Now I'm picturing a campaign all about smuggling souls from one afterlife to another, reuniting (or separating) families, while avoiding the ire of the gods.
Ooh! And make it so that all the afterlives are connected, but the paths between are hard and dangerous to traverse! Maybe some deities are okay with people jumping between afterlives, possibly even encouraging it for optimal chaos, while other deities try to stop it with all their power.
I had a concept for short adventure of investigating a death of a patriarch of a house, where it is later discovered trying to resurrect them that their soul no longer exists. Gods are pissed, devils are pissed and you basically have to go find a character that has created device that annihilates one's soul and offers their services to... people who might want to avoid afterlife.
@@chongwillson972don't got to worry for long. Glittergold won't suffer your kobold's soul for long. After all, he did blow up the kobold empire of several billion kobolds just for a laugh at the kobold God.
All of this implies that the life on the material plane is a kind of casting for later distribution amongst more specified planes. Which makes clerics some of the most clever people there, since they are literally minmaxing their chances to get the best "character" in the next world. And all of this is mildly interesting as a setting concept, but, that being said, it doesn't fell like dnd's intention at all.
I highly recommend reading more about the Outer-planes, and the soul's purpose within. Also curious what you think the "Intention" of Fantasy Gaming is, having proof that souls exist?
A lot of this came from the Avatar series. One of the main characters was a cleric who lost his faith when the gods disappeared. he took a trip to the underworld where he found out that if he didn't have a patron god his soul was doomed to the wall of the faithless. What's worse is the false who don't worship their gods honestly. They're souls are imbedded in the ground It's also where Kelrmvor is elevated to godhood, and he indisted that the gods periodically collect the souls of their worshipers
@@lostbutfreesoul I'm not sure if I understood your question. If you are asking why do I think that all of that is not the intent of dnd's lore (or Forgotten Realms for that matter), then my answer is as follows. And if not, then I wrote it all for nothing, so there's that. The answer: it is because we see close to no acting on this intention: societies should be built around worshipping certain deities, holy quests and wars should be everywhere and evergoing. Instead what we actually get is a bunch of close-to-nonsence stuff about common folk worshipping almost everyone, while also being close to illiterate (books and education are ridiculously expensive), but also having favourite gods, but also sticking to pantheons, unless they need a specific favor of the deity that is in the other pantheon and so on and so forth. And gods themselves are usually portrayed passive as hell, which doesn't necessarily contradict anything, but if the assumption of "material plane is only the tutorial" is to be true, than gods being passive is just plain bad/lazy writing, and I would expect a lot more emphasis on the life after the first death, since it sounds like a possibility for a very high fantasy adventure. Imagine speeding a life on a material plane to jump head first doomguy style into the war between the Abyss and the Nine Hells. And, to be frank, I get it. In such a world we might not really get any adventurers on a material plane, since it would always quickly devolve into some GoT religious stuff. But also explaining the whole premise to a newbie that just wants to play a classic European fantasy would be... unreasonable. So in the end I think, that all those gods were added to provide variety and player choice without really giving any thought to how it would affect a world on a larger scale. And, to be fair, it is kinda ok, if you're only playing an old stylish dnd with literal dungeons and dragons and the main reason to have gods in the first place is to justify the source of your clerics power.
@@nin0f Within the context of Forgotten Realms, the level of direct influence the gods can exert is tightly restricted. Remember that the setting has a lot of constraints artificially imposed top-down on everyone by the overgod Ao. Gods used to have a lot more ability to directly and routinely intervene on the Prime Material Plane prior to several series of changes at the point in the timeline usually intended for player characters. Most of the official D&D settings are from the 80s or 90s; I think the only significant one from the 2000s is Eberron. D&D does not and never has had a major setting that actually resembled a 'vaguely Medieval Europe' very much. They have all always been closer to 19th and 20th century pulp fantasy novels than anything actually resembling Europe.
@@NevisYsbryd ikr. I've studied forgotten realms lore for a while, and that is exactly the reason why I criticize it. It comes up with a lot of great ideas, and in the next second it introduces some kind of restriction that makes this ideas pretty much irrelevant in a regular ttrpg game. Granted, these ideas could work for novels, but given how much lore you have to know to use and understand them, I'd rather just read full on original story.
The Wall of the Faithless is the worst fate any soul can go through, being an actual Atheist (as in refusing gods and affirming they don't exist despite the fact they do, not like the absence of worship but recognising the existence of gods) is a one way ticket to eternal suffering and damnation regardless of your alignement and deeds. And yeah, every planes either brainwash you, removing your mortal memories and ties and/or tries to absord your soul into itself, which is very dubious and dark for me
Point of order on the noble farmer who dies in battle: given that he worshiped the god of harvest, hearth, and fertility his entire life, which in the forgotten realms is chauntea, his soul would likely be claimed by her, rather than the god of battle, Tempus. When he does go to the city of dead and gets judged by Kelemvor, it's not just that he is judged, but that he is allowed a chance to explain where his soul truly belongs. In a hyper agrarian society where people are generally good, if not overly zealous, peasant farmers, Chauntea is likely the primary deity worshiped amongst these people, and has the largest number of petitioners in the afterlife..... This is why she is a greater deity in the forgotten realms setting
I would surmise that the anxiety over death in a D&D world would partially revolve around the plethora of ways your soul can be destroyed and/or corrupted such that you don't go to your deserved afterlife. Further, there's the fact that which afterlife you go to is canonically determined by your alignment. Depending on your personality, abilities, and inclinations, some afterlives would be ideal, while others would be horrific, even if they're *technically* one of the "good" aligned planes. If we in the real world argue so vehemently about what actions lead to one having a specific alignment, how much more headache-inducing would those discussions be in a world where the lines between good and evil, law and chaos actually have practical, profound, and literally life-threatening consequences?
