Re: Resurrection/raise dead/souls in SJ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 6:30 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Resurrection/raise dead/souls in SJ

> If your deity (or a deity who is strongly allied with
> your deity) isn't present in a sphere, the fate of
> your soul comes into question...do you get lucky and
> get saved, or will your immortal soul be enslaved or
> devoured?

Death is a big unknown to PCs and religion is something that can act as 
their answer. I don't think you necessarily need to have *one* answer for 
this. There are an infinite number of crystal spheres and you could 
implement different "house rules" for different crystal spheres.

So we *could* have a crystal sphere (or a few crystal spheres) where 
unclaimed souls turn into wandering undead (waiting to be shown the way 
home). These undead wouldn't necessarily need to be evil, but could still be 
a challenge for PCs. Imagine if you had groups of undead eager to hijack 
passing ships and travel back to their own crystal sphere (so that they 
could finally die and get to the next life).

Imagine if your PCs didn't even realise that a space city similar to The 
Rock of Bral was populated by both undead and living people. In that crystal 
sphere it could be something so normal that marriages need not end in death, 
and nobody thinks to tell outsiders, unless they ask. (Death could be seen 
as one of the stages of life.) Imagine if you took on a crew of spacehands 
willing to work their passage to a sphere like Greyspace and they all faded 
away as soon as you entered the crystal sphere (leaving you with an 
under-crewed ship).

You could even bring one of the players into this secret if they were killed 
during a game. The other players could be led to believe that one of the PCs 
has somehow become very lucky at cheating death and not even realise that 
they need to cast a resurrection spell until later.

>From what I recall, the Planescape campaign setting featured dead souls on 
their way to their gods. I think these were called "petitioners", but there 
were a number of groups and I may have confused petitioners with another 
group. I think that if we take this question to its logical conclusion, we 
will end up with something that can only really be dealt with in the 
Planescape campaign setting.

If players in a party loose a "friend" when they are unable to resurrect 
them, then a GM could allow them to learn how to break through the 
"plain-barrier" and sail their spelljamming ship to wherever plane that 
unclaimed souls go. However, I think that sort of thing is possibly beyond 
the scope of this mailing list.

> I could definately see RP potential here.  It almost
> becomes imperiative for PCs, ALL PCs (not just
> clerics), to have an interest in spreading their
> patron god(s) churches as far as possible.  Afterall,
> Fighter Joe might not care who the cleric prays to, he
> would care if he can be raised from the dead or not!

Looking at the new treatments in the 3e FRCS and DLCS, I'm really starting 
to think that *every* crystal sphere should feel more like a campaign 
setting, in its own right, rather than just an adventure location for one or 
two SJ games. (So in my opinion Spelljammer should be a collection of 
connected campaign settings rather than a single setting that bridges 
multiple spheres.)

The 3e DLCS (as well as the 3e FRCS) makes all casters of divine spells 
(druids, paladins and rangers as well as any prestige classes) receive their 
spells from the gods (although the post 5th Age Mystic is an exception to 
this). I actually think this is an improvement on the older system because 
it allows you to turn churches into organisations that can supply magic to 
adventurers that are on friendly terms with their religion - in the specific 
case of Spelljammer, this rule allows you to turn every religion into a 
sphere-wide organisation that can supply helmsmen to captains who are on 
friendly terms with their religions. So I'd be in favour of giving gods 
control of divine spells in *most* crystal spheres. (I wouldn't say gods 
should control divine magic in *all* crystal spheres, because that takes 
away options from a GM, but I think it should be something that is implied 
unless the GM decides otherwise.)

The SJCS religions are (or should be) found in most civilised crystal 
spheres, but the local religions should logically be there alongside them. 
This would give as a "normal" structure of:

"Examplespace" religion = SJCS religion + local religion

In special cases we could specifically block certain SJ religions, however 
this should only really be done in spheres that are not seen as civilised or 
known spheres.

I've always liked the rules from The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook about 
bringing a new religion to a crystal sphere. It is sometimes hard to come up 
with a logical reason for a gaming group to be together, but religion and a 
religious campaign goal is one excuse that you can use for a groups 
formation. The Leadership feat from the third edition rules allows a PC to 
gather a large group of followers, but having looked at how it works a 
single PC may not actually attract a large enough group of followers to 
start a religion. However a group of PCs may well be able to attract a large 
enough group and a religious fighter or wizard might actually make a better 
evangelist than a cleric.

I am convinced that our SJCS conversion should feature new methods for one 
or more PCs to take their religion to the stars (and even wonder of SJ 
characters worshiping groundling religions might be more interesting to play 
than worshipers of Celestian or Ptah). However, the Complete Spacefarer's 
Handbook mentions opposition (during the construction and consecration 
phase) and I think that needs to be something unique to the combination of 
new religion and the crystal sphere it is being inserted into.

There were rules about Lay Preachers in the 2nd edition rules. I'm not sure 
where they were, but I think that 10 lay preachers added up to 1 priest 
during ritual magic. I'd be in favour of having something similar in the 3rd 
edition as religious organisations should be able to make combined efforts. 
At the very least, I'd be in favour of some sort of religious feat that 
allows PCs to use magic items that are normally only usable by clerics of a 
specific religion.

If we look at the other TSR campaign settings we can use their treatment of 
religion and death to give us sets of answers that could give us ideas for 
variations that could give some crystal spheres a unique feel to them. Many 
of these campaign settings went out of print in 2nd edition, but the fans 
may well have created a set of 3rd edition rules. It might be worth creating 
a list of "recommended 3e conversions".

The Athas.org conversion springs to mind, because it fits in well with 
Adam's Crimson Sphere. Because of the way that Dark Sun was created, Athas 
and the Crimson Sphere really only work as a mid to high level campaign 
setting. But they do show us one of the different directions that SJ can be 
taken in if a sphere is designed around special themes. We don't need to go 
to those extremes in most crystal spheres. Religion, the local perception of 
the outer planes and death can make every crystal sphere seem slightly 
different to the last one.

However, I don't think that a GM should randomly punish PCs for having the 
"wrong religion", so I think it is important to turn this into a roleplaying 
opportunity rather than just another rule (or set of rules). We should 
create things (only available to spacefaring cultures) that allow PCs to 
bypass restrictions in FRCS and DLCS that punish people with the wrong 
religion.

I think that all PCs (not just divine spellcasters) should be able to obtain 
holy symbols (or medallions of faith if they come from Krynnspace). These 
should be lesser versions of the ones used by divine spellcasters because 
they only need to act as a link between a single worshiper and their deity. 
These items could help guide a soul back to its proper place (if a PC gets 
killed on foreign soil). On groundling worlds it would be relatively easy to 
say that it was impossible to obtain or replace items like this - meaning 
that SJ characters worshiping a god like Celestian *could* freely walk 
around Ansalon, but if their holy symbol was stolen or destroyed their soul 
would be at risk until they obtained a new one.

We could even turn some of these "holy symbols" into magic items that can 
boost the ability of a divine spellcaster or give a "lay preacher" access to 
limited clerical abilities. Imagine a "holy symbol" that can turn undead 
once per day or one that can grant the ability that a cleric gets as a 
domain granted power for a single clerical domain. Items like this could 
make religion come to life and give GMs and players more ways to customise 
their PCs (and if they are also holy symbols then it is logical to say that 
they only work for worshipers of that religion).

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/