Glass Golem, need helps with stats new to BRP

[clawingwolf]

Ok so I've had BRP for awhile and I finally have everyone on board to use the rules system, we are doing a fantasy genre game. Now one of my players wants to be a human noble, whose soul has been transfered into a glass Golem (human size and appearence). Not sure how to proceed on stats.

I'm going to keep POW, INT, EDU the normal human, but not sure what to make STR, CON, DEX, APP or SIZ.

Any Ideas? are there stats for normal stone golems in the game somewhere??

[Atgxtg]

Here is how I would handle it. It's not the only way, but it's one way to handle it:

First off, I'd have him roll normal STR, CON, and SIZ for his old (humn) form. First off it will help with SIZ and STR, secondly, you will want them if he ever gets magically restored.

Secondly, I'd work on SIZ. Since glass is about two and a half times as dense as human flesh, I'd add 10 to his SIZ to reflect the increased weight. He's still have the same height, breadth as depth as before, he would just be heavier. SO you might want to record it something like SIZ 13 (23), so you can use the smaller SIZ for things like the weight of his armor.

For STR you got a bunch of choices, but based on the material strength and density, you can probably just add 6 to it (2/3rd the increase in SIZ) or if you are felling generous the same +10 as for SIZ.

For CON, he wouldn't have any, as he isn't a living being. That means he wouldn't be able to make a CON roll, and probably wouldn't get tired or need to sleep, but he also would be immune to things like poison and disease. Note that this will affect his hit points, although the SIZ increase will help. If you want to be really generous (I wouldn't, especially for a glass golem-glass is kinda brittle)) you could take CON out of the equation and just use SIZ for HP.

If you do want to force the character to rest, then you coul say that animating the golem body requires 1MP an hour, so he has to periodically rest to regenerate his magic points.

I'd give the character an extra point of armor or two to reflect the harness of glass. And as glass he wouldn't be quite as suspectibel to fire, but can melt.

You will need to figure out how the Golem can be repaired. Does it heal hit points naturally, and do first aid and healing spells work on it? Or does it take some sort of craft/repair skill or magic to fit it up? You will want to work stuff like this out in advance, so you will know what must be done when the inevitable happens and the golem gets damaged. Just be sure to think over whatever solution you come up with to see how restrictive it is, and if it can be perverted or exploited in new ways.

You will also want to decide what will happen tot he PC if the golem gets broken up or otherwise destroyed. Is he dead-dead or is his spirit trapped in the remains?

There are quite a few ways to go with this, depending on how powerful you want the character to be and/or how vulnerable.

[Zit]

Glass is very hard and very breakable: it is like either it holds, or totally breaks apart. If using the hit location option, there is a way to simulate this by changing the hit points in each location into "structural" armour points, alocating 0 HP: any hit below it have no effect, any damage above it destroys the location. If not using hit locations in your campaign, you may give one general armour amount for the whole body use the hit location for this character only and only of the damage exceeds the AP.

[Chaot]

Good stuff here already. My two groats.

First thing I thought of when reading OP was skeleton rules from CoC. Skeletons don't track hit points. Instead, they have a percentage chance to shatter depending on the amount of damage inflicted to them by a modifier of x4. So, if someone lands a blow against a skeleton of 8 points, the skeleton has a 32% chance to shatter. Maybe give the PC a natural armor rating, say 6, that is subtracted from the damage done. So an 8 point hit (minus 6 armor) is two points of damage, which means that the noble has an 8% chance of breaking. I don't normally use hit locations, but I think this character is an excellent candidate for them.

For fixes I think I would require a master artisan gaffer to oversee repairs. I'd make the character pretty sturdy though. If he does get shattered, I could see him riding around on another PC as half a face or something.

It really depends on what you are trying to model though.

[seneschal]

Another way to do the "hard but brittle" shtick would be to give him 5-12 points of Armor (kinetic, electricity, light), depending on how tough you want him to be. Glass is a poor conductor of electricity, so your golem would tend to shrug off electrical attacks such a wizard's standard-issue lightning bolt. He'd also tend to refract or deflect light-based attacks, so zapping him with a laser isn't useful. Heat-based attacks would be his Achilles heel. On the other hand, he's brittle, so the relatively low Hit Points based on having no CON (0 CON+SIZ/2) would be appropriate. So he's hard to hurt, but if he does take damage he risks being broken.

