Zheng Xiaoyu's page

Hoping to get some ideas from the creative minds I regularly see on this forum.

The situation is this: my players have finally reached Xin-Shalast and in following the yellow brick road they encounter no Cowardly Lion but rather two less than cowardly rune giants. The ensuing fight did not go well for my players, leaving two of them dead. On the one hand I'm never overly happy about killing my players, on the other I am quite happy that these towering runelord created freak-shows are now established as a serious threat, as they should be. But on the marilith's third hand I'm not particularly bothered either way as a GM, because at this level death is quite literally cheap and I know that my players have the capability to resurrect their fallen friends.

Except then I remember; one of the deceased, the party's gunslinger, has sold his soul to a demon.

Specifically, he sold it to Delvahine, the incestuous succubus from Runeforge. Now there was a fun encounter. The 'slinger in question, a male half-elf, established himself as a promiscuous womanizer right at the very start of our game, so I knew that I should except something special from him in the area dedicated to the sin of lust. He still managed to surprise me. He convinced the rest of the group to let him go and parley with the queen succubus on his own, and once there offered her his soul in exchange for her help in Runeforge. The accompanying ability score bonus from her Profane Gift might have tempted him too.

I honestly loved the gesture; it really fits his chaotic neutral, power hungry, path-of-least-resistance happy character. But I have to admit that I'm not sure where to go from here. Normally I would simply tell the player that his character's soul is well and truly doomed, that he deserves nothing less, and that it's time to make a new character.
But we're at the endgame, halfway through Xin-Shalast. This 'slinger has been with us since level 1. He's gone from killing goblins to finally being offed himself by a 40 ft. monstrosity with a sword three times bigger than he is. The player wants to see his character finish this campaign, and I share his sentiment.

So I'm adamant about bringing this 'slinger back, and not least because it just wouldn't make any sense for a new PC to join the party halfway up fantasy Mount Everest. My problem is that I'm not sure how. Hoping that some of you reading this see options here that I'm missing. Anyone here know of any official rules for reclaiming a soul now in the clutches of a fiend? That preferably won't necessitate trekking all the way back to Runeforge...

I'm not entirely lost though. I have a vague idea about using Delvahine's tenuous alliance with the wrath wing to bring this character back. The wrath guys could surely fashion him an all new body to inhabit in their creepy flesh lab. Not entirely sure why she would even want to do so, but it's certainly an option.
Thoughts? Suggestions?

Sorry about the provocative title. I'm really hoping that you guys can teach me something here rather than the other way around, but I figured a clickbaity thread title would draw the necessary crowd. A poster's got to do what a poster's got to do to get some replies, know what I'm saying? Sorry.

Seriously though, you're all wrong about Reincarnate.

Specifically, you are wrong about the whole "mental stats retention" thing. Another player and I recently got into a kerfuffle over whether or not PCs mental stats are left completely unchanged with the spell Reincarnate. As we often do with these disputes we took it to these boards. I love these forums. They host some great people and are just a fantastic resource for both players and GMs. And, sure enough, we found that although most people thought the spell's wording a little wobbly the board has a consensus: only physical stats are altered by Reincarnate. Mental stats are left as is.

And yet the more I look at the spell the less I understand this conclusion. I can't see anything, anything at all, in the spell's description that would imply that mental stats are left unaltered.

This is all Reincarnate has to say about one's ability scores:
"Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores depend partly on the new body. First eliminate the subject's racial adjustments (since it is no longer necessarily of his previous race) and then apply the adjustments found below to its remaining ability scores."

It seems so clear cut to me. Racial ability adjustments are eliminated. All of them. The halfling's Dex bonus? Gone. His Str penalty? Also gone. And his Cha bonus? Yeah, that too. Why shouldn't it?

What am I missing here? I'm still new to the game but I know these forums. Smart people frequent them. They can't all be wrong. And yet I just can't see where this accepted reading of Reincarnate comes from. Which is a problem for me, as I like to play most everything by the books.
Could someone please tell me what an idiot I am and explain this?

Can non-casters make caster level checks? Specifically, can they do so with effects provided by magical items?

Hypothetical situation: Tim the Fighter is wearing a pair of Boots of Teleportation. He wants to make a nice bowl of cereal to enjoy on what happens to be a nice summer morning. But what's this? Out of the cereal box, ripping right through Cap'n Crunch's glorious mustache, comes Black Magga, legendary lake monster of the Storval Deep! She too looks hungry for breakfast... and she's eying our poor Fighter! Tim had better get out of here! He clicks his heels together three times, activating the magic of his snazzy footwear. But oh no! Magga remembered to bring her supernatural ability Warp Dimensions. This makes it so that anyone trying to use a teleportation effect near her has to succeed a DC 21 caster level check or have said effect fail. What ever will our hero do?

Yeah, that's what I wanna know.
Non-casters can of course use magic items, but can they do caster level checks with such items? If so, would they use the caster level of the item? And what if Tim happened to have one level of Wizard from that one evening class he used to take? Would he then use his own caster level for the check or the superior caster level of the boots themselves?

Thanks in advance for any and all help, guys.

Hi there. Long time listener, first time caller hoping to get some clarification on something another player and myself are debating.

Prestige classes and that darn "+1 level to spellcasting class" thing. What does that actually mean in regard to obtaining higher levels of spells?

To clarify, I'm not talking about caster levels at all. I found plenty of threads dedicated to that topic, but none that could tell me if a character can learn to cast high-level spells through a prestige class.

To borrow an example from another such thread: I understand that one can simply think of, say, a Fighter 1/Wizard 5/ Eldritch Knight 10 as a lv.15 Wizard with regard to his spellcasting. But does that mean that such a PC can cast lv.8 spells at a caster level of 15, like a proper lv.15 Wizard, or does it instead mean that he can only cast lv.3 spells, like the Wizard 5 that he actually is, with a caster level of 15?

Thanks in advance for any help with this matter.