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<blockquote data-quote="Gargoyle" data-source="post: 3853402" data-attributes="member: 529">In my last couple of campaigns, I've made a house rule that characters important to the plot of the campaign have strong souls.&nbsp; I've referred to them as &quot;principals&quot;, but lately I've taken to calling them &quot;exemplars&quot;.&nbsp; They include the player characters and major villains, but can also be NPC's important to the plot, or just characters that we enjoy having around.&nbsp;&nbsp; - Exemplars cannot be killed with instant death effects, they are merely dazed instead of killed.- Exemplars have action points, per the Unearthed Arcana rules.- Non-exemplars cannot be raised from the dead.&nbsp; - There is an orison that clerics can use to detect exemplar.&nbsp; The only other way to find out if someone is an exemplar is to try to raise them from the dead or use some instant death spell on them and see if it works.&nbsp; So finger of death and all that may be useful for killing tough henchmen (or the Duke of Redshirt), but it's not going to kill the BBEG or my wife's beloved fighter.&nbsp; And you can't just raise the non-exemplar Duke from the dead...when the evil wizard insta-kills an important politician it will have some repercussions in the world.&nbsp; Murder of important non-exemplars can be a big campaign event because they cannot simply be brought back by high level characters in the world.&nbsp; My in-game rationale is that exemplars simply have stronger souls.&nbsp; It's a DM fiat, but I think it's a fair and fun one.With the possibility of mook rules in 4e, I wonder if something similar will be done about insta-death spells and raising the dead.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gargoyle, post: 3853402, member: 529"] In my last couple of campaigns, I've made a house rule that characters important to the plot of the campaign have strong souls. I've referred to them as "principals", but lately I've taken to calling them "exemplars". They include the player characters and major villains, but can also be NPC's important to the plot, or just characters that we enjoy having around. - Exemplars cannot be killed with instant death effects, they are merely dazed instead of killed. - Exemplars have action points, per the Unearthed Arcana rules. - Non-exemplars cannot be raised from the dead. - There is an orison that clerics can use to [I]detect exemplar[/I]. The only other way to find out if someone is an exemplar is to try to raise them from the dead or use some instant death spell on them and see if it works. So [I]finger of death[/I] and all that may be useful for killing tough henchmen (or the Duke of Redshirt), but it's not going to kill the BBEG or my wife's beloved fighter. And you can't just raise the non-exemplar Duke from the dead...when the evil wizard insta-kills an important politician it will have some repercussions in the world. Murder of important non-exemplars can be a big campaign event because they cannot simply be brought back by high level characters in the world. My in-game rationale is that exemplars simply have stronger souls. It's a DM fiat, but I think it's a fair and fun one. With the possibility of mook rules in 4e, I wonder if something similar will be done about insta-death spells and raising the dead. [/QUOTE]

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