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In a custom setting where there's large expanses of dangerous wilds between cities, many people opt to preserve their final wishes to be fulfilled after their demise. As such many wear enchanted coins that contain messages regarding if they die on that particular trip, what final tasks they request of their discoverers.
Some may request that the finder kills whatever killed the coin's owner, others may request that something inevitably stolen off of the body be delivered to the intended recipient. Whatever the request, the payment amount is stated in the message (delivered by visual and auditory illusion) and is legally guaranteed to be paid by the estate or living spouse of the deceased.
So a person mortally wounded might amend the end of the message to, "I'm killed by goblins, the (name) tribe. Deliver their chieftain's head to my brother in (town name here) to be paid (amount of gold). It might instead or additionally offer another amount of money in exchange for returning something from the goblins' possession, because the dead, former owner doesn't want it to be in goblin possession.
I don't think this would cause any issues in the players' hands and allows me to have quests technically coming from dead characters without having to make them undead.
Kinda neat. I might use this, with your permission.
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Kinda neat. I might use this, with your permission.
Help yourself! It's nice to know when my ideas are good enough to be worth taking.
As stated, the coin will just repeat the message till it's conditions are fulfilled. A prepetitioner could change the message or a medium could use it to link to the dead person.
Reminds me of a Pathfinder Coin. Probably a lot more expensive then you were intending, and while reusable it only repeats its message once.
That's definitely similar, but it doesn't fill the role of a will or contract, which would require the message to be preserved until it could be legally verified.
Suppose in a custom setting these will-and-testament coins are made en-masse, by a means that drastically reduces the price, so while other magic items are costly, these specifically have no market value beyond what message they contain. I think this opens a lot of room for the story, such as having partial messages recorded by NPCs after being mortally wounded by the beast or person the party will need to fight, and the message may contain a clue of how to win, or even an additional reward for avenging the fallen to be paid by an estate, with the coin's recorded message serving as the contract.
What keeps creatures from just taking these off of people's corpses?
I assume you mean someone just killing people to take the coins to claim any rewards mentioned in the coins? My thought is that to collect a reward, the coin must be presented to a magistrate, who determines the validity of the claim by asking questions while the claimant is in a Zone of Truth. If the acquisition of the coin is deemed to be the result of murder, then the claimant is charged. If the claim is upheld then the deceased's estate is contacted for payment.
What keeps creatures from just taking these off of people's corpses?I assume you mean someone just killing people to take the coins to claim any rewards mentioned in the coins?
Not sure if it's what Coidzor meant, of if it's just a similar question, but:
If these coins are so common, what prevents goblins from taking them and preventing anyone from knowing who killed the deceased and to know that coming after them would get you a reward?Also, when do these "last wills" get recorded? It it a posthume effect (like a very specific Speak with Dead), or do they have to pause their fight for survival to record their will in case they die?
What keeps creatures from just taking these off of people's corpses?I assume you mean someone just killing people to take the coins to claim any rewards mentioned in the coins?Not sure if it's what Coidzor meant, of if it's just a similar question, but:
If these coins are so common, what prevents goblins from taking them and preventing anyone from knowing who killed the deceased and to know that coming after them would get you a reward?Also, when do these "last wills" get recorded? It it a posthume effect (like a very specific Speak with Dead), or do they have to pause their fight for survival to record their will in case they die?
Valid points.
One idea I had was that the coin held one message per side, the first being set up beforehand, such as "If I should perrish, this reward goes to executing my killer and delivering my body home (+ details)", and the second being like an automatic recorder of the person's final dying thoughts, which if murdered would likely include the face of the murderer.It could be that the coins are hidden away in various locations such as shoes and hidden pockets so a looter with limited time to search the body and escape is less likely to find them. In the case of Goblins, it's possible that they didn't put two and two together regarding adventurers trying to hunt them being a result of information on the coins.
Alternatively, if goblins collect the coins as trophies, then an adventurer who kills them may be able to collect multiple rewards for killing the same group of goblins.
It could be that the coins are hidden away in various locations such as shoes and hidden pockets so a looter with limited time to search the body and escape is less likely to find them.
That works in cases where the murder is pressed for time, but in a setting where you can be sure that such a coin records the murder, I'd assume people would make time for it, given the relative importance.
At least very important people would probably commission "upgraded" versions of these coins that can teleport home/to a relevant temple/somewhere else appropriate when their user died, to make sure that 1) they don't get found and destroyed (which is the prudent approach for a murderer), and 2) the revenge quest can start early and with a public bounty for the murderer's head, instead of having to wait until the corpse is found and only being done by whoever found the coin.
Whoever uses such a coin - at least for "please avenge me" messages - otherwise needs to strike a balance: Too poorly hidden, and the coin might end up stolen.
Too well hidden, and it might not be found and assumed stolen.
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It could be that the coins are hidden away in various locations such as shoes and hidden pockets so a looter with limited time to search the body and escape is less likely to find them.That works in cases where the murder is pressed for time, but in a setting where you can be sure that such a coin records the murder, I'd assume people would make time for it, given the relative importance.
At least very important people would probably commission "upgraded" versions of these coins that can teleport home/to a relevant temple/somewhere else appropriate when their user died, to make sure that 1) they don't get found and destroyed (which is the prudent approach for a murderer), and 2) the revenge quest can start early and with a public bounty for the murderer's head, instead of having to wait until the corpse is found and only being done by whoever found the coin.
Whoever uses such a coin - at least for "please avenge me" messages - otherwise needs to strike a balance: Too poorly hidden, and the coin might end up stolen.
Too well hidden, and it might not be found and assumed stolen.
The coin teleporting home at death would work quite well. It prevents the coin from being stolen, and the killer is more likely to be known for his crime when he next enters the town. The party would just be getting the quests from the next-of-kin rather than off of the dead body.
I haven't given these ideas a whole lot of thought, as they just came to me as I read these comments, but these are what I've got:
The coins are unable to be moved for limited time after the person dies/records their final message? If it were for the length of an hour or so, I think most raiders/goblins/whatnot wouldn't wait around for that long.
Or
The coins cannot be moved until a creature agrees to either take up the request personally or bring it to someone (or something, like a guild, the constabulary, local military, the person's estate) which can then fulfill the request? Agreeing to this would put the person under a type of non-harmful geas or just a magical contract of some sort, bolstered by truth magic so only those who are honestly willing to fulfill the request (or to take it to those who can) can take the coin.
The coin will probably just say that the reward is for returning the whole body so they can be raised or properly buried. It might look like a steel slug till someone identifies it as a magic item.