Alignment transgression or not?

[Marimmar@Home]

Last session, half of our party was wiped out by an empowered Cone of Cold spell and the DM wants the dead PCs to be ressurected by Shar, the evil goddes of night and darkness in the Forgotten Realms.

It wouldn't be much of a problem but two PCs are clerics and another is a Druid of good goddess. Aside from the question why an evil goddess should ressurect clerics of an opposing faith, I have no idea if the good gods would view this as a transgression of their faith and strip them of their clerical powers.

We take turns DMing and the next session's DM is unshure how to handle this situation.

What would you do?

~Marimmar

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Well, souls don't HAVE to come back with a ressurection spell. I honestly don't think Good characters would come back with Shar's help(if they knew it was Shar helping, of course...) without a very very good reason to it.

If anything, I'd say it would at least worry the characters as to why in the name of Shar she wants them alive. Some might even be tempted to kill themselves if they worried about being part of Shar's plots...

 

[diaglo]

yeah... iirc the soul does know who is calling them back...

so in this case if i were one of the players i would decline the rezz

 

[Marimmar@Home]

But what if they accept?

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

But what if they accept?

Well, I wouldn't say its an alignment transgression...but the players Patron Gods(especially for the Clerics) would likely have a lot of questions and probably wouldn't be all that trusting towards the characters.

 

[diaglo]

But what if they accept?

but why would they???

if i were the patron deity that would be my question to them.

you are now in paradise according to your beliefs... and you want to leave to return to do an evil god's bidding.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Aside from the question why an evil goddess should ressurect clerics of an opposing faith

For money?

I have no idea if the good gods would view this as a transgression of their faith and strip them of their clerical powers.

Why would they? If the action (returning your cleric to life) is desirable who cares who does it. What, we only accept help if it comes from approved sources now?

 

[The_Universe]

It would depend on what Shar wants in exchange for the resurrection, I suppose.

 

[Trickstergod]

It wouldn't count as an alignment transgression in my eyes, even if they knew whose name the resurrection was in.

This is presuming the raise dead rules are being used more or less as is from the Player's Handbook and can essentially be done without owing cosmic favors to any deities or anything funky like that. Sure, it's a safe bet that the cleric or Shar herself would want something out of the PC's, but that's the act that I would count as a strike against the PC's, not the resurrection itself.

Of course, it occurs to me now that the Forgotten Realms does have a few differences with the way raising the dead normally works, at least I seem to recall that, but it's been a while since I'd read them.

Besides, outside of house rules, only a paladin has to worry about one alignment transgression. I wouldn't consider the resurrection to be evil in any way, but even if it were, it's not exactly going to change the clerics or druids alignment right away.

So, under any number of circumstances, I probably wouldn't do much of anything to the PC's. It would probably be a bad thing, sure - but that's only because the attention of nasty things has been gained.

 

[Mallus]

1) This is a great oppourtunity for some old-fashionded high-fantasy drama.

2) Rez them. Against their will, if you must.

3) Shar is using them. They have no idea toward what end. Certainly a bad one.

4) Their gods leave them their powers. Because they'll need them to thwart Shar's evil plan. Of course they're the only ones who'll be in the position to do so.

5) Watch the wackiness insue as the group frets over every subsequent action (well, make that 'almost every') as they try to do right. Paranoia, used correctly, is fun (they made an RPG out of it once...)

6) Why pass up an oppurtunity to inject a whole mess of dramatic tension into your game? You can resolve it any time you want, if it doesn't work out. But really, who wants an inert game where this kind of thing doesn't happen?

See, its simple.