Reincarnate

[insanogeddon]

Run the bards are comming.

It Break Enchantment works on Reincarnate you would need to have a pretty petty and illogical DM to not allow players to be aware of it. In a world where it happens as a reality it would be known (that people round a table in another reality are unaware is irrelevant).

Players find out via their characters thru : a easy spellcraft check, there would be amusing folk tales about it, I'm pretty sure it would be cannon teaching of druidism and druids would add it as a disclaimer to all ressurection services etc etc

That doesn't mean you cannot have fun without playing a onesided metagame. 1 minuite casting makes it a fine interrogation technique for captured PCs and NPCs. Answer questions within in 1min or...

Or my petty favorite (petty I am, but players all know bard abilities so I ain't cheating/metagaming) : Assasin Bards...

Song of Freedom (Sp): A bard of 12th level or higher with 15 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use music or poetics to create an effect equivalent to the break enchantment spell (caster level equals the character’s bard level). Using this ability requires 1 minute of uninterrupted concentration and music, and it functions on a single target within 30 feet. A bard can’t use song of freedom on himself.

Chillin in a bar after killing a dragon, wench on knee, good music playing....


Bards will be feared, make PCs pale, have them pay for bards NOT to play... and as bards are often in cities laws stop any notions of bardic genocide.

Makes the Bard/Druid alliance of the Harpers on FR setting far more sinister. Free Reinc to those fighting specific evil.. once you do your task.. the balance is served !!

 

[Starbuck_II]

Edit: just thought I'd add in the things I DO get, according to my DM:
[Elf stuff]

+

Light Blindness (drow) (this basically means -1 to attack rolls, Spot checks and Search checks while in normal daylight)
Spell resistance equal to 11 + class levels.
Spell-Like Abilities: (1/day): dancing lights, darkness, faerie fire. Caster level equals class levels.(drow)

So he thinks that the race is still worth 1 LA since it is an elf with 3 abilities extra?

Light blindess for an adventurer is equal to spell-likes. And Con penalty matches SR I think. (But then I never agreed Dex was equal to Con).
A -2 Con penalty is worth way more than +2 Dex. (Con is exponential with level; Dex is static).

If you are going to use LA:
I personally, think this should be LA +0 or +0.5 (but rounded down to 0).
I personally think the Mental bonuses were why the LA was there.

 

[Herzog]

Don't forget Darvision 120 ft. That's double the range of other playable races.
The Spell Resistance scales with level, as does the caster level for the spell like abilities.
He gets a +2 on Will saves against all spells and effects, not just Enchantment and Charm.

Don't forget, Drow is originally LA+2.
You're probably right the mental bonusses alone are worth a +1.

But that still leaves the other +1.

Discussing the balance between dex and con: There are a lot more skills depending on Dex, and Dex increases your AC, so should prevent losing those hp you would have gotten from Con.....
Besides, that would require re-evaluating the LA of the core races.

If I were the DM, I might even have hold out for the LA+2. I think spell resistance (scaling with level) is worth a level adjustment all on its own.

Of course, this is assuming the level adjustment rules are balanced. Wich I'm pretty sure they're not, considering the amount of effort put in by people coming up with 'buy-off' methods.

Which reminds me: where can I find those? I might want to look in to that at some point to get rid of the LA, if the DM allows it, as well as allowing players in one of my games to buy off their LA.

 

[Kharagh]

In my opinion, everyone is over-thinking this one. Maybe the reason the spell doesn't mention racial HD or level adjustments is because they don't come into play. If your human is reincarnated into a bugbear, it has the form of a bugbear (gaining physical abilities) but does not gain any HD or LA. A 7th level human sorcerer becomes a 7th level bugbear sorcerer (6th after loss of level from being brought back from death). Does this mean that every human would try to be reincarnated? No. It does mean that most dead humans might prefer to be reincarnated over raised. However, note that becoming a bugbear is EXTREMELY unlikely (1% chance). The benefits of becoming a bugbear are outweighed by the potential downside of becoming a kobold.

In summary, when you cast reincarnate, you don't need to make up any extra rules. Keep whatever XP, HD, and LA you had before reincarnate (minus the level loss for coming back from death). This means characters with LAs pre-reincarnate are likely to get screwed over and those without LAs are likely to benefit. That's just the way it is. The fact that you have to die and take a loss of one level is likely enough of a deterrent to keep humans from killing themselves in the attempt to improve their character.

As a compassionate DM, I would first subtract the lost level (from death) from any level adjustment the original character had and then (if no LA) from any racial HD the character had. Thus, a 4th-level lizardman monk (2 racial HD, 4 monk levels, LA +1) reincarnated as a human would be a 4th level human monk with 2 racial HD and 4 monk levels (no LA). If killed and raised/reincarnated (or level-drained) again, he would lose the racial HD first.

Although my proposed system might seem vulnerable to abuse (e.g., a 4th-level human fighter could kill himself and be reincarnated as a 3rd-level lizardman fighter with no racial HD or level adjustment, and a +2 to Str and Con, without the usual lizardman penalty to Int), the random die roll component severely limits such abuse potential. Chances are (96%) that if a human kills himself and is reincarnated, he won't come back as anything that normally has racial HD or a level adjustment, so he will have essentially lost a level for no benefit. Thus, the element of chance makes the spell fair, even if there is some possibility (4%) of it significantly improving the character without any real penalty.