My players where still 100% worried about losing characters... for they will have Judgement! Once you show them what some of the per-lore outcomes are, they often do not want to die. Here is something very concerning to me, after decades of looking into this topic: The Outer Planes are farming souls, churning them into methods designed to create plainer beings. It is far more obvious on the Infernal plane, look at the lore surrounding Hags for an example, but it is still there for the Celestial Planes as well. Eventually, regardless of which side you believe is an ideal afterlife for your character, they will become one of denizens of the plane in which they resided. Of which none have a "soul" as we know it. Nor do they have Free Will either....
@@lostbutfreesoulhaha I like that you came to a similar understanding. I once played a character years ago thats goal was to not die after coming to same realization, even in a best case scenario you go somewhere and lose your self and become some other being lacking free will. To them there was not a good answer to maintain your own will after death, so they decided to attempt to avoid it entirely. Free will is a unique trait to the prime material.
@@lostbutfreesoul That could actually feed into a plot for a campaign. The planes have become so saturated with souls that the mechanism for birthing new ones into the material plane has broken down, so now there's a cosmic imbalance where the population of mortals is swiftly dwindling, and eventually everyone will be an outsider.
@@lostbutfreesoul Wouldn't this only be a worry for those outer planes, though? In the Feywilde, you just eventually turn into a Fey, that still seem to have free will even if end up having to deal with the nonsense of the other Fey. (there's also the plane of Shadow, but that seems a lot less pleasant by comparison) These 2 planes are both overlapped with the material plane, so are not outer planes.
@@imALazyPandathat's why there are automatons that wander the multiverse, cleansing all those who attempt to avoid death, and will strike down any who aren't at least deity level. The gods don't allow one to not die. Momento mori is a rule that has an army of demigod level automatons who neither care nor will pause long enough to give you a moment to attempt reasoning with them. The gods will have you die, and only becoming a god will save you from that, and Io has made it clear in recebt lore, that he, the one who determines who becomes a god, that he's not accepting new applications.
So a comment about the "utter destruction" thing Imagine it like permanently deleting a file on a computer. The data isn't *gone*, it's just torn to shreds so much that not even an insane super computer can retrieve it. It's like ripping paper to shreds then trying to make it a clean paper anew with your bare hands Then, it is THEORETICALLY possible to get the "soul bits" back together, but only divine intervention has even the hope of doing so And I imagine finding those bits is a pain in the arse for the god unless you're literally Ao
This overview actually makes it sound like ending up as a devil and just doing whatever in the hell planes is bizarrely the best option to a character who puts any value in their individuality. This convoluted, messy system is probably a result of various writers conflicting and having had different ideas on afterlives, leading to a system under which none of it is really what many characters would want.
I mean it makes sense. Most religions don't favor individuality and instead focus on collectivist so if your an individualist you'd probably want to reject any religion anyway you can and devil worship/contracting might be your best bet if you don't have any other means of saving your soul.
It is more a testament to the wonky values of the creators. Ed Greenwood has some very... out there, and quite strong, opinions, and 4e was a whole thing unto itself.
I think one reason the afterlife in D&D is such a raw deal is because of the conflicting purposes of describing it in the first place. The Outer Planes have to be interesting enough to make people want to set adventures there, so there have to be monsters, conflicts, dungeons, intrigues, and the like. But the inclusion of these kind of things necessarily make the planes less appealing for the people who actually have to live there.
They have to be high-level challenges at that, it isn't normal for level 3's to "Wander Outer." Read then, on what happens to Residents whom die on the Outer Planes.... "I was promised forever lasting peace in Heaven and this is the Third incursion of Demons this week!"
@@lostbutfreesoul In Ysgard, don't they just respawn every day like nothing happened? Like an eternal groundhog Day, except everyone actually remembers every death.
There are more-or-less safe settlements in the Outer Planes, even in the lower planes. And they also are metaphysical with layers that are infinite, so it could very well be that for petitioners AKA those who spend their afterlife in the outer planes, or those that are born there like the people that are specifically mentioned to be born in Arcadia, Elysium and the likes, the outer planes are easier to traverse safely.
So, what I think answers most of your qurstions, is that dnd alignment is/was a literal representation of your "team" in an interplanar war. So, for instance, signing away your soul is bad in the treason way, not in any moral or practical way. And a Lich is effectively stealing the gods' property. You just sort of have to walk backwards from the cosmic alignment perspective to see how the dnd world works- it's surprisingly uncomplicated in that way.
