Guided reincarnation sounds like a 6th level spell with an expensive material component (or a straight up wish spell), so I'd price mind transfer tech and creating a new body as just a bit more expensive than that.
Transferring into an NPC race would be limited for game balance purposes. If it was something my players were looking to do, I'd let it happen as a capstone just before/after the campaign ends.
Once per day, you can cast reincarnate as a spell-like ability by spending all your remaining Resolve Points (minimum one-quarter your total Resolve Points). Instead of rolling to determine what type of creature the target returns as, the target returns as the race, gender, sex, and physical appearance of their choice. Rather than be a conscious choice of the target, this decision tends to reflect the innermost dreams and desires of the target’s soul, and so the reincarnation can be either identical to their previous
form or a drastic departure, depending upon the individual.
Unlike the spell reincarnate, this ability does not require a monument as part of the casting. Instead, both you and your target gain 2 permanent negative levels (as described by the spell). The target returns to life as an infant of their race, growing from infancy to young adulthood over the course of 1 hour. The target has memories of their original life, but also
of a new life that could have existed if they had lived in their new form. In addition to having a new race, the character can be rewritten as if they had used a mnemonic editor.
As long as you have at least 1 Resolve Point remaining, you can spend all your remaining Resolve Points as a full action to surround yourself with an organic cocoon. While enclosed in the cocoon, you are considered helpless. Eight hours later, you emerge having changed your type to animal, humanoid (of any subtype), or your original type, gaining superficial physical characteristics as appropriate. This change does not alter your ability scores, Hit Points, Stamina Points, saving throws, skill points, class skills, or proficiencies. Each time you make this transformation, you are cleansed of all poisons and diseases, are restored to full Hit Points and Stamina Points, and heal
all ability damage. You must select a type other than your current type every time you make the transformation. You can use this ability once per day. Once you use this ability, you can’t regain Resolve Points until you rest for 8 hours, even if you have another means to do so.
Given that souls exist in Starfinder I'm comfortable limiting the combination of soul and mind being rewritten into a permanent new form to high level mystic powers.
The concept of a universe where people didn't die from old age either didn't occur to the writers or would change the system enough to take the focus off of adventure!
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The maximum age listed includes an element of randomness to reflect the capriciousness of death, and it is the assumption for the race’s longevity without magical or technological intervention — with the right life-extension technology, individuals of all races can become nearly immortal.
From Core, talking about vital statistics and 'maximum' age specifically. Existing content may or may not make much use of that last line, but there's more than enough openness that a GM could say extreme life extension is commonplace. If there aren't enough people with extremely extended lives around to make that feel comfortable, just remember that the Starfinder setting has a nasty little habit of routinely producing potential catastrophes that could have massive body counts, as evidenced by basically all of the APs.
I suppose we should assume that life extension technology is expensive enough to be out of reach of the vast majority of the population (or at the very least becomes exponentially more expensive each time someone undergoes it).
Even so, we should have some rich corporate bosses who have lived several times the maximum age for their species -- and I do not recall any such individuals being mentioned.
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I mean, Zo! is right there. An entire planet has mastered eternal life.
Not that they are necessarily happy about it.
But undead have "lifespan: indefinite" without additional technology -- and of course they are not technically alive.
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Ok, going out on a limb here and risking the dreaded modwrath, I think that the setting might make immortality less vital to people.
See, in the real world people do not know as a matter of fact that a or any god or gods exist no matter how loudly they proclaim their faith, how many times a day they pray or how often they use their belief in their god as an excuse to force their views on others by any and all possible means.
We do not know if there are any gods, or if there really are souls or if there is any sort of actual afterlife, hereafter, etc. Anyone who claims to know for certain is probably a victim of childhood indoctrination or simply refuses to consider things that cast doubt on his views.
I mean death may be THE END for us, no afterlife, nothing.
Or it may not be.Even as a scientist I know that quantum theory and some proven and verified experiments prove there is something very special about consciousness and awareness at the fundamental level of reality. Much of what we consider to be reality is actually dependent on an observer, i.e. a sentient, aware, conscious observer or at least the possibility of one. So consciousness, awareness, etc, seem to be part of the basic physical laws of the universe that have been scientifically discovered and verified. Does that make consciousness part of the universe at a fundamental level and therefore possibly something that goes beyond the physical body? Maybe. Or maybe not.
Now in the starfinder universe gods, souls and afterlives are a certainty, a matter of solid fact, proven beyond all doubt.
So, in SF, you know that death is not just a big black final end with nothing beyond it. That's a fact in the starfinder universe. You have a soul and it does go on after your body stops holding onto it.
So, in such a universe maybe the drive for physical immortality isn't s urgent as it is in our world.
If a lot of people today knew there were afterlives, that death of the boy was not THE END ,that there were different afterlives for different people, I wonder how many people wouldn't eventually have enough of this life and decide to go on ahead and see what the next level had to offer.
