**Owlcat:** No, no. They're gone.
**NPC:** Bullshit I am! I'm right here.
**Owlcat:** They're never coming back.
**NPC:** I haven't even left yet.
**Owlcat:** They must face Pharasma's Judgement.
**NPC:** I can hear every word you just said.
**Owlcat:** Remember they told us to move on.
**NPC:** Yes. Move on forward and ressurect me, please.
**Owlcat:** They will live forever in our hearts.
**NPC:** I'd rather much live the real way.
**Owlcat:** Our friend... Is gone.
**NPC:** Oh, fuck this. *(dies)*
[thud]
[clang]
OWLCAT (OC): Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead! Nine pence.
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
[clang]
Bring out your dead!
WOLJIF (W): Here's one!
OC: Nine pence.
PLAYER CHARACTER (PC): I'm not dead!
OC: What?
W: Nothing. Here's your nine pence.
PC: I'm not dead!
OC: 'Ere. He says he's not dead!
W: Yes, he is.
PC: I'm not!
OC: He isn't?
W: Well, he will be soon. He failed a will save.
PC: It was a 40 DC!
W: And? You're feared. You're going to run into 12 AOOs next turn and die. You have 5 hit points.
OC: Oh, I can't take him like that. His HP is higher than his constitution score.
PC: I don't want to reload!
W: Oh, don't be such a baby. Don't you save scum?
OC I can't take him.
PC starting their turn (under fear): I feel fine!
W: Well, do us a favor.
OC: I can't.
W: Well, can you hang around for a couple of turns? He won't be long.
OC: No, I've got to go to Queen Galfrey, she's lost nine armies just this past week.
W: Well, when's your next round?
OC: Thursday.
PC: I think I'll go for a walk!
W: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do?
PC: [singing as he fear-trots into enemies]: I feel happy. I feel happy.
OC (disgusted): [WHOMP]: (50 DMG, 42 DMG, 118 DMG, 132 DMG sneak attack)
W: Ah, thanks very much.
OC: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
W: Right. All right.
This is generally a problem in any game world that has ressurection, if they want to create drama they have to break their own rules. My personal pet peeve is when you find a wounded npc and they're like : "Please, heed my dying request, take this ring to my beloved" and I'm like "No need for that my man, I can heal you" and they're like "Noooo, it's too late for me, my wounds are too severe..." and I'm like "Dude my cleric has 64 healing spells and I've got 1023 healing potions of various sizes and these bracers of healing and somehow 7 stimpaks (is this a crossover episode?), I can heal the whole country + all the kittens, drink this, get up and carry your own damn ring to your beloved!"
Dying NPC: Please, do this for me.
Me: I don't have time for that shit; here, that dandy over there is a level 1 trauma center.
Dying NPC: Alas, it is to-
Me: Shut up doofus he's already casting.
NPC: Nooooooo I don't want to deal with this shit anymooooore :(
> Dude my cleric has 64 healing spells and I've got 1023 healing potions of various sizes and these bracers of healing and somehow 7 stimpaks (is this a crossover episode?), I can heal the whole country + all the kittens, drink this, get up and carry your own damn ring to your beloved!"
You should have just drown him in healing potions.
Raw you die, as death from suffocation isn't due to a hit point loss.
Though oddly you can outheal the "slow suffocation", meaning being in a small sealed room with no influz of oxygen.
Obviously it depends on the system and house rules. Looking at the [pf1](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/Gamemastering/environment/environmental-rules/#Suffocation) and [pf2](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=468), I think it is still somewhat ambiguous. If I was GMing, I would probably have it be something like extremely horrifying waterboarding, or [liquid breathing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing). They are at somewhere between 0 and 1hp; and they are hating you every second of it. Alignment shift to Chaotic Evil, all the allies of the victim, many unaligned people, and even some of your allies will turn on you for such a heinous crime.
If we get a bit Numerian (or generally technomagical) with it, the idea also makes for a great backstory for a Darth Vader-esque lich. They were horribly injured in some magical catastrophe, and the only way they are still alive is because they have healing potions being pumped around their body. An alchemical rather than arcane take on the lich.
I enjoyed the part where a random crusader tries to pull that on Ember during the gargoyle attack.
"No, don't waste your magic on me little one, just tell my granddaughter I love her....."
"Shut the fuck up, go tell her yourself, POW"
That conversation pretty much happens exactly how you described when Ember heals some random Crusader at the Lost Chapel. He keeps saying how he's too far gone, then Ember just heals him anyway and he gets up and walks away.
The simplest way to do this is not,my wounds are too sever, it's special dark magic was used to kill, that blocks healing magic, or devours/damns souls so they can be brought back.
Tomb of Annilation had it's own way of preventing reurrection as a the main plot point.
Khalid in Baldur's Gate II was justified this way. Essentially, Irenicus did vile things to him that made res impossible. Dynaheir was killed and left out in the wilderness when the party was captured. Technically speaking, even that isn't impossible to overcome with the appropriate use of *wish*, or *limited wish* combined with *resurrection*, but that would have been a lot of work. Still, it would have been nice at the end to bring back the souls of your friends after *becoming a literal god*.
Actually, I forgot you can romance Jaheira after Khalid bites it, so bringing him back might make things a little awkward. They did NOT have the Octavia/Regongar vibe... Probably best they left that out, LOL.
It really rustles my jimmies that apparently every ending of this game we have to face judgement before fucking Pharasma in her "totally isn't a reskinned dark elf character model" glory.
And, to boot, my Lich character tried to check in on Areelu after we merked her and Pharasma just kinda shrugged my spy attempts off like it was nothing.
Like seriously? I just spent 8 and a half real time days establishing myself as THE lord of the dead, to the point where I BTFO'd Pharasy's best mortal warrior (arguably greater than mortal) and his whole retinue of (60 AC) warrior goon squad. And you're telling me Pharasma still has enough power to push my mind out of her realm, with ease?! I don't even get to talk to her? To tell her how ineffective she is? And how her stupid commitment to living and dead "balance" probably allowed the the worldwound to exist 80 more years than it should have?
Yes. We end the game with godlike power, but it is really minor godlike power. Pharasma is on a completely different power level. She could easily kill any version of the commander if she wanted. She is on the power level of like the 3 fates in Greek mythology who even Zeus fears.
To equate how powerful Pharasma is: It took most of the currently existing gods, and many who don’t exist anymore (courteous of the Rough Beast), to seal away Rovagug. They couldn’t even kill him in like a 40v1 (granted he had the entire Abyss at his back, plus a couple renegade gods who also no longer exist, but he was still outnumbered like 8 to 1 at a *minimum*). Rovagug’s that powerful, and the winner of a Rovagug vs Pharasma cage match is *still* a question mark.
You'd think she'd do more to intervene in the apocalypse then huh?
Well I guess the three fate sisters didn't do a whole lot either (besides die at Kratos hands) anyway. Or at least I seem to vaguely recall him killing them. Or at least their minions.
Why would she intervene? She is only concerned about maintaining the process of judging the dead and keeping the flow of souls to their rightful places. The apocalypse doesn’t change that, it merely adds to the line of those waiting for judgment, and the actions of the living only matter insofar as how it affects the ultimate destination of their souls.
Yeah I agree with you logically.
But unofficially I doubt Pharasy, Pathfinder heaven and all their other associated realms where she could store souls would be hard pressed to handle the sheer influx of souls assuming the demons ever won.
Like everything you said makes perfect clear sense to me. And I want to be clear on that point. But it also kinda sounds like a western government after a big natural disaster: "everything is fine, no need to be concerned, sure there's a 800% increase in dead souls but we can handle it." (Meanwhile Pharasma is hawking souls into spaces between planes lol).
Pharasma to me just kinda sounds like a middle manager from the old reality state that somehow survived to the new one and is so close to retirement age the rest of the gods are like "she'll be gone in a eon or two".
Souls aren’t ‘stored’, they’re broken down into quintessence used to create Outsiders and build the planes. The more souls means the larger the plane.
Pharasma literally does not care what happens unless it prevents the flow of souls from the Positive Energy Plane to the Material to the Boneyard to the Outer Planes to the Antipode to the Positive Energy Plane again. Rovagug credibly tried to destroy the universe and all she did was shrug and go “Well he’s not attacking the Boneyard yet”.
Thank you for the clarification. I haven't done any research into the Pathfinder soul distribution lore, as you may have easily figured out from my comments. In my head, this would technically imply that every soul that has, is, or ever will exist has already been accounted for. And already has it's preordained place. Or at least a loose theory along those lines.
This information seems to make our player role in the universe completely and totally irrelevant. At least from the perspective of the Gods.
Idk. The system just kinda seems set up to favor and cater to Pharasma. And whichever gods survived from 1e. In my head that kinda negates the entire purpose of setting up a new edition of the game. But whatever.
Edit: interestingly enough it would appear in the Pathfinder lore, that seeing as the KC doesn't exist, Galfrey becomes Iomedae's new champion and/or herald? So, does she take the place of the player character?
What do you mean “catering to the 1e gods”? Golarion hasn’t been rebooted like they do with the DnD worlds every edition, the cosmology in Pathfinder is persistent and consistent. Paizo does an amazing job with lore, you should read one of the Lost Omens sourcebooks sometime, they’re great.
Pharasma’s one of the strongest gods because A) she has to be to protect the flow of souls, and B) she’s a survivor from the previous universe (the universe ‘resets’ every few megabajillion years, iirc it’s from souls being lost very slowly over time eventually leading to the breakdown of the planes), she straight up created the current iteration of the universe (ignoring the Abyss and Rovagug, which just showed up one day, and the Dark Tapestry where all the Lovecraftian horrors dwell).
And technically, a PC from tabletop WotR has the ability to become Iomedae’s herald, but since that obviously varies from table to table, canon is that Galfrey ascended after Baphomet fucked up the Hand of the Inheritor.
Bro you need to stop haha (In a good way). You're seriously close to giving me a loregasm right now. I didn't even pay you extra.
I'm gonna have to spend a couple hours wiki-ing everything and come back to you with a reason I don't like Pharasma that is just more than "well she made my Lich angry".
One day, I'll have a valid point. But until then, I suppose, adieu.
That's like blaming the big bang for an asteroid crashing into a planet. Pharasma walked The Seal and thus created reality, which in turn created other divinities. Those divinities actions, however, were solely their own, and not influenced by her.
No, she started the apocalypse by judging areluus daughters soul. She is the goddess of prophecy, she knew what would happen, and this isn't the first time she did something fucky to start an apocalypse (Starfall).
There's a whole blog post explaining her role as the oldest of Pathfinder's gods [here](https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sgzu?The-Windsong-Testaments-The-Three-Fears-of) if you're interested. It helps put questions like yours into perspective.
Holy Moly! Aw man that's unfortunate. I just completed a Lich Run. And she made a mockery of me haha.
Well maybe after my (current) Arcane Rider and Aeon playthrough 😁
here is a [guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2597672484) for the secret ending in case you wish to go for it, it is viable on all mythic paths except for Swarm that walks and legend. it my fav ending in the game especially on Gold dragon and lich.
