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Old 03-08-2018, 02:29 PM   #21
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Default Re: Mesopotamian Vampire

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
There are so many mechanics that I don't want built into Healing that it seems like a very unsatisactory trait to use as the basis.

Essentially, what I want is the ability to use Leech in reverse, as well as being able to use it normally. It would seem fairly intuitive that this is done by modifying the Leech Advantage, perhaps with Affects Others, and not by adding an Advantage that has a lot of inbuilt mechanics I don't want.
Leech + Alternate Ability Affliction, Advantage (Leech)?
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Old 03-08-2018, 02:44 PM   #22
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Default Re: Mesopotamian Vampire

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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
Leech + Alternate Ability Affliction, Advantage (Leech)?
That might work. Except that the Affliction would probably be the more expensive Advantage of the two, the way Affliction pricing works, so the Leech, which is clearly the more important trait and more useful, would be treated as the Alternate Ability.

After all, she's not really Afflicting a useful Leech ability that the affected party can use on anyone for several minutes, she is only able to give her own blood to someone, healing as much FP and HP as she is prepared to give up, over a period of 1 second per pair of FP and HP.

Ca extra 30 points for that ability seems fair enough, which is what Affects Others (+50%) would work out as an Enhancement to the Leech (she's got two Leech powers with Link, one that drains 1 FP and one that drains 1 HP).
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Old 03-08-2018, 03:19 PM   #23
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Default Re: Mesopotamian Vampire

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
Ca extra 30 points for that ability seems fair enough, which is what Affects Others (+50%) would work out as an Enhancement to the Leech (she's got two Leech powers with Link, one that drains 1 FP and one that drains 1 HP).
Yeah I think Affects Others is the simplest and cheapest build for what your describing.
I would still go for Alternative Abilities as optional powers. Its how I build several of my templates, including those based on Vampire the Masquerade in Fourth Edition.
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Old 03-08-2018, 05:09 PM   #24
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Default Re: Mesopotamian Vampire

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
That might work. Except that the Affliction would probably be the more expensive Advantage of the two, the way Affliction pricing works, so the Leech, which is clearly the more important trait and more useful, would be treated as the Alternate Ability.

After all, she's not really Afflicting a useful Leech ability that the affected party can use on anyone for several minutes, she is only able to give her own blood to someone, healing as much FP and HP as she is prepared to give up, over a period of 1 second per pair of FP and HP.

Ca extra 30 points for that ability seems fair enough, which is what Affects Others (+50%) would work out as an Enhancement to the Leech (she's got two Leech powers with Link, one that drains 1 FP and one that drains 1 HP).
Quote:
This is still very cludgy. As a useful power in combat, only being able to heal 1 FP and 1 HP per turn is a major limitation, but your build doesn't take it into account. Empathic is even incompatible with Capped, by the rules, so it's flat out impossible to have Empathic and be limited in how much you can heal per second.

There are so many mechanics that I don't want built into Healing that it seems like a very unsatisactory trait to use as the basis.

Essentially, what I want is the ability to use Leech in reverse, as well as being able to use it normally. It would seem fairly intuitive that this is done by modifying the Leech Advantage, perhaps with Affects Others, and not by adding an Advantage that has a lot of inbuilt mechanics I don't want.

Would adding +50% to the Leech power be enough of an extra cost for this? It's probably more expensive that way than basic Healing...
New suggested build:

Affliction (Advantage +50%, Blood Agent, Reversed -40%, Magical -10%) [10]

For the advantage bestowed:

Leech (Accelerated Healing +25%, Accessibility: only on me -80%? Blood Agent -40%, Magical -10%) [5]

Maybe even make the bestowed Leech advantage have the Corrupting (-20%) Limitation, and then disadvantages eventually gained due to this Corruption could be things like the Admiration Quirk, Addiction, Sense of Duty to the vampire, Reprogrammable, and so on.

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
That's true, but what can you do with that Energy Reserve?

Can you 'store' HP or FP drained with Leech and use them for healing yourself later, if you are at full HP and FP when you use Leech?

If you can't do it by default, would a simple +50% Cosmic enhancement be a fair way to buy that extra capability?



Yep. The evil spirits want to enjoy some or all of sexual relations, fine food, wine, other intoxicants, sensous pleasures, beautiful art, music, etc.

Only the most intelligent, subtle and dangerous spirits can derive substance from the 'higher' and more intellectual pleasures, with the more typical vampires being focused on food, sex and, especially, blood. Some of them enjoy the blood of creatures in fear or pain more, of course.



They'll probably be about as likely to use it as the sexual activity FPs. All in all, these requirements will tend to double or triple the daily requirements they have for blood.


