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Reincarnation with memories


Steve

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I was reading an interesting way to present elves in the "Red Tide" campaign sourcebook I recently picked up. When an elf dies in that world, their spirit does not go to a final reward but instead reincarnates as another elf. They also remember all of their past lives.

 

How would one represent the ability to remember past lives in Hero terms? Would it be as simple as a form of Eidetic Memory? Maybe postcognitive clairsentience?

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From my write up of Scarab

 

10 Far Memory: Retrocognitive Clairsentience (Sight Group And Normal Hearing) (45 Active Points); No Conscious Control (-2), Retrocognition Only (-1), Only Through The Senses Of Previous Incarnations (-1/2) 4 Notes: In either secret or heroic identity, Scarab sometimes has glimpses of past incarnations, especially of being a priest of Ra. These can be full fledged "visions" of a past life, or sudden flashes of insight or special knowledge - "This way! The fourth duke built a secret tunnel in case of seige, it may still be there." "I thought you had never been in this castle before?" "Not in this life...."

 

While locating that, I stumbled on this thread

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/86059-incarnation-awareness/

 

Lucius Alexander

 

On a clear day, a palindromedary can see forever

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I'm not sure if it is a resurrection, since a character can change gender and appearance when being reborn. I suppose its a little bit like how the Avatar is treated in the cartoon series.

 

An elf dies, their spirit waits for a new elf to be conceived and then that is the body they get. It's the same person in a new body, remembering friends and enemies from previous lives.

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There could be a physical limitation "random changes when dies", or something similar.

 

Of course, if it takes a few centuries for an elf to go from birth to adulthood, it might not need a power to represent it at all.  By the time you get old enough to be out of diapers, campaign over.

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Is every elf who is born a reincarnated previous elf?

 

This might be a substitute for traditional Elven immortality. The body matures, grows old, and eventually dies, and then the process repeats -- over and over again, to infinity. It's a cycle that the elves apparently cannot escape.

 

I don't know how to model it, but elves might well have flashbacks of their former lives that can get pretty disturbing. They would remember every time they died, for example -- including the horrible ones. Some of those deaths and other experiences would be traumatic (ranging from the emotional pain of a failed relationship to having been tortured on the rack a few cycles ago).

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Regeneration with Resurrection.  Extra Time (whatever the elven gestation period is).  Side Effects: Cosmetic Transform (to random elf baby).  Limited Power: Requires an elf to become pregnant.

 

Alternately, use Possession from APG.  Triggered (upon death), Only Works On Elven Fetuses, plus Mental + Spiritual Transform (elven fetus to self).  

 

Edited to add:  Or:  Mental + Spiritual Transform, Random Elven Fetus to Self, Triggered (upon death), No Conscious Control.  

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Focus: Pregnant elf of opportunity.

Or an elf does not become pregnant until a spirit becomes available to inhabit the body. Spirit and body are fused at conception, so there's no existing soul to "kick out" Which would mean the population of elves is static there are always a certain number of elves in the world and no more.

 

An elf who is reincarnated this way will not be in adventuring condition for many years, depending on how rapidly the new body matures. So in game terms it hardly matters. And it could be that this is a Hindu-like religious belief of the elves that humans might think is untrue (much as most Westerners don't believe someone when they say they are the reincarnation of someone else).

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In the world setting, there is a fixed number of elves, set at 100,000 for some reason. Once every elf spirit has a body, no further conceptions can take place.

 

Elves were originally human, but they performed a ritual to try and become divine. It did not succed and left their race in its current state.

 

Occasionally, an elf spirit will incarnate as a human, and such humans have an elfin quality to them.

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Having a large number of elves (like, say, 25,000) die in go, especially if they are all the same gender (like males dying by the thousands in a lost battle) would probably have a calamitous impact on Elf society and culture in this scenario. The entire energy of the society would be taken up by conceiving and bringing up the next generation. And if something happens that leads to the deaths of ALL the elves, can they come back?

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And if something happens that leads to the deaths of ALL the elves, can they come back?

 

 

Elves were originally human, but they performed a ritual to try and become divine. It did not succed and left their race in its current state.

 

Occasionally, an elf spirit will incarnate as a human, and such humans have an elfin quality to them.

Seems so

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Human with a palindromedary quality

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I feel as though Regeneration is probably the best option, though you might need to add Immortality (I'm just picturing an elf dying of old age... forever).

