Reincarnating as a Pixie

[Orm]

(the player of our fighter/rogue/deepwood sniper hoped that his PC will be reincarnated as a pixie after he was killed by a banshee, but the dices wanted only a human body ).

Would have been really cool, especially at low/mid levels. IIRC, I was level 8 or 9. Having all the hitpoints and still a decent STR plus some nice abilities...

By the wording of the spell, the PC would gain ALL powers and abilities of the new form, so, yes that would include SR 16 (which is quite low, especially in high-level campaigns), natural invisibility can be foiled quite easily (See Invisibility is a standard spell for mid to high-level mages, Blindsight, Invisibility Purge and Glitterdust would help, too). The spell-like abilities are not overpowered IMHO, although a clever player could use them for some nasty tricks. And only one in ten pixies has Otto's Irresistable Dance, you have to roll d10 to check this out.

And it´s allways nice to force the adverse spellcasters to waste time or spells only to be able to see you. If still being human, they could see you anyway


Orm

 

[Darklone]

Reincarnated as Minotaur or Centaur... without losing more than one characterlevel would probably screw any party balance.

 

[Dark Dragon]

Reincarnated as Minotaur or Centaur... without losing more than one characterlevel would probably screw any party balance.

Hehe, that happened to my druid after being disintegrated while he was fighting a wizard as a giant squid in an underwater encounter (unfortunately he has lost ALL equipment). A friendly druid brought him back to life with a True Reincarnate. I rolled for an owl and a centaur...well, my choice was the centaur (the druid hasn't taken the feat Narural Spell at that time, spell casting would have been almost impossible).

From my point of view, a centaur character has not debalanced our campaign. He is still only an average fighter (and mostly, he forgets his additional hoof attacks ), hp are high (I've rolled very good for each level), darkvision is quite useful, but the druid relies more on Blindsight. Here's the stat change (we used a 82-point-system for our AD&D-characters) :
Old: STR 8, DEX 15, CON 17, WIS 21, INT 10, CHA 16, hp 126
New: STR 16, DEX 19, CON 21, WIS 21, INT 10, CHA 16, hp 156

I must admit that some classes would benefit from certain reincarnation froms, if they're lucky with the rolls...

 

[Shard O'Glase]

So what do you all do when the dice don't favor the player. Or do oyu just come up with patches when he rolls good. Yeah, that should be fun, hey if you roll pixie, minataur or something useful I'm going to nerf you so your not unbalanced, if you roll badger or something useless then Ha-Ha.

IMO if your going to have the player roll on the chart you should just eat the consequences good or bad. Its incredibly messed up to have a random chance thing where bad can happen but good if it does is taken away form you. Me I would just rewrite the chart os you always come back as a ecl PC(humanoid monstrous) race = to what you already were. So for most people its random chance amongst elf, human, dwarf, halfing, gnome, half-elf, and half-orc, goblin etc..

 

[LokiDR]

I agree with Shard that reincarnate as written is a crap-shoot and that is why it specifically doesn't have an ECL modifier. Pixie is great, but not if you were a half-ogre barbarian.

Twice in my game this spell has been used on long running characters. One came back as a centaur, and it caused him no end of trouble, people not trusting the "strange natury guy", trying to enter small spaces, and forget about climbing. He dumped the character because it wasn't fun.

The other character was a sniper rogue. He came back as a leopard. Pounce plus sneak attack plus improved sneak attack (d8s) is a scary sight to behold. He has gotten the Monster of Legend template, so he is even nastier. I didn't enforce any ECL for the reincarnate because he lost the sniper ability he had built up. But he is arguably more effective as a lepard.

My advice: if you like chaos, just leave the spell. If you are worried about imbalance in the party, re-write the table to exclude ECL races (past 1 or so). In either event, the person shouldn't have to deal with buying off a mostly useless ECL (half ogre to pixie) just to come back from the dead. It wasn't the players choice to be that race.

 

[Darklone]

First time I had fun with that spell (and a housemade table or a second edition table) was when my racist anti kobold gnome came back as ... a kobold.

Though that was a oneshot, I liked the idea enough to use it as background for another gnome => kobold illusionist/sorcerer.

 

[Dark Dragon]

First time I had fun with that spell (and a housemade table or a second edition table) was when my racist anti kobold gnome came back as ... a kobold.

LOL

We haven't changed the table so far, everybody in the group is aware of the risk to roll up a useless character. That's the reason because our asimaar pal/ftr refused to be raised by the druid (the group traveled a LONG way to the next town with a temple...)

Shard and LokiDR: I like the idea about an ECL cap (past +1) to replace "overpowered" races.

 

[Darklone]

And I dearly miss kobolds

 

[Spatzimaus]

I'm not saying you should automatically deduct ECL 3 or 4 from everyone who rolls Pixie, just like you wouldn't add 10 levels if someone became an earthworm (hmm... it's Earthworm Jim!). There has to be a level of common sense involved here. The thing is, though, while the big Half-Ogre Barbarian would lose a lot of power by turning into a Pixie (cuz a Pixie Barbarian just isn't that impressive, except maybe to other Pixies), the Human Sorcerer WOULD see an improvement. So would the Halfling Rogue (9d6 Sneak Attack is still just as damaging when caused by a 1d2 weapon instead of a 1d4, and now I can hide better and can fly, with a better attack roll and AC?)

On the other hand, turn the Sorcerer into a race with no hands (say, a panther) and he's really neutered, while the Rogue still does fine as a big cat. The Barbarian will do okay as a panther, although he'll have to do without his old weapons and armor. So, it varies by your character classes. A Psion does great turned into something without hands, since he doesn't need to gesture. It's all relative.

The problem for me is, at high level I've seen people use Reincarnate like they use Polymorph Other: to permanently give themselves a really useful form. Sure, it might take a few tries, but eventually you'll get something with useful abilities. It's stupid, but it happens, especially for those classes that don't really care about their physical form (most spellcasters).

AFAIK, the concept of reincarnation in the real world assumes your soul transfers but your mind doesn't; a person reincarnated into a cow isn't intelligent. So, we're already accepting that D&D uses an alternate definition; why not expand it further, and just give all those creatures opposable thumbs? Sure, you're a badger, but you're a badger with a sword!

The easy solution would just be to change the table to only include ECL 0, equipment-wearing, opposable-thumb-using races, so that all classes are affected equally. It's boring, but it's balanced.

IMC, when this has come up (a couple times, once giving a good race and once giving a bad one), I've sat down with the player involved, and we basically re-made the character in the new race, trading some unusable Feats for ones useful in his new form, shifting skill points around, and even trading some class levels, so that in the end he wasn't suddenly more or less powerful than the others. It was a good amount of work, but I already do this sort of thing for PrCs.

IMO, unless they're a Druid or Ranger or something, no one should WANT to be Reincarnated.

 

[Orm]

On the other hand, turn the Sorcerer into a race with no hands (say, a panther) and he's really neutered, while the Rogue still does fine as a big cat.

But a rogue without hands has a hard time opening locks and disabling traps.

Orm