Author Topic: Creating a "Dead Like Me" Grim Reaper style character  (Read 2508 times)

Offline Logan01X

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Creating a "Dead Like Me" Grim Reaper style character
« on: September 22, 2010, 06:24:20 AM »
I'm looking at making a character that is basicly a grim reaper a la the tv show Dead Like Me. I'm trying to stay close to the show and I got the supernatural powers pretty much figured out but i'm looking for some outside my group input, thanks in advance for the help. for my power set, i was looking at:

Living Dead (YS164) [-1] - he died and was "reaped" and joined the "Undead" as Rube put it

Flesh Mask (YS175) [-1] or Human Guise (YS176) [-0] - either works for the mortal body reapers like in the series, just not sure on which one yet

Ghost Speaker [-1] (YS169)- reapers can see and speak with the ghosts and spirits (gravelings were the only other spirit seen in the series)

Inhuman or Supernatural Recovery (YS185/186) - either will do, i'm leaning more to Supernatural cause in a few episodes Mason is seen with minor wounds and its mentioned many times that reapers heal really fast, but they dont seem to have a crazy regeneration rate to get mythic recovery.

The Catch (YS185) - This i need some thoughts on, nothing in the Dresdenverse has been seen in the show and never saw anything that they couldnt recover from. i was thinking about some kind of magical or like divine god like power (angels, demons, gods, ect.) I was also thinking about destoying the eyes, since theres the whole "the eyes are the window to the soul" thing and a reaper is basicly a soul inhabiting a body.

Now I was wondering about an "Soul removal" or "Reaping" power. As seen in the show, the Reapers can remove any soul from any body, not just the people scheduled to die and put the soul back in the body. but doing any "unscheduled reaping" has not so good consequence, so i'm not planing on using this power as an attack or at all. My GM is good with having a High Concept and Trouble Aspects that will cover my reaping job and the such. Also I dont plan on actually killing any humans since it seems that when a reaper kills a person, that person's soul pops out as a graveling and torments them. So should we leave this up as a "Power of Plot" power or make a custom power? and what would the refresh cost be since being able to remove someones soul at will seems really really OP.

Its an interesting character concept and plan on him being more skills and some light social, and not so combat heavy of a character. Feel free to leave any comments or thoughts, i like getting outside perspectives, thanks
« Last Edit: September 22, 2010, 06:39:14 AM by Logan01X »

Offline Falar

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Re: Creating a "Dead Like Me" Grim Reaper style character
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2010, 10:08:55 AM »
In the Dead Like Me movie, it seemed that the catch could be total destruction. That isn't really that much of a catch, so it would only be worth +0, but that is how they killed the new boss.
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Offline MijRai

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Re: Creating a "Dead Like Me" Grim Reaper style character
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2010, 05:08:44 PM »
Only problem I see with that is Living ead don't use recovery powers.
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Offline Becq

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Re: Creating a "Dead Like Me" Grim Reaper style character
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2010, 05:57:08 PM »
I have no familiarity with the show, but here are some general thoughts:
Inhuman or Supernatural Recovery (YS185/186) - either will do, i'm leaning more to Supernatural cause in a few episodes Mason is seen with minor wounds and its mentioned many times that reapers heal really fast, but they dont seem to have a crazy regeneration rate to get mythic recovery.
As the poster above said, I think Recovery powers are incompatible with Living Dead.  Either you recover very fast, or you don't care that you were wounded.  I think you probably want the former.

Also, when deciding which Recovery power works, consider that Supernatural Recovery allows you to recover from a Serious wound as though it were a Mild wound, which translates to reducing a healing time of weeks or months for a mortal down to about an hour.  It looks as though lost limbs would regrow in days, though I think that still requires some form of medical care.  Is that about right?  If not, you might want to stick to Inhuman.