 

Depending on the scale of the campaign, you might just be able to hand-wave it, using it as the flavor behind buying lots of skills. If the campaign only spans two in-game years, for example, most players might prefer to make a new character than play as a newborn or toddler. 

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As I recall, Elves in this world don't die of age or disease, just from mishaps or violence.

 

On a related note, how would one do a D&D style reincarnation spell? The Druid casts it and "poof" you're alive again, just you're a badger now (or whatever). Healing with the Resurrection option with a Side Effect?

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On a related note, how would one do a D&D style reincarnation spell? The Druid casts it and "poof" you're alive again, just you're a badger now (or whatever). Healing with the Resurrection option with a Side Effect?

 

I think that would effectively be a new character... I'm trying to think of a reasonable alternative to XDM and not coming up with anything. :help:

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Maybe you could buy it as a unified cheap summon and resurrection with the limitation "requires polymorph spell." The flavor being, of course, that you summon the character as a random animal, say a badger or weasel, and then, once the supplies have been gathered, change the animal back into the original character.

 

This has the bonus that the player can play as a cute little badger in the mean-time.

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On a related note, how would one do a D&D style reincarnation spell? The Druid casts it and "poof" you're alive again, just you're a badger now (or whatever). Healing with the Resurrection option with a Side Effect?

 

 

Maybe you could buy it as a unified cheap summon and resurrection with the limitation "requires polymorph spell." The flavor being, of course, that you summon the character as a random animal, say a badger or weasel, and then, once the supplies have been gathered, change the animal back into the original character.

 

This has the bonus that the player can play as a cute little badger in the mean-time.

I can't help but think of one of the things the party is questing for to get their friend back to "normal" are several varieties of mushrooms. Unfortunately they are guarded by snakes. Really big, mean, and smart snakes.

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I'm not sure if it is a resurrection, since a character can change gender and appearance when being reborn. I suppose its a little bit like how the Avatar is treated in the cartoon series.

 

An elf dies, their spirit waits for a new elf to be conceived and then that is the body they get. It's the same person in a new body, remembering friends and enemies from previous lives.

What does it do for the player charcters?

The dead character is still dead. His new body won't be adventure ready for a few decades. So nothing for the old character.

The new Elf charater (first created or to replace the "last elf we had") just has this as a special effect for "having all those skills". You could just as well say "used a magical memory sphere that imparted the knowledge of the regulary choose hero". Or "is really 500 years old mage, but has most magic tied up keeping alive so he has maybe inferior magic to a young mage, but better skills".

 

Are you certain you are not going to end up forcing your players to take skills they don't want to have?

Is there truly never forgetting? If so, how are they not mad at birth?

Forgetting is the small brother of death and perhaps the most precious gift humans have received since the Silmarillion.

 

I think I saw a writeup for an El-Aurian (human looking, can get thousands of years old) and a Joined Trill (memories of several lifetimes) from Star Trek once, with several levels of Overall Skill Levels/10 point Skill Levels to simulate the effect.

Neither of those memories is perfect. You can't just store infinite amount of data in a brain and hope it works out. In Schlock Mecernary there was one race that tried it. They went all insane within 200 Years of going immortal. Another group got sucessfully immortal - by adding prodigious amount of seneltiy into the mix. Immortal but senile, because otherwise you just go nuts.

A.I. in that universe can suffer from "Isolation for a felt eternetiy". And thier cure is also to "forget". They remake themself as a new personality to overcome being stuck in that loop.

 

In the world setting, there is a fixed number of elves, set at 100,000 for some reason. Once every elf spirit has a body, no further conceptions can take place.

 

Elves were originally human, but they performed a ritual to try and become divine. It did not succed and left their race in its current state.

 

Occasionally, an elf spirit will incarnate as a human, and such humans have an elfin quality to them.

Is there any way to "bind" souls in this world? If you bound a elfs soul at the moment of death, he should not be able to reincarnate.

Also does this limit the "Ressurection" time limit for Elf's of this world? I mean if you are unlucky, you might not even have a day to revive him. Or you might have 1 year.

 

As I recall, Elves in this world don't die of age or disease, just from mishaps or violence.

 

On a related note, how would one do a D&D style reincarnation spell? The Druid casts it and "poof" you're alive again, just you're a badger now (or whatever). Healing with the Resurrection option with a Side Effect?

That is hard to figure out, Basically it is resurrection with the limiting factor "might need a seperate spell to get into the original/humanoid body" (that is why it is avalible at such a low level).

How much of a inconvenience this really is, depends how hard it is to get transformed back into your original form.

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