Character Spotlight: Kira, a TL0 shaman

Today's character is Kira, a TL0 shaman. Kira's world is one where Spirits abound. People, places, natural elements, feelings and even some objects have spirits associated with them, and magically adept individuals may tap into them to acquire magic.

Note: Characters in Character Spotlight are created with the "coolness factor" in mind, not min-maxing.

Kira herself showed natural perception for the spirit world as a child. Quickly identified as a sensitive person, she trained under her tribe shaman in order to learn how to channel her abilites.

Life on Kira's home valley and woodlands was trivial enough, with the occasional inclement weather and low-level clashes with neighboring tribes. As of late, however, rumors from those who travel to the edge of the valley speak of diminishing game and a group of people that started to encroach on tribal land, coming from the East. They speak an unknown language and take prisioners whenever they can - and so far none has returned. They also mastered the use of different materials, including one that's both more resistant than wood and stone and as sharp as a sabertooth's claws and teeth: they call it bronze.

Here's her sheet:

DESIGN NOTES AND RELEVANT RULES

Thematically, that's it. But how to translate that into GURPS mechanics? As with many GURPS related questions, there are multiple answers to it, including some published in Thaumatology - and if I recall correctly, Magic and even Horror.

We decided to keep things simple, and start out by opting to use Power Investiture and standard Spells, simply stating that the spells come from the spirits. Easy peasy. With Power Investiture, if Kira fails to perform in conformity to the rites the spirit world expects, she will lose the ability to cast any spells she's learned. We take the Disciplines of Faith disadvantage for this. 

Apart from Spells, there are other abilities that fit within the Shaman concept, namely Detect (Spirits) and Medium. We also want her to be able to bless other people through the use of an Affliction that bestows Luck. We will be purchasing all of these advantages with modifiers to achieve how we want them to work.

We can purchase all this and call it a day! And it will work just fine. But what if we wish to tweak things further? Let's see what can be done. 

So far, so good. As we stand, Kira would learn spells as "skills" and use them as per Basic Set rules. But there's one more aspect we wish to emulate! Instead of a fixed list of known spells, we would like Kira to be able to tap into the abilities of spirits nearby her - so water spells near a body of water, fire spells near a fire, and so on... For that, we are going to use Modular Abilities, also modified with several limitations, which will enable her to switch points in that advantage to points in any spells the GM decide are available in any given area.

So let's take a look at each of these advantages in turn, with their modifiers.

• Modular Abilities - allows her to reassign "on demand" a number of character points to any skill or mental advantage. To actually cast these spells is what require Power Investiture! It's modifiers:
• Spells Only: restricts the advantage to, well, spells only (we will dispense with the "grimoire" part.
• Gadget - Breakable: in order to reassign her points, she must have her Charm with her.
• Gadget - SM -7 or -8
• Gadget - Can be  stolen: the Charm can be stolen, and will not work for the thief. 
• Preparation required - it will take a 8 hour long to trance and meditation for her to rearrange her points. 
• Requires Roll (Religious Ritual) - The trance must be performed appropriately. She will need to succeed at this roll at the end of the trance it for it to work.

• Detect (Spirits, Ocassional) - will allow her to detect such entities.
• Vague: we want her to "feel" something is present in her vicinity, but not point it's direction or quantity.

• Medium - will allow her to converse with spirits.
• Preparation required (10 minutes): a quick ritual is necessary in order to achieve this.

• Affliction - this will allow her to bestow Luck to her friends. It's the trickiest part of her build, but by breaking it down it we can see it's not that complicated.
• Advantage: instead of a Stun effect, we want to inflict Luck upon someone. 
• Costs HP (3 HP): this modifier comes from Powers. We want it to not be so trivial to use this ability, so it will cost her 3 HP each time - and we also rule that these HP can't be healed by magic.
• Extended Duration (Permanent, with dispelling conditions): we will stipulate thAT the dispelling condition is actually one use of Luck or 3 days after the subject is affected. After that, his Luck vanishes 
• Malediction - By using this, we will make sure the target can choose not to resist the affliction. Kira will only need to succeed at a Will roll.
• Melee Attack (Reach C): this will make so the ritual requires touching the subject.
• Preparation required (1 hour): that's how long it takes.

So now we have a group of advantages that are thematically linked and all share a common source. We just built ourselves a power, the Power of Spirits. All we need now is a Power Talent and a Power Modifier. We settle on creating a Spirit Talent (5 pts/level) and a Spirit Power Modifier (-5), and apply the modifier to all the abilities above. Though technically all of this can done by using the information on the Basic Set, Powers is the book to go for it. 

We also create a custom "regular" talent for Kira, that will give bonuses to some related skills. We call it "Spirit-Touched". Also we rename "Modular Abilities" to "Spirit Trapping" cause that's cooler.

Finally, any weapons that Kira might use actually are made out of wood and stones. This means that they are more prone to break against metal weapons and also have a 0.5 armor divisor.

That's it!

Cheers.