Re: Statting up a Dullahan
 

I realize things have moved on to Duplication, but...

Not only is it always at the head, but this is the only place the character's senses (other than Touch) are located. This also requires placing a highly-vulnerable (it can't defend itself, and it's rather easy to target the Skull, for x4 injury) body part away from the reach of the body, which is problematic. I'd say the cost for this - even considering the boosted range - would be [10], making it functionally a net total -80% Limitation, and I wouldn't be too argumentative if someone placed it at [5].

It's a Ranged Headbutt, really (you'd have to hit with the least aerodynamic part of the head to deliver a bite). The fact you need to throw your most vulnerable bit calls for a significant discount. Considering all that - and the fact the character already has a headbutt attack, this is just putting Ranged on it - I'd eyeball it as a Perk, maybe [2].

This is covered by your Clairsentience, above.

Does the dullahan have a Neck hit location? If not, this is simply IT (No Neck) at full cost (being able to be suffocated by someone holding their hand over your mouth is a function of lacking Doesn't Breathe). If so, no trait is needed. If your dullahans have a Neck that can be choked, but is treated as a Torso hit for purposes of Injury, then your build would be correct. Decapitation is just a special effect of a Neck wound that kills you.

Seems fair.

Perhaps No Legs (Portable) [-30], but applied only to the Head. The Head is right around 10% of the character's surface area, so [-3] doesn't seem too inappropriate.

Included as part of my interpretation of Clairsentience.

Compare a character with normal Duplication (where death of the dupe means sympathetic Injury and loss of the Advantage) to one with this Limitation and Extra Life. At -60%, the character is saving [21] on Duplication and paying [25] for Extra Life. For a net cost of [4], the character gets a "get out of death free" card, which is a pretty serious discount.

What you're really looking at is something more akin to Vulnerability x7 (Sympathetic Injury), where Sympathetic Injury is really more rare than Rare. Vulnerability x7 (everything) would be [-125] (by symmetry with IT:DR), against a Rare threat it would be [-25], and against this Ultra-Rare threat it would probably be something like [-12.5], which I'd round down to [-10].

Agreed on the first. For the second, One Person Only is canonically -80% (PU8:5), so there's a good reason to take that instead of Racial.

As for the fact the dupes share senses, that's worth at least a Perk, being roughly comparable to Teamwork. Special Rapport wouldn't be entirely out of the question, however.

Re: Statting up a Dullahan
 

My 2 cents: How it gets statted up probably depends a lot on how you envision "headless"... well, working. The basic portrayal I recall seeing, though I don't know if it was a Dullahan specifically, involves the head being visibly frustrated while the body fumbles around placing random vaguely right-shaped objects on its neck; usually, the head is 'tied down' by external means rather than a proper 'neck'. Most of the time I've seen it relevant, beings with detachable heads aren't immune to Decapitation - they often keep their head where it's 'supposed to' be and suffer from someone chopping it off. In fact, it's easier with them, because the neck effectively has no structural integrity outside of whatever armor is put around it - no HP and a crippling threshold of zero, in game terms.

Cases where you, say, hold your head under your arm seem thematic, and the rest of the time the body seems to run at the cleverness of a particularly dull human. If you're controlling your body remotely, that's another "level" of the "power".

For that setup, I'd probably stat it up as:

Headless (7/32/122 points): Injury Tolerance (Independent Body Parts; Detachable Head Only, -85%; Nuisance Effect, need to tie head down when in contact, -5%) [7] + Immunity to Neck Chokes [1] + Quirk (Neck crippling/decapitation threshold is zero) [-1]. Level two adds Possession (Own Body Only, -80%; While head is detached, -10%) + Puppet (While head is detached, -10%) [+25]. Level 3 adds Telecontrol 2 to Possession [+90].

Notes:

• Having a detachable set of limbs and having a detachable head are mostly independent; most Modifiers that let you remove the full 'original' Advantage have -100% on top of whatever Enhancement represents the new capabilities, hence why Detachable Head Only is -85% - exactly 100% less than the +15% adding a Detachable Head gives you.
• Immunity to Neck Chokes is the result of treating Injury Tolerance (No Neck) as a 5-point Immunity to neck-related things, then taking a more specific form vis-a-vis Immunity to a single poison/disease.
• Being able to detach your own head whenever you like is a special effect resulting from being able to not resist doing damage to yourself when you like.
• "While head is detached" is a rephrasing of "while using Injury Tolerance (Detachable Body Parts)".
• While your head and body are in the same place and physically touching, being able to control it as if you were 'in' the body is a special effect on Possession since you're controlling a single person's worth of body parts.
• The third level lets you control both when they're separated, by any distance.

The price seems possibly excessive given other builds at the third level, so it'd probably be better to ignore level 3 and model "you have two separate bodies with different capabilities and can share senses between them" some other way.

Re: Statting up a Dullahan
 

One traditional characteristic of a dullahan that I'm including is a very wide mouth, stretching from ear to ear. In GURPS, that's Born Biter 1, or maybe even 2. I consider that justification for being able to hit with a bite this way. Also, it has a cinematic feel that I enjoy.

The dullahan's body has a neck stump vulnerable to choke holds and such in my conception of it.


If I do go this way instead of using a limitation, I'm not sure figuring the value of Vulnerability x7 by using IT:DR is right. Wouldn't it be better to extrapolate from the existing Vulnerability numbers, so that a Rare x7 would be worth [-35], and then halve that to [-17.5], rounded down to [-15]? Unless you got the idea from a book or word of Kromm somewhere? And why x7? If you assume 2d as the average 7 points of damage, multiplying that by x7 would usually cause death, but not always, at least if you assume full HP for a character with the human average. And my dullahan have a higher ST/HP.


I definitely intend to include Mindlink. As for shared senses, isn't that what the Sensie enhancement on Telesend is for? That's a full +80%, it seems unbalanced to consider a Teamwork perk comparable.

Re: Statting up a Dullahan
 

The template was paying full (not in the head/body templates) 150 point cost for Unkillable.

The -60% was for the other dupe suffering instant death (same -HP as dupe) instead of 2d injury and stun when either dupe was killed. You're saying it's worth more like -30%? That's the same as a separate -10 point disad. At -60% of 35% it would come to -21 points instead.