Hello,
We had an incident in our current campaign in which an important NSC child died in a very traumatic way. Tried to raise it from the dead, but unsurprisingly it didnt want to come back.
Now there is out-of-game talk of a potential plan to bring it back anyway. I want to check the rules side of this befor we go on to discuss the (horrid) moral implications of this in-game. If it is even possible, or just a giant blinking invitation to start a Came-back-Wrong-Trope without a chance of actual success.
The potential plan theorised about is to use Create Undead to turn the dead child into an intelligent undead, like a Juju-Zombie for example, so that the child comes back with its own personality. Then explain to it the situation that led to its violent, traumatic demise and trying to persuade the undead child to now accept a proper Revivication. Perhaps combined with some psychological trauma help.
What are the direct rules that work with this plan. is it possible?
Problems i see at the moment:
1. Child will be twisted to Evil, as per the alignemnt change that almost all intelligent undead tempaltes use. Does this chage persist even if later revived?
2. Child might fall completly to utter madness, being an undead monster now. The Horro of it all just blows its small mind, effectively destroying its personality.
3. Cant persuade or try to "heal" via psychology the trauma it experienced before its death, as undead are immune to mind-effecting stuff.
4. Would this plan work it the target wasnt a child, but a grown-up?
5. Even if the plan worked exactly as planned, how high would you guess the chances that the child will be out for bitter revenge for this whole traumatic experience once it can fully grasp what happened? Being plugged out of a paradise afterlive and having necromantic child experiments performed on it, so as to bring it back against its explicit wishes?
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You want RAW for this?
Raise Dead will never work after the guy was made into any kind of undead, but Resurrection will, so keep that in mind.
That's it, that's all the applicable RAW I have.
The rest is story-telling.
So, I answer your question with a few of my own: What will work best for your story? You said this NPC child is "important", so what happens to your story if the kid stays dead? How much does the dead kid ruin your story?
If the answer is that the dead brat is a story-breaker, then it seems like the best GM decision here is to let their plan work. Animate the brainiac undead, convince the kid, then Resurrect him.
However, a different possibility exists. Use your magical GM powers to invent an alternative solution. Do something trite like have the kid be a twin, and the PCs can use his (long-lost) twin as a subsititute for the plot - this could involve a whole side quest since not even the dead kid knew he was a twin. Or be less trite and come up with some other option. "As you realize your plan has failed and you'll never be able to use this important rugrat, an old crone approaches you and says 'There might be another way, but it's perilous beyond imagination...'". Whatever strikes your fancy.
Once you have that idea in mind, then you can do what you want with Zombie Jr. Have him come back as a Revenant bent on revenge for whoever killed him AND however turned him into undead... I like the insanity angle too, and good luck curing insanity on an undead creature immune to mind-affecting magic. The opportunities for a cautionary tale abound. For added plot ideas, go read Pet Sematary by Stephen King.
It is unclear if an intelligent undead, even one with the memories and personality of the original creature actually has the original creatures soul, with the exception of ghosts which are the original creatures soul.
If we assume though that a undead creatures soul is the original soul, then all of your problems are indeed legitimate possibilities. Ripping a child from the afterlife and turning them into an undead abomination is about as evil as it gets, and I can't imagine that sort of evil being done to someone without all sorts of trauma.
I will add one additional possible complication though. Even if everything goes right, and you convince the undead abomination to accept a resurrection after you kill it, it still might refuse the resurrection after it has died since the circumstances it is experiencing have changed and it is no longer under the influence of its undead body.
Can't the child come back spontaneously as a Samsaran?
Scroll of Plane Shift is probably your best bet. Go to boneyard, find where the kid's soul is, convince him to come back. Remember to buy two scrolls though...
What do they need the kid back for
To lower the political ramifications of the incident. "Look, it is back! It wasnt soo bad then."
Kid isnt plot-important, but politically.
Is there any text as to what happens to the soul of an now-undead?
With Ghosts that are souls still clinging onto the prime. And Liches hide their souls in their Phylactery when they get (temporarily) destroyed.
But what about other kinds of Undead? Those that are templates are close to the previously living person. Those that are just created from killed people are most probablyjust animated flesh-bones without a soul, as they are mostly mindless. Zombies are mindless --> no soul at home. And Ghouls are just created from a dead cannibal, but have no direct connection to the person that their body once was. --> probably no soul.
But higher undead like Vampires? Fully intelligent with full memories of their old live--> With Soul, but turned into evil?