I'd handle damage/destruction/healing the same way it was for the Scarecrow and Tin Man of Oz: He can't heal damage but must be repaired by a glass maker, a trade that certainly exists in a medieval-ish setting. As long as the bulk of the pieces are recoverable, being shattered doesn't kill him. He just has to be melted down and reformed, something that might occur magically once he's in a semi-liquid state. Adding some additional glass won't hurt him, either. If the pieces are all or mostly lost, however, so is he.

The glass golem can't swim (he's too dense) but might be able to walk across the bottom of a body of water as long as he doesn't get mired in mud or quicksand. He'll have trouble walking on soft ground or snow. If he gets stuck, he can't drown or suffocate, but his friends will have a time getting him out. His weight and brittleness make horse riding problematic (getting thrown would be a real bummer, unless he happens to be in that inconvenient marsh at the time). While his increased STR offsets any penalties to his DEX (just to keep the bookkeeping down to a dull roar), Stealth is going to be difficult on stone or hardwood floors (clop, clop, clop).

Being changed to glass doesn't lower the aristocrat's APP; he's just as handsome as he always was. But he does have an unusual appearance, since he's presumably now a mobile transparent or translucent glass statue. Better beef up his Fast Talk or Seduction skills, just in case folks get spooked at first sight of him.

[Zit]

The glass golem can't swim (he's too dense) but might be able to walk across the bottom of a body of water as long as he doesn't get mired in mud or quicksand.

the very close refracting indices of water and glass make the Glass Golem very difficult to be seen underwater, almost invisible. If naked of course.

[Atgxtg]

If you want an all or nothing approach to damage to reflect it being brittle, you could just compare the damage to the location hit points on the resistance table. If the damage win the location shatters, if the hit points win, the glass is in tact.

Oh, and I probably can't think of a PC with a better case for learning and applying armoring enchantments over his body.

[seneschal]

And he probably shouldn't throw stones ...

[ORtrail]

I really like the idea of resisting damage or shattering. What if you assume his glass body tempature is high, so he can be flexible? Hmm, the melting point of common glass seems to be around 1500 degrees C, so I guess he could double as a portable oven/blast furnace. Okay, maybe just assume his body temperature is much lower?

You could make a strong case for weapon damage type to matter a lot though. An arrow hit versus a mace? Sword versus slingstone? Somehow, I expect the character to die in a fall. Or at least some adventures where he is trying to get body parts back from enemies, after getting shattered? Or he comes back as a smaller and smaller version due to the loss of mass? So he slowly shrinks down as the campaign goes on and he is put back together after damage?

[seneschal]

Piercing or impaling attacks -- arrows, spears, swords -- would tend to glance off his slick, smooth body. Blunt, crushing attacks -- clubs, maces -- would do terrible damage, however.

[MatteoN]

Or he comes back as a smaller and smaller version due to the loss of mass? So he slowly shrinks down as the campaign goes on and he is put back together after damage?

Well, maybe he can be recast with additional silicon to compensate for the lost shards, but when he gets shattered he runs the risk to lose the shard where his mind/soul is located (every time he's recast his soul changes location). So he cannot properly be killed, but might end up spending his eternal life as a grain of sand.

Edited December 19, 2012 by MatteoN

[Atgxtg]

I really like the idea of resisting damage or shattering. What if you assume his glass body tempature is high, so he can be flexible? Hmm, the melting point of common glass seems to be around 1500 degrees C, so I guess he could double as a portable oven/blast furnace. Okay, maybe just assume his body temperature is much lower?

I'd say lets chalk that up to magic. Otherwise the heat will flash fry everyone around him, prevent him from using weapons or other gear, and leave him sticking the the ground whenever he stops.

You could make a strong case for weapon damage type to matter a lot though. An arrow hit versus a mace? Sword versus slingstone? Somehow, I expect the character to die in a fall. Or at least some adventures where he is trying to get body parts back from enemies, after getting shattered? Or he comes back as a smaller and smaller version due to the loss of mass? So he slowly shrinks down as the campaign goes on and he is put back together after damage?

