Not sure how to implement a spirit ability.

[Goldeneale]

Hey all, first post here. I picked up GURPS a couple months ago after hearing so much about how modular and customizable it is, and have been having a grand time DMing a shonen-themed martial arts campaign with my buddies.

The issue I'm up against right now has to do with an ability one of my players is trying to train. His "ability" is that he can separate his spirit from himself, so as for example to attack from multiple angles at the same time. I had that as a simple innate attack with extra attack.

But now he wants to train the ability to separate his spirit further, so as to for example reach down with his spirit to pull an ally up a ledge while his main body fights. That could be done with an extra limb, but later on he wants to be able to separate his spirit entirely. How could I scale it up to that?

[Nereidalbel]

Duplication (Basic, p50) with the Construct (Powers, p48) enhancement will do for separating part of his spirit from his body.

[Kelly Pedersen]

First of all, glad you're having fun with GURPS! It really is one of the best systems I've ever found for this kind of custom-tweaking, so it's good to hear you're using it to its potential.

So, on to your question. First, I have a question for you - exactly how separate do you picture the person and their spirit, mentally? Obviously, they can take two separate actions, the ability to attack two targets proves that. But what if the person was, say, stunned? Would the spirit also be stunned? Or would it still be capable of independent action?

If it's the latter, you could look at the Duplication advantage. It's really one of the best for "being in two places at once". Of course, by default, the duplicates are identical to each other, so you'll have to tweak that. You can give the character certain advantages with an Accessibility limitation of "Only applies to one duplicate" - that would be -20% if there's only one duplicate involved. For the spirit advantages, I'd take a look at the Spirit meta-trait, which you can find on p. 263 of Characters.

[JoelSammallahti]

For building custom abilities like these, GURPS Powers is really helpful.

One possibility you might want to look at is Telekinesis. You can take Compartmentalized Mind with a limitation, TK Only, to simultaneously use Telekinesis and take another physical maneuver.

[Goldeneale]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Duplication (Basic, p50) with the Construct (Powers, p48) enhancement will do for separating part of his spirit from his body.

I had looked at this possibility, but the constructs just kind of felt too expendable. It's not just a part of his spirit leaving, but his whole spirit stepping out of him to do something else. There's not really a bad effect if it gets taken out. Also I couldn't think of any way to give the spirit unique traits he didn't have himself.

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

First of all, glad you're having fun with GURPS! It really is one of the best systems I've ever found for this kind of custom-tweaking, so it's good to hear you're using it to its potential.

So, on to your question. First, I have a question for you - exactly how separate do you picture the person and their spirit, mentally? Obviously, they can take two separate actions, the ability to attack two targets proves that. But what if the person was, say, stunned? Would the spirit also be stunned? Or would it still be capable of independent action?

If it's the latter, you could look at the Duplication advantage. It's really one of the best for "being in two places at once". Of course, by default, the duplicates are identical to each other, so you'll have to tweak that. You can give the character certain advantages with an Accessibility limitation of "Only applies to one duplicate" - that would be -20% if there's only one duplicate involved. For the spirit advantages, I'd take a look at the Spirit meta-trait, which you can find on p. 263 of Characters.

I hadn't thought of accessibility! That could actually be the solution that I'm looking for, allowing me to give his spirit abilities and traits that he doesn't have.

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

For building custom abilities like these, GURPS Powers is really helpful.

One possibility you might want to look at is Telekinesis. You can take Compartmentalized Mind with a limitation, TK Only, to simultaneously use Telekinesis and take another physical maneuver.

I had looked at that, but TK would have taken a ton of points to have the ST needed. Thanks, though.

My current idea that I'm going with, as this is supposed to be a gradual development from a spirit sword that gives him a second attack to a whole spirit clone that fights on the field, is to gradually work up to duplicate. Right now he just has innate attack. I'm going to let him buy extra limbs to represent his spirit separating further from him, and then once his points invested in the spirit gets up the number for Duplicate I'll just switch them all out for a Duplicate with proper modifiers (especially Accessibility!).

Thanks for you help, all.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Goldeneale

I had looked at this possibility, but the constructs just kind of felt too expendable. It's not just a part of his spirit leaving, but his whole spirit stepping out of him to do something else. There's not really a bad effect if it gets taken out. Also I couldn't think of any way to give the spirit unique traits he didn't have himself.

there is a Split HP option for duplicates so there are bad effects if it's taken out. Not he has to leave some of his spirt behind if his body get to act at the same time. other wise you can do the Projection route