Would like advice on doing a "Consecrate" spell in 5th Edition

[GlupiiGoose]

I am running a Weird West campaign and there are holy casters in it. My player who is playing one wants a spell for his spell pool that he can cast that will consecrate a dead body so it can not be used in any necromantic rituals to create undead with it. The only reasonable way I could think to do this is us a transform to change the body from a dead body to a "Inert Body" that would make it unsuitable as a spell component for necromantic spells. Can anyone think of a better way to do this I might be missing?

[Doc Democracy]

It depends on how clear you want this kind of thing to be.  How difficult do you want to make it for priests etc to consecrate and entire graveyard and remove a source of undead in your game.

 

If it is a routine thing, that any priest can do, then I think you need someone who has perk: priest with access to holy water and the right oils and KS: Holy rituals.  Then necromantic spells would take the limitation, "not on a consecrated body". 

 

If you want it to be more special, only someone with "true" divinity being able to do it, then I think it is really a minor transform.  As with all transforms, you need to think about what would reverse it.  Does it happen over time, or would it take a dark ritual, so an inconvenience for necromancers rather than an absolute barrier?

 

Doc

[GlupiiGoose]

Good point. I would think a reverse spell or a version of the same spell would be done by a necromancer. In my game the competing magics would be Blessed and VooDoo. And yeah, it would not be hard in either case, to do an entire cemetery but would take time and effort in game as that would not be the direct target of this type of spell. It is more aimed at a one body per casting type of magic. Not any priest would be able to do it but only those with "Blessed" powers. That is why it is not a wide spread thing.

[LoneWolf]

There are two ways you can limit how a power works.   The first way is to create a power that prevents the power from working.   The second is to put limitations on the power.  Transformation would be how you accomplish the first case.  The second case could be done by requiring all necromantic powers to be built that they do not affect all bodies.   Depending on how the necromantic power is build this could be an additional limitation.  If the necromantic power uses an expendable focus, you could increase the value of that to account for the fact that not all bodies can be raised.   

 

I would say that a character with the perk priest and PS priest would be all that is needed for the second case.    For most religions this is going to be part of their normal duties and not really require any special training. Cemeteries are usually consecrated and considered holy grounds.  That might create problems with creating undead in them.   

 

When I am creating a campaign like this, I spend some time on figuring out how I want things to work.  If there is going to be magic involved I lay out some ground rules for how things should work.  
 

[GlupiiGoose]

I was going down the same road as you in my thinking LW. I think what I will do is differentiate between active and inert corpses. And all the necro spells that raise undead will specify that an active corpse must be used. That way the transform should be enough.

 

Let me know what you think of this too. I was thinking about making the transform (both ways) cumulative and that they either have to overcome the body of the corpse or the points used to transform it, whichever is higher. So if a Priest takes the time to work his magic on a body and builds to say 20 points of transform, even though the corpse only had 10 body, if a necromancer wants to overcome that with an opposite spell, it must beat 20 points rather than the 10 in the corpse itself? Obviously this would be a rare case since most casters are not going to take the time to just do this willy nilly for every corpse they find (or make). But for the occasions for when they want to make the effort, it can be done. 

 

Also thinking about creating items that they can make and place in an area that have an area affect suppression of necromantic magic intended to raise undead so that if they want they COULD make a graveyard more resistant to being used by a necromancer. Thoughts appreciated.

[Duke Bushido]

The cleanest way to do this is to build a limitation into your necromantic spells:  does not work on consecrated bodies.

 

Then make "consecrated bodies" anything you want, from a major Transform to a one-point perk.  How major a thing is this going to be?  Is it almost a given that the dead will be magically molested?  Then make it a Transform.  Is necromancer unusual, with littke restriction on what corpses can and can't be used?  Make it Perk, since it is little more than peace of mind for the bereaved that out of the hundreds or thousands of bodies that _can_ be used, _this_ body is safe.

 

In short:  if it is overall little hindrance to a necromancer, I don't care how expensively it _can_ be built; it shouldn't be expensive or difficult.   If it causes no end of nuisance to m necromancy as a whole, then it should be priced  accordingly.

 

It hinges on putting the limitation in the spell you wish to disrupt.