But it also makes getting rid of alignment have subtly profound worldbuilding implications, to the point of me deciding to make an entire new cosmology of planes recently because a lack of alignment throws so much out of wack, despite seeming very straightforward at first glance
@@wanderingshade8383that's part of why I keep alignment, but also tell my players they are not bound by it. In time, I might even check in to see if they're still the alignment they chose last time. It's mostly a DM tool, as far as I am concerned, as some monsters have abilities that have different effect depending on the targets alignment and alignment can matter when a character enters an outer plane by death or planar travel. Outside of that though, it has little effect on play. It's one of those "It really doesn't matter until it suddenly does, and then it really matters!"-mechanics, and I've really come around from "I hate it!" as a player, as it initially fealt like I had to follow it (but you don't) to "I love it! 🥰🤗" as a DM. I think they've got the right balance now. As a player, it's just a reminder of your character's broad moral ideals. But as a DM it's a great storytelling tool once things start getting planar. So around tier 3-4 in play, which is generally the least played, which is why so many players thinks alignment doesn't matter and can just be removed as pointless bloat. But the D&D cosmology runs on alignment, and without it you do not have a D&D cosmology and have to invent your own and then you're just building a new weird bike to be different (as far as I am concerned). 😂
If I were to write an isekai into a D&D universe, something I'd love would be to somehow wind up dying in a way that got the attention of multiple divine powers including Garl Glittergold agreeing to referee the debate between Moradin and Corellon until a Druid starts to try and cast Reincarnate on me and all of them agree to let my actions in my new chance determine where I'd wind up... and waking up a Dwelf.
9:45 Actually there's a 1st level ritual spell on the cleric, druid, paladin, and ranger spell list in 5e called Detect Poison and Disease that lets you instantly know what illness someone near you has. So it's apparently not difficult at all for divine and nature magic users.
"Digesting a soul, leading to its utter destruction, and inability to be resurrected by anything but divine intervention." Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transmuted into another form of energy. Also, if you're not buying that explanation for deific intervention: The god or gods in question take some random energy from the unformed soulstuff of the multiverse from which all souls are made and just recreate your soul; they are gods after all.
Omw to make 100,000 clones of the soul of my most legendary follower and shotgunning them out over the Material Plane to plant the seeds of a couple generations of my favorite mortal.
@@michaelvisosky743 Explanations for why stuff like this doesn't happen usually boils down to "the other gods intervene". It could make for a fun campaign or adventure premise, but no way is doing that going to fly unobstructed with so many powers vying for control of the Material Plane.
The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy does not apply to Positive/Negative Energy in D&D, nor does it have a very consistent or accurate understanding of real world physics.
"Being a cog in the universe", does that mean eventually everyone is ground-down then reincarnated as a Modron to become part of the Great March? (Algorithm tweaked. ;-p )
"Dying, is bad." Absolutely perfect opening, 10/10, no notes. (Because this is text I'll specify I'm not being sarcastic; that got a very surprised water-filled laugh out of me.)
I've had thoughts about afterlives trapping you in before because there seems to be no lore about wizards, warlocks, or sorcerers (but wizards especially) teleporting back to the material plane after their deaths. Demiplane only requires a somatic component, and you could store a tuning fork in one for Plane Shift and use that to get to the material plane. I simply cannot believe that no wizard powerful enough to cast Demiplane has ever been curious about this in life. So when those wizards die and go to the afterlife, but fail to plane shift back, it's because something stops them from doing so. Either you just can't leave the afterlife, or you can't cast spells in the afterlife (sucks for anyone who loves magic), or you're changed to not want to leave the afterlife, even briefly to fulfill your curiosity about whether it's possible. I really like this idea of "becoming part of the plane" in a more literal sense: 200 years to become part of the plane, whether that means turning into a devil, being absorbed into the fabric of that plane, or something else. It also makes the idea that whatever form your soul takes in the afterlife, spellcasting isn't the same as it was in your material plane life. Perhaps you don't get any magic, or perhaps whether you do or don't and what kind of magic it is depends on the plane you spend your afterlife in and not what you had in life. That would explain the lack of resurrection via plane shift: whatever form your soul takes in the afterlife, magic just ain't the same. It does seem kinda one-sided as far as soul ecology goes though, whatever stuff makes the soul is leaving the material plane and going into other planes. Maybe souls are just created out of nothing and over that 200-year span (or suddenly at its end) they disappear into nothing, so nothing is lost or gained. Maybe it's made of the same stuff as magic and this one-sided flow means magic in the material plane is slowly getting weaker ("magic was more powerful long ago" is a pretty common trope after all). Or maybe there's some flow of soul stuff from these afterlives into the material plane, kinda like reincarnation except with less reuse and more recycle, where souls are disassembled into soulstuff and that soulstuff makes new different souls. Maybe every plane has a "thing" it does, and this is the material plane's thing, hence the name Material Plane: soulstuff on this plane can't help but to materialize as a soul. It's not exactly a material being in the traditional sense, but it is a discrete entity.
Planescape defines petitioners as not being able to remember their past lies, and not retain anything useful from what fleeting images they do retain (I.E. Spells.).
I guess if you tp to material plane you'll be a soul without body which will probably send you back to the city of dead or make you a ghost. So you just repeated the same process but made your god angry. Also it makes me wonder if wizard can ressurect himself while his soul haven't left material plane yet.
A quick web search pointed me to the term Monolatry, which apparently means consistently worshipping only one god out of many (that is, playing favorites), or maybe Kathenotheism, which means worshipping one god a time (which might be a good way of describing praying to whichever god is relevant to one's immediate concern instead of to all of them or to one exclusively). Some might even be Polymorphists, which in religious terms seems to be the term for taking multiple deities as separate faces of one entity.