I want them to have and use FP. Lose them naturally with exertion and all, but just not have any way of recovering them naturally. Which strikes me as a rather large Disadvantage, as it means that they'll not recover 12-24 FP per hour, that they could use for magic or vampire powers, but are instead stuck with what they drain from victims.
Unfortunately Energy Reserve is only for supernatural powers, or extra effort, not for normal exertion. The only way I’ve seen storing HP that way is through Blood Healing (Healing: self only -0%, Injuries only -20%) [24] from Pyramid 3/50 – which still runs into the same clunkiness issues.

On losing FP from exertion but not regaining it naturally, I did find this thread: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=68722

I would add the caveat that this could mean some very lazy vampires, because it is so difficult for them to regain FP. They would have to conserve their energies very carefully. Disadvantages like Gluttony or Compulsive Sexual Activity or Lecherousness would help keep encouraging them into those FP draining activities.

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Well, technically, they do not need blood for substance, they need it to keep the spirit inside them from growing weak (Draining). And they need the life energy to prevent the spirit from degenerating into an animalistic creature entirely under the control of their basest appetites.
Oh! Found something! Addiction rules. Basic Set, page 440, Drug Withdrawal & Psychological Dependency. The degeneration might be slow, but if the Addiction is totally addictive (-10 to the Will rolls) then the withdrawal rolls are virtually certain to fail. Disadvantages are only -1 per day, but it might give you something of a framework to use.
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Old 03-09-2018, 02:15 AM   #25
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Default Re: Mesopotamian Vampire

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Originally Posted by Railstar View Post
New suggested build:

Affliction (Advantage +50%, Blood Agent, Reversed -40%, Magical -10%) [10]

For the advantage bestowed:

Leech (Accelerated Healing +25%, Accessibility: only on me -80%? Blood Agent -40%, Magical -10%) [5]
Well, at least it reinforces the idea that this is fairly priced at 15-20 points for each Leech power. Actually using Affliction as the base Advantage still produces odd results, as it requires the vampire to consciously affect someone, who can roll vs. HT and will then have the ability to drink blood from that vampire for several minutes.

Whereas in what I'm looking for, anyone who drinks blood from the vampire, whether that's with the consent of the vampire (the most common, stereotypical use) or by overpowering her (the wicked necromancer, diablerie, blood-addict rape-y way), will drain her blood to the tune of 1 HP and 1 FP and gain 1 HP and 1 FP themselves. Along with other, temporary benefits, as if the blood was a magical elixir and a drug, which might be handled by an Accessory Perk and might cost more, I'll decide once I've decided what it grants.

I think that Affects Others (+50%) is fine as a modifier to enable the Leech to run both ways, especially as the vampire doesn't necessarily have control over the healing bestowed by the reversed form, though it will tend to make the drinker become physically obsessed with the vampire, more easily influenced by her and potentially addicted to the blood, with the more powerful vampires being able to use other Powers to Dominate those who have drunk their blood.

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Originally Posted by Railstar View Post
Maybe even make the bestowed Leech advantage have the Corrupting (-20%) Limitation, and then disadvantages eventually gained due to this Corruption could be things like the Admiration Quirk, Addiction, Sense of Duty to the vampire, Reprogrammable, and so on.
That actually sounds interesting. I'm going to have to think about how to implement it...

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Originally Posted by Railstar View Post
Unfortunately Energy Reserve is only for supernatural powers, or extra effort, not for normal exertion. The only way I’ve seen storing HP that way is through Blood Healing (Healing: self only -0%, Injuries only -20%) [24] from Pyramid 3/50 – which still runs into the same clunkiness issues.
I'm considering modifying Regeneration somehow, but due to how Costs Fatigue works, it would be a very minor Limitation on the Regeneration to have to pay 1 FP per 1 HP regenerated, which doesn't seem very fair, as that changes the dynamic from a perpetually renewing pool of resources (HPs that just come back) to a mere ability to exchange one depleted resource for another (spend FP to regain HP).

Of course, a yet another modifier to Leech, Cosmic (+50%) this time, might cover allowing Leeched healing to take place later, as long as the drained FP is stored in an Energy Reserve with Special Recharge. It's clean and doesn't seem obviously unbalancing. Again, eyeballing it, it seems to add an equivalent point cost as messing with Healing, but yields the exact mechanical effect I want and not a cludge with undesired mechanics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Railstar View Post
On losing FP from exertion but not regaining it naturally, I did find this thread: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=68722
Unhealing (FP) sounds like it ought to be worth at least +50% what Unhealing (HP) is, as FP are depleted far more often and the default rate of 'healing' for them is more than two orders of magnitude higher.

