Statting a GURPS magical house

[huffmuffin9]

Hey guys,

I posted on the GURPS reddit about this and I was advised that I should head over here. I'm running a GURPS campaign that mimics a holy grail war feom the Fate franchise. For those unfamiliar with it, the premise is mages summon famous historical figures to fight for them. Last one standing gets any wish they want granted.

One of my players is wanting to do Howl from the Studio Ghibli movie Howl's Castle as their historical figure (it's not perfect, but hey, let's roll with it). This player wants to have the castle. We talked about how to do it, and I think the best way we've decided on is by making the castle an ally and building it with points. That being said, I want to give her a racial twmplate for a house to start off with and let her build the castle from that. I'm thinking tons of Payload, extra STR, Doesn't Eat/Drink/Sleep/Speak, etc to make it more houselike.

Does anyone have a good idea for a house template? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to stat this particular house (if you've seen the movie)? We're using 4th edition. The character has 1000 points, so the ally can be anywhere from 100-1500 points (we added a 10% category to allies given the large point valus we're working with).

[whswhs]

First off, players don't build their characters' Allies. The GM does that. The player can have input, but the Ally isn't a player character.

[talonthehand]

Originally Posted by whswhs

First off, players don't build their characters' Allies. The GM does that. The player can have input, but the Ally isn't a player character.

What's the second off?

[Phantasm]

Instead of an Ally, have you considered looking at it as a Patron? There is one Pyramid article that does this for starships and their captains (Mal Reynolds would have Serenity as a Patron, f'rex), "The Captain's Boat", and I could see it adapted to Der Kestle from Girl Genius and other inanimate but powerful domiciles. (Such domiciles could also be statted up using Spaceships; there's a Pyramid article for that, too, IIRC, but I don't know the article name or issue number offhand.)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by talonthehand

What's the second off?

It's kind of a waste of effort to build a template in this case. Templates are useful if you're going to create a whole class of characters of a given type. But this seems to be a unique character. You might as well cut to the chase by describing the attributes you want the castle to have, and try to create a unique character sheet for it.

I think I've seen Howl's Moving Castle, but it's been years and years, and my memory is unclear; can you describe the main classes of things it can do? Can it talk? manipulate things? perceive with its own senses? Does it fly?

[Refplace]

As Phantasm suggested The Captains Boat from Pyramid 3/71 is an easy way to do it since you could spend cash.
However building it as an NPC I have never heard of the castle so just offering generics.
Payload covers the rooms.
High ST and HP plus Injury Tolerance Homogeneous or Unliving. Dont forget Unaging and various Immunities!
Abilities that only affect the inside cost 1/5 the normal cost (from GURPS Biotech and other sources).
Control Temperature handles AC/Heating.
Accessory perks can handle a lot of odds and ends, but I would roll them up into bulk.
The Control or TK advantage as well as extra limbs (all internal only) can handle a lot of servant type tasks like cleaning.

[ericthered]

Yep, captain's boat is much better than building it with points. Its likely to absolutely break the point budget, as it has piles upon piles of ST and DR, without actually being a game breaking element.