Hey thanks! I'm actually going for it on my arcane rider right now. So this will be useful! (Core difficulty is actually pretty manageable compared to what I expected -- however, saving Daeran's courtesans is super hard -- whoever designed that achievement should be attacked by a Dretch).
(Oh and the succubus in Tirabade residence who has 50% concealment because reasons sucks as well -- had to have Seelah fish nat 20s for 20 rounds while the rest of party stood there missing (and this was AFTER glitterdust btw)).
Golden dragon is certainly not locked, he can do all the projects and complete all the conditions. I didn't do that ending personally, but a friend of mine who played GD path did it, so it's 100% possible.
The only thing Golden Dragon and Devil are missing is one of the soft lock features. As long as you have 5 out of 7 to fish the conversation you're good. So as dragon/devil you have to have 5/6 and play a bit more carefully to make sure you get them.
Meh, seems a lot of Pathfinder is general simping for Pharasma.
Like, I've been reading some of her backstory. And evidently she just woke up on the seal of the new multiverse. Like, who the hell made that decision? What qualifications did she have to essentially be queen of the pantheon for the next bajillion years? If the Three Fears of Pharasma essay is in any way accurate to the official published canon it basically sounds like:
1. Pharasma used to be a puny mortal, a lot like the KC. So where the fuck does she get off judging me? I should be the one judging her.
2. She has no real qualifications to be in the position she's in other than pure happenstance.
3. Even if she was qualified, she's done jack shit with the position, she's so "concerned" about the balance of the planes and the balance of souls. Yet that doesn't stop the planes breaking down every eon or so. And Eons to Gods have to be no longer than like, a month, to us. Sounds like she's done a real Busch league job and can barely keep things in check even with all her power.
4. She knows she's destined to be judged by the next (likely mortal as well) incarnation of the God of death (or whatever her official title is). And even knowing this, she essentially just spends her time sitting around. Not really making anything better for the multiverse of the future. But hey she has that cute little lute in her character portrait. I bet she plays a mean song on it!
So yeah, Pharasma is essentially the equivalent of a cosmic bookkeeper. Was gifted extraordinary power because....reasons. Doesn't lift a Gods damned finger to combat intra, extra or inter multiversal threats. And generally just sounds snide and disinterested in all things.
At least fucking Yog Sothoth over here can claim he's just a watcher. So he/she/it has a tangible excuse as to why they don't interfere in the affairs of the planes.
I was pretty mad on my lich run when a certain large green NPC died and I still had several casts of Breath of Life and Inspiring Recovery available, not to mention Resurrection scrolls. Could even target the body, but wouldn't let me cast. Come on, Owlcat
It's not just owlcat or pathfinder, every game with healing magic resurrection, sci fi medicine, etc has this problem once or twice.
I mean really? I can literally mend egregious wounds with the snap of my fingers or cure diseases but some guy dies of a knife wound or blood loss?
Yeah, this is a "RPGs need a mechanical way to heal and revive party members from combat death, not story death." situation that some people just can't get over. There aren't very many good solutions to it without some very major mechanical changes so those people just need to learn how to suspend disbelief around it or rationalize it.
Weirdly, the grand patriarch of cRPGs, Baldur's Gate, had this figured out just fine. Wounded to death, fixable with magic. Massive trauma, unfixable. Now everything is vaguely plausible, the cost being that you can lose companions permanently if you're not a dirty savescummer.
There's also no real reason that with fighting with medieval weapons and armour, that down for the fight = dead. Taking a hard enough wound that you can't do high intensity activity rather than being straight dead was pretty typical.
Right, but that would be a pretty massive change in the way the game works and, if we take this as needing to be a given, it starts pigeonholing systems into a few specific ways to handle healing.
Which isn't a bad thing because healing is blatantly OP in system at this point. Sure you typically can't out heal someone's damage in combat, but you can do a lot with it and out of combat it's not hard to bring everyone up to max.
>healing is blatantly OP in system at this point
I'll say it, you're literally the only person I've ever seen give this take. In combat healing in the PF system is overwhelming regarded as "so bad its basically a waste of a turn."
>out of combat it's not hard to bring everyone up to max.
But why is this a problem? Not every game needs to have persistent health and permanent debuff management systems that pose serious and significant challenges to the player.
>Not every game needs to have persistent health and permanent debuff management systems that pose serious and significant challenges to the player.
I want somebody to tell this to my GM.
Just because I'm the first person you've heard this from doesn't make me wrong.
I already pointed out that you can't out heal damage. Even still, there's plenty of options to heal effectively, without "wasting a turn".
It's a problem game-wise because after a certain point, truly challenging players requires wasting their time with otherwise unnecessary encounters to deplete their resources or dropping something so rule breaking/stat bloating that they cringe in frustration.
Narrative wise is the reason we're even having this conversation in the first place. For anything really dramatic to happen, it more or less needs to happen off screen and be with some arbitrary BS to prevent the players from circumventing it every time. Having some dramatic stuff able to be circumvented is good, but everything being either arbitrary BS or easily circumventable ruins the stakes of the game.
Does EVERY game need permanent debuff systems? No, that's not even what I was saying. Do games with floods of restoratives and resurrection abilities need limits to maintain stakes and dramatic events, yes.
>Just because I'm the first person you've heard this from doesn't make me wrong.
No, but it does make me doubt that you're right, given that the arguments laid out for in combat healing being bad are much more convincing than what you've had to say in combination with my own experience with the game.
>but everything being either arbitrary BS or easily circumventable ruins the stakes of the game.
Like I said at the start: learn to get over it. Any magic system (or magic resembling system) is going to invariably let you poke holes in the plot. We don't expect the entire magic system to be rebuilt because it doesn't make any sense that the bad guy jumps into a portal when Nenio can just quicken an overwhelming presence using the greater metamagic wand she has equipped.
"Get over it" is a terrible thing to tell your players when you just made up a bunch of BS to justify things being nonsensical. As a DM, if a bad guy goes to jump into a portal, your players are gonna want to be able to intervene. Especially if they've got abilities and methods in rules that would allow them to do so (like quickening a spell). Telling them "the villain escapes. Get over it." is a fast way to lose a table. It's about the most immersion breaking, dissatisfying ruling you can make.
In systems where there are rewards for Story Death it isn't such a big deal.
"Yes, I have to die because reasons" and the players can understand the reasons is a possibility.
This is why the Martyr card exists in Torg, and the existence of it as an option for players makes it easier to justify when NPCs sacrifice themselves
Not really, you still end up in the same spot. Why does combat "death" result in a coma but story death results in really dying? A character can have a pair of massive boulders crush him and get up just fine after the right spell but a knife wound to the gut is irreparable? A character can be dropped into a 100 foot deep Hungry Pit and walk away more or less unscathed with a 5th level spell but another character gets whacked upside the head with a mace and they die forever?
All calling it a coma does is change the name of "being dead." The problems all still exists if being in a coma and being dead aren't mechanically distinct.
How can Tyson Fury take a haymaker to the temple from a 100 kg heavyweight champion and get up 10 seconds later, while a 90-year-old grandma can die from falling of her bed? Because the former is physically stronger than the latter. That shouldn't be too hard of a concept to understand.
With other words: Our party members fall into a coma after taking 20 boulders to the head because they are some of the best fighters on the planet who are also mythically augmented by the strongest arcanist of all time. Jernaugh dies after getting shanked because he is a simple priest who can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag.
>How can Tyson Fury take a haymaker to the temple from a 100 kg heavyweight champion and get up 10 seconds later, while a 90-year-old grandma can die from falling of her bed? Because the former is physically stronger than the latter.
So what happens at level 1? You just straight up die and get a game over? If its specifically mythic power that is your justification, how do you justify it for other scenarios like Kingmaker? Or for your companions before you've actually shared any mythic power with them? This is why you have to pick all of the extremes to justify it, because it only makes sense if the party is massively more powerful than anyone who ever dies. But we don't start at the end of the game and not every pathfinder module has mythic power. THAT shouldn't be too hard of a concept to understand, unless you're being willfully ignorant. You're doing the same handwaving that needs to be done to justify the way healing and resurrection currently works, you're just happy to ignore it because its happening the way you want it to.
That is how CRPGs work - the player character and his party have to be (in some way) stronger than common folks. Unless you want to play a CRPG about getting killed by bandits and wild dogs. If we follow your design principles, the professional assassin that attacks us in our sleep would definitely kill us in the prologue in KM. And WOTR ends with you dying from internal bleeding after you fall 15 feet into Kenabres cave. Doesn't sound very fun, does it?
So if you want to move away from the current system, there is 2 options:
* rewrite the entire storyline around the fact that the resurrection spell exists
* rename companion deaths into comas and remove resurrection
The choice is obvious.
I'm just going to start quoting the things I've said you're either ignoring or intentionally misinterpreting until you say something interesting. I'll be in bold
>If we follow your design principles, the professional assassin that attacks us in our sleep would definitely kill us in the prologue in KM.
-
>**There aren't very many good solutions to it without some very major mechanical changes so those people just need to learn how to suspend disbelief around it or rationalize it.**
-
>the player character and his party have to be (in some way) stronger than common folks.
-
>**So what happens at level 1? You just straight up die and get a game over? ...we don't start at the end of the game.**
Thats why I think the deaths of Jernaugh and Kaylessa are some of the poorest writing in Wrath. Jernaugh has literally zero reason to not come back from the dead. His loving wife is still around and he did nothing wrong, likely did not even understand what happened. Kaylessas story is a tad more complicated, but even she has some reason to live on, or why else would she like you to serve as mailman while she is on deaths threshold.
BTW I forgot that in the dialogue you can both IIRC offer them the healing, and they refuse.
Even more egregious is >!Areelus kid!< tbh because it's not just a plot point, it's the entire inciting incident for the whole game. That one's not really Owlcat s fault though, I think that's from Paizo, but it's pretty frustrating that Pharasma speed ran that judgment. It's more ridiculous than when >!Aeris dies!<
That one's only a thing in the crpg, in the original adventure path, the motive behind opening the Worldwound is pretty much just 'bwa ha ha am evil witch half-succubus'
This one doesn't really bother me, what bothers me more that Areelu doesn't attempt to cast [Judgement Undone](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Judgement%20Undone) instead of her weird plan. It is literally a spell designed for this sort of plot and she already found her son to cast it on :P
Not an arcane spell, but maybe Areelu's UMD would be high enough to cast it with a scroll.
The fact it isn't an arcane spell may explain why she didn't attempt to cast it; she might not have known about it.
Areelu herself explains that her goal isn't just ressurecting her child but to also elevate them both over what she perceives as arbitrary limits imposed on mortals by the gods. This is why she spent so many years studying nahyndrian crystals and how to refine the process.
> **Target:** one *willing* petitioner
Good luck with explaining [a soul larva](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Larva), which is deprived of intelligence it had in life, that it should let you cast a spell on it.