A note about entreating a deity to give you that next chance, it's generally the case that Petitioners don't have memories to build their goals off of "A petitioner retains the mannerisms, speech, even general interests of his or her former self, but all memories of the past are wiped completely away. At best, a petitioner has a shadowy recollection of a previous life, but little or nothing useful can be learned from these fleeting images." (Planescape Campaign Setting: A Player's Guide to the Planes, page 9) Granted Planescape isn't where every game takes place, but no setting went deeper on the philosophy of death than Planescape. Just worth considering, as in some of the examples given, the Petitioner wouldn't remember the family they lost or where they should be (sub note to this note: a soul can't be tricked into the wrong afterlife or be taken by the wrong entity, so the farmer could probably get where he wants to go even if he more recently had the war god's blessing). Now, some homework for those who are interested, try out the game Planescape: Torment to learn a little more about where your PCs might go after death.
Biting off too much is more interesting than biting off too little. I enjoyed it, and it gave me some fuel for my next character who, coincidentally, is obsessed with the/an afterlife. Thanks for the great video!
I have two interpretations of cosmic wheel theory i like to use in regards to the soul-conomy. 1. Once your soul is reabsorbed into your afterlife, it becomes eligible for reincarnation. Most living things are netural at worst on the material plane, and if not for the evil planes actively working to steal souls both morally and literally it would just be a cycle without end. 2. The material plane is the place where new souls are grown, taking energy from the positive/negative plane to do so. Reincarnation can exist in various forms of course, but the primary production is just new souls. In either case, the outer planes are competing for their share of souls, good vs evil, law vs chaos, in the hopes of irrevocably tipping the balance one way or another. What happens should a winner ever appear in this cosmic tug of war is anyones guess.
In my DND-like campaign, if you die you can't play for a whole session, and in the next, you will create a new character, but, what if every player dies in one session, in the rare event of this happening, the players will get the bad/secret ending where they don't defeat the final boss and they find themselves in heaven, in there, there is all of their past characters and current ones
Good exploration here. I also think "ability to come back from the dead" is a factor that d&d could do a lot more with than it does. Imagine if it were less about spell levels and resources and more about what happens to specifically the souls. It could be about having a divine mission, being assigned a fate unfinished, family bloodlines that can't be broken, following the right gods very specific rules, being a celebrated hero, or simply having a more powerful soul - all could be keys to an easier return from death or even the ability to do it at all. Could be a very powerful motivator for the actions of both players and NPCs. And it can extended to health and harm - preventing death in the first place. Gods of the harvest preserving health and vitality for those tending their fields. A war god with blessings of strength and skill in battle - gifts that are rescinded from those who decide not to fight on theit gods behalf. And for those accepted by no god at all.... the terror of lacking any hereafter driving them into heroism to be noticed by Fate. Or more often falling into the twisted arms of cults. Cults that may promise that they will be revived in new (monstrous) forms, or incorporated into (eaten by) an ineffable being who will then (maybe) become an eternal god.
My interpretation for the soul being destroyed utterly but still being able to be restored is this. I assume when a lich eats a soul whatever energy makes up that soul just gets turned into something else but doesn't stop existing. This is similar to how eating regular food works. Lets say I had a pet mouse that I really loved that was tragically eaten by a snake. If someone had god like powers it would technically be possible to find all the atoms that had once been my pet mouse and put them all back together. This sounds really hard even for a god so i understand why they dont always do it
This entire messy subject is why I made my setting's post-death stuff very simple. All "sparks" return to the Heart Of The World, the source of all magic, where they are re-integrated into it. Evil or severely egotistical people tend to have a harder time on that journey. Nice and simple and fair, no icky moral questions. XD
I’m not so sure that becoming an undead if you weren’t ready to leave the material plane is ever that great. My understanding of most of these creatures is that they are twisted and warped by their unfinished business making them constantly angry, pained, and/or obsessed with whatever task kept them there. Some are probably less affected by this - ghosts are said to be any alignment, but baked in is that they yearn to resolve their business. They can’t just chill - their entire day to day probably revolves around seeking the resolution. That’s not really a great existence. And other undead like specters aren’t so lucky - they have this line in the MM: “a specter always succumbs to its hatred and sorrow.”
My party is visiting the beastlands and that video gave me the perfect encounter of an unwilling soul to want to be taken with them , or being repositioned elsewhere, thank you you're a godsend
I think in the case of your young warrior dying in battle, sure that might get a war deity's attention, but that doesn't mean the warrior's soul would stay with that war god forever. The war god, being part of a pantheon, might claim that person as a petitioner, but that petitioner isn't bound to the god of war, he is bound to the pantheon. Think of it kind of like how POWs get traded even in wartime. The warrior probably didn't care too much about the war god specifically, but his heroic death would be enough for the god to say "aha, I've found a great new recruit for my sister's fertility cult" or something along those lines.
The bravest kobold throwing his life away fully believing he will become a dragon god in the afterlife Also intentionally having your shadow stolen seems dope as hell for like a villain or sneaky guy, very intimidating as well
It is interesting that I come across this very well thought out and interesting video! I recently have been reading two games specifically designed for an "afterlife" scenario. One of the two even advertising itself as a great supplement for when a TPK occurs. Acheron Games' Inferno, clearly based very heavily on Dante's Divine Comedy, and The Black Ballad by The Storytellers Forge.
