Hi all, too much time no posting.
I would like to ask for some ideas for a Setting I’m helping a friend to flesh out. One of the central parts is that on the setting (think something like Planescape with its weird’s physics and portal thematic + Ravenloft for the exiled and dark themes) death is only temporal.
People die normally, but don’t remain dead more than one hour. Some rules and facts of that “no permanent death” are:
- Death arrives normally, but is only a temporal thing. The body slowly recover itself 1 hp/turn until it recovers to 0 HP, and here on heal normally. People remain unconscious during that regeneration.
- People do not age. Those born outside the setting and exiled in stop aging the moment they arrive. Native people stop aging some place around Young Adult.
- That only happens to humanoid or intelligent creatures. Unintelligent monsters and animal die (and can be eaten) normally.
- There are only two known forms of final death; absolute destruction of the body, at least of Disintegrate scale, and destruction of the soul for enough negatives levels of similar effects.
- The time dead there are not sensations, but the moment of death can be horribly painful and traumatic, and you later remember it.
- On every death you forget something. Normally are small things of no importance, but with enough deaths you slowly forget nearly all. The worst’s cases seam little more than living zombies, but to that extreme are necessary hundred of deaths, so are rare.
- The overpopulation consequences are reduced for the huge size of the setting. There are at least dozens of “worlds”, connected between them with portals and each with its unique physic and magical laws, like Outer Planes but without the strong alignment theme.
Of course, something like that has great impact on nearly everything on the setting. We would begin one campaign there, with a military background. A county is being assault by different Evil Overlords.
Some of the repercussions of all that are clear; some magic gains a great importance. The spells of Necromancy that deals negative levels, Baleful Polymorph to take out enemies without killing them, or charm to turn previous enemies to your side are vital spells on conflicts there. The spells that create undead, specially the non intelligent ones, are more difficult to use, with humanoids at least. Kidnap, torture and slavery are at the same time more frequent and viewed as something even more evil, as the effects are more permanent.
But I'm sure there could be really interesting ideas and stuff that could be born there that I'm not thinking of. What stuff do people will make on a place like that? I want many crazy ideas. ^^
Edit: one more important detail. There are divine casters, but few sources of divine might; some on the scale of Demon / Empyreal Lords, but no god that has regency over the death portfolio at great scale.
Shameless bump.
I'm searching more for plot hooks and how could the situation affect the setting than mechanical effects.
Really, I'd rethink the total body destruction = final death thing. It's relatively easy to dispose of your enemies once they're unconscious - even with more mundane methods than feeblemind or polymorph. Hack their body into bits, cut their head off, melt them with acid, put them somewhere where they're permanently exposed to damage (in a fire, at the bottom of the ocean, etc). It doesn't require a lot more effort than normal to finish off your enemies, and PCs will think up ways to do it pretty quickly after their enemies come back for the first time!