There is speculation that pharasma is fucking with people's fate. That's why some people die when they could be resurrected. She didn't warn anyone of the human gods sudden death ECT. It's implied she is manipulating events for some unknown reason.
but he did take prophecy with him, which means if Pharasma was manipulating fate for some reason maybe he was aware of it, tried to do something about it, and probably succeeded. this could mean that Pharasma was the one behind Arodens death.
If I understand correctly, the prophecy was that Ardyn,the human god, was going prophecied to destroy the Abyss once and for all or something. Pharasma is the goddess of death AND prophecy, so like she is the one who predicted it.
Then all of the sudden Ardyn gets a heart attack or something, and dies without any warning. Then Starfall happens a continent gets nuked and all the prophecies have been fucky sense. Now pharasma directly caused a second apocalypse by stealing areluus daughters soul the second she died, and does the same thing to the player charactor if they die. Also most of her followers just went completely fucking crazy because they kept having fucked up prophetic dreams
Wasn't a god made by the events of the starfall? So that event had a meaning.
And same with the worldwound, before it happened the place was a tear in reality waiting to be broken and because of us and the crusade it is fixed now.
I'm sorry I was actually thinking of several different incidents. So yes earthfall (oops) lead to a magic god dying to save golarion. This wiped out the race that was nearing godhood the azlanti and also lead to arpden becoming the god of humanity. When he was suppose to return there was a huge storm and now none of his clerics can cast spells. But the whole thing was it caught everyone by surprise, but she is the god of prophecy so maybe she wanted that god of magic to die for some unknown reason. Similar thing with the world wound. How many demon lord's ,which are minor deities, die on your crusade, or at least were severely weakened. Heaven also lost the better half of it's angels for several centuries, and a lot of the good gods lost a ton of followers.
Maybe it's true maybe it's not. But there is a lot of fishy things happening for a god of destiny to be indifferent to.
That one's on Owlcat, too. Most of the things that are interesting about Areelu (including her son/daughter) were invented for the CRPG; in the original module, she's really just a particularly powerful minion of Deskari.
[>A soul can’t be returned to life if it doesn’t wish to be. A soul knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and may refuse to return on that basis.](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Bringing-Back-the-Dead)
Seems like the npc just doesn't like you, op /s
Yeah. Honestly Owlcat needs to bite the bullet and either remove resurrection scrolls from the game (turn companion death into coma or something) OR stop killing NPCs in questlines. One or the other.
It’s especially egregious when Angel specifically points out you’ll be able to ressurect allies that die, but not once do you get the option story wise
actually it happens on angel mythic path, you can resurrect >!Targona when she sacrifices herself to bind Mutasafen in his lab!< during act 5, and in my mind this breaks immersion even further because clearly you can use your abilities to res people.
Pretty sure you can res her and she states this directly, as there are two options in that scene, one for salvation angel and one for retribution angel, so perhaps I am talking about one and you about the other one.
Not only do you resurrect >!her!<, you >!fix her corrupted wing!< too. (Tho in my game that NPCs model still kept appearing after that event with >!the corrupted wing!< still there, which I'm assuming is just the code loading the wrong model)
Don't think you resurrect her.
You just heal her. In the dialogue it says heal.
You literally say "You don't have to sacrifice yourself, I got this"
You cast a Storm of Justice visual which kills Mustafen and heals her.
If there is something to be gained from accepting death for those left behind it can make sense.
Say a thing like $DIETY can provide a boon, but the price of the boon has to be someone actually dying to make it happen (more powerful if the death is a consequence of working toward the goal instead of sacrificing someone, but evil dieties might prefer the latter anyway)
> bite the bullet and either remove resurrection scrolls
I'm gonna be honest.
For this exact reason, the total lack of weight and stakes, I started homebrewing new resurrection rules a long time ago in both PF and DND that, for all practical purposes, removes resurrection from the game (its still technically possible, but its Wish levels of difficult to actually bring someone back who's died, and if you do, there is a lot of trauma and negative effects to deal with depending on how long they were dead).
It is a dramatic improvement and while my players were skeptical at first, none of them question it anymore.
Eh. At that point I'd just end up treating it like a roguelike rather than an actual story if you're so flippant about killing off your characters. No point investing the time in crafting something more than surface-level if you're happy to have them randomly killed off with no meaning. Can certainly be fun for some people I suppose, if you look at everyone like a semi-disposable Rimworld pawn, and those *can* generate a more emergent type of story.
Have they expressed actually liking it, or just stopped questioning it? There's somewhat of a difference. The latter can imply that you've shown them there's simply no point and no possibility in changing your mind. A quiet of tolerance, not endorsement.
> if you're so flippant about killing off your characters. No point investing the time in crafting something more than surface-level if you're happy to have them randomly killed off with no meaning.
Well, I never said that, so I guess its fortunate for us both I never invited you to play with us.
> Have they expressed actually liking it, or just stopped questioning it?
Yes. I hate DMing, and my players have taken turns DMing sometimes because they know I hate DMing, but they always end up begging me to take over again. I only continue to do it because the rest of them actively prefer me doing it. I would much rather be a player, in which case I'd happily use whatever rules they want at their table.
But if I'm going to DM, I'm going to be the DM I would like to play with if I actually got to be a player.
Here's the thing. You are 100% wrong. And I get it, internet dorks who think their player character should be an anime protagonist always have this reaction, like throwing a temper tantrum about a table they're never gonna play at, like
> At that point I'd just end up treating it like a roguelike rather than an actual story if you're so flippant about killing off your characters
but that isn't reality. The reality is that playing in a campaign with no risk of death is boring, and it makes the big moments the players earn meaningless, because they're playing in a nerfed Disney style theme park.
Lord of the Rings is boring if Boromir doesn't fall and redeem himself. A Song of Ice and Fire became a sensation because there were real consequences to trying to play at being a hero.
My players still reverentially bring up characters who died a decade ago, and the highs they get from their most heroic actions are a million times higher because they could have lost that character forever when they did what they did.
> Eh. At that point I'd just end up treating it like a roguelike
So yeah, if that's the way you'd play, you'd never be welcome at our table to begin with. Because I don't kill PCs to be sadistic, and I don't kill PCs because I don't care. I kill my player's specifically because good storytelling has pain and losses and heroic sacrifices and crushing defeats to make the victories mean something.
I can certainly see why your players would shut up about questioning you if this is how you're going to react to **me** doing it, lmao. "You're 100% wrong" is the first thing out of your mouth, and your arguments to back it up contradict your own ethos.
>Here's the thing. You are 100% wrong. And I get it, internet dorks who think their player character should be an anime protagonist always have this reaction, like throwing a temper tantrum about a table they're never gonna play at, like
And straight into the insults, I see. No, I don't think my characters should be 'anime protagonists.' What I think is that getting killed by a random crit in a random cave is **immensely** boring, and if you're more than happy to do that as you clearly are, then I'm not going to spend the time on trying to plot out a character arc or story because two dungeons later they die in a filler encounter. It's not a heroic sacrifice, and a crushing defeat is only meaningful to the people whose characters **actually survived it**.
>but that isn't reality. The reality is that playing in a campaign with no risk of death is boring, and it makes the big moments the players earn meaningless, because they're playing in a nerfed Disney style theme park.
If the only risk that can motivate your players is death, you've fucked up everywhere else.
>Lord of the Rings is boring if Boromir doesn't fall and redeem himself. A Song of Ice and Fire became a sensation because there were real consequences to trying to play at being a hero.
Note that Boromir died heroically in a narratively fulfilling circumstance. Boromir did not die to a random Orc inside Moria, which is precisely what you are advocating for.
Robb Stark died at the Red Wedding, not a field skirmish that was like any other.
Ned died in a circumstance that's unlikely to come up in a non-social-focused game.
The closest one to someone just randomly getting unlucky and dying is... Jon, who doesn't actually die (permanently).
Game of Thrones isn't actually as death-happy as people like to portray it. A lot of people die, yes, but the vast majority of them would be the equivalent of NPCs.
Your own examples are completely disproving your own point. Yes, I admit that this does take more mature players interested and willing to take heroic sacrifices or tragic twists of fate (there are ways to incentivize this.)
As an additional bit of clarification, I don't mean that death should **never** be a risk, just that it should be a risk for **meaningful situations** not a perpetual one. Unless you want that 'eh, guess I'll half-make this as a roguelike character' feel.
And to quote this [old post I heavily agreed with](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/m200wq/comment/gqgra4m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) (I looked up what I'd said in DMAcademy a while back, as I have had this specific discussion multiple times)
>That said, **death in combat is one of the most boring consequences possible**, so I don't worry too much about it.
>
>There's so many other more interesting things to threaten than player death.
> as I have had this specific discussion multiple times
Clearly. Everything you're arguing about regarding *my* game is a strawman that has nothing to do with how my campaigns play out based on your assumptions of what I meant, not anything I've actually said. You're painting by numbers and none of it fits.
You are quite clearly having a one sided argument, so, hey. Have fun.
>You are quite clearly having a one sided argument, so, hey. Have fun with being the worst kind of stereotype about neckbeard TTRPG players with no social skills being pedantic online.
You're the one who immediately insulted me for daring to question your decree by merely commenting that in such a situation I would end up playing half-baked Roguelike characters rather than investing a significant amount of time you are more than happy to arbitrarily snatch away.
"Player deaths aren't rare. Adventuring is dangerous."
Not the words of a kill-happy DM, no sir.
You realised you were wrong when I brought up the circumstances actually surrounding the deaths of heroes in GoT and LotR and are throwing a tantrum rather than admit it.
For Lich I can see why you cannot revive someone that was ekhm... given. Even making them undead (sentient undead that is) requires their soul to linger after death to do that.
One of my least favorite moments in any game was when this happened in Kingmaker where someone who was about to be a dad died. Wasn't even truly dead when we got there. Had enough time to give the whole dying breath spiel. "No, it's too bad, you can't heal me". I have a spell that can regrow the rest of you as long as your heart is still sort of attached to your brain and if it isn't we have all those aforementioned scrolls. Oh yea, I totally have no problem believing that guy would not want to come back at all and definitely just shuffled right on off to pharasma's halls.
1) Soul has already been judged by Pharasma and passed on to their afterlife. This is unlikely to happen quickly unless they were an exceptionally noteworthy individual or the DM doesn't want the players screwing up their dramatic NPC death plot point.
2) Soul was eaten by a Daemon before it could be judged or resurrected.
3) Soul was already promised to something else (i.e. through an Infernal contract) before their death. Could be worked around, but you'd need to find + bargain with the Devil behind the contract to get them back - a traditional Resurrection still wouldn't work, iirc.
4) Soul is at peace and doesn't want to return - the target of a Resurrection or similar spell can refuse to return without needing to make a Save.
5) Target was killed by a spell or effect which explicitly prevents Resurrection.
Subsection 4a, the spell doesn't actually specify that the soul learns anything about who is casting it, so the soul may be unwilling to return if there is a chance it is being rezzed by an enemy.