So maybe physical immortality might be possible thru technology or magic but maybe not in as much demand as you might imagine it would be. The starfinder world isn't our world and the people in it would live under very different situations than we do. They would have some very fundamental differences in their views than we do as they're shaped by a totally different reality, you need to remember that.
I hope this post doesn't get smited for getting into real religious issues as I was just trying to point out why physical immortality in the starfinder world might not be as big a deal as it would be in ours but with my luck someone will make the effort to take offense or someone will smite in just in case it might possibly offend someone somewhere.
But undead have "lifespan: indefinite" without additional technology -- and of course they are not technically alive.
I am wounded, sir. We call them "necromantically enhanced citizens," thank you very much.
You have to be alive before you can be undead.it's not like you have ghoul staplers or zombie golf carts.
Nice find, didn't see that in the book
But undead have "lifespan: indefinite" without additional technology -- and of course they are not technically alive.
I am wounded, sir. We call them "necromantically enhanced citizens," thank you very much.
You have to be alive before you can be undead.it's not like you have ghoul staplers or zombie golf carts.
For the low low cost of your soul you too can live forever!
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Also I think it matters that people know there literally IS an afterlife and have visible verifiable proof of that. Unless you are pretty sure your lifestyle is leading you to a really bad outcome I don't see people being as so frantic to avoid death knowing there is something that comes after.
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Also I think it matters that people know there literally IS an afterlife and have visible verifiable proof of that. Unless you are pretty sure your lifestyle is leading you to a really bad outcome I don't see people being as so frantic to avoid death knowing there is something that comes after.
The process of the afterlife pretty much strips your entire identity and replaces you with something made from your life force. It's actually pretty terrifying and something everyone should be afraid of.
Unless your deity loves you enough to turn you directly into an outsider with your memory intact.
Also I think it matters that people know there literally IS an afterlife and have visible verifiable proof of that. Unless you are pretty sure your lifestyle is leading you to a really bad outcome I don't see people being as so frantic to avoid death knowing there is something that comes after.The process of the afterlife pretty much strips your entire identity and replaces you with something made from your life force. It's actually pretty terrifying and something everyone should be afraid of.
Unless your deity loves you enough to turn you directly into an outsider with your memory intact.
Deities aren't outright required for that to happen.
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I should point out that we know some psychopomps take a very dim view of life extension magic or tech, and so people that take advantage of such things might end up becoming targets. That being said, I too choose to assume that most people extend their lifespan at least a little...until they get eaten by aforementioned space-bugs.
Deities aren't outright required for that to happen.Also I think it matters that people know there literally IS an afterlife and have visible verifiable proof of that. Unless you are pretty sure your lifestyle is leading you to a really bad outcome I don't see people being as so frantic to avoid death knowing there is something that comes after.The process of the afterlife pretty much strips your entire identity and replaces you with something made from your life force. It's actually pretty terrifying and something everyone should be afraid of.
Unless your deity loves you enough to turn you directly into an outsider with your memory intact.
That's fair. You can be such a badass that you're like "Nah, I'm not going away".
But most people can't.
See, my own read has always been that the loss of memory/identity as a petitioner has *far* more to do with the simple vastness of time than any kind of specific memory erasure or whatnot. The typical petitioner doesn't remember much about their mortal life for the same reason the typical adult doesn't remember much about their life as a three year old: it was a long time ago and they were a very different individual at the time. 50-100 years of adult life might seem long, but for a five thousand year old petitioner, that's still only a tiny fraction of their existence. What's more. . . even to the extent that they don't remember their mortal lives, they are still a being whose motives and choices are defined by what they learned and experienced as a mortal. You might not remember all the experiences that shaped you into you, but you still think and act and choose in the manner that you were so shaped.
The only problem I have with that theory, is even if you died yesterday, the petitioner that arose from your soul still (by the information I've seen) only remembers glimpses of their past existence.
Or a criminal could use a clone, or a "forked" (a new body with all the memory by the original) to be used as decoy. The copy would be punished but the true criminal would free with a new identity.
This was pretty much the origin for Shabti in Pathfinder, don't know if they've been transferred yet.
See, my own read has always been that the loss of memory/identity as a petitioner has *far* more to do with the simple vastness of time than any kind of specific memory erasure or whatnot. The typical petitioner doesn't remember much about their mortal life for the same reason the typical adult doesn't remember much about their life as a three year old: it was a long time ago and they were a very different individual at the time. 50-100 years of adult life might seem long, but for a five thousand year old petitioner, that's still only a tiny fraction of their existence. What's more. . . even to the extent that they don't remember their mortal lives, they are still a being whose motives and choices are defined by what they learned and experienced as a mortal. You might not remember all the experiences that shaped you into you, but you still think and act and choose in the manner that you were so shaped.The only problem I have with that theory, is even if you died yesterday, the petitioner that arose from your soul still (by the information I've seen) only remembers glimpses of their past existence.
Dead souls also take some nebulous amount of time (months to decades) to get to the boneyard before they ever get turned into a petitioner.
Don't forget what hapened to Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Total Recall"?
He forgot he was just a construction worker and wound up with his brain fried, drooling in a chair?