You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 8262044" data-attributes="member: 18182">Some points of thought: fantasy (and sci-fi) "races" are really supercharged ethnicities or cultures. If you have a fantasy human culture based on Norse mythology, you'd expect members of that culture who venerate the Norse gods to go to Valhalla when they die. Members of a culture based on Greek mythology might go to Olympus.So, for elves to go to Arvandor, orcs to Acheron, and dwarves to . . . wherever dwarves go . . . makes sense in that regard. In my own world-building, I wouldn't lock in those choices . . . a mortal who wasn't born of the Norsefolk, but was raised by them, or perhaps came to venerate the Norse pantheon later in life . . . would also go to Valhalla. I also would make sure that each "racial afterlife" would make sense, and have both heaven (reward) and hell (punishment) . . . or perhaps a neutral Hades-like realm (the Shadowfell?).The nature of any cultural or racial afterlifes would track closely with the design of any cultures or races in the game, of course. Make sure you don't design always-evil and/or always-savage orcs, and the orcish ideas of heaven/hell shouldn't be standard D&D tropes either. Don't ditch Acheron, but perhaps reimagine it to be an interesting place a warrior just might like to end up in after death, much like Valhalla or Stovokor.And of course, the afterlife doesn't have to be fair or even offer a "reward" option. Real life cultures often have very unfairly designed afterlifes, at least to modern sensibilities. A great adventure seed straight out of Greek myth (and probably others too) is for the heroes to travel to an unpleasant afterlife to rescue a companion unfairly sent there (or even fairly sent there, by the rules of that belief system).Some other points of thought: Do you distinguish between "spirit" races and "mortal" races in your campaign? They might have different kinds of souls, or no souls at all, and the rules might be different due to metaphysics. In D&D canon (not that it is consistent), devils, demons, celestials and other "outsiders" don't (usually) have individual souls, but rather are animated by the force of their plane of existence. And when they die, their lifeforces simply return to the plane and their individual existence is over. If a devil is slain in the hells, it's "soul" is simply reabsorbed into the planescape. Sometimes powerful outsiders develop unique souls over time, or acquire them through other means.Whereas mortal souls are different, they persist after death and are independent of the planar orrerry. Which is what makes them so valuable to planar beings and the gods. Hence the competition for worshippers and the collection of mortal souls in the various heavens and hells of the D&D multiverse.Are elves mortal? Or are they immortal spirits? Elves are descended from the eladrin (I know, what exactly eladrin are has evolved significantly), celestial spirits of Arvandor, who were thrown out of elvish heaven and set upon the earth to live mortal lives . . . . making elves (or other fantastical races) a different class of being than other races is an okay choice, or ditching that idea and making them follow the same rules is okay too.I liked how elves were treated in the Ghostwalk setting (3E era), when the elves died, their souls were absorbed into trees and overtime these spirit trees took on a sleepy sentience made of the collective spirits of deceased elves. Using that idea . . . is that the natural thing to happen to an elven soul? Or is there an elven ritual that bonds deceased souls to trees, to prevent them from passing naturally into the afterlife?</blockquote>

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