Need game help -- my Players DO NOT READ

[Eccles]

Tear a huge, gaping fissure in reality (ie. a Gate), with a glimpse through it of some distant realm (the abyss, Elysium, etc), and just dump the PC through it.

Don't even try to explain at the table.

I did this to re-introduce a sorceror character recently. He apparently came from the Abyss, and had steel rings bound around each of his ribs, front and back. He spent about a week trying to remove them...

Strangely, the party is *very* reluctant to investigate! (Mind you, they've got other things on their minds).

 

[Quasqueton]

Thanks alot for the brainstorming help here, folks. Since there seems to be some him/her confusion, let me add: the Player is female, the character is male.

To make things even more complicated:

When the group came out of the underdark (where the current extended adventure is taking place), the Player told me she wanted to drop her newest character and bring in something else. Since the party was above ground, picking up extra equipment and reinforcements (NPCs), I said OK to changing characters. The Player then made up and brought in another bard, similar to the dead one (but elf instead of human, archer instead of swordsman).

This caught me off guard, and I was heavily distracted by the other Players gathering their equipment and such. The new bard was introduced to the group and then we pretty much ended the game session.

In an e-mail exchange after the game, I asked why the Player wanted to bring in another bard so much like the first that she chose not to bring back from the dead. That's when I learned that she really like the character and apparently regretted the decision to keep him dead.

<sigh>

Players need to communicate with their DMs. We're not mind readers. It is much easier to help a Player work out a solution when we know there is a problem.

Quasqueton

 

[Rel]

I just wanted to chime in and say that I think Janta's idea is brilliant. That's the one I like the most. I'd apply the Half-Elemental template of whichever side won the struggle for his soul. Then I'd periodically have batches of the opposing elementals attack whenever he was near a major source of that element.

 

[blargney the second]

It's been done before, but it doesn't make it any less cool:
Dead Bard + [Fire] = Phoenix

-blarg

ps - Piratecat and KidChthulu made up a bard prestige class called Order of the Phoenix, I think. It'll give your player some fun options

 

[Calico_Jack73]

She was buried close to a Druid's grove and due to her untimely death began to haunt the area. The local druids dug up her body and cast Reincarnate on her.

You can tell her you made the roll but fudge it so that she comes back as a humanoid of some kind that will even out the levels between her and the rest of the party.

 

[Steverooo]

Having already died, twice, the Bard obviously had better things to do, so stayed dead for a while, to do them... I'm assuming the Bard was Good-aligned.

So the Bard spends some time playing his (instrument) with the celestial Lillends, and then is summoned before God. His work on Earth isn't finished, and he has to go back... The heavenly portals are opened, and the Bard evicted through them, memories of heaven quickly fading...

He finds himself back in the camp with his old friends, and a few rapidly-fading memories of Lillends... Give him a level or two of Bard (representing the time spent learning music from the celestial choir), and apply no new templates. The Raise Dead failed, after all!

 

[LordVyreth]

How's this for an explanation. The reason the bard didn't want to be raised earlier was because he was already a favored of his God or some of Its celestial servants. Instead of becoming a normal petitioner, he was allowed to retain his powers and memories, and was on the fast track to celestial-dom (or whatever is alignment-appropriate for the character,) but he discovered a horrible secret that would doom his surviving friends, and struck a deal w/ his patron God or celestial to return to the Material Plane and help them.

 

[wingnut_dc]

A necromancer stumbled across the body of a newly buried human (your bard) and raised an undead minion, possibly a vampire. Caught in a situation where the necro couldn’t command the vampire, the bard broke free of the necro’s control (possibly due to the elemental influences) and fled.

Slap a vampire template on the character. Now you have an additional plot line. Cure the character before the angry necromancer finds and tries to reclaim one of his minions.

 

[Meloncov]

Am I the only one to misread rour title to be "Need campaighn help; my players do not read"?

 

[cdsaint]

How long after death did the party try to raise dead on him? Perhaps during the time period between death and raising someone else used a true ressurection on him. Someone might have been waiting for the Bard specifically, or a party member generally to die and used their chance to beat out the party, ressurecting the bard for their own nefarious purposes.