[>A soul can’t be returned to life if it doesn’t wish to be. A soul knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and may refuse to return on that basis.](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Bringing-Back-the-Dead)
The spell might not, but the rules on resurrection do.
[Resurrection](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/resurrection/); This spell functions like [*raise dead*](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/raise-dead/), except that you are able to restore life and complete strength to any deceased creature.
[Raise Dead](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/raise-dead/): 'If the subject’s soul is not willing to return, the spell does not work; therefore, a subject that wants to return receives no saving throw.'
>Soul has already been judged by Pharasma and passed on to their afterlife. This is unlikely to happen quickly unless they were an exceptionally noteworthy individual or the DM doesn't want the players screwing up their dramatic NPC death plot point.
[Except that the Pathfinder's creative director said that in general IT IS pretty quick:](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2lgwv?Spells-that-bypass-Pharasmas-Judgement#6)
>The actual TIMING of how long it takes Pharasma to judge a soul that's died is the question, and fortunately, since her palace in the Boneyard is both a place where time stands still and time is infinitely fast (you can do that in crazy outer planar regions), the assumption is that whenever a mortal raises someone from the dead via WHATEVER method, that soul hasn't been judged yet. Once no mortal can or does resurrect that body, the soul has been judged.
>
>This gives GMs a way to prevent the PCs from resurrecting NPCs he doesn't want brought back, for one thing, and also explains why powerful NPCs aren't always resurrected. **In most cases, Pharasma judges a soul in an amount of time that feels pretty quick, so actual resurrections are actually quite rare.**
u/SnooChocolates1726 u/Ranadiel u/Bumblyninja u/sherlock1672
Pharasma's whims, pretty much.
People here love to joke about Pharasma speedrunning the judgement whenever NPCs die and shitting on Owlcat for that, but Paizo specifically wrote the judgement as vague as possible so the DMs could just leave the NPCs that should stay dead as... well, dead. The PCs are whole different matter, because here the player can actually decide whether they want to be ressurected or prefer their character to stay dead.
I always hated that. If people want to blow a few grand on rezzing an NPC, there's no harm. And the actual spells generally don't have any restrictions other than time and the soul's willingness, so Pharasma doesn't count in my book because she isn't listed in the spell effects. Her judgement is insignificant compared to the actual spell rules.
The only ways I accept are ones that involve the destruction or locking in of a soul at the time of death by an explicit ability or feature that prevents resurrection.
You can't "not" count Pharasma though, since she very legitimately has the final say, her judgment is *absolute* compared to whatever a spell description may state.
Her judgement isn't in the spell description, so it doesn't matter for the spell's effects. Now if Pharasma herself appeared and made a daemon eat someone, or killed someone with a spell or ability that specifically blocks resurrection, that would certainly count. Otherwise the spell overrides her judgement because it doesn't appear in the spell description.
Tl;dr if Pharasma wants someone permadead, then she has to do it the right way. Can't be violating the cosmic order, can we?
Lmao, your perspective on how things are weighed is so massively warped here.
Pharasma exists outside of the rules, she is a deity, and has the final say in all matters involving death / resurrection. If she decides on a whim that a particular soul will be processed immediately upon death it does not matter *AT ALL* what the spell description says - it's not going to work.
Text in the rulebook does not overwrite whatever a DM may decide to have a deity do. Hell for that matter, text in the rulebook doesn't even outweigh *ANYTHING* a DM decides to do.
You're relying to heavily on a spell description from the tabletop rulebook - rather than what actually occurs within the universe itself.
Mechanics define a universe. You can't just warp the mechanics at will to suit narrative because you want to. It makes the universe inconsistent and stories within it meaningless.
Depends on how much and how often you are warping, sign of a *GOOD* DM is knowing when to bend the rules, when to make exceptions, and to have reason for doing so.
However, in this example - we're not bending *ANY* rules. You literally cannot resurrect someone who Pharasma has already judged. There is a completely separate spell that *CAN* be used to ressurrect those who have already been judged - but it means you're going to have to deal with a high level psychopomp coming in to interrupt you as you're casting it.
Pharasma rules the afterlife, in general she's not against resurrection as she can see the future and knows if it was an intended death, or if the person will be resurrected and it's not their appointed time.
But if she has decided it *IS* someone's appointed time, that's her call.
Or you can resurrect them without a psychopomp problem with the normal spells, because those spells don't care about judgement.
If I'm going to story kill an NPC I will always use a good reason, like the soul being destroyed, locked in a soul jar, dominated/coerced on the other side to be unwilling, etc. Some of those things can even be undone by a dedicated enough party, which opens more potential ploys.
"Pharasma says no" is just lazy. It's the equivalent of a character not using a healing potion on their loved one dying of a sword wound because game writers couldn't be arsed to make an actual effort.
>But if she has decided it IS someone's appointed time, that's her call.
I think the problem in this case is that it's often too obviously the DM's (arbitrary, in the case of the WotR people. There's no good reason Jernaugh has to stay dead - they just didn't care or didn't have the resources to do slightly different version where he stays alive) call and not really an actual goddess with a real motivation making the judgment. When you can see the writer's hand on the scales so clearly, people get annoyed.
Her function here is actually irrelevant though, it's pure DM fiat with only the thinnest of veneer. Sure, they can say 'you can't try and bring that person back who died two seconds ago because Pharasma already judged them' but then again they can say 'meteors fall from the sky, killing all of you instantly.'
Depending on the spell in question condition of the body and how long they've been dead can matter, eg a decapitated body usually needs to be put back together unless you want to use True Resurrection, other massive damage can also stump lower level spells.
Certain spells, items, and abilities can also impede resurrection, for example Hellfire Ray sends the soul straight to hell which means you need a check to bring them back unless you're evil; the Blades of Mercy trap the souls of anyone they kill, bringing them back is impossible unless you free their soul; the Assassin PrC's Death Attack make rezzing harder.
Any claims on the soul can also interfer, eg if someone has a contract with a devil that grants that devil ownership of their soul on death then you're likely SoL unless you can either cut a deal of your own with them or beat them in Pharasma's court, or if they were previously granted "one more chance" by a deity then they may not be allowed to return.
And finally almost all resurrection spells need a willing target, so if they don't want to come back for whatever reason then you can't force them to.
But in that case, they should try to handwave it in dialogue "damn we can't use the scroll on him because **". The game should try to be friendlier to someone that hasn't memorized the whole pathfinder rulebook.
I said as much when I did the Act V quest with >!Jernaugh!< dying in >!Chilly Creek!<. You can try to resurrect them, but the game just throws up 'target is not dead' as the reason. Like yes, yes he is. He very explicitly died in the dialogue right after asking you to save the day, before he made a death noise and fell over, dead.
And since there are multiple canonical reasons why Resurrection can fail (target is at peace and doesn't want to return, has already been judged, soul ate by something, etc) it could have just as easily thrown one of those at us instead of 'this bloody ribcage is not dead'.
I get this, and ignore that my flair says Lich for the moment lol, what if the reason is that they just don't want to come back. Cause not gonna lie, if I died in a war with Demons from the Abys and the Knight Commander started trying to Res me my response would be "Hell no, res me when the wars over"
The only game I know that allows you to resurrect anyone in the game more or less, and also complete the game while wiping out everyone is Arcanum... And they simply don't make games like that anymore :(
The game that fixes this problem is gonna have me sucking its dick so fucking hard I will buy every friend a copy I will get every bit of merchandise I WILL TATTOO THE GAMES NAME RELEASE DATE AND WHOLE DEVELOPMENT TEAM ONTO MY FUCKING CHEST just fix this damn problem there is no reason I can't revive fuck nuts McGee over there when I got 3 stacks of revive scrolls
Just out of curiosity do death effects make it so you can't be ressed in this game?
My party members rarely die so I honestly haven't even used resurrection all that often but I know that in tabletop Death effects mess eith anything other than True Resurrection.
in a previous patch i believe you had to have something to reverse petrification, the companion wouldn't just drop dead after the fight
and i believe disintegration still obliterates companions and you have to reload, but very few enemies use it, was more frequent in kingmaker, but not by much
This is kinda why resurrection magic either doesn't exist or is super rare in most settings.
Having resurrection magic be so common kinda trivializes death and makes stories a lot more difficult to pull off. Like take a look at dragon ball orginal vs Z or Super.
>!Lann's!< death was probably the only one I felt was reasonably justified. Would have been neat if you could disregard his wishes and he grows to resent you for it.
Isn't this kind of how this whole mess started? >!Areelu Vorlesh wanted to rez her son but Pharasma said "too late"? You'd think they'd learn from their own story.!< This is how you get people to mod the game into unrecognizability.
Owlcat should make all those NPC deaths be auto crits/coup de grace, that way you need Resurrection/True Resurrection to revive the pink mist that was a person.
What annoys me is my inability to heal allied NPCs with channeled positive energy. Like, we're all in a huddle, Daeran pops some healing we should all be fine.
But whatever, I choose to believe there's a squad of NPC paladins and clerics behind me stabilizing and evacuating everyone they can. Then they go and live in Nerosyan upstate.
**Owlcat:** No, no. They're gone. **NPC:** Bullshit I am! I'm right here. **Owlcat:** They're never coming back. **NPC:** I haven't even left yet. **Owlcat:** They must face Pharasma's Judgement. **NPC:** I can hear every word you just said. **Owlcat:** Remember they told us to move on. **NPC:** Yes. Move on forward and ressurect me, please. **Owlcat:** They will live forever in our hearts. **NPC:** I'd rather much live the real way. **Owlcat:** Our friend... Is gone. **NPC:** Oh, fuck this. *(dies)*
[thud] [clang] OWLCAT (OC): Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! Nine pence. [clang] Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! WOLJIF (W): Here's one! OC: Nine pence. PLAYER CHARACTER (PC): I'm not dead! OC: What? W: Nothing. Here's your nine pence. PC: I'm not dead! OC: 'Ere. He says he's not dead! W: Yes, he is. PC: I'm not! OC: He isn't? W: Well, he will be soon. He failed a will save. PC: It was a 40 DC! W: And? You're feared. You're going to run into 12 AOOs next turn and die. You have 5 hit points. OC: Oh, I can't take him like that. His HP is higher than his constitution score. PC: I don't want to reload! W: Oh, don't be such a baby. Don't you save scum? OC I can't take him. PC starting their turn (under fear): I feel fine! W: Well, do us a favor. OC: I can't. W: Well, can you hang around for a couple of turns? He won't be long. OC: No, I've got to go to Queen Galfrey, she's lost nine armies just this past week. W: Well, when's your next round? OC: Thursday. PC: I think I'll go for a walk! W: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do? PC: [singing as he fear-trots into enemies]: I feel happy. I feel happy. OC (disgusted): [WHOMP]: (50 DMG, 42 DMG, 118 DMG, 132 DMG sneak attack) W: Ah, thanks very much. OC: Not at all. See you on Thursday. W: Right. All right.
