GURPS Supers Character: Korrasami

by mshrm

Another 600-point super, for the same game as Jade Rocket. This one is for my wife; she’s been observing all this GURPS stuff for some time, and has decided to join in. I worked out the details of the character under her direction, along with some feedback from the GM.

She started me off with “You know Raven from the Teen Titans?”

Korrasami

600 points
Age 19; Human; 5’5″; 120

ST 10 [0]; DX 12 [40]; IQ 16 [120]; HT 12 [20].
Damage 1d-2/1d; BL 20 lbs.; HP 10 [0]; Will 17 [5]; Per 16 [0]; FP 12 [0].
Basic Speed 6 [0]; Basic Move 6 [0]; Block 7 (DX); Dodge 9; Parry 10 (Brawling).

Social Background
TL: 8 [0].
CF: Western (Native) [0].
Languages: English (Native) [0].

Advantages
Alternate Abilities: Magical Aura [212]
Warp (Blink; Extra Carrying Capacity: Extra-Heavy Encumbrance; Magical; No Strain; Pact: Discipline of Faith; Range Limit 10 miles; Reliable +6) [185]; Warp (Blind Only; Magical; Pact: Discipline of Faith; Range Limit 10,000 miles; Reliable +9; Takes Recharge: 1 hour; Tunnel: forms before you teleport) [135/5]

Alternative Abilities: Projected Psychic Energy [128]
Crushing Attack 5 (Double Knockback; Magical; Variable) [29/5]; Crushing Attack 5 (Area Effect (2 yd); Magical; Mobile (+1); Persistent; Requires Concentrate; Wall: Rigid: Any shape desired) [67/5]; Healing (Affects Self; Magical; Pact: Discipline of Faith) [39/5]; Telekinesis 25 (Based On Will; Magical; Pact: Discipline of Faith; Visible) [100]

Attractive [4]; Claim to Hospitality (worshipers) 2 [2]; Damage Resistance 4 (Tough Skin) [12]; Damage Resistance 5 (Force Field; Magical; Nuisance Effect: ability makes you obvious; Pact: Discipline of Faith) [24]; Danger Sense [15]; Detect (Supernatural phenomena) [20]; Empathy [15]; Luck (Defensive) [12]; Regeneration (Slow: 1HP/12Hr) [10]; Teleportation Talent 4 [20].
Perks: Attribute Substitution (Body Sense based on Will); Attribute Substitution (Innate Attack (Gaze) based on Will); Cloaked [3].

Disadvantages
Discipline of Faith (Mysticism) [-10]; Enemy (Demonic culture) (medium-sized group, some formidable or super-human) (6 or less; Hunter) [-15]; Nightmares (12 or less) [-5]; Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) [-10]; Reputation (spooky) -1 (All the time; Almost everyone) [-5]; Sense of Duty (Mundane humanity) (Entire Race) [-15]; Weakness (Contact with holy water and artifacts) (1d per minute) (Rare) [-10]; Wealth (Struggling) [-10]; Weirdness Magnet [-15]; Xenophilia (15 or less) [-5].

Quirks
Can Be Turned By True Faith; Dead Giveaway (Always wears a cloak and hood); Dorky; Hated by fundamentalist followers of Abrahamic religions; Photosensitivity

Skills
Autohypnosis-15 (Will-2) [1]; Body Sense-16 (Will-1) [2]; Brawling-14 (DX+2) [4]; Detect Lies-17 (Per+1) [1]; Exorcism-15 (Will-2) [1]; Fortune-Telling (Dream Interpretation)-18 (IQ+2) [1]; Hidden Lore (Demon Lore)-16 (IQ+0) [2]; Hidden Lore (Spirit Lore)-15 (IQ-1) [1]; Innate Attack (Gaze)-18 (Will+1) [2]; Intimidation-16 (Will-1) [1]; Meditation-15 (Will-2) [1]; Mind Block-16 (Will-1) [1]; Religious Ritual (Demon worship)-14 (IQ-2) [1]; Scholar!-16 (IQ+0) [24].

Equipment
Boots, High (Styling (+1); 6 lb); Cell Phone (4 oz); Cloth Gloves; Light Cloak (Styling (+2); 2 lb); Mail Coif (Titanium; 1.33 lb); Mail Hauberk (Titanium; 8.33 lb).

Background and Origin Story

It’s not something that’s necessarily obvious about the world of “Campaign City”, but as it happens, there are quite a few folks who worship demons. They’re just normal folks, going about their normal business, aside from their behind-closed-doors religious observances. It being a comic book world, some of the demons being worshiped are real.

Korrasami grew up in Hell, raised by those demons. They told her that she had been born to a family of mortal demon-worshipers. Almost from birth, they said, she had displayed magical powers. Thus, she had been an excellent sacrifice. Her mortal family handed her over to their demonic overlords.

