Speaking to the dead

[greypawn]

To some people's delight, and others not so much, I've been running around with my new character who happens to be a priest of myrkul. These priests are suppose to have the ability to speak to the dead. Per lore there is even the 'skull fee' the vengeful dead can pay to these priest to revenge the living of whom wronged them.

With a recent pvp with Lothoir, I rp'd speaking to his corpse and his spirit beyond. With this type of role play there is a lot of grey areas and I'm curious on others thoughts.

I guess my main concern is do you lose your memory when you die or when you come back from death? Is this too meta, should speaking to the dead only be done with npcs and dms?

[Lothoir]

I wasn't sure if there was a Myrkulite ability to speak to dead souls so I rolled with it, but in regards to the PnP spell, it summons the memories of a corpse's life and has it answer questions, and explicitly doesn't contact the soul of the deceased, specifically

This spell does not let you actually speak to the person (whose soul has departed). It instead draws on the imprinted knowledge stored in the corpse. The partially animated body retains the imprint of the soul that once inhabited it, and thus it can speak with all the knowledge that the creature had while alive. The corpse, however, cannot learn new information.

But if there's a class ability for Myrkulites, rock on!

[greypawn]

Thats very good to know. So I can question the dead but they will never remember anything because its their imprint not actually them? I'll look around and see if I can find some more input on it. But I'm betting one of our community members might already know.

[Lotus]

I think something to note here is assuming a PC is dead and then oh wait, he's not dead anymore. Respawn. We are not to assume that PCs are dying over and over and coming back; rather, it's much preferred that you use your imagination to allow the "losing" PC's survival/escape.

should speaking to the dead only be done with npcs and dms?

DMs.

[greypawn]

Why have corpses and raise spells then? Dead in pve, escaped and just beaten in pvp?

[Fury]

That's usually why you set subdual. But this particular thread raises a faaabulous RP idea on my part for River, who has absolutely no understanding of the inner workings of faith beyond making sure she doesn't piss the gods off, but who dreadfully misses her uncles. Hmmmmm. *ponder, ponder*

[Lotus]

Why have corpses and raise spells then? Dead in pve, escaped and just beaten in pvp?

That's the idea, unless we want to take out the respawn system and require clerics hardway every time.

[sonuvalich]

Sounds like my old days in EverQuest. "Oh, you died without a cleric around? Sucks to be you!"

[jdmoor]

Why have corpses and raise spells then? Dead in pve, escaped and just beaten in pvp?

so just think of Raise Dead spells as really special healing spells then...?

[Laurk]

Not that ive ever used one because who has diamonds? But that's what I do. I RP the raise dead as a spell to bring someone out of a trama induced coma.

[greypawn]

its a bit silly because every pvp you lose you also have memory lost. so its 'oh man, I got away.. wait, i don't remember my escape nor beating.'

*shrugs*

its silly, but then again we are in a fantasy setting that can be pretty darn silly at times.

[prismaticcrow]

I'm pretty sure the rules around pvp memory loss and raising dead are not there because of any weird lore reason. They are there as RP constructs to prevent an idea of a revolving door of life and death. If you kept dying and reviving, that would be a really crazy thing for a normal person to understand. I believe the memory loss is to prevent an excuse to grief players, and to assist in the keeping of IC secrets.

[GodBeastX]

I made the rules so I'll spit on the logic behind them.


Literally in early Sundren, we'd have people do this EXACT behavior. I am not making this up.

1. Player attacks someone.
2. That Someone beats the player or vice versa.
3. Somebody dies.
4. That somebody walks to a guard in a city and goes "I want to report a murder."

Even with raise dead costs and vitality loss, Sundren is still VERY kind to players who die. If we scaled death and res to actual gold costs in line with how our economy works on Sundren, every time someone died it would cost between 50,000 to 100,000 to raise them. Respawn is a simple matter in Sundren so we need to do something for these scenarios where death is trivialized.

The solution? You didn't die. You got beat up, somehow you got rescued. Maybe some unknown adventurer found you, maybe you blacked out and came to. Maybe some old woman nursed you back to health. Fey peed on you and their pee was healing powered. Who knows.

However, the trauma of getting beat up leaves you with memory loss so you can't run around after the assassin does attempted murder and say "HE DID IT!"

What we have is people who get in fights and usually when you lose a fight with another player is when someone is MOST LIKELY to do something less than thoughtful for RP to get back at the person. That's where it's imperative that we make sure they can't. We've a history of Character Requests where people try to swindle out of the memory loss to do just that, thus proving it's something necessary.

[Mournas]

Fey peed on you and their pee was healing powered. Who knows.

LOL, Fey Pee - The Sundren Snake Oil.

[Elusa]

I'm hoping there can be some kind of change to make Raise Dead and Resurrection actually useful. Diamonds are not easy to find, and as such are expensive. All to revive someone that should actually be simply knocked out. I don't know how the state of the server economy is, but couldn't it be changed to a straight up gold cost like some of the other powerful spells? Or create a Sundren unique spell along the lines of "Revive Critically Wounded."