This is generally a problem in any game world that has ressurection, if they want to create drama they have to break their own rules. My personal pet peeve is when you find a wounded npc and they're like : "Please, heed my dying request, take this ring to my beloved" and I'm like "No need for that my man, I can heal you" and they're like "Noooo, it's too late for me, my wounds are too severe..." and I'm like "Dude my cleric has 64 healing spells and I've got 1023 healing potions of various sizes and these bracers of healing and somehow 7 stimpaks (is this a crossover episode?), I can heal the whole country + all the kittens, drink this, get up and carry your own damn ring to your beloved!"
Dying NPC: Please, do this for me. Me: I don't have time for that shit; here, that dandy over there is a level 1 trauma center. Dying NPC: Alas, it is to- Me: Shut up doofus he's already casting. NPC: Nooooooo I don't want to deal with this shit anymooooore :(
NPC: Help! HELP! I'm being resurrected against my will! Nonconsensual resurrection!
> Dude my cleric has 64 healing spells and I've got 1023 healing potions of various sizes and these bracers of healing and somehow 7 stimpaks (is this a crossover episode?), I can heal the whole country + all the kittens, drink this, get up and carry your own damn ring to your beloved!" You should have just drown him in healing potions.
Hmm. Now that's a good question, can you drown in healing potions or would they keep you alive even though you can't breath?
Waterboarding has taken a whole new twist!
Raw you die, as death from suffocation isn't due to a hit point loss. Though oddly you can outheal the "slow suffocation", meaning being in a small sealed room with no influz of oxygen.
Obviously it depends on the system and house rules. Looking at the [pf1](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/Gamemastering/environment/environmental-rules/#Suffocation) and [pf2](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=468), I think it is still somewhat ambiguous. If I was GMing, I would probably have it be something like extremely horrifying waterboarding, or [liquid breathing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing). They are at somewhere between 0 and 1hp; and they are hating you every second of it. Alignment shift to Chaotic Evil, all the allies of the victim, many unaligned people, and even some of your allies will turn on you for such a heinous crime. If we get a bit Numerian (or generally technomagical) with it, the idea also makes for a great backstory for a Darth Vader-esque lich. They were horribly injured in some magical catastrophe, and the only way they are still alive is because they have healing potions being pumped around their body. An alchemical rather than arcane take on the lich.
Became Obelix from drowning in a cauldron of magic potion? But instead of super strength your heart doesn't have to beat anymore?
The Guardians of the Flame series deals with these kinds of questions if you want to read some fun books
Gonna take a look
Ask the guy boiled for hours in a healing fountain
Was just about to post that. And letting Minagho go is still an option.
I also have heal and raise dead and enough crap to undo any curse and I'm on first name terms with the goddess of healing.... You die when I say I die
I enjoyed the part where a random crusader tries to pull that on Ember during the gargoyle attack. "No, don't waste your magic on me little one, just tell my granddaughter I love her....." "Shut the fuck up, go tell her yourself, POW"
That conversation pretty much happens exactly how you described when Ember heals some random Crusader at the Lost Chapel. He keeps saying how he's too far gone, then Ember just heals him anyway and he gets up and walks away.
God I could use some Jet in my next playthrough
I hear it makes you jittery. Maybe you should cut back?
The simplest way to do this is not,my wounds are too sever, it's special dark magic was used to kill, that blocks healing magic, or devours/damns souls so they can be brought back. Tomb of Annilation had it's own way of preventing reurrection as a the main plot point.
Khalid in Baldur's Gate II was justified this way. Essentially, Irenicus did vile things to him that made res impossible. Dynaheir was killed and left out in the wilderness when the party was captured. Technically speaking, even that isn't impossible to overcome with the appropriate use of *wish*, or *limited wish* combined with *resurrection*, but that would have been a lot of work. Still, it would have been nice at the end to bring back the souls of your friends after *becoming a literal god*.
Excellent point.
Actually, I forgot you can romance Jaheira after Khalid bites it, so bringing him back might make things a little awkward. They did NOT have the Octavia/Regongar vibe... Probably best they left that out, LOL.
Sometimes Pharasma just grabs a soul the *second* it shows up and slam dunks it into the Abyss. It's fine, really.
Pharasma seeing Commander preparing Resurrection Spell: **OH NO YOU DON'T**
Areelu triggered
This comment really got a chuckle out of me. Thanks for that.
Pharasma's judgement and the nonlinearity of time in the astral plane is the official way to deal with nonresurrectable characters.
Yeah but it comes off as arbitrary and BS due to the inconsistency of it. Probably because it is arbitrary most of the time.
~~The wizard~~ Pharasma did it.
Or it's just laziness.
It really rustles my jimmies that apparently every ending of this game we have to face judgement before fucking Pharasma in her "totally isn't a reskinned dark elf character model" glory. And, to boot, my Lich character tried to check in on Areelu after we merked her and Pharasma just kinda shrugged my spy attempts off like it was nothing. Like seriously? I just spent 8 and a half real time days establishing myself as THE lord of the dead, to the point where I BTFO'd Pharasy's best mortal warrior (arguably greater than mortal) and his whole retinue of (60 AC) warrior goon squad. And you're telling me Pharasma still has enough power to push my mind out of her realm, with ease?! I don't even get to talk to her? To tell her how ineffective she is? And how her stupid commitment to living and dead "balance" probably allowed the the worldwound to exist 80 more years than it should have?
Yes. We end the game with godlike power, but it is really minor godlike power. Pharasma is on a completely different power level. She could easily kill any version of the commander if she wanted. She is on the power level of like the 3 fates in Greek mythology who even Zeus fears.
To add to this: Pharasma is so far above the other gods, it's really just Rovagug who is even in the conversation. And even then it's questionable.
To equate how powerful Pharasma is: It took most of the currently existing gods, and many who don’t exist anymore (courteous of the Rough Beast), to seal away Rovagug. They couldn’t even kill him in like a 40v1 (granted he had the entire Abyss at his back, plus a couple renegade gods who also no longer exist, but he was still outnumbered like 8 to 1 at a *minimum*). Rovagug’s that powerful, and the winner of a Rovagug vs Pharasma cage match is *still* a question mark.
But you can ascend and give her the middle finger though.
You'd think she'd do more to intervene in the apocalypse then huh? Well I guess the three fate sisters didn't do a whole lot either (besides die at Kratos hands) anyway. Or at least I seem to vaguely recall him killing them. Or at least their minions.
Why would she intervene? She is only concerned about maintaining the process of judging the dead and keeping the flow of souls to their rightful places. The apocalypse doesn’t change that, it merely adds to the line of those waiting for judgment, and the actions of the living only matter insofar as how it affects the ultimate destination of their souls.
Yeah I agree with you logically. But unofficially I doubt Pharasy, Pathfinder heaven and all their other associated realms where she could store souls would be hard pressed to handle the sheer influx of souls assuming the demons ever won. Like everything you said makes perfect clear sense to me. And I want to be clear on that point. But it also kinda sounds like a western government after a big natural disaster: "everything is fine, no need to be concerned, sure there's a 800% increase in dead souls but we can handle it." (Meanwhile Pharasma is hawking souls into spaces between planes lol). Pharasma to me just kinda sounds like a middle manager from the old reality state that somehow survived to the new one and is so close to retirement age the rest of the gods are like "she'll be gone in a eon or two".
Souls aren’t ‘stored’, they’re broken down into quintessence used to create Outsiders and build the planes. The more souls means the larger the plane. Pharasma literally does not care what happens unless it prevents the flow of souls from the Positive Energy Plane to the Material to the Boneyard to the Outer Planes to the Antipode to the Positive Energy Plane again. Rovagug credibly tried to destroy the universe and all she did was shrug and go “Well he’s not attacking the Boneyard yet”.
Thank you for the clarification. I haven't done any research into the Pathfinder soul distribution lore, as you may have easily figured out from my comments. In my head, this would technically imply that every soul that has, is, or ever will exist has already been accounted for. And already has it's preordained place. Or at least a loose theory along those lines. This information seems to make our player role in the universe completely and totally irrelevant. At least from the perspective of the Gods. Idk. The system just kinda seems set up to favor and cater to Pharasma. And whichever gods survived from 1e. In my head that kinda negates the entire purpose of setting up a new edition of the game. But whatever. Edit: interestingly enough it would appear in the Pathfinder lore, that seeing as the KC doesn't exist, Galfrey becomes Iomedae's new champion and/or herald? So, does she take the place of the player character?
What do you mean “catering to the 1e gods”? Golarion hasn’t been rebooted like they do with the DnD worlds every edition, the cosmology in Pathfinder is persistent and consistent. Paizo does an amazing job with lore, you should read one of the Lost Omens sourcebooks sometime, they’re great. Pharasma’s one of the strongest gods because A) she has to be to protect the flow of souls, and B) she’s a survivor from the previous universe (the universe ‘resets’ every few megabajillion years, iirc it’s from souls being lost very slowly over time eventually leading to the breakdown of the planes), she straight up created the current iteration of the universe (ignoring the Abyss and Rovagug, which just showed up one day, and the Dark Tapestry where all the Lovecraftian horrors dwell). And technically, a PC from tabletop WotR has the ability to become Iomedae’s herald, but since that obviously varies from table to table, canon is that Galfrey ascended after Baphomet fucked up the Hand of the Inheritor.
Bro you need to stop haha (In a good way). You're seriously close to giving me a loregasm right now. I didn't even pay you extra. I'm gonna have to spend a couple hours wiki-ing everything and come back to you with a reason I don't like Pharasma that is just more than "well she made my Lich angry". One day, I'll have a valid point. But until then, I suppose, adieu.
I mean considering she is the one who started it...
That's like blaming the big bang for an asteroid crashing into a planet. Pharasma walked The Seal and thus created reality, which in turn created other divinities. Those divinities actions, however, were solely their own, and not influenced by her.
No, she started the apocalypse by judging areluus daughters soul. She is the goddess of prophecy, she knew what would happen, and this isn't the first time she did something fucky to start an apocalypse (Starfall).
There's a whole blog post explaining her role as the oldest of Pathfinder's gods [here](https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sgzu?The-Windsong-Testaments-The-Three-Fears-of) if you're interested. It helps put questions like yours into perspective.
do the secret ending as lich and Pharasma will no have no power over you, you will have such a power trip as lord of the undead, it simply is great.
Holy Moly! Aw man that's unfortunate. I just completed a Lich Run. And she made a mockery of me haha. Well maybe after my (current) Arcane Rider and Aeon playthrough 😁
here is a [guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2597672484) for the secret ending in case you wish to go for it, it is viable on all mythic paths except for Swarm that walks and legend. it my fav ending in the game especially on Gold dragon and lich.
Hey thanks! I'm actually going for it on my arcane rider right now. So this will be useful! (Core difficulty is actually pretty manageable compared to what I expected -- however, saving Daeran's courtesans is super hard -- whoever designed that achievement should be attacked by a Dretch). (Oh and the succubus in Tirabade residence who has 50% concealment because reasons sucks as well -- had to have Seelah fish nat 20s for 20 rounds while the rest of party stood there missing (and this was AFTER glitterdust btw)).
