Handling a character with a past life?

[ErisAcolyte-Chaos jester]

There is a certain inevitability to life fading into death. Maybe you pass into the after life, your soul going to a final resting place. but this is the pathfinder universe, so things will often get messed up. with the variety of Resurrection magics, re-animations or reincarnations, it can be rather hard to state that any adventurer dies in pathfinder Permanently, at least until they retire. This is where Samsarans come in. Samsarans are a race whose whole being and culture is the result of a past life, leaving them with memories(or shards of memory) of their past life.

This is great for story telling, since the player and GM might be able to exploit this element to create some great story telling moments. A Villain might have been an ally the the character in a past life. The Noble knight might have been your former rival or companion. These past life shards can be used to create a character of who the player might have been before.

This however does not get limited to Samsarans. Other races might reincarnate, being born in a different body, but still possessing the memories of their former existence. This creates some natural acclimatization problems, especially if the proportions and limbs differ extensively. Getting used to those extra arms, or tail, or altered height.

That's how I would handle it, but I wonder how you might handle it.

[LazarX]

ErisAcolyte-Chaos jester wrote:

There is a certain inevitability to life fading into death. Maybe you pass into the after life, your soul going to a final resting place. but this is the pathfinder universe, so things will often get messed up. with the variety of Resurrection magics, re-animations or reincarnations, it can be rather hard to state that any adventurer dies in pathfinder Permanently, at least until they retire. This is where Samsarans come in. Samsarans are a race whose whole being and culture is the result of a past life, leaving them with memories(or shards of memory) of their past life.

This is great for story telling, since the player and GM might be able to exploit this element to create some great story telling moments. A Villain might have been an ally the the character in a past life. The Noble knight might have been your former rival or companion. These past life shards can be used to create a character of who the player might have been before.

This however does not get limited to Samsarans. Other races might reincarnate, being born in a different body, but still possessing the memories of their former existence. This creates some natural acclimatization problems, especially if the proportions and limbs differ extensively. Getting used to those extra arms, or tail, or altered height.

That's how I would handle it, but I wonder how you might handle it.

The usual thing is that you don't have the full memories of your past life, mostly the occasional haunting dreams from them, such as in the movie "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud."

The point is reincarnation is something more than a body swap. There is a definite change with each incarnation and usually diminishing memories between them.

I don't quite understand your question, are you looking for mechanics, or a story issue, if it's the latter that's up to the player for the most part. He's certainly not going to have the power of his previous incarnations to call on.

[SirLeadhead]

I was actually wondering how Samsarians would work with their whole reincarnation thing, and by 'work' i mean how would they act as people on the individual level. The Advanced Race Guide kind of goes into it a little, but it still seems vague to me and I was wanting some help figuring out how to characterize a Samsarian character because one of my players just picked up a Samsarian wizard as a cohort.

I was just kind of imagining it as if the Samsarian just has their own memories and inspirations, a 'normal' life, if you will, but on occasion when something happens that is similar to a situation that one of their past-lives has gone through, they have a flash of vivid deja-vu that helps them deal with those scenarios. Am I off base, or is it just up to the GM to deal with how reincarnation memories go?

[LazarX]

SirLeadhead wrote:

I was actually wondering how Samsarians would work with their whole reincarnation thing, and by 'work' i mean how would they act as people on the individual level. The Advanced Race Guide kind of goes into it a little, but it still seems vague to me and I was wanting some help figuring out how to characterize a Samsarian character because one of my players just picked up a Samsarian wizard as a cohort.

I was just kind of imagining it as if the Samsarian just has their own memories and inspirations, a 'normal' life, if you will, but on occasion when something happens that is similar to a situation that one of their past-lives has gone through, they have a flash of vivid deja-vu that helps them deal with those scenarios. Am I off base, or is it just up to the GM to deal with how reincarnation memories go?

Most Samsarans like most other people aren't adventurers. so I imagine that most of their lives are fairly ordinary.

[Weirdo]

SirLeadhead, that sounds about right to me. I'd also expect them to have more intuitions based on past lives without the distinct sense of familiarity deja vu implies. For example just getting the sense that someone is untrustworthy (having been betrayed by them in a past life) or somehow knowing a particular word in a language they don't speak. You could use this to explain lucky rolls on skill checks - or represent ranks in certain skills as reflecting a deeper connection to past lives rather than actual formal training in those skills. For example if out of nowhere the wizard picks up ranks in Survival, they may have tapped into memories of being a druid.

One of the players in my current campaign has a past life he's not currently aware of. Rather than having any sort of memories from his past life he's actually got vague memories of passing through a sort of purgatory (which he does not recognize as such). He's also been told by the oracular high priestess of the goddess of death that he "has no place in the land of the dead." Figuring out what that's all about is a side plot for him.

Related: study of children IRL who claim to remember past lives.

ErisAcolyte-Chaos jester wrote:

Other races might reincarnate, being born in a different body, but still possessing the memories of their former existence. This creates some natural acclimatization problems, especially if the proportions and limbs differ extensively. Getting used to those extra arms, or tail, or altered height.

This only really makes sense if you're talking about the Reincarnate spell - otherwise you go through this normally as a baby. Though I suppose you could have some subconscious signs of your old form's abilities, like a character who was a dwarf in a past life being really attached to his beard or being afraid of the dark because he can't see in it (anymore) and not quite understanding how other humans don't find that a bigger deal.