Using Symptoms to create a progressive petrification attack

[Michael Thayne]

Been thinking a lot about how to model a medusa's gaze and similar abilities, and came up with this:

Toxic Attack or Fatigue Attack (Permanent, +150%; Symptoms, A Bit Petrified after taking over 1/3 HP or FP, Half-Petrified after taking over over 1/2 HP or FP, Totally Petrified after taking over 2/3 HP or FP, +900%) [46 or 115 points/die].

This is just to illustrate the main idea, obviously you'd want to at least add penetration modifiers and likely alterations to range and something like Area Effect or Cone. "Permanent" in this case means that Stone to Flesh or Remove Curse instantly heals all damage from the attack, but otherwise it can't be healed. Pricing this at +150% seems fair given that Cosmic, Can Only Be Healed Magically is canonically a +100% enhancements. Finally, the three levels of Symptoms are Alternate Forms to add a series of progressively more extreme meta-traits, as follows:

A Bit Petrified
-31 Points

You've begun the process of turning to stone. This interferes with vision, makes it hard to do things with your hands, and makes you look like a horrifying rock monster, but also has some minor benefits. Your weight also increases 10-15%, enough to make flotation difficult. The weight increase could in theory grant large creatures a few extra HP, but in most cases that aspect is negligible.

Advantages: Breath-Holding 1 [2]; DR 1 [5]; Nictitating Membrane [1]; Pressure Support 1 [5]; Reduced Consumption 1 [2]; Resistant to Metabolic Hazards (+3) [10].
Disadvantages: Appearance (Monstrous; Universal, +25%) [-25]; Bad Grip 3 [-15]; Cannot Float [-1]; No Peripheral Vision [-15].

Half-Petrified
-165 Points, modified by cost of bonus HP

Similar to A Bit Petrified, but taken to the point where you're sluggish and half-insensate, and your hands and feet have stopped working entirely. Your weight increases by about 85%, which combined with Unliving could justify increasing HP by 150% or more, the only benefit of this level of petrification that even comes close to offsetting its substantial downsides.

Advantages: Breath-Holding 2 [4]; DR 3 [15]; Injury Tolerance (Unliving) [20]; Nictitating Membrane 3 [3]; Pressure Support 2 [10]; Reduced Consumption 2 [4]; Resistant to Metabolic Hazards (+8) [15].
Disadvantages: Appearance (Monstrous; Universal, +25%) [-25]; Cannot Float [-1]; Crippled Legs [-10]; Decreased Time Rate [-100]; Hard of Hearing [-10]; No Fine Manipulators [-30]; No Sense of Smell/Taste [-5]; Numb [-20]; Slow Healing 1 [-5]; Tunnel Vision [-30].

Totally Petrified
-376 Points, modified by cost of bonus HP

You've been turned into a stone statue of yourself. Anyone not present at your transformation will assume you are simply a highly realistic sculpture, and may decide to display you in a museum, personal collection, etc. But hey, it's not all bad—your weight increases by about 170%, and between that at Homogenous, your HP could increase by over 450%!

Attributes: ST -10 [-100]; IQ -10 [-200].
Secondary Characteristics: HP +10 [20].
Advantages: Body of Stone [140]; Doesn't Eat or Drink [10]; Unaging [15].
Disadvantages: Blindness [-50]; Cannot Float [-1]; Dead Broke [-25]; Deafness [-20]; No Legs (Sessile) [-50]; No Manipulators [-50]; No Sense of Smell/Taste [-5]; Numb [-20]; Social Stigma (Subjugated) [-20]; Unhealing (Partial) [-20].

[whswhs]

Shouldn't you have Unaging for the totally petrified form?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Shouldn't you have Unaging for the totally petrified form?

Good point. And probably ST -10, come to think of it.

[Plane]

One of the complicated things (since Syptoms borrows pricing from Affliction) is that it's +10% per advantage point +1% per disadvantage point, so treating it like a net disadvantage ignores the 10x pricing of stuff like DR and Breath-Holding that you're giving out.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Plane

One of the complicated things (since Syptoms borrows pricing from Affliction) is that it's +10% per advantage point +1% per disadvantage point, so treating it like a net disadvantage ignores the 10x pricing of stuff like DR and Breath-Holding that you're giving out.

Canonically, Affliction (Advantage, Alternate Form) lets you side-step that issue. See for example the Body of Wood build in GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery.

[David Johnston2]

Social Stigma is inappropriate. Nobody is going to be making reaction rolls to a statue.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Social Stigma is inappropriate. Nobody is going to be making reaction rolls to a statue.

It's already canonical for IQ 0 AIs (at least in Transhuman Space), and vehicles built as characters (per Template Toolkit 2). I did worry a bit that piling on Dead Broke was going a bit far though.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Canonically, Affliction (Advantage, Alternate Form) lets you side-step that issue. See for example the Body of Wood build in GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery.

yeah, though you have that transformation time requirement (unless you reduce time it to zero) which I think is maneuvers the Afflictor needs to take (unless it's Beneficial Affliction)

though you could also have "Uncontrollable Alternate Form" as a disad which neither party could control

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Plane

yeah, though you have that transformation time requirement (unless you reduce time it to zero) which I think is maneuvers the Afflictor needs to take (unless it's Beneficial Affliction)

though you could also have "Uncontrollable Alternate Form" as a disad which neither party could control

Huh, I hadn't thought about this. I don't think making the character (or creature) with the Affliction advantage take the maneuvers is right, though. The Body of Wood spell, for example, says nothing about unusually long casting time.

[Plane]

One of the problems with Affliction (Alternate Form) that I just remembered (I think I saw someone write about this before) is that Alternate Form's pricing is based on the comparison of price of that racial template to your existing racial template.