THat is where it gets tricky. Galss has a low tensile strength, but a high compressive strength. So it would be very tough against certain types of damage, especially uniform crushing attacks, such as pressure. Arrows and other piecing attacks could be quite effective as they try to separate the bonds holding the glass together. And the quality of the glass makes a bit difference.

I would suspect that any mage who wanted to put somebody into a glass body and didn't want to break it right away, would probably put some sort of armoring and strengthening enchantments on it so that it wouldn't fall apart the first time the guy trips on a stone floor.

Speaking of the mage, something like this is pretty heavy magic in BRP,and would take time, skill, a lots of magic points, not to mention the probability of some permanent POW. A mage would need to have a really good reason to go through all the trouble. Or be completely bonkers.

[USAFguy]

At first glance, a 'glass golem' seems ridiculously dumb and the PC has a short life expectency...especially if he likes opera! However, there are plenty of examples of 'magic' glass. In ICE's Shadow World, there is a volcanic magic glass called 'laan'. In our world, there is 'tempered glass' that is pretty strong, too, and by analogy could be very strong in a world were magic influences the glass' strength. Of course, there would have to be some drawbacks.

You all certainly gave the GM (and probably the player) some things to think about.

Merry Christmas!

[seneschal]

Speaking of the mage, something like this is pretty heavy magic in BRP,and would take time, skill, a lots of magic points, not to mention the probability of some permanent POW. A mage would need to have a really good reason to go through all the trouble. Or be completely bonkers.

Since the culprit is probably an NPC villain, I'd hand-wave the game mechanics, assuming the bad guy is heavy duty enough to pull it off and still be a threat.

Also, there's the possibility that if the glass golem character does need to be re-cast for some reason, his old nemesis could arrange for him to be molded into something other than human form: an animal, a coffee table, a full-length mirror, a fancy decanter and goblet set, a shelf full of ashtrays at the local market. The young noble would still be sentient, still be mobile, but the effort to get his assorted components to work together could provide both challenge and humor to the campaign. For example, the villain confronts the other characters only to be assaulted by a virtual squadron of flying ashtrays, hurling themselves off the display counter.

[clawingwolf]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I will have the Glass Golem magically heal naturally, so no need for repair. And I'm using hit locations in the game, so I will be using the hit locations for the golem to. I like the idea of it either shattering or doing nothing.

Oh, and the player wanting this character is a women.

This is her back story " character was a noble from an important family a century or a few centuries earlier in a civilization that since disappeared/ moved from the area because of invasion, natural disaster, whateva. she was beautiful, rich, flighty, and desired, a spoilt brat basically

she attracted the eye of many suitors, and had many secret lovers, though she had been engaged at a young age. One such lover, obsessed and jealous, devised a way to keep her captured forever after the official announcement of the engagement and subsequent marriage was made public. so he kidnapped her, killed her, and placed her soul in a glass sculpture made exactly in her likeness, sustained by a magical flame which gives her movement"

Probably have her introduced by the other characters finding her in a form of stasis.

[Atgxtg]

Since the culprit is probably an NPC villain, I'd hand-wave the game mechanics, assuming the bad guy is heavy duty enough to pull it off and still be a threat. [/qupte]

I wasn't worried about the mechanics, just noting that it was a major investiure and that the mage would need a good reason for going to all the time trouble, and effort. It's not a parlor trick.

[Atgxtg]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I will have the Glass Golem magically heal naturally, so no need for repair. And I'm using hit locations in the game, so I will be using the hit locations for the golem to. I like the idea of it either shattering or doing nothing.

If a location get's shattered does it still heal?

[soltakss]

Any Ideas? are there stats for normal stone golems in the game somewhere??

Merrie England has stats for Stone Golems, but I don't have them to hand.

All my ideas regarding glass golems have already been covered, though.

[seneschal]

Here's her theme song ...

[seneschal]

I wasn't worried about the mechanics, just noting that it was a major investiture and that the mage would need a good reason for going to all the time trouble, and effort. It's not a parlor trick.

An obsessed suitor in a jealous rage? Works for me.