Ressurection variant idea

[Fade]

I just had another idea for a less 'quickie-mart' ressurection:

Whilst a raise dead spell can indeed call someone's soul back from their afterlife, it cannot return them to their body. Because it's dead. If you have a sword sticking right through you, you are not going to get up and start walking around again.

Instead, the deceased's soul must be placed in another, live receptacle. Said body must be that of an intelligent creature, or there will be no room for the deceased's mind. When the new soul takes over the body the old one will be kicked out. It won't pass on to the afterlife, because it hasn't died. Instead it will linger in Limbo for eternity, envying even pain. In order to be able to hold the new spirit, the body cannot be too weak (<1/2 deceased's HD).

So basically, in order to bring your companion back to life, you are going to have to capture someone of considerable power, strap them down, and perform a ritual which tears their soul free of their body and puts it in eternal torment. Still sure you want to do it? What if the person you're using has had hundreds tortured to death? Is it then acceptable to doom him to bring a great hero back to life?

(Balancing, spell would be relatively easy to perform (4th level?), and you don't require the original body.)

 

[Limper]

Vile, nasty, reprehensible awful and quite evil..... ITS GREAT!!!

I like it adds a dimension of wrongness to the process, you might want to apply a "no-benefit" undead or outsider template suseptable to magic circles and such to the Returnee.

 

[twjensen]

Nice!

Perfect for a Ravenloft or Call of Cthulhu feel! I like it. (evil dm cackling)

 

[Grazzt]

I have a spell in my campaign called "revivessence" that does something very similar (pretty damn close to exactly) this.

Havent used it yet, but I do have an NPC cleric/necromancer that has knowledge of it. And one of these days I hope he gets to use it (on someone else, not himself).

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

It has a creepy, evil style that could add flavor to a campaign world when used by NPCs. That said, it's not a good spell for use by PCs.

I'm not referring to the fact that evil PCs running around a campaign world and perpetrating their evil on whoever they can (even if it's with an "it's for the greater good" excuse slapped on) is very distasteful. More to the point, it would permit characters to dump physical stats, intentionally die and take over a physically superior body thus permanently increasing their strength, dex, and con quite dramatically for a relatively minor cost. It's a bad idea for the same reason that WotC decided that polymorph other gives a character the average stats of whatever race they polymorph into rather than permitting characters to polymorph into an exceptionally strong, quick, and robust specimin.

 

[Fade]

If you want to get into the mechanics of it, I'd give the returnee the average of his and the receptacle's physical stats (partly the body, partly the way you use it). Along with Limper's suggestion for making them an outsider and RP problems (including a powerful NPC group who actively hunts these abominations), I don't think it would be abused too much. But mainly I was proposing the concept.

 

[Steven McRownt]

But that doesn't resolve the problem (giving "average"physical stats), Fade, it just delay it.

1. I decide to "leave" my weak body (STR 8, CON 6, DEX 10), for something better, and younger .
I find i young human (STR 16, CON 16, DEX 12). I will now have my superior intelligence and wisdom in a body so mixed: STR 12, CON 11, DEX 11). I've gained a lot, already, but i decided to look foward for a new body.

2. This time i see a Dwarf. A powerful dwarven dwarf (STR 18, CON 17, DEX 11). Perhaps i will gain even some of his racial bonus (?). My stats became STR 17, CON 16, DEX 11).

3.After that I will probably look for a dextereus elf to adjust my stats... There are Orcs and minotaurs to increase further my strengh (and probably constitution), and if I take even some of thier racial features i will became so powerful that lichdom will be a status for kids, not for real necromancers.

And all this for a 4th level spell. In Dragonlance, the Bloodstone of Fistandantilus, had similar power, but he became a sort of lich, and the spell stored in the bloodstone -a sort of philacitery- was a 9th level !

Steven McRownt

 

[Dispater]

Sort of like reincarnation. Great idea.

Anyway IMC the ressurection spell is quite risky anyway (heh). The only means of doing it praying to an evil deity, and delivering the ressurected person's soul into the god's hands in the afterlife as well as possibly shifting his alignement towards evil.