In my world, I describe the souls in the afterlife going to be judged and generally going into the Good Plane (basically Heaven) and the Evil Plane (basically Hell). This way most commoners go to the Good Plane (as most are generally neutral or good), unless claimed by another being. Most souls go to the Good Plane and eventually "move on" to the next part of their existence. No one knows what happens to them, I like to keep it open ended. This is also why destroying souls is considered evil, denying the soul from this other stage of the journey.
I love your videos so much, I never thought about the fact that turning into a spirit or a specter or some undead creature that lives forever or at least close to forever until their business on earth is done whatever that may be would be the most positive solution. My good aligned Domain of life cleric who has vowed to defend the living by slaying undead At every turn may need To come to realize this and have a qualm of conscience. He may need to realize that these are simply people who did not wish to leave the world of the living quite so soon. I think my party is going to have a fit if I start protecting undead from them or trying to get them to run away instead of defeating them utterly. This will be a very interesting bit of role-playing! I think my new mantra is going to be "undead our people too".
My setting (for DnD) has souls go to the plane most aligned with the sum of their actions in life. The gods preside over their domain/planes, however their power in part comes from how well their actions(as deities) align with the domain that they claim influence over. So if someone whose life was dedicated to healing/caring for the sick was turned away from Elysium by its god, that would have a material cost for that god, as they are diverging from the natural alignment they ought to embody. Because the vast majority of people live simple lives that aren't extraordinarily focused on a particular ideal, the majority of people do go to the same afterlife, which is not eternal paradise, but still reasonably pleasant. They can then be reincarnated, and have another shot at a life of greater purpose and merit the next time around. In this ordinary afterlife, it is mostly elective, as long as the lord of the dead consents (which he usually would, because more souls living mortal lives = more power for the gods). However in other domains, the gods may choose unilaterally, particularly if they are evil, and are betting that this reincarnated evil soul will do more of the same in their next life.
The problem I see from a deity’s ability to re-create a soul after 100% utter destruction is how come they cannot just create a soul from scratch out of nothing? Also, by what pattern would that deity be able to reconstitute an individual soul without some kind of “spiritual blueprint”? And even then, would that new individual be the SAME person as before?
My idea for why divine intervention can do things that deities can't usually is because it is referring to the cleric's Divine Intervention. The only way deities can actually do some of these things is with the help and conduit of one of their powerful clerics, one who likely was connected to the soul trying to be brought back. This also explains why, even when a deity would have no reason to not intervene, they may not, the d100 roll has to be successful in order for the deity and cleric to actually achieve the connection necessary for divine intervention. At level 20, a cleric would be so connected to their deity that they would always be able to make the connection.
I am now inspired to make a character who is afraid of death and sold his soul to a devil simply for the certainty in the afterlife. He will be completely nonchalant about his cool devil powers since, to him, they are just a side benefit.
I'm first time dming for my gf and her friend who gets a little upset when she thinks she's getting even close to death and thinks I'm playing against them even though I'm adjusting things so much to make sure they don't die because they told me they just wouldn't play anymore if they died. I'm running rime of the frostmaiden so it's already difficult to balance but I'm managing and my gf says it's great. I just wish I could play around with death or make them actually scared of dying and not just know it's not gonna happen because they'll quit
5:43 It's actually probably waaay cooler then that. The deity could create a fake soul as a sacrifice, then travels through time, swaps the two souls, then returns to the present and restores the person.
The gods are actually pretty unlikely to leave a soul entirely unclaimed. They don’t just maintain afterlives for purely altruistic reasons, even the good gods. A soul is a resource, so you’d have to put ALL the gods off to some degree - perhaps just by not leading a life that pursues any sort of principles or appreciates any aspect of life and the world at all. THAT is what a real faithless soul is.
9:45 Why in the world do you say that it is very difficult to diagnose a disease by magic? The text of the 1st level spell Detect Poison and Disease is as follows: For the duration [10 minutes], you can sense the presence and location of poisons, poisonous creatures, and diseases within 30 feet of you. You also identify the kind of poison, poisonous creature, or disease in each case. The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.
It’s pretty clear that the genuine RAW lore for most of D&D regarding the afterlife is tremendously convoluted. I wouldn’t even try to Make Sense of it. It’s a dozen different pantheons and ideas mashed together.
Im not certain of this, but from what Ive read for the forgotten realms at least, it seems that while Souls await judgement on the Fugue plane, the gods that have a 'passive' claim and care enough to do so send someone to present the offer of becoming their petitioner, and among these offers the soul can choose. This is of course superseded by any 'active' claims a being has. Like making a deal with a devil before or after death, sending you down to the Nine Hells to become a Mane, or a higher Devil if you were particularly useful. Or getting kidnapped by Demon raids on the City of the Dead, which mostly target the Wall of the Faithless. If you get past all of the above, then I believe you are judged by Kelemvor, who decides where to place your soul.
Using the logic of the world I'm building for a book. The reason deities try to bring people in willingly is because their power comes from these souls. The worshipping and such is all a process of aligning a person's soul to the deity's energy. When this is done, the energy they provide is essentially inexhaustible, but at a finite rate. So the more followers a divinity has, the more powerful they are. In contrast, if the deity just obliterated the person to take their soul by force, the soul would be destroyed in the process, a big burst of energy, but only one-use. Petty, lesser beings might destroy souls to boost their power, but older divinities value the longer-term benefits.
