I'm trying to decide how to handle a situation. The spirit in question is a good character who wants to stop an evil ritual. He dies fighting the villains running the ritual.
He would want to be restored to life, if he knew he would be able to return to fight the villains.
But, the villains need him alive as a sacrifice for the ritual due to his ancestor's actions. So, he would not want to come back to be their prisoner and sacrifice.
Would he know anything about who is casting Raise Dead to decide if he is willing to return?
If you can please cite the source of your answer. I don't care if it is from pathfinder, D&D, 3rd party, whatever. Just looking for ideas.
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CRB p 208 the prospective revivee knows the name, alignment and patron deity of the cleric casting the spell to raise him and has to decide whether or not he'll come back on that basis.
That's a word for word grandfathering of the 3.5 rule... I haven't checked 3.0, and there was no such provision in AD&D v1.
I looked for the source and I couldn't find it, but they are right. You know the name, alignment and deity of the person who is resurrecting you.
In one of my games one of the BBEGs, a high level druid, managed to survive and now she is living among her enemies, using her alter self at will to pretend she is one of them. So she cannot use resurrections because her true identity could be revealed.
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You mean Reincarnation? a Druid does not have access to RD and Resurrection IIRC.
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Of course, clever villains could hire a neutral cleric. "Please help our good friend who died tragically!"
I meant resurrections in a generic way, not specifically Resurrection spell.
Of course she could hire a cleric if she wanted to. She is now manipulating some important people. But she's so angry that she cannot do it by herself so she makes some important people owe her life to her (if she could she's the kind of person who'd get someone killed only to cyclic reincarnate him so he's in debt to her).
Geas/Quest on a friendly cleric to ressurect the character for him. ;)
Would undetectable alignment on the cleric casting prevent this?
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Maybe, but it would be a matter of how the dead character would react to being raised by a person completely unknown to him. Having that unknown caster's alignment hidden from him might disincline the character from accepting being raised by him even if he would otherwise take a chance on being raised by a cleric that he knows nothing about.
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Nope. I remember James Jacobs answering that question a few time ago, IIRC.
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Would undetectable alignment on the cleric casting prevent this?
No, if the guy also knows his name and patron deity, it works on a level much above that spell's pay grade.
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Here's the source if a PRD link is needed. "A soul knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and may refuse to return on that basis."
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Dumb question -- if hypothetically evil characters can't restore someone to life for whatever reason, can they raise them as an intelligent undead and use magic to force them to do what they want?
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Dumb question -- if hypothetically evil characters can't restore someone to life for whatever reason, can they raise them as an intelligent undead and use magic to force them to do what they want?
This is entirely possible. But there are countermeasures.
This leads me to two questions:
1) Is there any way to alter what the soul "knows" upon resurrection/raise dead -- anyway to bluff the soul being raised.
2) If they refuse the first raise dead, can they accept others or is it a "one and done" -- and at that point, they are permanently dead.
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Nothing in the rules says that you cannot be attempted to resurrect more than once.
As I see it, the BBEG wants to raise you to interrogate you and use you against your party. You refuse.
Then another party member tries to resurrect you. It would be unfair that it wouldn't work because the BBEG has already tried.
About turning somebody into intelligent undead to convince him to allow a resurrection spell is something that was done in one of my most recent games. It should work, as long as the resurrection spell can bring former undead back to life.
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Once you're undead, you're beyond resurrection...that is, you have to be destroyed before a Resurrection spell can touch you, and then your soul can still resist the raise as presumably, destroying the undead form has washed it clean of the taint of evil
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Yes, but you can convince him to resurrect, strike a deal with him or something (even threaten him to harm his beloved ones), then kill him and resurrect him. That is possible.
What happened in my game:
A Fighter and a Dirge Bard were a former couple. They broke and got separated. Some time later he died in a fight and didn't want to be resurrected. She couldn't stand being without him, so she refused to let him dead and brought him back as a mummy, only to keep him that way until she convinced him to be resurrected. Then she killed him and had a high level druid to cyclic reincarnate him.
Would Use Magic Device on a scroll of Raise Dead enable the "caster" to use the skill to emulate a different alignment in order to also fool the revivee in the same way?
Would other methods of hiding/altering your perceived alignment, like Misdirection work?
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I would say no and no.
A) You're tricking the item but that's it, you're Alignment isn't actually changing, nor is it changing for any other effects, and the person not only knows that but also your name AND what Deity you worship.
B) Misdirection only works against Divination spells, which the Resurrection schools are not.
Other than that there's no rules about how the person knows these things, they just do, and there's nothing to override that except for GM narrative and a specific item/spell that says it does.
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Would undetectable alignment on the cleric casting prevent this?No, if the guy also knows his name and patron deity, it works on a level much above that spell's pay grade.
To echo this, if the spell gives you this amount of knowledge you would need a very, very powerful spell in order to obscure said knowledge, since to my recollection there is no other way to find out what Deity a person actually worships other than them telling you (truthfully) or seeing them use a specific Sacred Symbol to cast (and not using anything to obscure that).
There is a spell I believe that lets you detect fellow followers of your deity, but that's it.
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More the taint of undeath than evil, since, ya'know, Evil characters can be raised.
I believe stronger forms of Resurrection can bring you back if your body was sued to make a non-intelligent undead, however.
Resurrection and True Resurrection can raise to life somebody that has been turned into an undead, but only if the undead has been destroyed.
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I remember reading that an undead creature has a soul fragment even if it is not an intelligent undead.
I guess the soul fragment has to be released to allow the resurrection to be done.
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Even if you could make your alignment and deity undetectable, I think that would be a big red flag. "Wow, it must be my friends trying to bring me back! And they're doing it anonymously because they're so modest!"