Soul eating, addicition and leech

[tetrahedron]

Senaki Kumo Rite

Bitten by an oni that infected him with a supernatural taint and left him with a craving for human souls to fuel his immortality, the warrior in my Kamakura game needs to stat up this power. I’m looking for some help from the hive mind in modeling it.

First up, how he takes the soul. The warrior needs to conduct an elaborate ritual over the body (which need not be alive, freshly dead is ok). I think leech is the best choice (p. P96) but am unsure of how much of an enhancement modifier to charge for the stealing of a soul. In game terms it doesn’t really have an effect on the victim (aside from the PC killing them…). Any thoughts?
Leech (Steal soul, +?; Temporary disadvantage: Elaborate trademark, -15%; Feature: does not age while in possession of soul, +0%) [25-15%+?]

Secondly, I am using the addiction disadvantage (p. B122) to simulate his constant consumption of souls. This seems a better fit than dependency because I want him to start aging instead of taking damage. How would I model this if he consumes a soul every month – give or take?

Thoughts?

T

[Exxar]

If I properly understand that the sole point and effect of this is for the character not to age if he devours souls, then it's just a simple Unaging disadvantage with an Accessibility modifier whose value depends on how frequently he's in need of fresh souls. This would, however, result with the character resuming his natural aging during the period where he doesn't have access to souls, which isn't much of an inconvenience.

Perhaps a better treatment would be to purchase Unaging together with Dependency, and I'd say it would be fair for him to age a year instead of losing a point of HP, without any modifications to cost.

[tetrahedron]

You've got the idea correctly, and I like your unaging/dependency suggestion.
In fact, dependency has an aging enhancement. Good catch there.

I still think I want to include Leech, however, for the drawing of the soul. Any thoughts on whether steal soul could be a 0% enhancement?

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by tetrahedron

You've got the idea correctly, and I like your unaging/dependency suggestion.
In fact, dependency has an aging enhancement. Good catch there.

I still think I want to include Leech, however, for the drawing of the soul. Any thoughts on whether steal soul could be a 0% enhancement?

You said stealing a soul would kill that person. I'm assuming if you want to use Leech, then you're either going to be directly stealing HP (attacking their vitality) or stealing Youth (aging them), since those are the only two things that Leech does that can kill (Steal FP +50% will start killing them once they get to 0 FP due to HP theft at that point).

I would say +0% is fine, if and only if souls have no game effects whatsoever besides what they do for this soul stealing character (or characters).

But does resurrection exist in your world? I'm assuming if it does, then it shouldn't work on someone if their soul was either being devoured or already devoured by the soul thief. And that'd be a game effect that should cost points (Kromm suggested a pretty nifty way to stop someone from being resurrected using an Affliction of the -1 Eternal Rest perk (was in GURPS Undead, 3rd Ed, but it can be copied as is to 4th Ed). If you're interested and it's relevant, I can find the relevant post from my bookmarks and post the link and quote it here.

And again, if "stealing the soul" has no effect other than to be able to say it's been stolen, then +0% is fine.

[tetrahedron]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I would say +0% is fine, if and only if souls have no game effects whatsoever besides what they do for this soul stealing character (or characters).

Cool. That is what I thought.

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

But does resurrection exist in your world?

Extremely rare. Requires the Secret Spell perk from Magic Styles.

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

And that'd be a game effect that should cost points (Kromm suggested a pretty nifty way to stop someone from being resurrected using an Affliction of the -1 Eternal Rest perk (was in GURPS Undead, 3rd Ed, but it can be copied as is to 4th Ed). If you're interested and it's relevant, I can find the relevant post from my bookmarks and post the link and quote it here.

Can't seem to find the perk in Undead. Maybe in the playtest 4th ed Horror? If you have a relevant post, I'd love to look at it for other ideas (Sin Eaters for example...). Appreciate the feedback so far.

[tetrahedron]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

And that'd be a game effect that should cost points (Kromm suggested a pretty nifty way to stop someone from being resurrected using an Affliction of the -1 Eternal Rest perk (was in GURPS Undead, 3rd Ed, but it can be copied as is to 4th Ed).

Found it! p. UNDEAD102 "Covenant of Rest"

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by tetrahedron

Found it! p. UNDEAD102 "Covenant of Rest"

Sorry, I was using what he called his Affliction, got confused in my head.

Here are those posts (both in the same thread, called "Ablity that prevents resurrection.. cost?"):

Eternal Rest / Corpse Defilement

Resistant and Immunity to Eternal Rest / Corpse Defilement

Even though the intent wasn't "soul killing", I've used it that way - for cases where, either for really good reasons (the soul truly moved on, or "ascended") or for bad reasons (the soul was stolen or destroyed).

See, I've been GMing this one campaign for over 12 years now, but it started out in its first 2 years in AD&D before I converted it over to GURPS, first to 3rd Ed and then to 4th Ed (also started off with a different "DM"). For years one of the nasty residual effects of the previous DM and system was that resurrection and raise dead were far too easy, so "soul death" became a thing. But eventually I decided to clean house and have a major apocalyptic event end all magic that could resurrect (and heal), to give the campaign a darker, grittier feel both myself and the players wanted. So the above mechanic was a good way to prevent resurrections and make death more scary in the interim.