Skip to main content

The Terra Cotta Warrior

One of the organizations statted out in GURPS Boardroom and Curia is a superhero team, the Mid-City Defenders. That was a sort of throwaway idea, a compilation of superhero team tropes intended to outline the kind of organization a superhero team might be and using that to illustrate how stats for it might look. For no particular reason (seriously, no particular reason; this is not a tease and nothing I'm working on is related to this), I was reading through B&C and thought that as an exercise, I might stat out one of the members. Moreover, to illustrate the flexibility of the core text, I thought I'd limit myself to the Basic Set. So here, then, is the Terra Cotta Warrior, a ~1000 point four-color superhero for GURPS.

 

Terra Cotta Warrior (1014 points)

Age 2225/90; Animated Statue; 5' 7"; 350 lbs.


ST 35 [250]; DX 15 [100]; IQ 12 [40]; HT 16 [60].

Damage 4d-1/6d+1; BL 245 lbs.; HP 50 [30]; Will 15 [15]; Per 12 [0]; FP 30 [42].

Basic Speed 7.75 [0]; Basic Move 7 [0]; Block 9 (DX); Dodge 11.


Social Background

TL: 3 [0].

CF: Ancient China, Modern America

Languages: Ancient Chinese (Native) [0]; English (Native) [6].


Advantages

Combat Reflexes [15]; Doesn't Eat or Drink [10]; Doesn't Sleep [20]; Fit (Very Fit) [15]; High Pain Threshold [10]; Indomitable [15]; Recovery [10]; Regeneration (Slow: 1HP/12Hr) [10]; Trained By A Master [30]; Unaging [15].


Disadvantages

Code of Honor (Soldier's) [-10]; Honesty (12 or less) [-10]; Unnatural Feature (Made of clay) -1 [-1]; Vow (Protect the people and deliver justice) [-10].


Skills

Area Knowledge (Midland City)-12 (IQ+0) [1]; Artist (Calligraphy)-10 (IQ-2) [1]; Bow-16 (DX+1) [4]; Breaking Blow-15 (IQ+3) [16]; Broadsword-16 (DX+1) [4]; Carousing-16 (HT+0) [1]; Cartography/TL3-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Climbing-14 (DX-1) [1]; Crossbow-15 (DX+0) [1]; Esoteric Medicine-14 (Per+2) [12]; Farming/TL3-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Fast-Draw (Arrow)-16 (DX+1) [1]; Fast-Draw (Sword)-16 (DX+1) [1]; First Aid/TL3 (Human)-14 (IQ+2) [1]; Flying Leap-13 (IQ+1) [8]; Gambling-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Herb Lore/TL3-12 (IQ+0) [8]; Immovable Stance-17 (DX+2) [12]; Intimidation-14 (Will-1) [1]; Judo-18 (DX+3) [16]; Jumping-15 (DX+0) [1]; Karate-20 (DX+5) [24]; Law (Imperial Chinese)-10 (IQ-2) [1]; Leadership-14 (IQ+2) [8]; Naturalist (Earth)-12 (IQ+0) [4]; Navigation/TL3 (Land)-12 (IQ+0) [2]; Observation-17 (Per+5) [20]; Poetry-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Polearm-18 (DX+3) [12]; Power Blow-15 (Will+0) [4]; Pressure Points (Human)-14 (IQ+2) [12]; Soldier/TL3-14 (IQ+2) [8]; Spear-15 (DX+0) [2]; Staff-15 (DX+0) [2]; Stealth-14 (DX-1) [1]; Survival (Plains)-13 (Per+1) [4]; Tactics-14 (IQ+2) [12]; Teamster (Horses)-12 (IQ+0) [2].


Equipment

Scale armor (full suit, DR 4, 70 lbs.)

Naginata (swing 5d+3 cut; Reach 1, 2. Thrust 3d+1 imp; Reach 2. Skill 18; Parry 13. The weapon is technically not a naginata, but is sufficiently similar to one as makes no difference.)

 (Karate punch 4d+6 cr, skill 20, parry 14; kick 4d+7 cr, skill 18)

History

The Terra Cotta Warrior is a enchanted clay statue, created as a sort of prototype by sorcerers in the employ of the first emperor of China. The intention was to create incorruptible servants of the emperor, not subject to the failings of men made of flesh and blood. Qin Shihuang died shortly thereafter and no more were made. Indeed, the work was incomplete at the time, and the statue, not yet animate, was put aside and eventually lost.