She doesn’t know if any of this is true. Demons are notorious liars. She’s heard several variations on the story, including one where her magical talent comes from being the descendant of a demon.

In Hell, Korrasami was trained in the use of her magical abilities. Being trained by demons in the mystic arts is just about as pleasant as you would expect it to be. The expectation was that once her training was completed, she would be used as a weapon, or tool, or both, by her owners.

Instead, when she got a chance, she jumped ship and escaped into the mortal realm. She’s been on Earth, in “Campaign City”, for a few weeks, now. She’s making a modest living for herself, working as a fortune-teller and a sort of unordained minister to the same kind of suburban satanists as her parents.

Explanation and highlights

Attributes

Extraordinarily intelligent, and even more extraordinarily strong-willed. Even though she doesn’t have any telepathic powers, I expect her to end up protecting the group from psionicists, mostly because, with her Will, she’ll be nearly impossible for them to affect.

Social Background

So, weird thing about comic-book Hell… Apparently, it’s TL 8, and they speak English there. Probably with a California accent. You can tell, because Korrasami has the standard, default package of TL 8, Cultural Familiarity with the Western world, and English as a native language.

The reasoning here is to avoid extraneous complexity. We considered the possibility of having “Demontongue” as a native language and so forth, but decided that it would just complicate things and wasn’t necessary to the character. Anyway, one might argue that “realistically” a race of demons living in a different dimension would have their own language, culture, and so forth, but in the comics, none of that ever seems to matter much. Smooth-tongued contract-writing demons don’t ever seem to suffer a penalty for being unfamiliar with Earth culture. English-speaking wizards never summon French-speaking demons.

Therefore, Korrasami’s particular comic-book Hell has a lot of commerce with and understanding of the mortal realm. They might prefer a medieval aesthetic, with swords and cloaks and brooding castles, but they still know all about cell phones and automatic transmissions. Some of them come and go, working to taint souls or some other evil scheme. They bring the news back with them.

Advantages

Yeah, yeah, I know, I said one of the goals was to minimize complexity, after showing a character sheet that seems to have two of everything. Let’s break it down into pieces.

Korrasami has two sets of Alternate Abilities. First is her “Magical Aura”, which has two versions of Warp, one alternate to the other. The second is “Projected Psychic Energy”, which includes her outward-directed powers, mainly variations on psychokinesis.

The two flavors of Warp amount to “quick, close, and small” versus “big, showy, elaborate portal”. Under normal conditions, she’ll use the first version, with Blink and No Strain. This is a quick, Nightcrawler-style “bamf”. With Reliable and her Teleportation Talent, she’ll have a roll of 26, before penalties for time and distance. With Blink, she’ll be able to perform a teleport as an active defense at that level. (Eek!) The second version of Warp opens a portal, and can reach any where on the planet. It operates with a roll of 29, which is good, because a jump of over 1000 miles is going to be at a -8 for distance, plus a -5 for teleporting blind, putting her back down to an effective skill of 16 before we consider the modifier for time spent. It’s likely she’ll be taking 30 seconds, for no penalty. Once she’s opened such a portal, she needs to recover for an hour before she can open another.

Essentially, she’s got a teleport power that’ll carry her and a friend around the battlefield or across town, and another that’ll be used in Act 1 to drop the team into whatever exotic locale they’ll be in for this issue.

Next up, Projected Psychic Energy. The flagship power is Telekinesis sufficient to lift 1.25 tons. She uses this to fly. She can also project her psychokinetic energy as a 5d cr attack that does double knockback; an average damage roll should throw a normal human back a distance of four hexes. Alternatively, she can project that same force as a protective force field that lasts as long as she concentrates on it. Finally, she can project that same energy with such finesse that she can heal wounds, even her own.

(Regarding that projected force field, I would just like to say, the way GURPS does walls just feels weird. I mean, I can appreciate the way modify-attack-to-wall generalizes them, so you build “Wall of Stone” the same as “Wall of Fire”, but… weird. Makes it look like she’s got two different attacks, rather than an attack and a defense.)

Korrasami’s Claim to Hospitality comes from ministering to those suburban satanists: from time to time, she can find a spare couch to crash on and a refrigerator to raid.

She’s fairly rugged on her own, with DR 4 from tough skin, but she can also summon a personal force field for additional protection. She also heals quicker than a normal human. These abilities might point to demonic ancestry, or they might be side-effects of growing up in the alien environment of Hell, or they might be the result of thousands of hours of mystic rituals aimed at gathering magical power.

After a lifetime spent in Hell, she’s always on guard, giving her an almost-supernatural Danger Sense. Her magical studies have made her sensitive to any kind of supernatural phenomena. (Demons, yes. Magic, yes. Psychic powers? I’m not sure, we’ll see what the GM says.) Despite a lifetime spent in Hell, she possesses Empathy, which might be the root of her rebellion and escape.

