Any rules/suggestion/advice/guidance on what to reincarnate as after rolling 100 on the reincarnation table? It does say DM's choice, but some inspiration/guidelines would most certainly be useful.
suggestion, roll a 20, multiply it by 10, substract a d6 and divide by 2, round up, and pick that monster from the bestiary :)
be creative, use a race on the list and add fire
or use races of bestiary 2 like damphir, and add glittering under sunlight effect.
Perhaps convert the Leprechaun to a usable race.
Perhaps ask the player for 5 races he wants (even if they are not meant for players) and add 1 race you want, and let him roll a d6. Of course if a race is too powerful, downgrade it a bit.
One thing I do with reincarnate is create tables based off of creature type. For example - once the players killed a fiendish wasp. For whatever reason, they decided to reincarnate it. I looked at the back of the bestiary, and looked at the outsider entries. I rolled first for which outsider entry to roll (including an extra "entry" of my own for rolling up a different creature with a template), then rolled a dice with a number close or comparable to the number of outsiders in that entry. For example, let's just say there's nineteen outsider entries (I'm totally making that up) - this would be outsider (water), outsider (evil) or outsider (template) as examples, the last being the category I added to make it an even twenty. I roll a d20, and it turns out I get outsider (good). I roll on that, and get a ghaelee. Instant new ghaelee (dedicated to Calistria as a bonus) - the outsider now comes back with a mind and as a chaotic good creature allied with the party.
While that's different from your situation, the principle remains the same. Look at the various humanoid entries (I'm presuming you're reincarnating a humanoid here). Look at the ones in the bestiary (and/or bestiary 2) - count that number. Roll a roughly equivalent dice. If there is none (for example, if there's, let's just make up the number 33), use the d% and use iterative examples of another dice (e.x. roll d%, and divide by 3, roll again if 100%). One thing I did in Forgotten Realms is roll for the sub-race of a particular reincarnation to. For example, if I got "elf", I'd roll to see if it's wild, wood, moon, sun, drow, or other - "other" meant I looked at the Monster Manual and rolled on those subraces too!
Now all that is for randomization. If you prefer less random things, here's another trick I do: reincarnate as something appropriate to the character's theme - either what they want to be more like or what you want them to be more like for story reasons.
Two totally fictional examples:
1) A sorcerer dies and is reincarnated. Fey bloodline? Maybe they're reincarnated as a fey creature (like a Korred, Nixie, Grig, or even Satyr). Undead bloodline? Perhaps a dhampir! Aberration bloodline? Well, there's a lot, but perhaps even something like a morlock would be appropriate! Or if the beast-totem barbarian dies, perhaps he reincarnates... as himself! How lucky! ... at least until the full moon reveals just how much his beast totem has gotten into him... And that's just the way he likes it! Just be aware when you use this method you're likely to get unpredictable side effects and potentially game-changing powers. Spell-like abilities might should be folded into spell-lists (giving a few extra spells known, for example) rather than being just extra bonus-things, or alternate forms might be part of a character's special combat modes (lycanthropic forms for the barbarian's rage, in the example above).
2) You've strongly (secretly or not) tied a particular NPC's back-story (by blood, relationship, or distant history) to Generic Villain X or Kindly-but-Hated Monster Y or Mysterious-and/or-Rare Species Z. When they're reincarnated, they become more like that race. Gnomes tied to darkness might become svirfneblins or dark ones, for example, while elves might become drow (and that's a big thing). Perhaps the sorcerer (above) had the celestial bloodline... well now he's an aasimar! Perhaps, even though it costs some negative levels, the reincarnation could be even a kind of reward - in exchange for noble self-sacrifice, they are permitted to take steps toward ever-greater realization of themselves.
Anyway, those are a few ideas. If we had more backstory/concept/etc of who/where/what was being reincarnated we might be able to give better feedback, but those are all tricks I've used, depending on the game.
+1 You have some great ideas there. I might have to implement those into my campaign sometime.
I'm glad you like them, and please feel free! As you can tell, I've had fun with Reincarnate in the past.
Also, a few notes.
I didn't clarify, but in case it wasn't obvious, looking at the FR example I gave above, I listed five different types of elves - five is pretty close to d6, so I used that, and just made the "6" my "other" entry.
For the d% rolls in the example above, I should have noted that while you divide by three, you also round up, so you're never less than one - that never actually causes a problem in numerical distribution. As it's a completely made-up number anyway, I suppose it doesn't matter too much, but, hey, it could be confusing.
In the second example, I specified NPC, but it could be done with a PC as well, should they player be okay with that.
One other thought I didn't mention above: when reincarnating creatures with very large numbers of entries (animals, for example) another possibility is to roll the % dice twice and simply loop around. It messes with the distribution a bit, but it gets the job done and still allows for every creature on the list to be randomized.
Finally, one thing I did in old 3.0 days was create tables based off of similar themed critters. For example horses could also be reincarnated as: centaurs, asperi, pegusi, unicorns, etc - acting like a "free" awaken spell, to an extent. Dogs might include blink dogs, yeth hounds, moon dogs, hell hounds, shadow mastiffs, or the like. Centaurs, might roll to see which one they come out as: horse or humanoid, then roll on that entry. Scaled humanoids (kobolds and yuan-ti for example) might go together with scaled creatures (and roll to see if they're on the scaled ones or the humanoid lists when reincarnated). I've not updated those tables and I've put them away a long time ago... I run for the more simple methods listed in the above post, even if it leaves a few thematically-inappropriate reincarnations (like fiendish wasp to ghaelee)... but that's okay, because the story potential for such dramatic changes is great!
Great advice, especially in Tacticslion's posts!
I have had the 100 reincarnate roll come up once before and had reincarnated the character as a dragon. This was back in 3.5E days and at the time, I used racial levels to represent that to ensure that the character remained approximately balanced with his peers. As it happens the character was a sorcerer and the player loved it.
In any case, I am not shy about giving players special advantages and bonuses. If it overpowers one character, it just means that I will give some unique rewards to the others a bit later too... :)
Great advice, especially in Tacticslion's posts!
I have had the 100 reincarnate roll come up once before and had reincarnated the character as a dragon. This was back in 3.5E days and at the time, I used racial levels to represent that to ensure that the character remained approximately balanced with his peers. As it happens the character was a sorcerer and the player loved it.
In any case, I am not shy about giving players special advantages and bonuses. If it overpowers one character, it just means that I will give some unique rewards to the others a bit later too... :)
Thank you! Also, more importantly, we're glad we were able to help!
EWHM also had a nifty suggestion. :)
Yes, all the suggestions were good.
Normally, I would either go with what the table has indicated after the roll or what I deemed thematically appropriate for the character, but having rolled exactly 100, it seems like it should be something special.