[Path Magic] What happens if you Banish a Spirit of Place?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Anders

The intent is presumably to make it so you can't kill normal humans with it. So I'd start there with my definitions. According to that description you could 'kill' e.g. a lich or a vampire with it, though.

Horror by way of some features seems to imply that you define being able to be affected by these spells as a 0pt feature (even though it seems like all downsides so maybe it should be a quirk?) and that it has to be listed on the character sheet, as otherwise we may not be able to infer it by the presence of advantages.

Though personally I think if you have Insubstantiality of the "Spirit" sort (Powers 54 defines five other kinds of Insubstantiality) that is probably the best guideline if we don't want to be listing a bunch of features.

Ghosts (H78) Shadows (H80) and Evil Faerie are all vulnerable to Astral Block, Repel Spirits, and Turn Spirit.

Succubi (H66) share these also, plus also Banish.

Demons (H96) as well, except for them it's both Banish and Pentagram they're vulnerable too.

I think I remember even broader examples like "can be influenced by spirit-affecting magic" (ie all spells) but forget where I saw it. That at least I can understand being 0pt because there are some spells which benefit spirits like Embody.

In terms of only being affected by attack spells (AB/RS/TS and sometimes B or P) but not explicitly the buffing ones though it seems purely disadvantageous, the question is if it's disadvantageous enough to warrant a point, or just one of those situations where a -0.1pt disadvantage counts as a 0pt discount.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Plane

Horror by way of some features seems to imply that you define being able to be affected by these spells as a 0pt feature (even though it seems like all downsides so maybe it should be a quirk?).

What it really is is that GURPS treats classes of being as zero point feature: many abilities only work on specific classes of being, and you're immune to any abilities that don't work on your class of being. Whether this should be a net benefit or penalty is setting dependent so it should really be handled by unusual background (which should have a disadvantage form, but doesn't) rather than assigning a point value to class of being itself.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Plane

Horror by way of some features seems to imply that you define being able to be affected by these spells as a 0pt feature (even though it seems like all downsides so maybe it should be a quirk?) t.

In a Horror setting there are liable to be plenty of things that only affect or target living persons.