Korrasami has three Perks. Her Body Sense and Innate Attack skills are magical in nature, and so they’re based on sheer Will. She has Cloaked, because in Hell, if you can’t rock a cloak with style, they send you down to the sulfur mines to prod the damned souls of shoplifters and people who dog-ear books instead of using a bookmark.

Why two Warps? It got too expensive trying to do everything all at once. Splitting the power in two made it much more affordable. It also keeps her from popping over to the campaign equivalent of STAR Labs’ Tokyo campus to grab the World’s Biggest McGuffin Ray when we realize, three seconds into the big fight, that a McGuffin Ray would be really useful right about now… while still allowing her to deliver the team to exotic locations with impressive scenery… which I’m sure the GM will appreciate.

Why Healing, Affects Self, and Regeneration? That one’s mostly a belt-and-suspenders tactic. I figure, if she gets a little scuffed, she can heal herself up between scenes, but if she’s beat up so bad she’s unconscious, she’ll still have the Regeneration ticking away in the background. Comic book characters bounce back extraordinarily quickly, so I think just about any super can support Slow Regeneration, just as “plot protection”.

Another thing to consider about the Healing/Regeneration thing is the limitations. Healing is Magical (-10%) and has the Pact limitation, meaning it might not always be available. The Regeneration, on the other hand, is built-in and just keep on going.

Finally, that Pact limitation that pops up all over the place. Korrasami spends a lot of time meditating, burning incense, chanting odd phrases (“Azarath Metrion Zinthos!”), and so forth. If she doesn’t do this, she loses the mystic focus required to perform a lot of her magic tricks. If she can’t meditate, she can’t teleport, she can’t heal, she can’t pick up small cars with her mind. On the other hand, she doesn’t need to meditate to raise a telekinetic wall or blast things with brute force. Those are the manifestations of her raw magical abilities that she displayed even as a child.

Disadvantages

Korrasami’s former owners (or “family”, as they would have it) would like to get her back under their control, but it’s hardly their top priority. They’re hunting her, but on 6 or less.

Her upbringing has left her with recurring Nightmares. She also has spooky ways that are often off-putting. The same process (or supernatural genetics) that gives her such tough skin and rapid healing also left her vulnerable to holiness, just like any demon.

Still, even Hell itself couldn’t affect the core virtue of her soul: she cannot bring herself to harm the innocent, and she feels a responsibility to protect those who are lucky enough to know nothing of the magical dangers lurking behind the surface of reality.

Understanding what it’s like to be a mystic fish-out-of-water in a mundane world, Korrasami can sometimes have a bit of a soft spot for those who are strange, unusual, or even freakish.

Like calls to like, and so weird calls to weird. Being a practitioner of the Dark Arts, she’s always running into the strange things that shouldn’t exist.

Quirks

Korrasami is allergic to True Faith, just like she’s allergic to holy objects. The atmosphere in Hell being what it is, she’s somewhat sensitive to bright lights.

Hell’s fashion sense run towards the baroque, but has one underlying constant: the cloak makes the demon. Korrasami will inevitably end up wearing a hooded cloak if there’s any possible way to do so.

Being an admitted spawn of Hell with demonic magical powers and a goth style, Korrasami isn’t all that popular with fundamentalists of several different religions.

Being unsure of herself among humans in social situations, sometimes Korrasami will overthink her actions and display Dorkiness.

Skills

Mostly self-explanatory for a character who was taught to meditate by demons. She’s got a bit of Brawling, despite not being a physical, in-your-face melee fighter, because sometimes life in Hell requires an uppercut to the chin. Her Detect Lies is extraordinary, because she learned by penetrating the deceptions of the best liars in the multiverse.

Korrasami’s flagship skill is Scholar! at IQ.  This stands in for a lot of the “book learnin'” that wizards need to have. In particular, it’s the reason why Korrasami can get away with being a wizard without Occultism.

Korrasami makes her living with a combination of Fortune-Telling and Religious Ritual (Demon Worship). This isn’t enough to generate much income, but it has the benefit of being low-profile.

GCA put in a footnote saying that her Intimidation might be affected by her spooky Reputation. I suspect Korrasami might get more mileage out of “… or I’ll eat your soul” than she would out of “… or I’ll beat you up”.

Gear

Hell has TL8 metallurgy and a pseudo-medieval style. Korrasami came to Earth wearing a mail coif and hauberk made from some hellish metal that more-or-less approximates titanium. Those, a pair of knee-high boots, a pair of gloves, and (of course) a well-made cloak make up her costume.

Since she’s been on Earth, Korrasasmi has established herself well enough in modern society to obtain a cell phone.