A character that is killed and reincarnated returns with class and abilities, alignment, and outlook but not necessarily race.
Do they develop from the remaining body part in the presence of the reincarnation caster? Do they wake up in the shade of a nearby tree as a confused bugbear or kobold or whatever?????
I'm curious if a careful reincarnation might include a chance to take advantage of this chaos to work some lasting change.
What do people think? Kill evil overlord and reincarnate him. Is there a chance you could reform him in the confusion following the spell?
What about the hero? Reincarnate and orchestrate a particular world view to change the characters alignment?
What do people think?
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A character that is killed and reincarnated returns with class and abilities, alignment, and outlook but not necessarily race.
Do they develop from the remaining body part in the presence of the reincarnation caster? Do they wake up in the shade of a nearby tree as a confused bugbear or kobold or whatever?????
I'm curious if a careful reincarnation might include a chance to take advantage of this chaos to work some lasting change.
What do people think? Kill evil overlord and reincarnate him. Is there a chance you could reform him in the confusion following the spell?
What about the hero? Reincarnate and orchestrate a particular world view to change the characters alignment?
What do people think?
I don't think anyone thought that deeply about Reincarnation as a spell when they originally wrote it. I actually don't use it because it never made sense. Does a new creature miraculously appear or is the old spirit born into a new body and then everyone has to wait around until it grows up to rejoin the party? It's easier to give a Druid Raise Dead and Resurrection.
A character that is killed and reincarnated returns with class and abilities, alignment, and outlook but not necessarily race.
Do they develop from the remaining body part in the presence of the reincarnation caster? Do they wake up in the shade of a nearby tree as a confused bugbear or kobold or whatever?????
I'm curious if a careful reincarnation might include a chance to take advantage of this chaos to work some lasting change.
What do people think? Kill evil overlord and reincarnate him. Is there a chance you could reform him in the confusion following the spell?
What about the hero? Reincarnate and orchestrate a particular world view to change the characters alignment?
What do people think?
The impression I got was that the new body grows in the presence of the caster. And while the newly reincarnated person might be confused as to their new form, they still clearly remember who they are. So now not only is the evil overlord still evil, but he's probably also seriously ticked off.
I think the roleplaying possibilities of this are fun from the start!
Why not let a character keep their alignment?
Having a "good" bugbear or gnoll will make for plenty of difficulties for the player that its worth the possibility of some more power abilites. (Some of the reincarnated races have some nice bonuses...)
But I look forward to seeing my players roleplay the first time one of them shows up in a different body.
Its clearly a niche spell, fitting that very small void between 4th and 5th level spells.
I can't really see anyone Not using raise dead once you have it.. except.
Raise Dead states:
A raised creature has a number of hit points equal to its current HD. Any ability scores damaged to 0 are raised to 1. Normal poison and normal disease are cured in the process of raising the subject, but magical diseases and curses are not undone. While the spell closes mortal wounds and repairs lethal damage of most kinds, the body of the creature to be raised must be whole. Otherwise, missing parts are still missing when the creature is brought back to life. None of the dead creature's equipment or possessions are affected in any way by this spell.
Reincarnate states:
"...all physical ills and afflictions are repaired."
I can definately see someone drained down to nothing and then dying, using reincarnate rather than raise dead- especially if they lack the means to readily get someone's ability scores up to par.
and heck, it Is good RP :)
-S
Oh there are other reasons.
Maybe the old guy had lost an arm or a leg. Maybe he was blind or crippled. Raising him won't grow back those missing limbs or uncripple him, but reincarnation might.
Maybe he was a 90 year old human on his deathbed. Raising him leaves him as a nonagenarian still on his deathbed, but reincarnating him (probably; it's not entirely spelled out in the rules) gives him a healthy young body, even if it's not his own.
Raised Dead requires the body be mostly intact. Reincarnate creates and/or finds a useful body so it doesn't require a body at all. So if the dead guy burned up in a house fire, or crushed in a collapsed mine shaft, or drowned at sea, or got disintegrated, or whatever, he is unraisable, but could be reincarnatable.
I once had a high-level dungeon in which my players found a "magical portal". Or so they thought. It was really a disintegration trap. Rather than taking the time to figure it out, a player just hopped in to see what would happen. Zap. Gone.
No body to raise, so they reincarnated him. I played it that the spell found the nearest dead body that was intact enough to sustain life, and in this case, it was a rat. A normal sized ordinary rat. Which wasn't too big a problem since the dead guy was a pure psionicist. He spent the rest of the dungeon sitting on the barbarian's neck, shielding the two of them with his psionic power, turning them into an unstoppable force of steel death and psionic defense.
Reincarnate was the original method of "monsters as PCs".
The problem always was the imbalance of it.
For example, take an elf wizard with STR 8 DEX 12 CON 10 INT 20 WIS 14 CHA 12 and reincarnate him as a dwarf, reroll his physical stats, and maybe end up with STR 12 DEX 12 CON 16 INT 20 WIS 14 CHA 12 and suddenly that Reincarnation spell really was a permanent increase of 10 total points to the wizard's stats.
Do the same thing with a dwarf fighter with STR 20 DEX 12 CON 18 INT 8 WIS 10 CHA 8 and reincarnate him as an elf, reroll his physical stats, and maybe end up with STR 8 DEX 14 CON 10 INT 8 WIS 10 CHA 8 and suddenly this Reincarnation spell really was a permanent drain of 18 total points to the fighter's stats.