In the late 19th century, the statue was recovered by peasants in Shaanxi province digging irrigation canals and from there came into the hands of an American missionary group which sent it on to the US as a curiosity. After changing hands a time or two, it ended up in the Midland City Museum where, one night in 1932, he suddenly came to life. The Terra Cotta Warrior had been imbued with knowledge which the people who made him believed would be useful in his mission: a smattering of law, knowledge about various aspects of daily life, and a variety of practical and martial skills. Many of those were out of date when he awoke, but his mission, to deliver justice and serve the people, was as relevant as ever. He soon made common cause with the other mystery men and women appearing at the time to become a core member of the Mid-City Defenders.

The Terra Cotta Warrior is an almost literally tireless defender of the city. He fatigues slowly, recovers quickly, and has a remarkable ability to absorb damage (he is, in terms of common superhero categorizations, literally a brick). He's no where close to being the strongest entity in the world or the ultimate master of martial arts, but he's certainly good enough to hold his own against the threats which appear around Mid-City, and even when overwhelmed, he's always ready to come back for more soon. Mooks know it's a good idea to flee or just give up when the Terra Cotta Warrior shows up.

His appearance is oddly unremarkable. His shape and facial features are those of a nondescript Asian man of a height slightly below the modern average in his adopted city. However, while his features are expertly shaped, colors (whites and irises of his eyes, etc.) are clearly painted on and the texture of his skin is that of a well-smoothed clay pot. He has genuine affection for the people he has decided to protect, who are often a little surprised by his informal demeanor; he's got a famous scowl, but doesn't use it when he's not actively fighting crime. And he shares deep mutual respect with the other members of the team. As a construct, he was never formally given a name. Outside the team, he is known by his full title or simply the Warrior. Inside the team, he's usually called Wu, a nickname derived from a Chinese word for "warrior," and is known for his endless knowledge of ancient Chinese drinking songs.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More Nattering About Writing Historical RPGs

omeone made the mistake of asking me to expand on some things I'd said about writing historical rpg material, so you all must suffer for it. I write a lot of historical rpg stuff as well as entirely fictional setting material. So why make historically themed games rather than just making stuff up? Well, because it's an effective way of achieving the purpose of writing settings and adventures in general. The purpose of settings and adventures, I would aver, is to give players things to do in a convincing context. Convincing context doesn't necessarily mean realism. Players have different levels of understanding of what's "realistic" in different situations and are more or less sensitive to how closely those situations adhere to reality. For example, I'm a history and culture guy. Put me in SF campaigns (which happens with some regularity) and the specifics of how reaction drives, orbital mechanics, and subatomic physics work entirely escape me. I don't,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Stuff I Wouldn't Do With Purchased Minis

One of the great things about the advent of 3d printing, when it comes to gaming, is that it allows me to take more risks and try stuff I wouldn't do otherwise. Take, for example, experimenting with painting techniques. Maybe I want to see what an unusual color scheme would look like or try doing an odd way of achieving an effect. Factory-made miniatures are expensive. Too expensive for me to risk it. Which, as someone who's not very good at painting minis and needs lots of practice, is one reason I've never gotten into them. I don't feel like I can afford the implied expense of getting better. Enter 3d printing. With the right files, I can print as many minis as I can like and mess around with them to my heart's content. Mess one up? That's fine. Resin isn't cheap , but it doesn't cost nearly as much as pre-made molded plastic. I can take it as a learning experience and move on. Which brings me to messing around with some Car Wars minis. I'd been m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Briefly, How To Play GURPS

For a long time, I’ve maintained that GURPS, despite its reputation for complexity, is actually pretty simple in play. I was thinking recently that I should see if I can express the fundamentals of playing GURPS in a short, easily digested form, and so here I am.   This does not address a more general “how to play rpgs” for those who know nothing on the topic. How to approach GURPS, at that level, isn’t necessarily a lot different from how to approach D&D or TFT or any other RPG system. It doesn’t get into optional and campaign-specific sets of rules or equipment. Rather, this is stuff applicable to playing GURPS no matter what the campaign is. It also doesn’t address how to build GURPS characters, which is a vastly more complicated topic. Rather, this is about how to engage GURPS rules when you’ve already got your character sheet and are sitting at the table to play. It’s a trifle over 1000 words, which I think isn’t too bad.   How To Play GURPS Most of what you’ll need t...
Post a Comment
Read more