It seems like there was a notable absence of any discussion of Elvish reincarnation in this video. It would probably be a bit of a tangent, but for the record, none of what is said here applies to non-Drow Elves, who may be reincarnated indefinitely, unless they become fey Eladrin and so become functionally immortal beings. Technically, there are also undead Elves who are outside the cycle of reincarnation (notably archliches), but that’s another thing again.
if you were to ask me how a deity can resurrect someone whose soul was completely and utterly destroyed, I'd say that it's probably because they're recreating it from their own power, literally bringing it back from the past, before it was destroyed
It's actually much easier to diagnose in dnd than the real world. See detect poison and disease. 20 mins, 10 to cast as a ritual, and 10 for the duration of the spell, from one caster can diagnose the illnesses of 100s of people if you put them in a line. Even if they all have different illnesses from one another. In the real world diagnostic tests are specialized, and even the people who diagnose diseases are specialized. And a single person takes at least 10 minutes of explanation in a one on one appointment to be diagnosed, if not several hours or days of tests and lab work. My sleep disorder took 12 months just to have access to the specialized equipment to detect it. With a spell, I'd be diagnosed by the masses
tbh the idea of reincarnation being a provable fact in worlds that work by dnd rules is really cool. it’s a nice alternative to eurocentric, christian-based fantasy. it also even maybe provides a reason for some form of atheism to exist even though the gods are probably real: if your soul is eventually going to fade into being one with the universe anyway, does it *really* matter which deity you align yourself with? …i also now have an idea about a warlock character trying to reach nirvana in order to get out of having sold their soul to their patron. maybe even a vaguely buddhist-inspired faction that comes into conflict with some of the more traditional pantheons because encouraging people to look forward to the ego-death stage of their soul is depriving the deities of useful minions. and as for deities being able to recreate a destroyed soul - it makes sense that if souls eventually fade into nothingness anyway, there has to be some way of creating new souls. what if when someone’s soul is consumed by a lich or other monster, the deity resurrecting them isn’t so much putting their soul back together as they are just creating an entirely new soul and slapping it into the resurrected person complete with their memories… and a massive identity crisis about whether they’re actually the same person they were before they died :D there are sooo many cool story ideas here, im 100% gonna have to incorporate some of this stuff into my campaigns
Remember that gods are not confined to the linear progression of time. For them it's just as easy as taking back a step and yoinking the soul to the present.
Depends the setting: Pathfinder's Glorian feeds Atheists to a eldritch moon. The Wall of the Faithless, as mentioned in this video, is Forgotten Realms.
I do object to the whole "become part of the substance of the plane"-part for those who follow a god. For followers of gods, they instead become so aligned with their god that there is no difference between them and thwir god, at which point they simply become a part of their god (thus, the god grows stronger of souls). So the endpoint for any worshiper is to literally become their god. If you instead follow a philosophy, then I can see you becoming part of the plane that allows perfection of that pursuit instead. Which would be how the planes themselves grow. Anyhow, that's how I run things on a meta-level to justify why gods want worshipers. They literally wither and die without them, as avatars can be destroyed, and gods being a collection of identical souls is just cool. That's how they can hold thousands of conversations at once, they're one mind multiplied by however many identical souls they consist of. 🤓
It seems that the only way to retain your personality is to become some powerful undead. Probably it's a horrible experience but at least you stay yourself. Like if you'll become a devil or petitioner you'll probably still lose your personality. I can't imagine that at least somebody of them doesn't want to look at what descendants/motherland/property have became after his death but I don't think thar anybody have done it. I guess necromancer/lich/vampire that thinks making everybody an undead would be objectively better for them and he doesn't need to ask can be a nice villian.
After you die, you’re done. You’re now a petitioner on your outer plane of choice and waiting for judgement. You get no more progress, no more adventure, no more nothing. It is bad for the player.
What I often don't get is how the DnD universe is not completely overfilled with the undead, with ghosts etc, and how can simple common mortals be in the majority..
So in other words what your saying is that at some point dnd religions would just boil down to aggressive monotheism or demon contracting/worship in order to make sure your preferred god favors you or to reject the gods entirely to preserve your ego/soul.
Divi e beings of a certain power level can use reality alteration and make, unmake, remake anything less powerful than themselves. I'm sure they don't use it as frequently because of politics. An element I did not hear; sometimes souls with join with the various elemental plane that they pass through otw to the after life and instead become a genie or other denizen of the plane
Then you have the Forgotten Realms elves who all know, literally know that they will be reincarnated on the material plane after a brief stint in Avandor when they die. Of course that is assuming they don't do something monumentally stupid, like make a deal with the devil, start worshiping Grumsh or Lolth, adventure into some soul trap or be a Drow(This last one is meant to be Ironic). So really most regular elves would have less reason to fear death then any other peoples in the Forgotten Realms at least.
