Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="StupidSmurf" data-source="post: 2715217" data-attributes="member: 35893">There are two instances I can think of where even having some sort of dead-raising magic is not a guarantee of undoing a death. As the comedian said, "Stop me if you've heard this one."1. Steveroo mentioned the reluctance of some gods raising people who are antithetical to their ethos. That's great, and how about taking that a step further? What's to stop a god from executing a Divine Override if the soul in question belongs to them, but has not distinguished itself in life? For instance, you have Tempus, god of battle in the Forgotten Realms. Some fighter dies while turning tail and running away from a more or less evenly matched battle. Well, for some bizarre reason, the survivors of the battle decide to bring their cowardly friend back. Tempus says "No way" and prevents the soul from returning.Perhaps his comrades need to perform a quest to bring their friend back. This speaks a lot about the ultimate character of the dead soul....having companions willing to undertake such a risk speaks a lot for the soul's character. Or perhaps the raising is temporary, and is piggybacked onto a quest. "Sir Runs-a-lot, you have been brought back to life for one month, and during this time, you must travel to the lair of Ripya Faceov, the double-sized mountain troll, and slay him. Succeed, and you have redeemed yourself and the raising will stand. Fail, and you come back to the realms of the dead, so that your cowardice and incompetence will no longer cause me shame among the living."2. Secondly, and this one's nasty... How many of you DMs out there have had evil cultists sacrifice a PC or NPC, only to have a rescue party come in, slay the cultists, take the body, and have it raised?Excuse me? Can anyone else see what's wrong with that? The cultists have given the SOUL of the victim to their GOD. Unless it's the God of Takebacks we're talking about here, no bit of clerical magic is going to tear away the soul of the dead from the clutches of a god on his/her/its home plane. Cthulhu doesn't give refunds, bube.I have a House Rule, and it's been agreed to by my group. If evil priests have managed to capture someone, and successfully do a full-out elaborate sacrificial ritual (as in, taking at least an hour, in a temple/shrine dedicated to the god, consecrated altar, full costumes and regalia stuff), offering the victim's soul to the evil god, then dude, that soul is GONE. Not even a successful Divine Intervention will undo that.Want the victim back? Then make like the heroes of Greek myth and journey to the afterlife and get them back. And if you think THAT's going to be easy, you have another thing coming.Due to what can be the utter finality of this, I rarely use it.Come to think of it, both suggestions should be cleared in advance with the party.If this post has been entertaining and/or informative, I wouldn't say no to that Figurines of Wondrous Power thingy!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

Verification