Perk: Named Possession

Ah, nothing lends scholarly credence
like an animated GIF.

Named Possession is a perk that can be fun and helpful in a maniacal rise to power... or a fairy tale setting too, that too. It allows a weapon to grow alongside its owner with a style of character points. Let's examine some fun ways to utilize this.

Overview

Named Possession is introduced on p.132 of GURPS Fantasy, and explained in some detail on p.26 of the same book. Originally, this book very specifically assumes vanilla magic, and its style of enchantment, but you could easily modify this to any other system. I think, myself preferring Sorcery, I might use that for follow-ups.What kinda cool stuff can we give a weapon using this perk? Let's take a look.

• From GURPS Magic, we can acquire:
• Of all the mundane helpful things for a weapon:
•  Graceful Weapon (p.63) a possible alternative to Dungeon Fantasy's Dwarven enhancement.
• Penetrating Weapon (p.63) Fix that whip.
• Puissance (p.65) Can be cheaper than very fine?
• The more outrageous things:
• Several things in the Body College (p.35) could be useful to add afflictions to the attack. Note the following enchantments usually require a staff or baton.
• Pain (p.36)
• Frailty (p.37)
• Paralyze Limb (p.40)
• Similarly, the Mind Control College (p.133) has many useful afflictions
• Fear (p.134)
• Panic (p.134)
• Terror (p.134)
• Using Sorcery We might apply:
• The following as follow-ups:
• Affliction
• Binding
• Constriction Attack
• Innate Attack
• And from powers, Leech.
• Damage Resistance (you don't want your cool weapon to break, right?)
• Danger Sense (Sting! Or is that Detect (Spiders?))
• Extra Attack (With the enhancements and limitations for same attack, and only the same attack cancelling out.)
• Regeneration, Regrowth, grow back if it does break!
• Spines (Make it really hard for someone to try to take it without hand armor!)
• Stretching - Change your reach!

Additionally, with sorcery, you may be able to stat out the cost of an advantage enhancement based on the highest damage of a weapon. for example, a fine axe (Basic Set - Characters, p.271.) has sw+3  cut damage, and maximum ST of 33, which is 7d-1 altogether, and 47 points as an innate attack. You can ignore limitations like melee and the like because the cost of an enhancement affects base cost, so those discounts are moot for our purposes. But for, example, if you wanted to add an armor divisor of 2 to this axe, it might be 24 points. Of course, if it suits you, the Sorcery approach of turning imbuements into advantages is another possibility.

Other Thoughts and Conclusion

Some people worry that Named Possession is a bit of a point crock. Like a lot of things in GURPS, that can be true, but like a lot of things in GURPS it A) depends on the setting and playstyle and B) it is not meant to exist in a GM-less void. I've never thought of using it before, but I think I'd like to, some adventure or another. It'd make for a cool magic treasure I think.