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Gwyneth Palpate posted:A minion that can cast True Resurrection is probably already thinking about becoming undead anyways. That seems like a pretty fragile situation. It's not the minion that casts True Resurrection; or maybe it's a different clerical minion; the plan as described is to give your valuables to a random decently loyal minion, who is prepared to die to be your wallet; disintegrate them, and then have a priest or yourself rez them at a later date with all your valuables intact. But this probably only works if you capture their soul in a gem or something because if they're evil they quickly have their soul consumed in the afterlife. Tenebrais posted:Well, we know from the Familicide saga that fiends can maintain the individuality of souls that catch their interest, so maybe the scheme can still be upheld if you bring on board a powerful being of the ventral planes and pledge your underling's soul to them. Most likely for evil/neutral souls you probably have a similar limbo area to hang out in until you get hauled in front of some sort of Lawful Neutral outsider to be judged and then tossed to the appropriate afterlife; and maybe there's a process in which you can keep "appealing" your case to drag it out the higher level you are until an evil teammate brings you back. I also imagine that for lawful evil afterlives they probably can see into the future well enough to see if a resurrection is coming because maybe you being alive is worthwhile to devils to possibly tempt other people into doing evil deeds and thus securing more evil souls for them to feast on.
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Jan 1, 2019 18:21
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I don't remember ever seeing any rulings about souls becoming ineligible to be raised due to their afterlife, so I assume the working period of the spell used to raise the soul is all that matters. I suppose souls of the dead will always remain valid targets for resurrection, as long as you can find a true resurrection-capable caster of a high enough level, even if they've for all other purposes ceased to exist, are undergoing "eternal" torment or been promoted in whatever soul hierarchy their particular afterlife uses (in the latter case they always have the option of just rejecting the rez if they feel they're better off in their new position)
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Jan 1, 2019 19:18
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I mean, have you ever in a game rezzed someone who was dead for literally centuries? The timespan in question here is such it would probably never come up during your typical campaign. Plot beats like "The enemy cult is trying to bring back to life the Demon Lord, thought dead for a thousand years" are the exceptions and probably not the norm; i.e they are kept linked to the world in some way shape or form.
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Jan 1, 2019 19:25
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Slashrat posted:I don't remember ever seeing any rulings about souls becoming ineligible to be raised due to their afterlife, so I assume the working period of the spell used to raise the soul is all that matters. The Nine Hells supplement brings up that the Nine Hells won't release the souls it gets if they signed actual pacts consigning them there. The souls of those who end up there automatically are allowed to be rezed as they view it as just putting off the inevitable and they don't have the ability to keep them there. A soul that signed a contract can still petition for release, but they have to request this and know to request this while in the middle of devils manhandling them and dragging them off to be tortured. If they do they are brought to the infernal courts were they are allowed representation of their choice. (If said representative is not in Hell The presiding devil contacts them and explains, but has not obligation to provide transport.) However rezing in any case does not work once a soul is converted to a lemure, but this is a fairly slow process as a soul is tortured for centuries to draw out the divine energy in the soul, until it is utterly broken and nothing further can be taken from it. After which the soul is sent to be converted into a lemure and join the hierarchy of devils. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jan 1, 2019 |
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Jan 1, 2019 19:37
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean, have you ever in a game rezzed someone who was dead for literally centuries? The timespan in question here is such it would probably never come up during your typical campaign. I could have sworn I saw a fantasy book where they did that. An empire 500 years in the future needed their legendary hero, so they rezzed him and he turned out to be a dick. I honestly can't remember the name of it though.
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Jan 1, 2019 20:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean, have you ever in a game rezzed someone who was dead for literally centuries? The timespan in question here is such it would probably never come up during your typical campaign.world in some way shape or form.
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Jan 1, 2019 20:46
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Toplowtech posted:You know it could make a decent base for a campaign plot: apparently "someone" is resurrecting specific people of historical importance to create a crisis to fulfill a mysterious end. Is it a powerful priest of chaos or evil or is it some kind of history obsessed idiot with a staff of Resurrection or equivalent? That's actually a plot hook given in the 3.5 DMG. Something to the effect of "The heroic founder of the kingdom's remains were found in a hidden reliquary beneath a major temple, and the high priest wants to resurrect him, but what if the legends about him are wrong?"
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Jan 1, 2019 20:48
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Raenir Salazar posted:That probably doesn't work though, because eventually said minion's soul will be absorbed into whatever afterlife they got sent to. And there's no guarantee if they have their items on the otherside that some demon won't steal them. Also, Resurrection requires the consent of the soul. A lot of these evil minions only serve their master out of fear.
