rather than HT. At -1xMP, you risk mental death, which reduces the character to a vegetable (the body still lives, so if you can somehow get a new consciousness in there it will work).

SP would be similar, except penalizing Per (or Will). Unconsciousness from SP damage temporarily turns your PC into a completely amoral NPC. Spiritual death means you've lost your soul, making the character completely amoral.

EDIT: I should note that these three together can make resurrection appropriately difficult - you need to find and fix up the body, find (in the astral plane?) and fix up the mind, and find (in the afterlife) and fix up the soul, then you need some ritual to combine the three back together. Flub it up and the person just dies again (failed to fix up the body), is a vegetable (failed to fix up the mind), or is an amoral monster (failed to fix up the soul).

Last edited by Varyon; 09-05-2013 at 01:53 PM.
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Old 09-05-2013, 02:55 PM   #5
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Mental HP (MP) would probably be based on Will rather than ST, but spiritual HP (SP) is difficult to come up with. Basing it on Per might work (Per is the closest GURPS has to D&D Wisdom, which is what I would go off of in that system). Alternatively, you could have MP be based on IQ and SP based on Will. Magery (and similar traits) might add to MP, while Power Investiture (and the like) would add to SP.

Dropping below 1/3 MP would penalize Will (or IQ) much as dropping below 1/3 HP penalizes DX. At 0 MP and lower, you risk falling unconscious, rolling against Will (or IQ) rather than HT. At -1xMP, you risk mental death, which reduces the character to a vegetable (the body still lives, so if you can somehow get a new consciousness in there it will work).

SP would be similar, except penalizing Per (or Will). Unconsciousness from SP damage temporarily turns your PC into a completely amoral NPC. Spiritual death means you've lost your soul, making the character completely amoral.

EDIT: I should note that these three together can make resurrection appropriately difficult - you need to find and fix up the body, find (in the astral plane?) and fix up the mind, and find (in the afterlife) and fix up the soul, then you need some ritual to combine the three back together. Flub it up and the person just dies again (failed to fix up the body), is a vegetable (failed to fix up the mind), or is an amoral monster (failed to fix up the soul).
This is really cool. Thanks.
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Old 09-05-2013, 01:51 PM   #6
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

I want to have mental and spiritual Hit Points because I like to play Dungeon Fantasy and without them the PCs have high Wills to resist attacks but if they fail them then mind control spells and psionics completely put the PCs out of play. I would like to have a little buffer zone where the PCs are weakened but they can still play just as Hit Points works with physical damage. Demons and ghosts would inflict spiritual damage while Elder Things, faeries mind master wizards and psionists would inflict mental damage.
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Old 09-05-2013, 02:15 PM   #7
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

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Originally Posted by b-dog View Post
I would like to have a little buffer zone where the PCs are weakened but they can still play just as Hit Points works with physical damage.
Yeah, but what kind of weakness do you want the characters to suffer? As you take SP damage, what effect does that have on your behavior? If you want it simply to act as a buffer, then is the answer "no effect"? Do you just take SP damage until you hit zero, and then you become susceptible to mind control and so on?
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Old 09-05-2013, 02:45 PM   #8
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

I want demons to be able to spiritually attack PCs in order to weaken the Spiritual Hit Points. If the PCs have negative Spiritual Hit Points then they are less resistant to being controlled by demons. A demon could then have two options of attack; the first would be to try to directly control the PC and this would be resisted by the PCs Will or the demon could do some spiritual attacks and reduce the Spiritual Hit Points below 0 and cause the PC to have a negative modifier to his Will roll. The second approach works well with DF style because it fits resource management just as normal Hit Points do.
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Old 09-05-2013, 01:36 PM   #9
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

I think this breaks up into a number of related questions:

First, what do you base the Spiritual Points stat (henceforward SP) on? You seem to have a good grasp on this already -- use levels of Power Investiture or Holiness. You could set SP equal to 10 + PI level + Holiness level or Will + PI level + Holiness level. You could also deduct SP for traits that you think are especially unspiritual. Alternately, you could just make SP an independently bought stat, starting at 10 and going up if you take the advantage Extra SP [3/level]. Set the cost wherever you like. And, of course, you could also combine the two.

Second, how do you inflict SP damage? Your post seems to indicate that you've got some creatures already planned out, so I'm going to guess that they simply attack as normal and do SP damage instead of HP damage. But is there an equivalent of DR, Injury Tolerance, or wounding modifiers for SP? I don't know how close to the HP model you want the SP system to be.

Third, what are the consequences of taking SP damage? Is there an equivalent of shock, stunning, or crippling? Do I take penalties for going below SP/3, or some other breakpoint? What happens at SP 0, -SP, -2*SP, and so on? Do I make death or unconsciousness rolls, and if so, against what? A Spiritual Health stat, maybe? If I survive the damage, how do I heal? If I don't survive, can I be raised? Again, I don't know what kind of results you're looking for here, so I won't try to answer these questions.

So there's where I would start: look at the HP system as a model, and decide how much of a resemblance I want, and what kind of results I'm looking for.

My advice would be to throw out most of the HP model, for two reasons. First, much of the HP system is there in order to model the physical realities of combat. There's no reason to think that there have to be spiritual realities that parallel physical realities such as shock or crippling. The SP system should make sense in its own terms, not just as an echo to the HP system. And second, because complication in a game is bad. I'll guess that SP-damaging creatures are rather uncommon compared to HP-damaging ones in your game. Why throw a lot of complication into your game for something that isn't going to show up that often?
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Old 09-05-2013, 01:43 PM   #10
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Default Re: Spiritual Hit Points

Quote:
Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris View Post
My advice would be to throw out most of the HP model, for two reasons. First, much of the HP system is there in order to model the physical realities of combat. There's no reason to think that there have to be spiritual realities that parallel physical realities such as shock or crippling. The SP system should make sense in its own terms, not just as an echo to the HP system. And second, because complication in a game is bad. I'll guess that SP-damaging creatures are rather uncommon compared to HP-damaging ones in your game. Why throw a lot of complication into your game for something that isn't going to show up that often?
If this was anybody other than b-dog I'd suggest just using Fatigue Attacks. If you want to make it more "spiritual" create a "Soul Hazard" that keeps the FP from being healed without eight hours of rest in Normal Sanctity or better or requires treatment with Esoteric Medicine or something.
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