Quite a shame that in the 5e books there is no real detailed description of what happens after death. The information is partly scattered behind various pay-walls. I read through "On Hallowed Ground" for 2e. I don't know if 3e or 4e has similar text sections about death and the afterlife. Since 2e is the biggest source for Planescape, I wouldn't be surprised if it's also the most detailed description of an afterlife. On Hallowed Ground describes when you die and nothing unusual happens, your soul travels through the Astral Plane. Then the astral plane absorbs your memory. Even gods have a problem retaining memory. You travel to the outer plane that best suits your beliefs or to the realm of the god or phandeon you have served the most. You are reborn from the plane itself or from a power as a petitioner. with qausi no memory, but your soul is still somehow shaped by your memory. Without a free will. In this new life you try to fight your way in the new hicheraie of the plane. Your faith is moulded into the philosophy of the plane to such an extent that you become a littery part of the plane. Or you fulfil tasks of your power and try to be as similar as possible to your power in order to be absorbed by your God. Sometimes On Hallowed Ground is formulated selstam. You can't approach it with the Christian idea of the afterlife. That's not how Planescape works. To me it seems more like that. When the multiverse was created, it was decided on 17 philosophies, in the form of the 17 outer planes. and then the cosmos underwent the greatest experiment in its structure - life. You are born in the Prime to form a first belief. It serves as a categorisation of where your soul goes after death. Once in one of the outer planes or in the realm of your Power, you try to further consolidate your belief to eventually become a part of the plane or Power. The multiverse becomes more and more complex as life becomes more complex. With each soul that becomes one with a plane or power, the cosmic structure becomes stronger and more complex.
Yo I def don't want to be a hater, but why does this video look like it still has the plastic/film wrap over the lense. Maybe it's the light? But I don't remember your videos normally being this kinda fuzzy and slightly less clear. Interesting topic to think of really, never thought of the groups of people who wouldn't actually want to be in that afterlife they are in.
I had a similar realization and played a character based on this years ago. They realized that free will is a trait unique to the prime material, and sought to avoid death at all costs, or if death is inevitable, destory their soul entirely and experience a true death.
@@chongwillson972 i thought about maybe going through a villain arc with them but ultimately decided they weren't against the gods, but for free will. And that it is an individuals right to choose to lose their free will, so they wouldn't force maintaining free will on anyone.
You can make your videos as long as you want! I understand you're playing the algorithm game, but you need only use a clickbait-esque title to ensure all of your usual viewers click, you may not get them to watch in the 1st 24 hours like the algorithm wants but everyone will click the 50 minute if they like the topic/title
"lem-yoor" is the correct English pronunciation. "le-MOO-rays" is for posh folks who want to show off that they learned classical Latin in school... and you can then out-posh them by telling them it's a plural-only word, so they're still wrong saying "le-MOO-ray", singular. 😄
Dude, please don't die yourself. The shadows around your eyes do certainly not look all too healthy. Get some sleep … and then maybe address the over-exposure of the video. Decent topic, though. ;)
Thanks for the video that's really nice but usually overlooked topic In my opinion afterlife in FR is inhumane and cruel as shit, deities aren't doing good for people by intervening and promoting "miracles", they're FARMING mortals The wall that receives unclaimed people should be proof enough when you consider that it wasn't always there and that proven alternatives like reincarnation exist I'm not saying that anyone should go to a heaven or whatever, just that the afterlife-cycle of petitioners point out that they're not important and that deities, and the cosmic forces for that matter, only move in relation to the people for their self preservation or innate method As an addendum, this whole stuff could be due to the fact that FR lives under many eternal wars but who knows
In the faerun setting souls do at least get what i have now realised is a MERCY Of forgetting evrything about their past life on the materiale plain, by the time that they get to their afterlife plain, over the course of a 10 day journey through the astral plane, to their afterlife! But this is the setting without the courtroom of the dead, and no the forgotten realms! Unless of course they make a deal With an entitet wich then garanteres their arrival their!
In dnd belief held real power and influence on reality. So a group of people can channel their beliefs to create a new realm and afterlife for the non-god followers.
My world has multiple pantheons which pantheons you follow determine what heaven or hell if your soul was chosen to incarnate as a einherjar a spirit not an undead or reincarnated. If not chosen you would be a wisp in heaven that would come back into the spiritual energy. If you not a follower of any pantheons your so would lose consciousness and being slowing just convert into energy part of the world.
I think that's part of the problem of tying D&D too closely to Forgotten Realms. Their cosmology is pretty shitty. I don't know anyone who actually ues it
I absolutely refuse to play in a group that allows "Player Character Deaths" outside of extreme/deliberate situations. Examples: Jumping off a High Cliff without being a Slow-Fall Monk or Feather-Fall Wizard. The entire Multiverse being destroyed. Being a Major Murderhobo (as a DM I would severely punish them with a torturous demise). Outside of those 3 examples I refuse to play with or allow "Player Character Deaths"!!! As for my World if I was DMing I'd have it be that when someone dies they get sent to a Grand Crossroads between all Afterlives. Then the person faces Judgment and must convince the Deities for your Afterlife Choice.
in my experience when people aren't afraid of death they begin to play very differently than compared to when death is a risk they face, however minor. for example, a lawful good hero paladin of sorts would simply never retreat from a fight if they knew there was no inherent risk in trying to stop evil. the second every battle becomes a fight for your life, the definitions of "good" and "evil" shift and being a person with a sense of self preservation no longer makes you into objectively just a coward. i wouldn't blame anyone from running away from a guy with a gun irl; in a dnd world we often say a person who left their friends to get killed by bandits is an evil/unheroic coward. obviously i would never kill a player for getting bad luck with dice if they play smart and execute clever tactics and strike at enemies weaknesses and such, but imo the second you stop taking the threats seriously the training wheels are off
@@ferrisffalcis Each their own preferences, instead of Player Character Deaths when they get knocked out/lose all HP I instead use a different system. IF THEY GET KNOCKED OUT they suffer a new permanent Scar/Marking and lose half the potential experience from the encounter. They then stay unconscious for 1 minute before they pop back up at full health with temporary doubled AC for the remainder of the encounter. What's more if they consistently get knocked out at 50% Scarred they permanently lose 5 points of Charisma and can no longer get scarred but in the future if they get knocked out again they still lose half the potential experience from an encounter.
