Eating Magic

[Nereidalbel]

I'd just give them Doesn't Drink, Restricted Diet (Mana), and maybe Increased Consumption, if I wanted them to "starve" faster than a mortal being would. Treat Low Mana as half rations for everybody else, and No Mana as no food whatsoever.

While not entirely RAW, I would allow such a character to physically eat (and thus destroy) a powerstone to act as food in a No Mana Zone, with the charge the stone had before entering the NMZ determining how much "food" it's worth. That'll end up being quite expensive, of course.

[Aldric]

The only advantage on the list you can mostly get rid of is Unaging. Golems might not age, but how often is that relevant to an adventurer?

Other that that, the others are quite relevant and worth every penny, especially any DR or IT and other immunities, your only option would be to offset them with disadvantages, Low Empathy, Numb and stuff like that seems appropriate.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Also building a character that's made out of wood or stone is seriousy expensive with a lot of expensive advantages. Is there a way you can think of to pair down the cost on all of the Doesn't Eat, Doesn't Sleep, Unaging, Injury Resistance, Resistance to metabolic Hazards?

Sure... if they don't have the advantage, they don't have to pay for it.

For example, most golems will have "Doesn't Sleep", but can you imagine a golem that requires some sort of "Sleep"? What if they have to spend 8 hours a day chanting the magical incantations that keep them in existence?

Injury resistance is fairly natural for someone with a body made of stone or wood. What if the golem had (comparatively) delicate magical gems, or inlaid lines of precious metal that were vital to its well-being?

The above are probably better represented as custom disadvantages rather than simply not buying the advantage, but everything should mostly cancel out. In fact, its better if you make the requirements more exotic, like the Golem requiring a four hour session of chanting every 12 hours, making it less like sleep. Just think about why the golem isn't able to do what the advantage you don't want to buy says it can do.

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There are various ways to do this. I discussed them in GURPS Templates Toolkit 2: Races, in the section on Sustenance. My preferred approach if you want it to work like "eating" is to say that you have Doesn't Eat or Drink (Magical, -10%); however, you could also make it a Dependency. Do you want Fatigue issues to be involved, or not?

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I thought about regular starvation but I want the peril to be more alarming for these creatures so I like the idea of Dependency where you take Hit Point Damage if you're outside of a mana zone for too long.

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

While not entirely RAW, I would allow such a character to physically eat (and thus destroy) a powerstone to act as food in a No Mana Zone, with the charge the stone had before entering the NMZ determining how much "food" it's worth. That'll end up being quite expensive, of course.

I'm fond of sacrifices like that but I envisioned them without mouths or noses. I may still play around with a way to make that happen. Thanks.

[Flyndaran]

They're supernatural, so it's not like they have to eat stones in the conventional manner.

[AlexanderHowl]

Exactly how much time would a Powerstone give? I really do not think that it should be worth more than an hour per level (since it takes that long to create).

[Flyndaran]

Why should a meal last only 1 hour?
A better metric, I think, would be price per point per 8 hours compared to price of food for a person.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I'm fond of sacrifices like that but I envisioned them without mouths or noses. I may still play around with a way to make that happen. Thanks.

If they can speak, they can "eat" the gem with whatever orifice produces sound. Gotta admit, it'll be great to see a PC find out the BBEG is a mage with some ridiculously OP powerstone on his staff, so they make an attack roll of "I bite the powerstone off his staff!"

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Why should a meal last only 1 hour?
A better metric, I think, would be price per point per 8 hours compared to price of food for a person.

1 level stones are a light meal and 2 levels are a full meal? Gonna be expensive, but, they never have to pay for any food outside of an NMZ, so it balances out for the most part.

[Flyndaran]

I was initially ready to argue due to my love of rules minutia. But on further thought, yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable.