Welcome to Wednesdays & Woes our web series about Rpg Horror Elements this week Mark Gedak brings you something PCs take from granted that coming back from the dead has no consequence. Mark can help teach your players how wrong they are.
Illustration by Arthur Wang
One of the problems with running a horror-based campaign in the Pathfinder system or any standard OGL fantasy game is that too much of the magic and physics of the world is known. A wand of ice storm deals on average a set amount of damage, a fifth level wizard’s acid arrow will burn targets for two rounds. Horror occurs when the unexpected happens. For horror-based campaign to work there needs to be some uncertainty, some chance for things to go horribly wrong. Below you will find five alternate resolutions to the process of raising the dead.
Sometimes They Come Back...Wrong!
It is hard to deal with the death of a loved one, but it is harder still to have them returned to you transformed in unknowable ways. Being resurrected, raised from the dead or reincarnated is a common practice for heroes in many fantasy roleplaying games. What is overlooked in these games is that when you slip beyond the veil that separates life from death, death can affect you in unpredictable ways. Contact with oblivion can leave even the hardiest hero changed. Below are a few examples of what can happen to a person who has been brought back from the dead.
Aberrant to Green
Sometimes when a person is raised from the dead within a large city, their connection to the living world becomes strained. This antipathy to the natural world manifests in a number of ways. Any person found to be aberrant to green adds the following special abilities and qualities:
Animal Antipathy (Ex): You carry with you the taint of death. This aura unnerves animals who encounter you. Any animal that you come into contact with you has its attitude shifted one state toward the negative. An animal will never possess a helpful attitude toward you.
Severed Bond (Su): If you are a druid or ranger who possesses an animal companion, that bound is lost. The druid instead gains one of the following cleric domains: Air, Death, Earth, Fire, Water or Weather. The ranger instead gains the companion bound.
Druids of 9th level or higher are aware of this condition and often warn their younger members of this risk. If a druid hopes to be raised from the dead, he will often counsel his travelling companions to only conduct the ceremony within the natural environment.
Filled with Rage
If a person dies a particularly violent death, the brutality of the attack that killed them may become imprinted on their soul. This causes the raised person to develop almost a secondary personality that causes them to lash out at others. Any person who is raised from the dead and filled with raised gains the following special abilities.
Berserk (Ex) When the character enters combat, there is a cumulative 1% chance each round that its rage breaks free and they go berserk. The uncontrolled character goes on a rampage, attacking the nearest living thing or smashing some object smaller than itself if no creature is within reach., then moving on to spread more destruction. A close friend can try to calm the character down, which requires a DC 19 Charisma check It takes one minute of inactivity for the percentage to reset to 0%.
Ferocity (Ex) The character can remain conscious and continue fighting even if its hit point total is below 0. The character is staggered and loses 1 hit point each round. A character with ferocity dies when its hit point total reaches a negative amount equal to its Constitution score.
From Beyond
When a raise dead spell is cast, the soul of the departed must be willing to return to the material plane and be reunited with its body. However, in the emptiness of the afterlife, strange beings swim about the ether hoping to consume a lost soul or steal their path back to the material world. If one of these strange creatures can subvert the spell energy to their own use, these alien creatures can be drawn back into the body instead of the original soul. Any person who becomes a shell for another gains the following special abilities.
Alien Mind (Ex) The character gains a +4 bonus to mind-affecting spells, spell-like abilities and powerful. Additionally, the character’s mind is hostile to divination magic and any divinations spells cast on the character also deal 1d6 points of damage to the caster.
Transformative Event (Ex) The character has been changed in unpredictable ways. You may immediately reassign feats, skills, class abilities or even class levels previously selected. Once changed this becomes your new form.
If a character becomes a shell for another, he truly has become a new person, with new goals and ambitions. This can allow them to rework their character into a completely different party role.
Touched by Evil
If the soul of the departed travels the ether too close to the negative material plane, the evil energy of that realm seeps into the newly departed and transforms them into their own evil twin. A person that has been touched by evil is changed in the following ways.
Alignment: The moral aspect of the character’s alignment shifts from good or neutral to evil.
Aura: Your character exhibits an aura of evil similar to that possessed by an evil cleric.
Smite Good (Ex): Once per day, the character can call out to the powers of darkness to aid him in his struggle against good. As a swift action, the character chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is good, the character adds his Charisma bonus (if any) to his attack rolls and adds his character level to all damage rolls made against the target of his smite. If the target of smite good is an outsider with the good subtype, a good-aligned dragon, or a fey creature, the bonus to damage increases to 2 points of damage per level the character possesses. Regardless of the target, smite good attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess.
In addition, while smite evil is in effect, the character gains a deflection bonus equal to his Charisma modifier (if any) to his AC against attacks made by the target of the smite. If the character targets a creature that is not good, the smite is wasted with no effect.
The smite good effect remains until the target of the smite is dead or the next time the character rests and regains his uses of this ability. At 4th level, and at every three levels thereafter, the character may smite good one additional time per day to a maximum of seven times per day at 19th level.
Warded from Salvation
It is only possible for a soul to be returned to his body within a specific period of time before they are taken by their deity toward their final reward or rest. If a person is raised at the limit of allowable time, his deity may take affront at the person’s choice to return to life instead of coming into their deity’s glory. Such persons become warded from salvation and are changed in the following ways.
Faithless (Su): The character cannot be granted spells by his original deity. Many faithless instead turn to the enemies of their previous gods for divine power.
Out of Sight (Su): The character is completely undetectable by magic means by anyone worshiping or working for the character’s previous faith.
Slow to Heal (Ex): The character regains only one-half the hit points from any curative magic.
No comments:
Post a Comment