If the plot isn't an issue, then I would advise them that their plan does involve an evil act (casting the spell) to perform it if they were going to anyway; it'd be doubly evil to do such a thing to a child as well, even if their intentions are pure. I'd prefer to put it in the shoes of a Paladin, a class that is (supposed to be) a paragon of that which is honorable and respectable. If there was a Paladin in the group, I'm certain that he would either A. try to find a better solution to this predicament or B. pray for the child's soul in the afterlife, and possibly atoning for the factor that he couldn't save him.
I can guarantee you a Paladin that saw or partook in the act of turning the child's corpse into an Undead creature, just to forcibly wish it back to life (a life that it probably doesn't want to come back to) would not stand for it and act against such activity, and if he didn't (without being Lawful Stupid, of course), would be grounds for falling.
(FYI, I'm not trying to make this into a Paladin thread, I'm just using Paladins as an example for implications on the act of doing what they're doing.)
As brutal as this sounds, some things that are dead should just stay dead. (It's cruel, but if immortality existed in this universe, life as we know it wouldn't properly function, since to feed something that lasts an eternity, you need sustenance that will last an eternity.) If the PCs are supposed to be good guys, this is something that I would advise against them doing, since this would at least make them Neutral, or if they were Neutral, they would become an Evil alignment.
As brutal as this sounds, some things that are dead should just stay dead.
I have to agree with this. Forcing someone who doesn't want to come back to life for one's own gain is a pretty awful thing to do, and turning them into a undead is probably worse. That said, I'm of the kind that prefers my players to learn such things the hard way. "That time we tried to do something good, and it turned out really, really awful" is a lot more memorable than "That time the GM told us we couldn't."
For one thing, an evil undead would definitely have a different personality than it did in life, especially if it was a different alignment in life.
I might have the undead child decide that it doesn't want to be killed again (the only way to restore an undead to life) and attempt to escape and (being evil) cause a bit of mayhem that the PCs now have to deal with.
If the PCs were to use Wish or something similar to bring back the child against its will, I'd at least have the child traumatized by the experience and later harbor a resentment towards the PCs.
Another issue to consider is whether the dead child has some reason to distrust the caster of the spell to raise him or his patron deity. If that could be the case, the solution might be to find a caster that the child would be willing to come back for.
1) Ask your GM.
2) Ask your GM.
3) Ask your GM.
4) Ask your GM.
5) Guess what this one is?
As Blake says, RAW does not even mildly cover this situation. It's a roleplay question.
While the "Speak with Dead" spell does not allow you to directly talk to the deceased child, it will allow you to question his memories and perhaps give you insight on why he does not want to be raised.
Man, just go for it. The worst case scenario is that it works perfectly.
Every other possible outcome is roleplay awesomeness.
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Hello,
We had an incident in our current campaign in which an important NSC child died in a very traumatic way. Tried to raise it from the dead, but unsurprisingly it didnt want to come back.
Now there is out-of-game talk of a potential plan to bring it back anyway. I want to check the rules side of this befor we go on to discuss the (horrid) moral implications of this in-game. If it is even possible, or just a giant blinking invitation to start a Came-back-Wrong-Trope without a chance of actual success.
The potential plan theorised about is to use Create Undead to turn the dead child into an intelligent undead, like a Juju-Zombie for example, so that the child comes back with its own personality. Then explain to it the situation that led to its violent, traumatic demise and trying to persuade the undead child to now accept a proper Revivication. Perhaps combined with some psychological trauma help.
What are the direct rules that work with this plan. is it possible?
Problems i see at the moment:
1. Child will be twisted to Evil, as per the alignemnt change that almost all intelligent undead tempaltes use. Does this chage persist even if later revived?2. Child might fall completly to utter madness, being an undead monster now. The Horro of it all just blows its small mind, effectively destroying its personality.
3. Cant persuade or try to "heal" via psychology the trauma it experienced before its death, as undead are immune to mind-effecting stuff.
4. Would this plan work it the target wasnt a child, but a grown-up?
5. Even if the plan worked exactly as planned, how high would you guess the chances that the child will be out for bitter revenge for this whole traumatic experience once it can fully grasp what happened? Being plugged out of a paradise afterlive and having necromantic child experiments performed on it, so as to bring it back against its explicit wishes?
If I can suggest what seem a nicer option:
- find the plane to which the child was sent or if he is still in Pharasma queue;- plane shift to the appropriate location;
- find the child and try to help him accept what happened and return to earthly life.