Pharasma Preventing Raise Dead / Reincarnation

[Tom Marlow]

Is there a non evil way of preventing a soul from being Raised, reincarnated, resurrected?

I am player that is playing a devout cleric of Pharasma. Who believes that, unless with a divine pardon, anyone that dies should stay dead as it is the natural order of things.

So wishing to role-play my character better, I am asking this question. As of now I can only find evil ways of doing this, any advice or things that I am overlooking?

[Falcar]

One thing that may not really for your idea but might would be destroy the body, that way it required ressurection or better, a cleric of 14+ level casting a spell would count as that god giving permission. You don't accidentlh become your dieties most powerful mortal. So any high level ressurection could be qualified as a pardon, this gets tricky with reincarnate cast by a witch though. Interested in this thread no the less though.

[tkul]

Don't forget your character is also asking his/her deity for favors when they prepare spells. You can always say you asked for raise dead and your deity refused to grant it unless there's a good reason why you should be able to raise them. Divine deity fueled casters have a nice out like that.

[Nawtyit]

Pharasma is against animating undead, not restoring the dead back to normal life. She grants her clerics resurrection spells just like the other gods. As long as their souls don't make it through the Boneyard, they are fair game.

[LazarX]

Pharasma has nothing against raise dead or resurrection spells.

They simply become impossible once a soul has been judged.

[Keep Calm and Carrion]

As a PC cleric, you’ll be painting your party into a corner if you take that hard line. Eventually PCs will die, and your fellow players will quite reasonably expect you to be there with Breath of Life and Raise Dead to get them back in the game.

While Pharasma and her church are utterly opposed to the undead, there’s room in their theology to allow for resurrection and the like. She’s the god of fate, really: death is just one aspect of that. Clearly anyone who can be brought back to life has not yet reached their final fate and judgement before her. People who have met their final fate--people who die of old age, for example--ain't coming back.

But if you’re looking for a low-cost way to prevent most ways of coming back to life, cremation followed by scattering the ashes at sea is pretty final.

[Karui Kage]

We have this shown in our Carrion Crown game. The Inquisitor of Pharasma has now died three times, and brought back by Reincarnation each time in a new body. We've themed it as Pharasma (via her servants) are granting him a new form in order to better help his fight against the Whispering Way (arguably a greater evil). He was a bit uncomfortable with it at first, but has grown to appreciate his deity's grace in sending him back into the fight.

[Mikaze]

Keep Calm and Carrion wrote:

As a PC cleric, you’ll be painting your party into a corner if you take that hard line. Eventually PCs will die, and your fellow players will quite reasonably expect you to be there with Breath of Life and Raise Dead to get them back in the game.

While Pharasma and her church are utterly opposed to the undead, there’s room in their theology to allow for resurrection and the like. She’s the god of fate, really: death is just one aspect of that. Clearly anyone who can be brought back to life has not yet reached their final fate and judgement before her. People who have met their final fate--people who die of old age, for example--ain't coming back.

But if you’re looking for a low-cost way to prevent most ways of coming back to life, cremation followed by scattering the ashes at sea is pretty final.

Seconded, both on the concerns and the methods. On the former, it's definitely something you'd want to clear with the other players first, because they might frown upon being targeted by such beliefs.

There's also a spell, the name of which escapes me at the moment, which is non-evil and makes it difficult for targets to be raised. Forced rest or something similar?

On a related note and as you've probably noted given your dismissing of them, spells like malediction and hellfire ray are best avoided if you're a Pharasma worshipper. Or anyone else really, unless you really want to go to Hell. And using those spells is pretty much buying a one-way ticket downwards. Pharasma comes down on that even harder than raising undead it seems.

[Tom Marlow]

Thanks for all your advice. I think I will go with burning the bodies as I do rights over them. My cleric is very “conservative” about his beliefs and the people I’m playing with don’t mind. They like making new builds and trying them out. It is not uncommon for a player to "accidently" die, so his long lost cousin/lover/friend to appear and "out of respect" finish there last quest.

[Pan]

"accidently" :)

[Velcro Zipper]

It might screw up your concept but, as Pharasma herself is not opposed to raising the dead, you might wanna look at the Separatist archetype. Your cleric's opinion toward raising the dead is out of step with the vast majority of Pharasman clergy so being a separatist could be a nice way to highlight that.

[The Shaman]

In general, Pharasma effectively bars resurrection once a soul has been judged, so until then it is fair game. Of course, if a certain subsect decides to go out of its way, it probably won't get them in trouble with the Boss.

If your party agrees to it, though, ok.

[PathlessBeth]

When I have an in-game need to make sure a character stays dead, and do it quickly, my preferred method is a bag of holding/handy haversack. Put the body in, and destroy the bag. They are cheap (at least by the point in the game where Raise Dead is common), so the cost isn't an issue. Just don't put anything valuable in the bag.
Disintegrate+Gust of Wind also works, but if you aren't a wizard then scrolls of disintegrate are more expensive than bags of holding.

Once 9th level magic shows up, though, most methods of permanent incapacitation go out the window.

rambling about 9th level magic:

The spells that explicitly prevent someone from being brought back can all be countered by other 9th level spells. The best way to do it is probably with Greater Create Demiplane: capture and incapacitate the npc you want to get rid of, and imprison them in your demiplane for a few hundred years, which are just a day on the material plane. Bam, the npc dies of old age. Doesn't work against anything that doesn't age, and requires a nontrivial amount of work for each creature you want to permanently kill. All of that falls apart if you want to permanently kill a large number of people--it's a way to specifically get rid of one, extremely troubling enemy.

Really, once 9th level magic shows up, you are going to have a lot of trouble keeping anything permanently dead. But if your campaign never goes above 16th level, you should be able to manage.

[Uqbarian]

Mikaze wrote:

There's also a spell, the name of which escapes me at the moment, which is non-evil and makes it difficult for targets to be raised. Forced rest or something similar?

There's Rest Eternal, a 4th-level cleric/oracle spell (5th level for druids and witches). It's a necromancy curse but it doesn't have the evil descriptor. It can be beaten by a caster level check or remove curse/break enchantment.

[Tom Marlow]

Uqbarian wrote:

Mikaze wrote:

There's also a spell, the name of which escapes me at the moment, which is non-evil and makes it difficult for targets to be raised. Forced rest or something similar?

There's Rest Eternal, a 4th-level cleric/oracle spell (5th level for druids and witches). It's a necromancy curse but it doesn't have the evil descriptor. It can be beaten by a caster level check or remove curse/break enchantment.

Sweet, Thanks