Morganti weapons in GURPS

[Refplace]

Are you planning on building it as a enchantment or power, or just declare it does what you want?
I would say Terror (visible) would be good with more powerful weapons having a greater penalty.
Also for perm damage you could do Radiation damage if you wanted something permanent but less than Insta-Kill.
Also Affliction "covenet ofRest" or whatever its called which is a perk that says you stay dead.

[Pragmatic]

Sorry, I was unclear.

Causes dread when the weapon is DRAWN, I meant more like a fright check, where the aura of hunger combines with the knowledge that one nick would cause the consumption of part of the soul.

And, like a lot of things put into game mechanics, when I say "soul is consumed," I mean "something with painful and unpleasant effects that, in universe, would cause people to fear getting cut--and OOC, would cause players to wince."

Just like we don't know what our spirit is, but we have whole sections of Thaumatology (Horror?) devoted to spirit corruption, there can be damage to the soul without knowing what a soul is.

[Dalillama]

If resurrection is fairly common, you could just keep the 'those killed by such a blade are gone forever' bit but not the 'and any nick is instantly fatal' part. Also means no contacting their spirit via necromancy, no one showing ip later with their ancestral memories (via e.g. reincarnation), etc.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Are you planning on building it as a enchantment or power, or just declare it does what you want?
I would say Terror (visible) would be good with more powerful weapons having a greater penalty.
Also for perm damage you could do Radiation damage if you wanted something permanent but less than Insta-Kill.
Also Affliction "covenet ofRest" or whatever its called which is a perk that says you stay dead.

Mostly just running a thought experiment ("how would ____ look in GURPS").

I am leaning towards (somehow) building as a statted magic item, then using metatronic generator to figure price (since I hate magic items treated as advantages...).

I think, instead of adjusting the multiplier, I might design a follow up attack. Those can have additional traits/conditions (e.g., imposes paralysis, causes terror, in addition to damage), right?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Mostly just running a thought experiment ("how would ____ look in GURPS").

I am leaning towards (somehow) building as a statted magic item, then using metatronic generator to figure price (since I hate magic items treated as advantages...).

I think, instead of adjusting the multiplier, I might design a follow up attack. Those can have additional traits/conditions (e.g., imposes paralysis, causes terror, in addition to damage), right?

Yes they can.
Terror (Visible) means its only in effect when drawn so add that using the Metatronic Generator as a base cost.
I liked the Radiation or Corruption mechanics and found both to be very scary to players in an old campaign I ran.
I used them as a monster attack from Cthonic lovecraft type monsters in a fantasy horror setting. It was based off King Chondos ride series by Paul Edwin Zimmer.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Doesnt the soul actually get sucked INto a morganti blade and continue existing, trapped forever therein?

The evidence about that is rather limited, and both the cases I can recall involved Great Weapons, so generalisation to "ordinary" Morganti blades may be misleading.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

there can be damage to the soul without knowing what a soul is.

But the characters (and the players, and thus the GM) still have to know what the observable, game-mechanical effect of "soul damage" is -- or else there's nothing observable to give the weapons their reputation and to have something undesirable to fear on the meta level. You're going to have to commit yourself to some definition in order to have an actual effect to fear. Otherwise, it's externally-induced magical Terror, needing no actual basis in "reality", with the fear of the weapons being just RP. (You could threaten the players with loss of XP for poor roleplaying if they didn't act properly afraid of an effect-less weapons.)

You can try just giving characters a Soul Points stat, having those get taken away by weapon hits (dealing SP damage even with a scratch), and making vaguely menacing allusions to bad things that happen if you run out of SP, even though you don't really know what that might be. But you seem to want something more concrete to convince your players. If so, you're going to have to make some sort of choice.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The evidence about that is rather limited, and both the cases I can recall involved Great Weapons, so generalisation to "ordinary" Morganti blades may be misleading.

I recall (just read) where Pathfinder took exception to a regular Morganti trying to eat Aliera, so it suckered in her soul to keep it safe.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

I recall (just read) where Pathfinder took exception to a regular Morganti trying to eat Aliera, so it suckered in her soul to keep it safe.

That's one of them. The other is Lady Teledra remaining sapient within Godslayer.

[Michael Cule]

I would say that you don't want to write a mechanical effect of these devices other than to say 'it prevents resurrection or other forms of afterlife'. It's a pointless feature of the weapon. (The Great Weapons should probably be defined as characters and maybe should be charged for that power, if they were player characters. Please tell me you don't want to have Great Weapons as player characters.)

The effects of the weapons are purely in the social sphere. All Morganti weapons have a terrible reputation (because they do such terrible things) and all persons wielding Morganti weapons will also have... varying effects on their reputation.

If someone gets a sense of 'wrongness' from the weapons it still isn't what causes terror in people. What causes the terror is that the damn things can destroy your soul. A young child who knows nothing of what that creepy feeling implies may be disturbed: someone who knows what it implies is liable to run.