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Jan 1, 2019 22:38
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seaborgium posted:I could have sworn I saw a fantasy book where they did that. An empire 500 years in the future needed their legendary hero, so they rezzed him and he turned out to be a dick. I honestly can't remember the name of it though. There's a Forgotten Realms book with that plot. It's about another elven realm forming by getting their mythal up and fighting off beholders. It's pretty bad.
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Jan 2, 2019 00:34
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seaborgium posted:I could have sworn I saw a fantasy book where they did that. An empire 500 years in the future needed their legendary hero, so they rezzed him and he turned out to be a dick. I honestly can't remember the name of it though. https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/summer_2010/fiction_the_lady_who_plucked_red_flowers_beneath_the_queens_window_by_rache/
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Jan 2, 2019 05:02
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Android Blues posted:I think it also depends which afterlife you go to. Lemures in the Nine Hells, the Lawful Evil afterlife, are transformed from mortal souls into craven little goop monsters pretty much as soon as the souls arrive. Generally the "good" afterlives seem to have a longer expiration date on your individuality, so that would probably make it a better strategy for pulling off benevolent schemes than wicked ones. to be fair though thats just teir one. If they're true schemers they can spend a few thousand years backstabbing, betraying and gaming their way to the top of the demonic hierarchy in the process getting less horrible lovely forms.
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Jan 2, 2019 06:33
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All the afterlives seem to care about your commitment to the afterlife, but in different ways. While the Good afterlives are gated communities that get to say who enters or doesn't, the Evil afterlives take all comers, from petty bandits to sorcerer-kings. The catch is that it's also an objectivist hellscape (ha) where anyone who isn't able to dig in their metaphysical heels and assert their wills end up immediately smashed into mush or otherwise made to serve as a resource for those who can. In short, to survive in hell, you can't just be evil, you gotta be Evil. Edit: That causes an interesting metaphysical quandry. If you realize you're going down the path of evil, (in a world where that is an objective, quantifiable measure), do you try to pull up and get back on the straight and narrow? Or do you instead stop sliding down the slope by running down it instead, building up speed so that you can try to kick in the door to Pandemoneum and demand to be a Hezrou? girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Jan 2, 2019 |
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Jan 2, 2019 07:20
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Reminds me of the recent lore for the devils known as Nupperibos. Pathetic blind devils that just mindlessly obey the orders of their betters. While they are stronger than the Lemures they are actually considered lower ranked. The reason is when the devils get the batches of Lemures created they look over all of them for the mark on their soul of their crimes, only those with ambition can move up, as ambition is the devil's lifeblood and the driving motive of every single one of them. The lemures who don't have marks of ambition on their souls are forced to step down from advancing in hell and become nupperibos, as they are worthless, those whose evil came from sloth and carelessness. A lemure is instantly more respected and considered greater then nupperibo because the fact that it is even pathetically crawling around means it has the mark of ambition because it was not turned into a nupperibo.
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Jan 2, 2019 07:54
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Slashrat posted:That's a neat detail, and suddenly makes me think that disintegration -> true resurrection might make for a secure storage system for characters of the evil inclination.
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Jan 2, 2019 09:08
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean, have you ever in a game rezzed someone who was dead for literally centuries? The timespan in question here is such it would probably never come up during your typical campaign. I'm playing in a published campaign for Pathfinder (Hells Rebels.) And at one point we got a magic item that was essentially a one off true Reseruction. We ended up using it on one of the long dead previous leaders convictions of our secret society. She had been dead for a decade and was a legitimate target. I'm sure you can res people dead for longer but it might require Wish or Miracle.