 

 

[unclevlad]

This is also a case where all you're really talking about, is a plot device...so it's not worth spending ANY points, or defining it in game terms.  This is a very common D&D situation.  The details vary greatly, but in general, properly consecrated and buried on consecrated ground, made it impossible to animate the corpse...often, only so long as the ground remained consecrated.  Now, who can consecrate the body?  That can vary.  Sometimes a devout layman is all you need.  Others, you need a full priest.  It'd be unusual, IIRC, to need something higher than 3rd level...because that's actually supposed to be Getting Up There, particularly for rural areas.  But it's manageable to do that, cuz there might be a priest who serves an area of a day's ride.

 

Consider:  are the PCs really going to be impacted by this at all?  Or is it just world background?  If the latter, the heck with points.  It doesn't need definition...or, at most, you say consecrating a body can be done by any appropriate priest with an X (or larger) active point MP or VPP for priestly spells.  Or something like that.  

 

You absolutely do NOT need to define everything in game terms, when there is no game impact.

[Christopher R Taylor]

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You absolutely do NOT need to define everything in game terms, when there is no game impact.

 

Yeah its the opposite of the rule "if you benefit from it, you have to pay points" rule.  If it doesn't do anything in the game but color or flavor, it doesn't cost anything.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor

[unclevlad]

Yeah, but we can go further.  Not only no points, but no rules at all, or just very general ones.  It's a variation on sci fi's maxim...don't even TRY to describe in detail how X works...warp drive, jump drive, transporter, FTL comms.  Hand wave?  Sure.  Dahners had a character figure out how to pull off quantum entanglement...what happens to A, immediately happens to B.  Boom...instantaneous, FTL communications between a transceiver pair, over literally ANY range.  No more detail.  No point in having more detail, it ALWAYS just leads to biting yourself in the foot.  

 

Note that I'll say largely the same thing about the necromantic spells.  They're points, schmoints...points don't matter.  What DOES matter?  

--what does it take to produce a ....................?  Skeletons and zombies are trivial, more powerful (and particularly semi-sentient to fully sentient undead) are something entirely different.

--special cases...if you're using anything like "someone killed by a vampire will rise as a vampire at the next sunset" then how can this be prevented?  Note that it may NOT be a power.

--how LONG does raising zombies take...cuz the PCs might want to interfere.

 

Where can the PCs be dynamic, in other words.

[Christopher R Taylor]

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No point in having more detail, it ALWAYS just leads to biting yourself in the foot. 

 

It is, I think, a point of maturity where you can reach the point where you can stop asking "why?" as a child.  Do I need to know how Superman's powers work?  Do I need a deconstruction of Indiana Jones' motivations?  Do I have to see back into Conan's origins?  Do I need to have detailed schematics for how Iron Man's armor functions?

 

No.

In fact, digging into this stuff cheapens and weakens it, it takes away the wonder, the joy of it all.  If you know exactly how magic works... it stops being magical.  Figure out enough to handle it well as a writer/gamer/player etc and then, stop.  You know just enough and need know no more.

 

Because if you dig too deeply, you might find another story there to tell, but then the gold mine, you've tapped out the ore.  That vein doesn't go any further.  You've ruined all the future stories, and most of the past ones, and for what?  To show how clever you are?

[GlupiiGoose]

All very good points. And I do not disagree with any of them. Handwavium works. My own personal limitation however is that I game with the same group of guys I have been gaming with for over 30 years. We are old curmudgeons and many are, shall we say, set in our ways?  I need to have set rules in place for things whenever possible both to satisfy my player base and to keep boundaries. I have learned over time that my players will often find loopholes and exploit them if I am not careful. All of the points made here are more than valid and I appreciate every one of them. I just need to be more rigid than most I guess when it comes to these sorts of things.  Thanks all for the great feedback!

[Pattern Ghost]

One way to look at it is to ask if it's ever going to be a plot point. A good acid test for whether something is going to be a plot point in an adventure is whether it will ever come under time pressure. If you envision a scenario where a priest PC has to consecrate some bodies before the necromancer villain can get to them, then it may need a little mechanical definition. Which doesn't have to involve a power write up. It could just be noting down how much time the ritual takes. I'd leave the mechanics on the necromancy spells and have the rest be settings factors, as others have suggested above.