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Originally Posted by Railstar View Post
I would add the caveat that this could mean some very lazy vampires, because it is so difficult for them to regain FP. They would have to conserve their energies very carefully. Disadvantages like Gluttony or Compulsive Sexual Activity or Lecherousness would help keep encouraging them into those FP draining activities.
A feature, not a bug, in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Railstar View Post
Oh! Found something! Addiction rules. Basic Set, page 440, Drug Withdrawal & Psychological Dependency. The degeneration might be slow, but if the Addiction is totally addictive (-10 to the Will rolls) then the withdrawal rolls are virtually certain to fail. Disadvantages are only -1 per day, but it might give you something of a framework to use.
That's a great idea!

I do want some vampires to be Addicted to different things, of course, as Mental Disadvantages.

All of them have a supernatural requirement to drain life force, not a preference and not something that can be overcome with willpower, therapy, healing or any form of Mind Control. Even if they drink blood from humans daily, if they don't drain life force occasionally, they'll gradually become more bestial and insane until they are effectively no longer sapient creatures (which for a PC would equal death and for an NPC Ally would be worse than death, because it's now a threat). As such, it seems to be every bit as bad as Dependency, even though it doesn't 'kill' them, because it will destroy the character and replace it with something else.

If I used the Addiction mechanics for that hunger, I'd have to modify it with an Enhancement to represent more than just physical or psychological addiction, i.e. more than just a Physical or Mental Disadvantage, but an actual supernatural one that couldn't be cured, as it was the thing that kept them 'alive'.
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Old 03-09-2018, 02:30 AM   #26
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Default Hazard: Bleeding

In my campaigns, I treat damage lost from Bleeding differently from other HP and FP damage, in that the full amount cannot be healed until the blood is replaced, either with a blood transfusion or enough time to replace it with normal physical processes (as per Bio-Tech). Magical healing that simply cures HP is not enough to replace lost blood, but there are, obviously, magical remedies that count as 'blood transfusions'. These will generally be herbal or alchemical and demand at least some bed rest and good nutrition to recover, however, unless the healer is awesomely powerful.

With this in mind, Bleeding is clearly a Hazard in the sense Starving, Freezing, etc. are.

What ought the modifier value for Leech causing HP and FP loss that counts as being lost to the Bleeding Hazard be?
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Old 03-09-2018, 03:17 AM   #27
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Default Re: Hazard: Bleeding

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What ought the modifier value for Leech causing HP and FP loss that counts as being lost to the Bleeding Hazard be?
Hm. That seems fairly setting-dependent. I mean, in a mundane TL 8 game that amounts to "much easier to heal than normal damage" and is probably a limitation.
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Old 03-09-2018, 03:30 AM   #28
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Default Re: Hazard: Bleeding

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Hm. That seems fairly setting-dependent. I mean, in a mundane TL 8 game that amounts to "much easier to heal than normal damage" and is probably a limitation.
Not for FP lost to Bleeding, at least. Normal FP recover automatically every 10 minutes, but FP lost to Bleeding will require days or a blood transfusion to fix.

On HP, this is not a limitation, either, but I might be persuaded that it's a special effect. Note that normal HP loss seems to be at least partially shock to the system and can be treated with First-Aid in minutes for the first few HP, at TL8.
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Old 03-09-2018, 05:41 AM   #29
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Default Re: Mesopotamian Vampire

The drinking of the blood just seems to be a special effect of Healing with Blood Agent, Empathetic, Injuries Only, Reliable+10, and Xenohealing (All Earthly Life). The vampire can heal any form of Earthly life by pouring their blood onto the target. Since the target does not have to be conscious, the ability possesses greater utility than giving the target Leech.
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Old 03-09-2018, 06:00 AM   #30
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Default Re: Mesopotamian Vampire

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The drinking of the blood just seems to be a special effect of Healing with Blood Agent, Empathetic, Injuries Only, Reliable+10, and Xenohealing (All Earthly Life). The vampire can heal any form of Earthly life by pouring their blood onto the target. Since the target does not have to be conscious, the ability possesses greater utility than giving the target Leech.
Your construction would allow healing of as many HPs in one turn as the vampire could give. That's rather far from 1 FP and 1 HP per second.

Bleeding onto people also doesn't do anything, the blood has to enter their system, either through their bloodsteam or digestion (albeit magically fast).

It's also doubtful that the blood can heal all Earthly life. Persons of a race or species similar to what the vampire was in life, yes, but not necessarily dragons, demons, mind flayers, unicorns, etc.

I probably ought to add a Limitation to the Leech, in that the target has to be an intelligent mortal being of a race compatible with the vampire's mortal body, at least for full effect. I suppose there might be some limited value in drinking the blood of other beings, but unintellient beings would provide, at most, very limited nourishment or enjoyment.
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