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Jan 2, 2019 13:34
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PMush Perfect posted:All the afterlives seem to care about your commitment to the afterlife, but in different ways. While the Good afterlives are gated communities that get to say who enters or doesn't, the Evil afterlives take all comers, from petty bandits to sorcerer-kings. The catch is that it's also an objectivist hellscape (ha) where anyone who isn't able to dig in their metaphysical heels and assert their wills end up immediately smashed into mush or otherwise made to serve as a resource for those who can. This would make sense to me and would be a far more thematically interesting than what I think is the case; iirc in the 3.5e 9 Hells sourcebook it's literally a trap. There's virtually nothing you can do as an evil mortal to get any kind of advantage in the afterlife, your fate is to be a lemure; many devils will try to tempt you and imply that by being evil and stuff you can gain favour and what not and end up higher in the devil hierarchy but they carefully never grant this in the actual contract. There's no reward at the end of the tunnel for being Evil with a capital E like Xykon. Xykon even implies as much in Oots, no matter how evil you are you're fate is an eternity of torture and suffering so you gotta be willing to do anything and everything, rip out you're own heart to avoid the fires below. This is because in the lore, devils are just angels who took it too far in order to fight demons and decided that by punishing evil mortals they could have the energy needed to fight the infinite of the abyss. But from a mechanical perspective it seems weird that in a setting with so many evil dieties that need prayers and followers to maintain their status that so many evil people don't just end up in a cushy evil afterlife with an evil god of their choice. Especially in Faerun where nonbelievers end up in the Wall of the Faithless; this feels very contradictory for me, since Bishop, evil fucker that he is, ended up there instead of hell. So yeah, I think it should be possible just by doubling down on being Evil either you can quickly through momentum gain devil/demon ranks quickly, or by securing the right kind of agreement it feels to me like it should be possible for an evil person to like, incarnate as a Balor almost immediately after dying in service to one of the Hell Lords or something. But I think one of the sourcebooks implied this was highly unlikely without extraordinary effort or circumstance. The Question IRL posted:I'm playing in a published campaign for Pathfinder (Hells Rebels.) And at one point we got a magic item that was essentially a one off true Reseruction. What decided it was a legit target of the spell though? The DM letting it happen and the sourcebook saying it can happen are two different things and not all sourcebooks are created equal. Pathfinder isn't necessarily the same setting as the Forgotten Realms for instance.
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Jan 2, 2019 13:39
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Raenir Salazar posted:This would make sense to me and would be a far more thematically interesting than what I think is the case; iirc in the 3.5e 9 Hells sourcebook it's literally a trap. There's virtually nothing you can do as an evil mortal to get any kind of advantage in the afterlife, your fate is to be a lemure; many devils will try to tempt you and imply that by being evil and stuff you can gain favour and what not and end up higher in the devil hierarchy but they carefully never grant this in the actual contract. There's no reward at the end of the tunnel for being Evil with a capital E like Xykon. Xykon even implies as much in Oots, no matter how evil you are you're fate is an eternity of torture and suffering so you gotta be willing to do anything and everything, rip out you're own heart to avoid the fires below. This reminds me of the Hell depicted in the web novel Unsong, whose Jewish author - I mention it for reasons that will become apparent - has a very black sense of humour: http://unsongbook.com/interlude-%D7%99-the-broadcast/ posted:“Some of the demons have nicknamed this place Brimstone Acres,” Thagirion was saying. “It’s the nice part of Hell – relatively speaking, of course. We reserve it for the worst sinners. Hitler has a villa here. So do Beria and LaLaurie. It’s basic incentive theory. If the worst sinners got the worst parts of Hell, then people who were pretty sure they were hellbound might still hold back a little bit in order to make their punishment a little more tolerable. We try to encourage the opposite. If you know you’re going to Hell, you should try to sin more, much more, as much as possible, in the hopes of winning one of these coveted spots. And that’s just the beginning. There were some bad people who died in Stalinist Russia, and I like making sure every one of them knows that Beria is having a great time right now. Food, drink, and of course all the slaves he could possibly need for whatever purposes he likes. Whatever purposes. All the people selected to be his slaves being the people who hate him the most, naturally, which is the icing on the cake. These places pay for themselves, evil-wise. I just give everyone who died in the Holocaust a little magic stone that lets them know what Hitler’s doing at any given moment, and you wouldn’t believe how they howl.”
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Jan 2, 2019 14:00
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NihilCredo posted:This reminds me of the Hell depicted in the web novel Unsong, whose Jewish author - I mention it for reasons that will become apparent - has a very black sense of humour:
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Jan 2, 2019 14:44
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That reminds me in a roundabout way of a comic where Jesus keeps forgiving Hitler and letting him into Heaven, and God blows up at him because he's built himself a nice place with good people and doesn't want his son to have loving Nazis stay there.
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Jan 2, 2019 14:50
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From what I gathered the Source book said you could as it had rules for what happened when she came back to life. I'm sure that there are adventure paths that make it a plot point to bring back a long dead character to advance the story.
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Jan 2, 2019 15:01
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Raenir Salazar posted:There's no reward at the end of the tunnel for being Evil with a capital E That said, if supervillains got infernal rewards, whether by reincarnating as a Diablo clone or by being awarded their own pick of 100 Days of Sodom villas, it would create an incentive for heroes of the setting not to kill said villains and, indeed, to prevent them from dying. Alternate methods like flesh to stone, trap the soul, imprisonment and mind seed would see much more use on the Good side of the conflict. Rogue AI Goddess fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Jan 2, 2019 |
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Jan 2, 2019 15:02
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quote:I just give everyone who died in the Holocaust a little magic stone that lets them know what Hitler’s doing at any given moment, and you wouldn’t believe how they howl. Yeah, that's why I stopped using twitter.
