Godless characters and Death?

[Kaeldorn]

I haven't been able to find any specific rules on this, but I was wondering how death is treated on Sundren for characters without a deity. Can they be resurrected at all for gameplay purposes? Or does their demise, even from unlucky moments or lag, mean instant perma death?

[wangxiuming]

To go along with Kael's question, do signuses require having a deity to use?

[Tome]

Death has always been one of those iffy matters in Sundren, mostly because of disagreements. Do you go by what is cannon or what is actually creative?

-The cannon would either say no you can't revive them or say something like the deity of the cleric or druid ressurecting was willing to make an exception or whatever for whatever reason.
-The creative would not treat life and death like they were toys to begin with and probably just say that they were NEAR-death the whole time. Sure, saying someone got knocked out and revived a few dozen times gets lame, but not as lame as saying he was risen from the dead a few hundred times. Odd how some people play their characters as being the kind of person the gods would make a few hundred exceptions for. Death is never described as being something easy to snap out of.

The choice is yours to play of off, and whether you are cannon or creative, you can adjust your rp accordingly.

[c2k]

What about if you don't have a deity because the game doesn't support the deity your character follows? For instance, my barbarian follows Uthgar, but Uthgar is not a selectable deity in NWN2.

[Xeesheava]

You know Kaeldorn I played a Godless char.

:: At gameplay purposes, you just pretend to be knocked out but not killed while there is no DM online.

:: The permadeath in low levels and so far it's just with the concent and agreement of both parts. Anyway, maybe the character is atheist, but some god will see his/her behavior and will put his/her hand to help him.

Examples:

> A lawful good fighter can be resurrected by Tyr or Helm
> An evil thief can be resurrected by Mask.

[Azulfae]

OMG no Uthgar in NWN2 this is sick wtf were they thinking.

[Kaeldorn]

Yes, that makes sense I suppose. While a character may not directly worship a deity, his actions may still be in favor of a god and cause others to believe, hence more influence. Albeit indirectly.

I just wanted to know if bringing in another old character of mine I played on another server wouldn't be destined to meet an untimely perma death. Think I'll make a combination of 'cannon' and 'creative'.

Thanks for the responses

Still curious about the answer to wang's question too, though. How exactly should we see the meaning of a signus and how do they work?

[Product of Void]

Umm... perma death sucks.

Perma death should apply if

1. Player gets banned ergo their charactors need to be dead.
2. Player decides to retire charactor.

Charactors return from the dead because we like playing them and video games defy rules of life while working in a realm of fantasy.

How many fantasy novels does someone return from death? or even hell.

Part of playing fantasy is having fun, and having your charactor perma'd is not fun.

In nwn1 I liked to say my charactor was "ran off" or "forced to retreat". Instead of saying the died. Makes death more meaningful if the charactor has not died before.

[wangxiuming]

The reason I ask is because Alyrian has been faithless for some time now - I've yet to use a signus the times I have died, since a DM was kind enough to resurrect me for plot purposes, or consider the death more of a "knockout" than real death.

[Silas North]

I whole-heartedly agree with Product and Tome.

The whole concept of coming back from the dead bugged me (not counting the zombie thing, which can be wickedly macabre and fun). Treating death as nothing more than a minor inconvience kills any element of drama, suspense, and consequence. This is one reason why I chucked the 'official' lore and only followed the lore of the novels, where such things at least run less rampant.

99% of the time I had Os present with someone who fell in battle, I treated them as just badly injured and rez spells as being major healing spells that save someone from the brink of death. The other 1% of the time was only an exception because I had the death-thing practically crammed down my throat. For those matters, I just don't speak of the matter icly. For the matter of signus rezzes, you can play if off this way or like Product said, play them off as having to retreat due to their injuries. I recall one time where Fenton 'died' and I had to lug him back to the Helmites. We rped Fenton talking in his comatose state, thinking Os was a girl in a bar he was trying to buy a drink for and constantly flirting with him. Made for a funny scene that was sure as hell a lot better than just "oops he died, *ping* good as new."

The 'official' lore says faithless cannot be revived at all. However, it also states that the vast majority of elves and dwarves do not even BELIEVE in ressurection. So, where does that leave them? The whole thing is a slippery slope of bad writing that I'd rather just not have anything to do with. So, I go with the swoon approach instead.

As for Wang's question....

I used to play off signuses as being small trinkets that helped to keep one's spirit intact in the event of great physical trauma. Basically, they kept you alive in situations where you should not be. However, in time I met someone in Sundren who played them off not as a physical, tangible object you could see, but more like a 'mark of fate' given by the gods or perhaps some greater power. Think of everyone as being like a playing piece in the 'game of destiny' and the signus as being your 'get out of jail free card'. There were some things you could do where they could not help you, but for everything else, they could. I thought her concept was so cool, that I immediately adopted it myself.

These are examples of how a signus could keep a faithless intact. There are probably a lot of other well-written ways that one could come up with.

[Product of Void]

Actually seen alot of players rp it as an injury as well which is pretty cool. The bad dream sounds funny as heck.

I was pondering this a bit and thought about lagging out or crashing I rp that as well. My charactor got clumsy and fell in a hole, shoe stuck in mud, tripped on a rock and saw stars, etc.

You can rp anything, just make sure your having fun and those around you are. ;D

[Silas North]

Actually seen alot of players rp it as an injury as well which is pretty cool. The bad dream sounds funny as heck.

I was pondering this a bit and thought about lagging out or crashing I rp that as well. My charactor got clumsy and fell in a hole, shoe stuck in mud, tripped on a rock and saw stars, etc.

You can rp anything, just make sure your having fun and those around you are. ;D

(Reputation increased with Silas North by 10 points)

[Urithrand]

Death is a hopeless issue on any ressurrection friendly server. I think I've only ever seen a handful of characters that actually RPs fear of pain, injury and death, so I won't get started on the subject here

[Jai_V]

Sometimes, I wanted to RP my characters as scared of dying or getting hurt, but that only made to sense, to me, in a situation in which they were going to die or get hurt. Generally, that means in the middle of combat (unless they were kind've cowardly, like Cazen is about Vampires and Fiends, and try to run/hide before battle, only being forced back by seeing friends in trouble).

I can imagine trying to RP fear in battle...

(Jai, typing in the message box) *suddenly is overcomed with fear that the next strike might be the last thing he feels--
Spittlefist Goblin attack Deacon Saetric. (4 + 20 = 24 Critical Hit)
(Jai, speaking aloud) Son of a...grrr...why's the loading screen to the FEN have to take so long?

Anyway, I think the best idea here is treating a trip to "Revivers R' Us" as the character being comatose or dying instead of actually being dead. Let's face it: none of us are Elminster.

[Lanemeyer]

Not much to say about it, but I agree with Tome for sure.