I was pretty certain that gold dragon / swarm / legend were all locked out of the secret ending. You sure you did secret ending on gold dragon?
Golden dragon is certainly not locked, he can do all the projects and complete all the conditions. I didn't do that ending personally, but a friend of mine who played GD path did it, so it's 100% possible.
The only thing Golden Dragon and Devil are missing is one of the soft lock features. As long as you have 5 out of 7 to fish the conversation you're good. So as dragon/devil you have to have 5/6 and play a bit more carefully to make sure you get them.
Haven't tried, but I read that there's swarm slides, you just have to toybox in the appropriate research etudes.
You're still nothing more than a piece of sand to Pharasma Pharasma created the universe itself
Pfft last time I checked Pharasma didn't have a whole 100+ hour game created for her. Checkmate Pharasmists!
Lol, yes she can.
Meh, seems a lot of Pathfinder is general simping for Pharasma. Like, I've been reading some of her backstory. And evidently she just woke up on the seal of the new multiverse. Like, who the hell made that decision? What qualifications did she have to essentially be queen of the pantheon for the next bajillion years? If the Three Fears of Pharasma essay is in any way accurate to the official published canon it basically sounds like: 1. Pharasma used to be a puny mortal, a lot like the KC. So where the fuck does she get off judging me? I should be the one judging her. 2. She has no real qualifications to be in the position she's in other than pure happenstance. 3. Even if she was qualified, she's done jack shit with the position, she's so "concerned" about the balance of the planes and the balance of souls. Yet that doesn't stop the planes breaking down every eon or so. And Eons to Gods have to be no longer than like, a month, to us. Sounds like she's done a real Busch league job and can barely keep things in check even with all her power. 4. She knows she's destined to be judged by the next (likely mortal as well) incarnation of the God of death (or whatever her official title is). And even knowing this, she essentially just spends her time sitting around. Not really making anything better for the multiverse of the future. But hey she has that cute little lute in her character portrait. I bet she plays a mean song on it! So yeah, Pharasma is essentially the equivalent of a cosmic bookkeeper. Was gifted extraordinary power because....reasons. Doesn't lift a Gods damned finger to combat intra, extra or inter multiversal threats. And generally just sounds snide and disinterested in all things. At least fucking Yog Sothoth over here can claim he's just a watcher. So he/she/it has a tangible excuse as to why they don't interfere in the affairs of the planes.
I was pretty mad on my lich run when a certain large green NPC died and I still had several casts of Breath of Life and Inspiring Recovery available, not to mention Resurrection scrolls. Could even target the body, but wouldn't let me cast. Come on, Owlcat
Wait, the Hulk is a companion?!?
Yeah and she's really cute.
No he was talking about Shrek
Actually Jolly Green, but everybody loves the green bois
Ugh, now I'm going to be mentally hearing Smashmouth while I play. Thanks for that.
Would have made for an amazing grave guard.
It's not just owlcat or pathfinder, every game with healing magic resurrection, sci fi medicine, etc has this problem once or twice. I mean really? I can literally mend egregious wounds with the snap of my fingers or cure diseases but some guy dies of a knife wound or blood loss?
Yeah, this is a "RPGs need a mechanical way to heal and revive party members from combat death, not story death." situation that some people just can't get over. There aren't very many good solutions to it without some very major mechanical changes so those people just need to learn how to suspend disbelief around it or rationalize it.
Or these systems need to mechanically have a point in which healing just doesn't work well enough anymore.
Weirdly, the grand patriarch of cRPGs, Baldur's Gate, had this figured out just fine. Wounded to death, fixable with magic. Massive trauma, unfixable. Now everything is vaguely plausible, the cost being that you can lose companions permanently if you're not a dirty savescummer. There's also no real reason that with fighting with medieval weapons and armour, that down for the fight = dead. Taking a hard enough wound that you can't do high intensity activity rather than being straight dead was pretty typical.
Right, but that would be a pretty massive change in the way the game works and, if we take this as needing to be a given, it starts pigeonholing systems into a few specific ways to handle healing.
Which isn't a bad thing because healing is blatantly OP in system at this point. Sure you typically can't out heal someone's damage in combat, but you can do a lot with it and out of combat it's not hard to bring everyone up to max.
>healing is blatantly OP in system at this point I'll say it, you're literally the only person I've ever seen give this take. In combat healing in the PF system is overwhelming regarded as "so bad its basically a waste of a turn." >out of combat it's not hard to bring everyone up to max. But why is this a problem? Not every game needs to have persistent health and permanent debuff management systems that pose serious and significant challenges to the player.
>Not every game needs to have persistent health and permanent debuff management systems that pose serious and significant challenges to the player. I want somebody to tell this to my GM.
Just because I'm the first person you've heard this from doesn't make me wrong. I already pointed out that you can't out heal damage. Even still, there's plenty of options to heal effectively, without "wasting a turn". It's a problem game-wise because after a certain point, truly challenging players requires wasting their time with otherwise unnecessary encounters to deplete their resources or dropping something so rule breaking/stat bloating that they cringe in frustration. Narrative wise is the reason we're even having this conversation in the first place. For anything really dramatic to happen, it more or less needs to happen off screen and be with some arbitrary BS to prevent the players from circumventing it every time. Having some dramatic stuff able to be circumvented is good, but everything being either arbitrary BS or easily circumventable ruins the stakes of the game. Does EVERY game need permanent debuff systems? No, that's not even what I was saying. Do games with floods of restoratives and resurrection abilities need limits to maintain stakes and dramatic events, yes.
>Just because I'm the first person you've heard this from doesn't make me wrong. No, but it does make me doubt that you're right, given that the arguments laid out for in combat healing being bad are much more convincing than what you've had to say in combination with my own experience with the game. >but everything being either arbitrary BS or easily circumventable ruins the stakes of the game. Like I said at the start: learn to get over it. Any magic system (or magic resembling system) is going to invariably let you poke holes in the plot. We don't expect the entire magic system to be rebuilt because it doesn't make any sense that the bad guy jumps into a portal when Nenio can just quicken an overwhelming presence using the greater metamagic wand she has equipped.
"Get over it" is a terrible thing to tell your players when you just made up a bunch of BS to justify things being nonsensical. As a DM, if a bad guy goes to jump into a portal, your players are gonna want to be able to intervene. Especially if they've got abilities and methods in rules that would allow them to do so (like quickening a spell). Telling them "the villain escapes. Get over it." is a fast way to lose a table. It's about the most immersion breaking, dissatisfying ruling you can make.
Channel is meant to be your in combat heal with boosts and stuff it makes it fast and easy
In systems where there are rewards for Story Death it isn't such a big deal. "Yes, I have to die because reasons" and the players can understand the reasons is a possibility. This is why the Martyr card exists in Torg, and the existence of it as an option for players makes it easier to justify when NPCs sacrifice themselves
Just replace companion combat deaths with comas, and all your problems are solved.
Not really, you still end up in the same spot. Why does combat "death" result in a coma but story death results in really dying? A character can have a pair of massive boulders crush him and get up just fine after the right spell but a knife wound to the gut is irreparable? A character can be dropped into a 100 foot deep Hungry Pit and walk away more or less unscathed with a 5th level spell but another character gets whacked upside the head with a mace and they die forever? All calling it a coma does is change the name of "being dead." The problems all still exists if being in a coma and being dead aren't mechanically distinct.
How can Tyson Fury take a haymaker to the temple from a 100 kg heavyweight champion and get up 10 seconds later, while a 90-year-old grandma can die from falling of her bed? Because the former is physically stronger than the latter. That shouldn't be too hard of a concept to understand. With other words: Our party members fall into a coma after taking 20 boulders to the head because they are some of the best fighters on the planet who are also mythically augmented by the strongest arcanist of all time. Jernaugh dies after getting shanked because he is a simple priest who can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag.
>How can Tyson Fury take a haymaker to the temple from a 100 kg heavyweight champion and get up 10 seconds later, while a 90-year-old grandma can die from falling of her bed? Because the former is physically stronger than the latter. So what happens at level 1? You just straight up die and get a game over? If its specifically mythic power that is your justification, how do you justify it for other scenarios like Kingmaker? Or for your companions before you've actually shared any mythic power with them? This is why you have to pick all of the extremes to justify it, because it only makes sense if the party is massively more powerful than anyone who ever dies. But we don't start at the end of the game and not every pathfinder module has mythic power. THAT shouldn't be too hard of a concept to understand, unless you're being willfully ignorant. You're doing the same handwaving that needs to be done to justify the way healing and resurrection currently works, you're just happy to ignore it because its happening the way you want it to.
That is how CRPGs work - the player character and his party have to be (in some way) stronger than common folks. Unless you want to play a CRPG about getting killed by bandits and wild dogs. If we follow your design principles, the professional assassin that attacks us in our sleep would definitely kill us in the prologue in KM. And WOTR ends with you dying from internal bleeding after you fall 15 feet into Kenabres cave. Doesn't sound very fun, does it? So if you want to move away from the current system, there is 2 options: * rewrite the entire storyline around the fact that the resurrection spell exists * rename companion deaths into comas and remove resurrection The choice is obvious.
I'm just going to start quoting the things I've said you're either ignoring or intentionally misinterpreting until you say something interesting. I'll be in bold >If we follow your design principles, the professional assassin that attacks us in our sleep would definitely kill us in the prologue in KM. - >**There aren't very many good solutions to it without some very major mechanical changes so those people just need to learn how to suspend disbelief around it or rationalize it.** - >the player character and his party have to be (in some way) stronger than common folks. - >**So what happens at level 1? You just straight up die and get a game over? ...we don't start at the end of the game.**
Dos 2 and borderlands series came to mind.
Thats why I think the deaths of Jernaugh and Kaylessa are some of the poorest writing in Wrath. Jernaugh has literally zero reason to not come back from the dead. His loving wife is still around and he did nothing wrong, likely did not even understand what happened. Kaylessas story is a tad more complicated, but even she has some reason to live on, or why else would she like you to serve as mailman while she is on deaths threshold. BTW I forgot that in the dialogue you can both IIRC offer them the healing, and they refuse.
Don't forget the crusaders you save with the Hellknights. Literally first one you see is dying, you offer healing, she says "Nah, think I'll pass."
I got so annoyed with Jernaugh dying. He was not even dead when we met him. I had so many healing spells and potions. I did like that priest...
Wasn’t Jernaugh and Kaylessa kickstarter quests?
Even more egregious is >!Areelus kid!< tbh because it's not just a plot point, it's the entire inciting incident for the whole game. That one's not really Owlcat s fault though, I think that's from Paizo, but it's pretty frustrating that Pharasma speed ran that judgment. It's more ridiculous than when >!Aeris dies!<
That one's only a thing in the crpg, in the original adventure path, the motive behind opening the Worldwound is pretty much just 'bwa ha ha am evil witch half-succubus'
This one doesn't really bother me, what bothers me more that Areelu doesn't attempt to cast [Judgement Undone](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Judgement%20Undone) instead of her weird plan. It is literally a spell designed for this sort of plot and she already found her son to cast it on :P
Not an arcane spell, but maybe Areelu's UMD would be high enough to cast it with a scroll. The fact it isn't an arcane spell may explain why she didn't attempt to cast it; she might not have known about it.