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Jan 2, 2019 15:07
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Reminds me of another comic where Hitler (or some other monster from history) is in Heaven, and all the souls around are constantly mocking him, going "what a joke, Hitler there, what with him causing <specific atrocity>", everyone having a different example. Hitler goes to Saint Peter to complain "why are they so rude to me, isn't this Paradise?" and Peter replies "they are in Paradise, not you." Not sure if reminiscing of past horrors to mock their perpetrators is such a great way to enjoy the good afterlife, but hey, it wasn't my joke.
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Jan 2, 2019 15:09
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Raenir Salazar posted:But from a mechanical perspective it seems weird that in a setting with so many evil dieties that need prayers and followers to maintain their status that so many evil people don't just end up in a cushy evil afterlife with an evil god of their choice. Especially in Faerun where nonbelievers end up in the Wall of the Faithless; this feels very contradictory for me, since Bishop, evil fucker that he is, ended up there instead of hell. The Wall exists because the gods decided that not believing in them is a greater sin than just being evil. Also it is incredibly unjust.
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Jan 2, 2019 15:12
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Shugojin posted:The Wall exists because the gods decided that not believing in them is a greater sin than just being evil. Also it is incredibly unjust. This is of course, the crux of Mask of the Betrayer and informs the player's decision as to what they're supposed to do if anything at all, beyond merely ripping your soul back from the Wall. The general idea is that by not believing in the gods it risked a sort of existential crisis for the multiverse, like it seems like in Forgotten Realms if the gods were all to die at the sametime so does the Material Plane kinda what happened in God of War III except much worse off as there aren't other lands with other gods there to pick up the slack. It's a little more fascinating in retrospect because the Wall of the Faithless becomes somewhat comparable to some concepts in different real world religions. It's something like oblivion which is the stated end goal of some religions under the idea that the cycle of reincarnation is simply a living hell and ending it is preferable to its continuation and in some ways is preferable to torment in the Abyss or the Nine Hells. While the mere existence of the concept of an unjust punishment also exists in real world religions but the punishment actually seems less severe? Real world religions sometimes have this concept of sin where it's just so bad that of course you'll be punished for various reasons ranging from "Because God said so" to reasoning to comes out to "Because it damages the fabric of the universe which is indistinguishable from God and Hell is how god fixes it." The Wall actually seems less bad honestly in some circumstances.
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Jan 2, 2019 15:34
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Raenir Salazar posted:
Kelemvor is a chud
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Jan 2, 2019 16:16
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You kind of have to hand wave away all that time when the wall didnt exist and things were fine
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Jan 2, 2019 16:33
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The Chad Jihad posted:You kind of have to hand wave away all that time when the wall didnt exist and things were fine I found an interesting write up here which while relying on some amount of conjecture presents a theory that makes sense. Jergal was simply sufficiently powerful enough and the population small enough that it didn't matter until Myrkal who was originally Mortal and might've been having a harder time dealing with the ever increasing number of dead people. In the early days Jergal could attend to the Faithless personally and scare off Demons trying to steal them; Myrkal was a much weaker upstart who needed to dickwave.
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Jan 2, 2019 16:41
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Raenir Salazar posted:But from a mechanical perspective it seems weird that in a setting with so many evil dieties that need prayers and followers to maintain their status that so many evil people don't just end up in a cushy evil afterlife with an evil god of their choice. Especially in Faerun where nonbelievers end up in the Wall of the Faithless; this feels very contradictory for me, since Bishop, evil fucker that he is, ended up there instead of hell. Don't they? I thought that clerics and particularly devout followers go to their god's domain rather than their default afterlife as a rule. I mean, Hilgya explicitly states that she's going to spend the afterlife chilling with Loki in Valhalla.