The Catch (YS185) - This i need some thoughts on, nothing in the Dresdenverse has been seen in the show and never saw anything that they couldnt recover from. i was thinking about some kind of magical or like divine god like power (angels, demons, gods, ect.) I was also thinking about destoying the eyes, since theres the whole "the eyes are the window to the soul" thing and a reaper is basicly a soul inhabiting a body.
"Holy Stuff" is a fairly common Catch for undead types.

Now I was wondering about an "Soul removal" or "Reaping" power. As seen in the show, the Reapers can remove any soul from any body, not just the people scheduled to die and put the soul back in the body. but doing any "unscheduled reaping" has not so good consequence, so i'm not planing on using this power as an attack or at all. My GM is good with having a High Concept and Trouble Aspects that will cover my reaping job and the such. Also I dont plan on actually killing any humans since it seems that when a reaper kills a person, that person's soul pops out as a graveling and torments them. So should we leave this up as a "Power of Plot" power or make a custom power? and what would the refresh cost be since being able to remove someones soul at will seems really really OP.
I think that this would have to be semi-Plot-Powery.  You'd probably have an aspect that you'd invoke as part of a take-out narration.  This would end up being more of a flavor-text effect than anything else, though it might impact the targets ability to "come back".

In order to be able to realiably rip the soul out of an otherwise healthy person, you need to come up with a way to do enough stress to take out your target in one attempt.  Which sounds to me like a Thaumaturgy-at-the-speed-of-Evocation effect, which it turn would mean a sponsored magic power (simmilar to Kemmlerian Necromancy, but customized).  The complexity would be pretty high so I'm not sure how feasible this is; perhaps the Graveling could count as some form of Consequence used to pay down the complexity a bit.  Or perhaps it would be a form of 'debt', with the free compels taking the form of nasty things the Graveling does to screw you over.  A dying person, on the other hand, wouldn't need enough complexity to burn their consequences (since they're already dying!), thus the power could be used without incurring the debt.

I dunno.  Maybe the above has some useful ideas for you.

Offline SuperBunnyBun

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Re: Creating a "Dead Like Me" Grim Reaper style character
« Reply #4 on: September 24, 2010, 05:28:04 PM »
I like this idea!  A pity the show didn't catch on.

I would use the term Re-Animated instead of undead, I imagine.  Undead involves a living/moving dead body, but their bodies are still alive.  And something as simple as an exorcism wouldn't depossess them.

The Catch could possibly be like a soulgaze.

Offline Leatherneck

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Re: Creating a "Dead Like Me" Grim Reaper style character
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2010, 01:45:28 PM »
In order to be able to realiably rip the soul out of an otherwise healthy person, you need to come up with a way to do enough stress to take out your target in one attempt.  Which sounds to me like a Thaumaturgy-at-the-speed-of-Evocation effect, which it turn would mean a sponsored magic power (simmilar to Kemmlerian Necromancy, but customized). 

To reflect the unique quirkiness of the death, each level of bizarreness of the death should be considered a tag-able maneuver to be used in “Thaumaturgy-at-the-speed-of-Evocation effect”.     The Sponsor magic could be something like Soulfire, but as the magic to release the soul from the body.  As an effect, if the body does not die, the soul reattaches to the body.

As an example of a bizarre death for tangible maneuvers; a priest enters the confessional to start confessions while an alter-boy and girlfriend are getting it on.  After a brief awkward back and forth, the priest realizes he doesn’t have an upset crying for their god young lady in need of saving, but a couple doing… well yea, he calls out in surprise and they kids bolt.  He runs after to, not confront in anger but to help them in the way a good priest does.  The scared boy knocks over a basin of baptismal water.  The priest slips and bangs his head on a pew.  Staggering after them he falls in a open floor hatch, somehow managing to get his head caught in a loop in the bell rope.  Mercifully he dies instantly and the bell rings steadily as the grim reaper escorts the released soul to the light.
I count that as 7 maneuvers to be tagged. 

For these maneuvers, I would make the player devise the death before hand.  Put the work in the player’s hands, not the GM.  If they start repeating death maneuvers, then start refusing the maneuver values.  One thing I remember from the show was how bizarre the deaths were.