Reincarnate or "I'm a bugbear now what?"

[seans23]

You really think +4 STR, +2 DEX and +2 CON with no negatives, plus a number of racial abilities isn't worth a level adjustment even if you did ignore the racial hit dice (which never factor into level adjustment anyway).

I do. Reincarnation is a gamble. You're more likely to be reincarnated as a goblin or a kobold. If you get bugbear, CONGRATS YOU WIN!

 

[Nail]

I like Reincarnate.


...as long as the DM removes all +LA races, and substitutes in new ones. Or revises all races to have a +0 LA and no racial HD.

...and gives those races that are +0 LA normall but still awful (goblin, kobold) something extra.

...and interprets the spell such that you lose all of your current racial features and gains all of the new racial features (e.g. -2 Cha, Darkvison, Natural armor, whatever).

I like reincarnation just fine.

 

[Nifft]

*chuckle* I thought you were going to send me to some website devoted to crappy games we force kids to play.

Nah, I just dislike having the same fight twice on one page. Seems somehow inefficient.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Elethiomel]

It sucks to NOT be the character you wanted to play through no fault of your own.

Your character died. Died. That's no fault of yours?

AT WORST, he should let you abandon the character if you have no desire to play it as it exists. This is, after all, something that was INFLICTED upon you as a player.

Of course he should. Any character can decide to no longer follow the adventurers' life, to strike out on their own or just curl into a ball and die. Uh, again. Or, you know, not be willing to return when they get the afterlife "Do You Want To Return To Life" call, as you point out later in your post.

This SHOULD eliminate ANY AND ALL motivation the DM might have for stupidly applying anything like a Level Adjustment. LA simply doesn't apply in a case like this. It's one of the reasons that the list was limited to humanoid, not animal forms when it was converted from 3.0 to 3.5.

I think you're wrong. LA applies. Yes, it sucks. That's one of the risks of the spell. Why does the LA apply? Because Level Adjustment is a measure of your power relative to your character level.

As a bugbear you get your darkvision back, you move faster (30'), +3 natural armor, +4 move silently, and favored class Rogue. You DON'T get two racial feats as, again, you're not STARTING play as a bugbear and intending to add levels. And you also did get +4 str and +2 dex out of the deal.

The two racial feats are because of HD, not random bonus feats. Assuming for the moment that you are right and that racial HD do not apply, the omission of the feats follow automatically. If racial HD do apply, you'll gain feat slots from the HD as you would from any other source of HD (like regular class levels). Note that the MM bugbear is an example bugbear, and that other bugbears might have chosen other feats from the feat slots they gain from HD.

Even with the level loss and xp penalty (until you balance out your class levels) this result means you are going to be tougher than you were.

Which means your game is likely screwed because you'll be getting more XP because you're a lower level than the other characters, even though you're likely stronger and tougher than them.

 

[Alyssia]

It would be easier just to simplify the whole thing and say that you basically stay the same as your old character, and only your appearance changes. NPCs would react to you as if you were a bugbear (or kobold, etc).
You would have to apply size modifiers if you weren't the same size as your previous race, though you could alway be a particually big goblin, or small human if you wanted to simplify it further.

By the way, one thing we noticed is how come a scroll of reincarnate costs 700gp when the spell needs material componants worth 1000gp?

 

[nobodez]

you don't change your feats and skills (so ex-humans keep their skills and feats, and ex-elves keep their weapon proficiencies), or your mental ability scores (so dwarves and horcs are hosed, sorry). You then gain all the qualities of your new race (including LA, HD, feats, and skills).

For instance, your Ftr 2/Cleric 6 comes back as a Ftr 2/Cleric 5/Humanoid 3/LA 1 with the minimum XP for being an 11th level character (since, otherwise, you'd not be an 11th level character).

Reincarnate is hard to adjunticate, but I've had two LG characters reincarnated, so I'm familiar with the process. But, one thing you have to remember, you can always refuse to come back as a bugbear.

 

[Nifft]

Your character died. Died. That's no fault of yours?

Sometimes. Why is that a problem?

-- N

 

[Elethiomel]

Sometimes. Why is that a problem?

The "this is something your character is forced into through no fault of your own" thing. Most often character death is a result of a player's decision - unless it's Plot Death... but as the Lesson of Aeris shows, Phoenix Down does not work against Plot Death.