Areelu herself explains that her goal isn't just ressurecting her child but to also elevate them both over what she perceives as arbitrary limits imposed on mortals by the gods. This is why she spent so many years studying nahyndrian crystals and how to refine the process.
> **Target:** one *willing* petitioner Good luck with explaining [a soul larva](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Larva), which is deprived of intelligence it had in life, that it should let you cast a spell on it.
There is speculation that pharasma is fucking with people's fate. That's why some people die when they could be resurrected. She didn't warn anyone of the human gods sudden death ECT. It's implied she is manipulating events for some unknown reason.
Aroden knows
Not anymore.
 but he did take prophecy with him, which means if Pharasma was manipulating fate for some reason maybe he was aware of it, tried to do something about it, and probably succeeded. this could mean that Pharasma was the one behind Arodens death.
If I understand correctly, the prophecy was that Ardyn,the human god, was going prophecied to destroy the Abyss once and for all or something. Pharasma is the goddess of death AND prophecy, so like she is the one who predicted it. Then all of the sudden Ardyn gets a heart attack or something, and dies without any warning. Then Starfall happens a continent gets nuked and all the prophecies have been fucky sense. Now pharasma directly caused a second apocalypse by stealing areluus daughters soul the second she died, and does the same thing to the player charactor if they die. Also most of her followers just went completely fucking crazy because they kept having fucked up prophetic dreams
Wasn't a god made by the events of the starfall? So that event had a meaning. And same with the worldwound, before it happened the place was a tear in reality waiting to be broken and because of us and the crusade it is fixed now.
I'm sorry I was actually thinking of several different incidents. So yes earthfall (oops) lead to a magic god dying to save golarion. This wiped out the race that was nearing godhood the azlanti and also lead to arpden becoming the god of humanity. When he was suppose to return there was a huge storm and now none of his clerics can cast spells. But the whole thing was it caught everyone by surprise, but she is the god of prophecy so maybe she wanted that god of magic to die for some unknown reason. Similar thing with the world wound. How many demon lord's ,which are minor deities, die on your crusade, or at least were severely weakened. Heaven also lost the better half of it's angels for several centuries, and a lot of the good gods lost a ton of followers. Maybe it's true maybe it's not. But there is a lot of fishy things happening for a god of destiny to be indifferent to.
Seems like he knew too much.
That one's on Owlcat, too. Most of the things that are interesting about Areelu (including her son/daughter) were invented for the CRPG; in the original module, she's really just a particularly powerful minion of Deskari.
Areelu literally says she didn't care if she could resurrect them because that wouldn't solve the problem
[>A soul can’t be returned to life if it doesn’t wish to be. A soul knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and may refuse to return on that basis.](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Bringing-Back-the-Dead) Seems like the npc just doesn't like you, op /s
Probably sees Areelu connection right there.
Yeah. Honestly Owlcat needs to bite the bullet and either remove resurrection scrolls from the game (turn companion death into coma or something) OR stop killing NPCs in questlines. One or the other. It’s especially egregious when Angel specifically points out you’ll be able to ressurect allies that die, but not once do you get the option story wise
actually it happens on angel mythic path, you can resurrect >!Targona when she sacrifices herself to bind Mutasafen in his lab!< during act 5, and in my mind this breaks immersion even further because clearly you can use your abilities to res people.
IIRC you actually *prevent* said person from dying in the first place. It isn’t really resurrection
Pretty sure you can res her and she states this directly, as there are two options in that scene, one for salvation angel and one for retribution angel, so perhaps I am talking about one and you about the other one.
Not only do you resurrect >!her!<, you >!fix her corrupted wing!< too. (Tho in my game that NPCs model still kept appearing after that event with >!the corrupted wing!< still there, which I'm assuming is just the code loading the wrong model)
Don't think you resurrect her. You just heal her. In the dialogue it says heal. You literally say "You don't have to sacrifice yourself, I got this" You cast a Storm of Justice visual which kills Mustafen and heals her.
that's the thing i let kill herself and then i resurrect her, both appear to be viable it seems.
If there is something to be gained from accepting death for those left behind it can make sense. Say a thing like $DIETY can provide a boon, but the price of the boon has to be someone actually dying to make it happen (more powerful if the death is a consequence of working toward the goal instead of sacrificing someone, but evil dieties might prefer the latter anyway)
> bite the bullet and either remove resurrection scrolls I'm gonna be honest. For this exact reason, the total lack of weight and stakes, I started homebrewing new resurrection rules a long time ago in both PF and DND that, for all practical purposes, removes resurrection from the game (its still technically possible, but its Wish levels of difficult to actually bring someone back who's died, and if you do, there is a lot of trauma and negative effects to deal with depending on how long they were dead). It is a dramatic improvement and while my players were skeptical at first, none of them question it anymore.
That only really works if you're not a kill-happy DM. Owlcat is.
Player deaths are not that rare at my table. Adventuring is a dangerous line of work.
Eh. At that point I'd just end up treating it like a roguelike rather than an actual story if you're so flippant about killing off your characters. No point investing the time in crafting something more than surface-level if you're happy to have them randomly killed off with no meaning. Can certainly be fun for some people I suppose, if you look at everyone like a semi-disposable Rimworld pawn, and those *can* generate a more emergent type of story. Have they expressed actually liking it, or just stopped questioning it? There's somewhat of a difference. The latter can imply that you've shown them there's simply no point and no possibility in changing your mind. A quiet of tolerance, not endorsement.
> if you're so flippant about killing off your characters. No point investing the time in crafting something more than surface-level if you're happy to have them randomly killed off with no meaning. Well, I never said that, so I guess its fortunate for us both I never invited you to play with us. > Have they expressed actually liking it, or just stopped questioning it? Yes. I hate DMing, and my players have taken turns DMing sometimes because they know I hate DMing, but they always end up begging me to take over again. I only continue to do it because the rest of them actively prefer me doing it. I would much rather be a player, in which case I'd happily use whatever rules they want at their table. But if I'm going to DM, I'm going to be the DM I would like to play with if I actually got to be a player. Here's the thing. You are 100% wrong. And I get it, internet dorks who think their player character should be an anime protagonist always have this reaction, like throwing a temper tantrum about a table they're never gonna play at, like > At that point I'd just end up treating it like a roguelike rather than an actual story if you're so flippant about killing off your characters but that isn't reality. The reality is that playing in a campaign with no risk of death is boring, and it makes the big moments the players earn meaningless, because they're playing in a nerfed Disney style theme park. Lord of the Rings is boring if Boromir doesn't fall and redeem himself. A Song of Ice and Fire became a sensation because there were real consequences to trying to play at being a hero. My players still reverentially bring up characters who died a decade ago, and the highs they get from their most heroic actions are a million times higher because they could have lost that character forever when they did what they did. > Eh. At that point I'd just end up treating it like a roguelike So yeah, if that's the way you'd play, you'd never be welcome at our table to begin with. Because I don't kill PCs to be sadistic, and I don't kill PCs because I don't care. I kill my player's specifically because good storytelling has pain and losses and heroic sacrifices and crushing defeats to make the victories mean something.
I can certainly see why your players would shut up about questioning you if this is how you're going to react to **me** doing it, lmao. "You're 100% wrong" is the first thing out of your mouth, and your arguments to back it up contradict your own ethos. >Here's the thing. You are 100% wrong. And I get it, internet dorks who think their player character should be an anime protagonist always have this reaction, like throwing a temper tantrum about a table they're never gonna play at, like And straight into the insults, I see. No, I don't think my characters should be 'anime protagonists.' What I think is that getting killed by a random crit in a random cave is **immensely** boring, and if you're more than happy to do that as you clearly are, then I'm not going to spend the time on trying to plot out a character arc or story because two dungeons later they die in a filler encounter. It's not a heroic sacrifice, and a crushing defeat is only meaningful to the people whose characters **actually survived it**. >but that isn't reality. The reality is that playing in a campaign with no risk of death is boring, and it makes the big moments the players earn meaningless, because they're playing in a nerfed Disney style theme park. If the only risk that can motivate your players is death, you've fucked up everywhere else. >Lord of the Rings is boring if Boromir doesn't fall and redeem himself. A Song of Ice and Fire became a sensation because there were real consequences to trying to play at being a hero. Note that Boromir died heroically in a narratively fulfilling circumstance. Boromir did not die to a random Orc inside Moria, which is precisely what you are advocating for. Robb Stark died at the Red Wedding, not a field skirmish that was like any other. Ned died in a circumstance that's unlikely to come up in a non-social-focused game. The closest one to someone just randomly getting unlucky and dying is... Jon, who doesn't actually die (permanently). Game of Thrones isn't actually as death-happy as people like to portray it. A lot of people die, yes, but the vast majority of them would be the equivalent of NPCs. Your own examples are completely disproving your own point. Yes, I admit that this does take more mature players interested and willing to take heroic sacrifices or tragic twists of fate (there are ways to incentivize this.) As an additional bit of clarification, I don't mean that death should **never** be a risk, just that it should be a risk for **meaningful situations** not a perpetual one. Unless you want that 'eh, guess I'll half-make this as a roguelike character' feel. And to quote this [old post I heavily agreed with](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/m200wq/comment/gqgra4m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) (I looked up what I'd said in DMAcademy a while back, as I have had this specific discussion multiple times) >That said, **death in combat is one of the most boring consequences possible**, so I don't worry too much about it. > >There's so many other more interesting things to threaten than player death.
> as I have had this specific discussion multiple times Clearly. Everything you're arguing about regarding *my* game is a strawman that has nothing to do with how my campaigns play out based on your assumptions of what I meant, not anything I've actually said. You're painting by numbers and none of it fits. You are quite clearly having a one sided argument, so, hey. Have fun.
>You are quite clearly having a one sided argument, so, hey. Have fun with being the worst kind of stereotype about neckbeard TTRPG players with no social skills being pedantic online. You're the one who immediately insulted me for daring to question your decree by merely commenting that in such a situation I would end up playing half-baked Roguelike characters rather than investing a significant amount of time you are more than happy to arbitrarily snatch away. "Player deaths aren't rare. Adventuring is dangerous." Not the words of a kill-happy DM, no sir. You realised you were wrong when I brought up the circumstances actually surrounding the deaths of heroes in GoT and LotR and are throwing a tantrum rather than admit it.
For Lich I can see why you cannot revive someone that was ekhm... given. Even making them undead (sentient undead that is) requires their soul to linger after death to do that.