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Jan 2, 2019 16:50
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Don't they? I thought that clerics and particularly devout followers go to their god's domain rather than their default afterlife as a rule. I mean, Hilgya explicitly states that she's going to spend the afterlife chilling with Loki in Valhalla. Caveat emptor being of course that this seems to be wildly inconsistent between: Setting -Forgotten Realms vs Dragonlance (No Afterlife at all!! You just go on a mythical cosmic journey beyond space and time, while the Gods are the ones who are trapped forever around Krynn, they even have no idea what happens after, it's a mystery!) vs the desert setting vs Ravenloft etc. They all seem to have their own rules that override the: Source Books the source books say a particular thing (If you're Evil, you go to hell/abyss, do not pass go, do not collect 200$) I know that Drow go to their respective Drow deities, albeit Lolth likes to redo the whole survival of the fittest thing and puts a bunch of obstacles between the Astral Plane and her Realm; until she killed Vharuun and Selvatern and become a Greater Deity and God of all Evil Drow, then in the War of the Spider Queen series where if Lolth managed to kill Elisteree then she would've been God of all Drow and good or evil their souls were hers; so no hell for Drow except's Lolth's. This is fascinating as it seems totally different from how the other pantheons work and is much more similar to how the Dwarven Oots Pantheon works. So in Forgotten Realms there is presumably an exception where Evil gods intervene to claim their petitioners, but I was originally mainly referring to what the 3.5e sourcebooks were saying.
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Jan 2, 2019 17:02
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Cat Mattress posted:Reminds me of another comic where Hitler (or some other monster from history) is in Heaven, and all the souls around are constantly mocking him, going "what a joke, Hitler there, what with him causing <specific atrocity>", everyone having a different example. Hitler goes to Saint Peter to complain "why are they so rude to me, isn't this Paradise?" and Peter replies "they are in Paradise, not you."
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Jan 2, 2019 17:10
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Raenir Salazar posted:This would make sense to me and would be a far more thematically interesting than what I think is the case; iirc in the 3.5e 9 Hells sourcebook it's literally a trap. There's virtually nothing you can do as an evil mortal to get any kind of advantage in the afterlife, your fate is to be a lemure; many devils will try to tempt you and imply that by being evil and stuff you can gain favour and what not and end up higher in the devil hierarchy but they carefully never grant this in the actual contract. From what I remember, this is incorrect - it is possible for you to bargain your way into starting higher up in the hierarchy than as a lowly lemure. The thing that devils conveniently forget to mention during these negotiations is that your old sense of self will still be completely annihilated after your soul's transformation into a devil. So regardless of whether you become a lemure or something stronger, "you" as an individual will still ultimately cease to exist after your soul is claimed.
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Jan 2, 2019 19:06
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The Question IRL posted:I'm playing in a published campaign for Pathfinder (Hells Rebels.) And at one point we got a magic item that was essentially a one off true Reseruction. There was an entire AD&D module based on this premise.
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Jan 2, 2019 19:22
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Reinbach posted:There was an entire AD&D module based on this premise. Ah yes, Dungeons and Dragon Balls. Of course, the original isn't as well known as the second or fourth editions. We.. we don't talk about the third.
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Jan 2, 2019 19:45
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Ironically, the card game for the third edition was the best thing to come out of that era.
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Jan 2, 2019 19:51
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My Lovely Horse posted:There's another "relativistic morals applied to hell" thing I'm thinking of right now that I can't quite place, but goes something like "why would sinners get tortured in hell, wouldn't the devil look after his own?" Think the last bit of that is almost verbatim. Can't remember if that was a published comic or just some single panel webcomic. That would the late, lamented The Parking Lot is Full. 
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Jan 3, 2019 05:06
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W.T. Fits posted:From what I remember, this is incorrect - it is possible for you to bargain your way into starting higher up in the hierarchy than as a lowly lemure. The thing that devils conveniently forget to mention during these negotiations is that your old sense of self will still be completely annihilated after your soul's transformation into a devil. So regardless of whether you become a lemure or something stronger, "you" as an individual will still ultimately cease to exist after your soul is claimed. Well everyone starts as a Lemure, transforming into one is the first step. But if the promise is starting higher on the hierarchy then that Lemure will be promoted right after creation. This also don't mentioned that before you become a Lemure all the personality and divine energy your soul has is tortured out of you.
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Jan 3, 2019 07:12
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Considering he didn't even take a moment to ask Hilgya how she felt before proposing to her, I still say she did nothing wrong. 
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Jan 3, 2019 11:59
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Cuntellectual posted:Considering he didn't even take a moment to ask Hilgya how she felt before proposing to her, I still say she did nothing wrong. Gonna have to say that an immediate sentence of death seemed excessive for the crime. 
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Jan 4, 2019 05:35
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jng2058 posted:Gonna have to say that an immediate sentence of death seemed excessive for the crime. Death-and-resurrection doesn't seem too excessive for the level of shitlordery that Durkon was committing. If the death had been permanent, sure, that's excessive. But with the Raise Dead coming, he's getting off lightly.
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Jan 4, 2019 07:08
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