| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So I have been working on a samsaran character to run through Rise of the Runelords, and have come to a stumbling block in developing his character history.
The stumbling block comes in the very vague wording of the samsaran birth/death cycle. Here is the line of text regarding samsaran life-cycle from the d20 pathfinder SRD:
"Whenever a samsaran dies, it reincarnates anew as a young samsaran to live a new life."
Does this mean that a samsaran is born naturally to parents? It can't be samsaran parents since samsaran give birth to humans. Do humans sometimes give birth to blue babies?
Alternately, does this function like the spell reincarnate? If so, at what age does the samsaran return at? "Young" implies the age category prior to adult. Is it always the same? Are samsarans never infants? Do they reincarnate on the spot where they die? If so how long does this reincarnation take?
I'm hoping that the designer who created the samsaran race can help shed some light on this officially. I absolutely love the race and cannot wait to play one in Rise of the Runelords, but without a suitable working knowledge of how their reincarnation works it leaves tricky spots to gloss over in his background.
While I realize my GM and I can come up with whatever answer we please for this, I would prefer to understand the race as intended as well. Also, if I'm missing anything in the text as written hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!
|
I was hoping there was quite abit of clarification on the Samsaran race in the Advanced Race Guide myself. It seems there's just not quite enough information out for them. I'd love if Paizo did some kind of ecology on them going further into detail about them, especially on their death and reincarnation cycle, as well as how their former lives memories function.
I like the ambiguity with the memories, since it allows each samsaran to remember things a little differently with more/less clarity. The background I've worked out for Rise of the Runelords has this samsaran living in ancient Thassilon, and he will have dreams/flashbacks as the story progresses, allowing my GM to utilize these as a way to show vignettes to establish Thassilon and the Runelords more intimately.
The only questions now lie in that vague reincarnation wording. I, for one, would love to see an ecology article for them. I wish Paizo would occasionally do mini-articles of official nature on their blog. Ecology of the samsaran, ecology of the bandersnatch, or what have you.
It would be great if they allowed for community submissions for that too (that were vetted for content, of course). That would be a great way to shore up small areas of interest like this.
Paizo seems to have swung too far in the "give the players freedom"-direction, in lieu of "give the players fluff to work with".
But considering fluff sells books and freedom doesn't, that'll change eventually.
That is a fantastic link and offers up some great insights into my own dilemmas thanks to JJ's input. Thanks so much for posting that!
I also agree with VRMH on the notion of 'not enough fluff,' it's especially notable in this instance.