Wizard probably gains some decent stats, fighter probably loses a bunch of stats.
Yeah, yeah, it's all random and could work out differently. The point is that when you generate your character, if you invest heavily in physical stats, like fighters do, and then later you get reincarnated, the odds or randomly rolling as well as you originally invested are very unlikely. But if you dumped physical stats, like a wizard often does, then the odds are tha you'll randomly do better than your initial dump stats.
So, yes, it was the PC-as-Monster gimmick, but it was more just a loophole for making tough mages and, usually, a horrible idea for trying to build a monster fighter.
My understanding is that Alignment is a property of the soul. Alignment tends to determine where the soul ends up in the hereafter. On that basis, I'd say that any alignment change requires an authentic change of heart, or else magic capable of changing the alignment of a living target.
However, that's just what I think. Other GMs could have different explanations, and that's cool by me.
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DMB, I'm not sure if you're talking about a different version of the spell or not, but you do not reroll your stats, you apply new adjustments to them. For instance, you take away the elf's +2 dex and -2 con, then apply the dwarf's +2 con. No 20 turning to an 8, unless your starting race was horribly imbalanced...
My understanding is that Alignment is a property of the soul. Alignment tends to determine where the soul ends up in the hereafter. On that basis, I'd say that any alignment change requires an authentic change of heart, or else magic capable of changing the alignment of a living target.
However, that's just what I think. Other GMs could have different explanations, and that's cool by me.
It is still the same mind and soul that made the decisions that were good or evil. Only the body has changed. If a good person was reincarnated they would continue to decide to do things that were good. Same for evil.
DMB, I'm not sure if you're talking about a different version of the spell or not, but you do not reroll your stats, you apply new adjustments to them. For instance, you take away the elf's +2 dex and -2 con, then apply the dwarf's +2 con. No 20 turning to an 8, unless your starting race was horribly imbalanced...
I believe the quote I included was from another poster referening "the old days" before Savage Species, etc. Back then, this spell worked a bit differently.
Any chance that smurf will be added to the reincarnate table or just DMs option?
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I agree with others, keep alignment and all other mental abilities. Remove the racial modifiers to STR, DEX amd CON and add the new ones as per the spell description.
I recently had my 9th level human male wizard die and reincarnated as a female elf. I was a bit miffed about the sex change at first (DM rolled 50-50) but with a bit of roleplay it worked out quite well.
The spell says "A reincarnated creature recalls the majority of its former life and form.". I opted to play this in a way that the new body felt as if it were born this way, it still retained the memories of the previous person, although I roleplayed a transitional period of a few days as the memories slowly took root. This alleviated any issues of my characters sexuality, since this body did not feel foreign to her.
Along with the Alignment issue comes learned racial abilities. In my case, an additional feat at level 1 and an elf gets familiarity with certain weapons. None of that effects your character when you reincarnate either, my wizard doesn't loose a feat and suddenly know how to wield a longbow. Also, he doesn't suddenly start speaking elvish. Any learned ability or behavioral trait stays the same when reincarnated.
In all, it was a total benefit to my character, he/she now gets to live much longer and got the benefits of starting life as a human. Reincarnate is a really fun spell, I would use it again.
EDIT: My attitude may have been different if the result were Goblin or Kobold ;) I was really rooting for bugbear though.
I've used reincarnation quite frequently in my games, almost always with custom tables. Specifically, the reincarnation table is customized to the local area, with a small (5%) margin of "the gods meddle. Say, like this for a reincarnation in a forest (I'm being very vague and not putting in percentiles because I'm feeling a bit lazy today, assume wider percentiles at the start, smaller at the end.)
Human
Halfling
Elf
Half-Elf
Gnome
Evil humanoid (probably hobgoblin or orc).
Minor fey creature (brownie, grig).
Minor plant creature (reflavored myconid, thorn, woodling template halfling)
Forest non-humanoid
Animal
More powerful fey.
More powerful plant creature.
---5% Meddlesome Gods Bracket----
Perhaps a race who's diety would like to see a presence there, like dwarf if there happens to be a valuable ore vein under those trees.
A very powerful creature that might have once lived there (green dragon, etc.)
DM choice if the DM has a brilliant idea that works well with the campaign.
Perhaps even Player choice if the player has a brilliant idea that works well with the campaign.
Overall, I run reincarnation as a sort of case by case event when it is cast. Usually with the previous body's remains being subsumed into the earth (moss growing over it, or for creepier fare, a swarm of vermin obscuring it until it's just gone). The new body arrives in a similar manner (a growing lump of moss that splits to reveal the new body, or one of the vermin growing larger and larger and reshaping into the new body).
The personality and soul are there, but memories of the previous life are fragmented and faded, and also often blurred by the racial memories implanted in the new body (to account for the loss of old racial abilities and gain of new ones. I know thats not how it normally works, but thats how I run it). Personality traits common to the new body's culture may crop up, due to racial memory (dwarven gruff, halfling bravery, lizardman pragmatism, etc.) Never enough to violate alignment, unless the player decides to go down that path themselves.
I usually require wisdom checks to remember "lesser" or "older" memories, usually just DC 5, but sometimes 10 or 15, even 20. Should a second reincarnation occur, the memories from two lives back become even more faded (+5 to the DC and such).