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TrueMikeBrown
2010-08-16, 09:49 AM
some of you might recall me posting before about a new campaign I am making. I am currently evaluating gurps as a possible system, and want some advice from someone who knows the system better than myself.

I would like there to be a race that has psychic abilities, but suffers psychic backlash whenever they kill someone (which will cause them to temporarily lose their psychic abilities, and perhaps suffer temporary physical and mental penalties as well)

is there a disadvantage that could be made to mach this description, or perhaps a limitation to their abilities that would match it?

perhaps the loss of abilities would be a limitation to the ability, and the attribute penalties would be a disadvantage?

I am interested to see what you come up with

Satyr
2010-08-16, 10:55 AM
Pact Limitation on the psychic powers, combined with pacifism (Cannot kill) for a -15% Limitation or a significantly weaker version based on reluctant killer may work very well here.
Pact usually means that you loses the power until you repent, but does not deal any damage. So, lose the power for X hours or days and suffer Y damage might very well work, but the impact of these depend greatly on the frequency of combats and the availability of healing.

dariathalon
2010-08-16, 11:01 AM
Short answer: In GURPS, you can do anything.

Longer answer: Yes, just off the top of my head, perhaps something like this included in their racial traits...

(-40 pts.) Base DX 8
(-40 pts.) Base IQ 8
(+28 pts.) IQ increase +2 w/ limitation (Pact: Pacifism Cannot Kill -15%)
(+28 pts.) DX increase +2 w/ limitation (Pact: Pacifism Cannot Kill -15%)
For a total cost of -24 points.

These alone would make for a race of normal human capabilities most of the time, but when it has killed and not yet "atoned" for the killing suffers -2 to most skill rolls. You could play around with this some to make it more heavily affect one stat (such as Will) or affect others that I didn't (ST or HT for example) or even give the race higher or lower standard values than a typical human.

A similar limitation could be put on the race's psionic abilities. For instance they might have...

(+38 pts.) Telecommunication: Telesend w/ (Broadcast +50%, Telepathic -10%, Pact: Pacifism Cannot Kill -15%)
(+23 pts.) Mind Reading w/ (Telepathic -10%, Pact: Pacifism Cannot Kill -15%)

Other modifications you could make would be: Changing the psionic powers they have (maybe giving them more precognitive abilities or something), You could change the Pact to an Accessibility limitation, still ought to be worth the same reduction or so, I think, but reflavors the race a little, add other modifiers to the psionic abilities, I just set up some basic psionic packages... There's plenty more you could do there.

TrueMikeBrown
2010-08-16, 11:05 AM
Beautiful! :smallsmile:

I new that this was possible.

Thanks to both of you.