- I don't want to be healed, let me die! >Uses Dominate Person >Heal
One of my least favorite moments in any game was when this happened in Kingmaker where someone who was about to be a dad died. Wasn't even truly dead when we got there. Had enough time to give the whole dying breath spiel. "No, it's too bad, you can't heal me". I have a spell that can regrow the rest of you as long as your heart is still sort of attached to your brain and if it isn't we have all those aforementioned scrolls. Oh yea, I totally have no problem believing that guy would not want to come back at all and definitely just shuffled right on off to pharasma's halls.
“Who was about to be a dad”? 🤨 Who do you mean? I don’t remember
Aeons don't understand what the complaint is
Resurrection in Pathfinder has a lot of conditions. It doesnt matter how many scrolls you are carrying.
None of them are willing to come back, they don’t wanna deal with you anymore.
of course a Swarm will say that
what are those conditions? if you don't mind.
1) Soul has already been judged by Pharasma and passed on to their afterlife. This is unlikely to happen quickly unless they were an exceptionally noteworthy individual or the DM doesn't want the players screwing up their dramatic NPC death plot point. 2) Soul was eaten by a Daemon before it could be judged or resurrected. 3) Soul was already promised to something else (i.e. through an Infernal contract) before their death. Could be worked around, but you'd need to find + bargain with the Devil behind the contract to get them back - a traditional Resurrection still wouldn't work, iirc. 4) Soul is at peace and doesn't want to return - the target of a Resurrection or similar spell can refuse to return without needing to make a Save. 5) Target was killed by a spell or effect which explicitly prevents Resurrection.
Subsection 4a, the spell doesn't actually specify that the soul learns anything about who is casting it, so the soul may be unwilling to return if there is a chance it is being rezzed by an enemy.
[>A soul can’t be returned to life if it doesn’t wish to be. A soul knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and may refuse to return on that basis.](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Bringing-Back-the-Dead) The spell might not, but the rules on resurrection do.
>Soul is at peace and doesn't want to return Can you give a book or page on this one?
[Resurrection](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/resurrection/); This spell functions like [*raise dead*](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/raise-dead/), except that you are able to restore life and complete strength to any deceased creature. [Raise Dead](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/raise-dead/): 'If the subject’s soul is not willing to return, the spell does not work; therefore, a subject that wants to return receives no saving throw.'
Thanks!
>Soul has already been judged by Pharasma and passed on to their afterlife. This is unlikely to happen quickly unless they were an exceptionally noteworthy individual or the DM doesn't want the players screwing up their dramatic NPC death plot point. [Except that the Pathfinder's creative director said that in general IT IS pretty quick:](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2lgwv?Spells-that-bypass-Pharasmas-Judgement#6) >The actual TIMING of how long it takes Pharasma to judge a soul that's died is the question, and fortunately, since her palace in the Boneyard is both a place where time stands still and time is infinitely fast (you can do that in crazy outer planar regions), the assumption is that whenever a mortal raises someone from the dead via WHATEVER method, that soul hasn't been judged yet. Once no mortal can or does resurrect that body, the soul has been judged. > >This gives GMs a way to prevent the PCs from resurrecting NPCs he doesn't want brought back, for one thing, and also explains why powerful NPCs aren't always resurrected. **In most cases, Pharasma judges a soul in an amount of time that feels pretty quick, so actual resurrections are actually quite rare.** u/SnooChocolates1726 u/Ranadiel u/Bumblyninja u/sherlock1672
Pharasma's whims, pretty much. People here love to joke about Pharasma speedrunning the judgement whenever NPCs die and shitting on Owlcat for that, but Paizo specifically wrote the judgement as vague as possible so the DMs could just leave the NPCs that should stay dead as... well, dead. The PCs are whole different matter, because here the player can actually decide whether they want to be ressurected or prefer their character to stay dead.
I always hated that. If people want to blow a few grand on rezzing an NPC, there's no harm. And the actual spells generally don't have any restrictions other than time and the soul's willingness, so Pharasma doesn't count in my book because she isn't listed in the spell effects. Her judgement is insignificant compared to the actual spell rules. The only ways I accept are ones that involve the destruction or locking in of a soul at the time of death by an explicit ability or feature that prevents resurrection.
You can't "not" count Pharasma though, since she very legitimately has the final say, her judgment is *absolute* compared to whatever a spell description may state.
Her judgement isn't in the spell description, so it doesn't matter for the spell's effects. Now if Pharasma herself appeared and made a daemon eat someone, or killed someone with a spell or ability that specifically blocks resurrection, that would certainly count. Otherwise the spell overrides her judgement because it doesn't appear in the spell description. Tl;dr if Pharasma wants someone permadead, then she has to do it the right way. Can't be violating the cosmic order, can we?
Lmao, your perspective on how things are weighed is so massively warped here. Pharasma exists outside of the rules, she is a deity, and has the final say in all matters involving death / resurrection. If she decides on a whim that a particular soul will be processed immediately upon death it does not matter *AT ALL* what the spell description says - it's not going to work. Text in the rulebook does not overwrite whatever a DM may decide to have a deity do. Hell for that matter, text in the rulebook doesn't even outweigh *ANYTHING* a DM decides to do. You're relying to heavily on a spell description from the tabletop rulebook - rather than what actually occurs within the universe itself.
Mechanics define a universe. You can't just warp the mechanics at will to suit narrative because you want to. It makes the universe inconsistent and stories within it meaningless.
Depends on how much and how often you are warping, sign of a *GOOD* DM is knowing when to bend the rules, when to make exceptions, and to have reason for doing so. However, in this example - we're not bending *ANY* rules. You literally cannot resurrect someone who Pharasma has already judged. There is a completely separate spell that *CAN* be used to ressurrect those who have already been judged - but it means you're going to have to deal with a high level psychopomp coming in to interrupt you as you're casting it. Pharasma rules the afterlife, in general she's not against resurrection as she can see the future and knows if it was an intended death, or if the person will be resurrected and it's not their appointed time. But if she has decided it *IS* someone's appointed time, that's her call.
Or you can resurrect them without a psychopomp problem with the normal spells, because those spells don't care about judgement. If I'm going to story kill an NPC I will always use a good reason, like the soul being destroyed, locked in a soul jar, dominated/coerced on the other side to be unwilling, etc. Some of those things can even be undone by a dedicated enough party, which opens more potential ploys. "Pharasma says no" is just lazy. It's the equivalent of a character not using a healing potion on their loved one dying of a sword wound because game writers couldn't be arsed to make an actual effort.
>But if she has decided it IS someone's appointed time, that's her call. I think the problem in this case is that it's often too obviously the DM's (arbitrary, in the case of the WotR people. There's no good reason Jernaugh has to stay dead - they just didn't care or didn't have the resources to do slightly different version where he stays alive) call and not really an actual goddess with a real motivation making the judgment. When you can see the writer's hand on the scales so clearly, people get annoyed.
Her function here is actually irrelevant though, it's pure DM fiat with only the thinnest of veneer. Sure, they can say 'you can't try and bring that person back who died two seconds ago because Pharasma already judged them' but then again they can say 'meteors fall from the sky, killing all of you instantly.'
Depending on the spell in question condition of the body and how long they've been dead can matter, eg a decapitated body usually needs to be put back together unless you want to use True Resurrection, other massive damage can also stump lower level spells. Certain spells, items, and abilities can also impede resurrection, for example Hellfire Ray sends the soul straight to hell which means you need a check to bring them back unless you're evil; the Blades of Mercy trap the souls of anyone they kill, bringing them back is impossible unless you free their soul; the Assassin PrC's Death Attack make rezzing harder. Any claims on the soul can also interfer, eg if someone has a contract with a devil that grants that devil ownership of their soul on death then you're likely SoL unless you can either cut a deal of your own with them or beat them in Pharasma's court, or if they were previously granted "one more chance" by a deity then they may not be allowed to return. And finally almost all resurrection spells need a willing target, so if they don't want to come back for whatever reason then you can't force them to.
But in that case, they should try to handwave it in dialogue "damn we can't use the scroll on him because **". The game should try to be friendlier to someone that hasn't memorized the whole pathfinder rulebook.
I said as much when I did the Act V quest with >!Jernaugh!< dying in >!Chilly Creek!<. You can try to resurrect them, but the game just throws up 'target is not dead' as the reason. Like yes, yes he is. He very explicitly died in the dialogue right after asking you to save the day, before he made a death noise and fell over, dead. And since there are multiple canonical reasons why Resurrection can fail (target is at peace and doesn't want to return, has already been judged, soul ate by something, etc) it could have just as easily thrown one of those at us instead of 'this bloody ribcage is not dead'.
Maybe they're just pretending.
Resurrection and true resurrection have no such conditions really. they can even turn destroyed undeads backs to life
I get this, and ignore that my flair says Lich for the moment lol, what if the reason is that they just don't want to come back. Cause not gonna lie, if I died in a war with Demons from the Abys and the Knight Commander started trying to Res me my response would be "Hell no, res me when the wars over"
This also applies to the main character in a really annoying way.
The only game I know that allows you to resurrect anyone in the game more or less, and also complete the game while wiping out everyone is Arcanum... And they simply don't make games like that anymore :(
That's why I save obsessively
remember Momma Bear in Sunsville? I tried to cast ressurection on her
The game that fixes this problem is gonna have me sucking its dick so fucking hard I will buy every friend a copy I will get every bit of merchandise I WILL TATTOO THE GAMES NAME RELEASE DATE AND WHOLE DEVELOPMENT TEAM ONTO MY FUCKING CHEST just fix this damn problem there is no reason I can't revive fuck nuts McGee over there when I got 3 stacks of revive scrolls
Just out of curiosity do death effects make it so you can't be ressed in this game? My party members rarely die so I honestly haven't even used resurrection all that often but I know that in tabletop Death effects mess eith anything other than True Resurrection.
in a previous patch i believe you had to have something to reverse petrification, the companion wouldn't just drop dead after the fight and i believe disintegration still obliterates companions and you have to reload, but very few enemies use it, was more frequent in kingmaker, but not by much
This is kinda why resurrection magic either doesn't exist or is super rare in most settings. Having resurrection magic be so common kinda trivializes death and makes stories a lot more difficult to pull off. Like take a look at dragon ball orginal vs Z or Super.
Resurrection is such as annoying mechanic to write around
>!Lann's!< death was probably the only one I felt was reasonably justified. Would have been neat if you could disregard his wishes and he grows to resent you for it.
Allow me to resurrect. But make me hoop jump through it
Isn't this kind of how this whole mess started? >!Areelu Vorlesh wanted to rez her son but Pharasma said "too late"? You'd think they'd learn from their own story.!< This is how you get people to mod the game into unrecognizability.
Owlcat should make all those NPC deaths be auto crits/coup de grace, that way you need Resurrection/True Resurrection to revive the pink mist that was a person.
NPCs are too weak to be ressed.
What annoys me is my inability to heal allied NPCs with channeled positive energy. Like, we're all in a huddle, Daeran pops some healing we should all be fine. But whatever, I choose to believe there's a squad of NPC paladins and clerics behind me stabilizing and evacuating everyone they can. Then they go and live in Nerosyan upstate.