[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Divine Curse

[johndallman]

Divine Curse is a supernatural disadvantage, notionally mental, although I think that mainly means it will follow you to a different body. The point value is highly variable, because you’ve been cursed by a deity or other powerful supernatural force; the GM decides the value by comparison with other disadvantages. I think this disadvantage first appeared in GURPS Religion, for 3e.

The curse is not necessarily personal. It might be on any group that includes you, from “all of your race” to “those pesky adventurers that broke into my tomb.” Example forms of the curse include a commandments (“you may never eat fruit”), misfortunes (“All your friends will die within a year of meeting you”), or any normal disadvantages. Commandments are priced as if they were Vows (you can’t break them, but that doesn’t make them worth more points), and disadvantages have their usual values.

The point of a curse is normally the cursing power’s desire to modify your, or the group’s, behaviour. So if you can find out what they are offended about, which may be easy if you received the curse personally, or may be very hard, you may be able make penance or atone, resulting in the lifting of the curse. Of course, this may result in you acquiring some new disadvantage(s). If it is reasonably straightforward to find out the cause of the curse and to lift it, the value of the curse is reduced. Normally, it’s very hard to do one or both of these things, or the consequences of doing so are about as bad as the curse.

Divine Curse doesn’t belong on templates for normal people, for obvious reasons. It does get used to implement the restrictions that are sometime intrinsic to supernatural creatures. Adaptions has examples of using it in settings, and Alphabet Arcane has a trio of eternally wandering entertainers. Basic Set uses it for characters who won’t buy off a fulfilled Destiny, and on the Vampire template, while Boardroom and Curia suggests cursed organisations. Creatures of the Night has several things with this disadvantage, and DF Celestials have a mild case. Horror and Locations: Hellgate have examples not convenient to describe, and Mars Attacks has Weird Science Curse, much the same, except that there’s nobody you can plead with. Monster Hunters makes use of (Monster Magnet), and Thaumatology has examples of using it for really bad magical calamities and poorly cared-for artifacts. Magical Styles has a group where Divine Curse is a common disadvantage option, which shows that the gods occasionally do their job right.

I’ve never seen this disadvantage used, as far as I recall, although there were zombie Spetsnaz in a Dark Conspiracy game that might have been suffering it. What has it done in your games?

[Railstar]

I used Divine Curse as the "like this other disadvantage, but subtle differences" rather than tack a whole bunch of complicated modifiers onto it.

The main character it got used for was a vampire: aside from being unable to enter a home uninvited, she also could not cross running water unaided. It wasn't quite the same as Dread, because I wanted to include that element of folklore without her being unable to take a shower or wash or so on.

[RogerBW]

I'm not sure I see the point of this existing as a separate Disadvantage. It doesn't do anything in itself; it inflicts other Disadvantages. It's something that you can't simply buy off with earned experience points (though opinions differ on how easy that should be), but the listing specifically says it shouldn't ever give you more points than the underlying Disadvantage does. Maybe "can be bought off (only) by performing certain specific actions" should simply be regarded as a Limitation?

[Christopher R. Rice]

I wrote a Pyramid article that examined Divine Curse and all the ways you could reasonably use it. It includes a fairly long list of curses in the article itself and how said items were assembled.

As for my games - I'm a pretty big fan of using it as a way to simulate disadvantages you'd otherwise have issues bending other disads to do. I've also used it as short-hand for a sort of "disadvantage" meta-trait for monsters, faeries, ghosts, etc.

I've used it as a "power source" as well with the GM Pact limitation. In that case, it was the speedster in my AEON supers game with "Divine Curse (Bullet Magnet)," whose powers manifested in time to save him from death against a hail of bullets, but he's been "weak" against lead poisoning ever sense because he doesn't subconsciously believe that he's fast enough to escape being shot.

In my Chronicles of Ceteri campaign I created a series of Divine Curses (The Laws of Cellini) which represented the Supernatural Laws of Nature; e.g., demons and ghosts both hate cold iron, but to different degrees so I reskinned Weakness to represent that and then hid the mechanics in nice neat packages.

In my current DF campaign, I've used it for a couple of races. The elves despise drakes and their ilk (mostly drakken and other magically created mishaps derived from drakes) and the drakes return that hatred using the Divine Curse (Enmity) disadvantage I created on my blog. Dwarves have a similiar issue, but with giants and giant-kin.

(In that setting drakes are your more typical western dragons - greedy for power and gold, while dragons are like eastern dragons - powerful spirits and servants of the gods.)