Keeping your heart in an egg

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Jerander

I went with Rare because there's only one and it doesn't have to be with you. If it's destroyed, you're done.

A potential pitfall with this approach: An ordinary person has this, without an option to hide it somewhere, and gets no points for it.

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

A potential pitfall with this approach: An ordinary person has this, without an option to hide it somewhere, and gets no points for it.

Call it Dependency (Soul Jar) then and/or give the character IT: No Vitals. The point is they have an external object that can be found and destroyed easily, killing them instantaneously.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by Jerander

I went with Rare because there's only one and it doesn't have to be with you. If it's destroyed, you're done.

I went through a bunch of responses to this and discarded all of them because I can't imagine a game where I would let a player take a disadvantage like this one.

For it to be worth the points people have to keep trying to destroy it but if I did that eventually it would get destroyed, the character would be dead, and the player would have have to ritually sacrificed to Satan to sustain our dark powers.... have to make a new character I mean.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by lexington

I went through a bunch of responses to this and discarded all of them because I can't imagine a game where I would let a player take a disadvantage like this one.

For it to be worth the points people have to keep trying to destroy it but if I did that eventually it would get destroyed, the character would be dead, and the player would have have to ritually sacrificed to Satan to sustain our dark powers.... have to make a new character I mean.

Yes, but if a character has a Patron or Ally with the trait, you want to be able to break it down so you can assess the value of the Patron or Ally trait.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Jerander

Call it Dependency (Soul Jar) then and/or give the character IT: No Vitals. The point is they have an external object that can be found and destroyed easily, killing them instantaneously.

The issue I have with it is that it doesn't look like a disadvantage. Usually you would see something like this as a limitation on Supernatural Durability or Unkillable. By itself, it seems like something close to a Feature. I suppose you could turn it into a true disad if you made it especially vulnerable.

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

The issue I have with it is that it doesn't look like a disadvantage. Usually you would see something like this as a limitation on Supernatural Durability or Unkillable. By itself, it seems like something close to a Feature. I suppose you could turn it into a true disad if you made it especially vulnerable.

Taking damage from something that doesn't normally damage other people is covered by disadvantages like Dependency, Vulnerability, and Weakness. Dependency is how they model the Wraith Items in Magic (p. 160). This seems like a similar thing to me.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by Jerander

Taking damage from something that doesn't normally damage other people is covered by disadvantages like Dependency, Vulnerability, and Weakness. Dependency is how they model the Wraith Items in Magic (p. 160). This seems like a similar thing to me.

Having your heart destroyed kills most things I'm familiar with.

The upshot of this is that your heart is in a different location. If someone finds it all they do is attack the heart for x3 damage to you repeatedly until you die. Perhaps No Vitals with an Achilles Heel limitation is a better way to represent it.

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by lexington

Having your heart destroyed kills most things I'm familiar with.

The upshot of this is that your heart is in a different location. If someone finds it all they do is attack the heart for x3 damage to you repeatedly until you die. Perhaps No Vitals with an Achilles Heel limitation is a better way to represent it.

I'm going with the OP which doesn't say it literally is the heart in an egg, but is trying model death from destruction of external items ("soul jars") in general. If the soul jar is literally their heart in an egg, then different traits/modifiers might be appropriate. But for instant death from destruction of soul jar, I'd go with Dependency.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

A potential pitfall with this approach: An ordinary person has this, without an option to hide it somewhere, and gets no points for it.

Originally Posted by lexington

Having your heart destroyed kills most things I'm familiar with.

Yes, but usually you have to be present for someone to destroy your heart, and you can try to dodge, etc. What's disadvantageous here relative to having it in your chest is that people can destroy it while you're not around, won't have to make a difficult targeted attack roll, and may not even need a roll at all ('We build a fire and chuck the thing into it' 'I feed it to the dog' etc.)

ETA:
This is relevant for the Darklings conversion too, in my other thread. One of the things they do is steal organs, which they keep alive in magical gardens. The people whose organs they have don't die, but damage to the organs will affect them, and the Darklings use this as a threat to keep people in line. So there's the question of what trait is involved when someone else can take your organs away, and then you get the downsides but not the upsides (You can't hide the organs or control who has access to them, and you're not and harder to kill than usual).

[Nereidalbel]

Still thinking the trait you're describing is closer to the effect of the Soul Stone spell than Soul Jar. Breaking the stone INSTANTLY kills you, with no chance to make a new one, or even attempt an overly dramatic death speach.