I've always thought of the Prime Material worlds to be something of a "kindergarten", where individuals get their first taste of free will, and based on their life choices, they "graduate" upon death to join the "real" game of Planar politics. Each Plane has its own agenda that reflects individual notions of good, evil, law, and chaos. By graduating from the kiddie pool of the Prime Material, each individual must take responsibility for their own eternal soul, and that soul's alignment determines which plane it is naturally drawn towards. For some people, that might mean fighting fiends for all eternity, so off they go to Mount Celestia. Others are content to enjoy the wisdom and peace of Elysium, and so on for each of the various Planes.
Now I'm picturing a campaign all about smuggling souls from one afterlife to another, reuniting (or separating) families, while avoiding the ire of the gods.
That idea is a fun one to run, I've been running that on an off with my gaming group for literally years...
Ooh! And make it so that all the afterlives are connected, but the paths between are hard and dangerous to traverse!
Maybe some deities are okay with people jumping between afterlives, possibly even encouraging it for optimal chaos, while other deities try to stop it with all their power.
I had a concept for short adventure of investigating a death of a patriarch of a house, where it is later discovered trying to resurrect them that their soul no longer exists. Gods are pissed, devils are pissed and you basically have to go find a character that has created device that annihilates one's soul and offers their services to... people who might want to avoid afterlife.
@khayyin359
imagine being a kobold who soul was smuggled to the gnome afterlife...
@@chongwillson972don't got to worry for long. Glittergold won't suffer your kobold's soul for long. After all, he did blow up the kobold empire of several billion kobolds just for a laugh at the kobold God.
All of this implies that the life on the material plane is a kind of casting for later distribution amongst more specified planes. Which makes clerics some of the most clever people there, since they are literally minmaxing their chances to get the best "character" in the next world. And all of this is mildly interesting as a setting concept, but, that being said, it doesn't fell like dnd's intention at all.
I highly recommend reading more about the Outer-planes, and the soul's purpose within.
Also curious what you think the "Intention" of Fantasy Gaming is, having proof that souls exist?
A lot of this came from the Avatar series. One of the main characters was a cleric who lost his faith when the gods disappeared. he took a trip to the underworld where he found out that if he didn't have a patron god his soul was doomed to the wall of the faithless. What's worse is the false who don't worship their gods honestly. They're souls are imbedded in the ground
It's also where Kelrmvor is elevated to godhood, and he indisted that the gods periodically collect the souls of their worshipers
@@lostbutfreesoul I'm not sure if I understood your question. If you are asking why do I think that all of that is not the intent of dnd's lore (or Forgotten Realms for that matter), then my answer is as follows. And if not, then I wrote it all for nothing, so there's that.
The answer: it is because we see close to no acting on this intention: societies should be built around worshipping certain deities, holy quests and wars should be everywhere and evergoing. Instead what we actually get is a bunch of close-to-nonsence stuff about common folk worshipping almost everyone, while also being close to illiterate (books and education are ridiculously expensive), but also having favourite gods, but also sticking to pantheons, unless they need a specific favor of the deity that is in the other pantheon and so on and so forth.
And gods themselves are usually portrayed passive as hell, which doesn't necessarily contradict anything, but if the assumption of "material plane is only the tutorial" is to be true, than gods being passive is just plain bad/lazy writing, and I would expect a lot more emphasis on the life after the first death, since it sounds like a possibility for a very high fantasy adventure. Imagine speeding a life on a material plane to jump head first doomguy style into the war between the Abyss and the Nine Hells.
And, to be frank, I get it. In such a world we might not really get any adventurers on a material plane, since it would always quickly devolve into some GoT religious stuff. But also explaining the whole premise to a newbie that just wants to play a classic European fantasy would be... unreasonable.
So in the end I think, that all those gods were added to provide variety and player choice without really giving any thought to how it would affect a world on a larger scale. And, to be fair, it is kinda ok, if you're only playing an old stylish dnd with literal dungeons and dragons and the main reason to have gods in the first place is to justify the source of your clerics power.
@@nin0f Within the context of Forgotten Realms, the level of direct influence the gods can exert is tightly restricted. Remember that the setting has a lot of constraints artificially imposed top-down on everyone by the overgod Ao. Gods used to have a lot more ability to directly and routinely intervene on the Prime Material Plane prior to several series of changes at the point in the timeline usually intended for player characters.
Most of the official D&D settings are from the 80s or 90s; I think the only significant one from the 2000s is Eberron. D&D does not and never has had a major setting that actually resembled a 'vaguely Medieval Europe' very much. They have all always been closer to 19th and 20th century pulp fantasy novels than anything actually resembling Europe.
@@NevisYsbryd ikr. I've studied forgotten realms lore for a while, and that is exactly the reason why I criticize it. It comes up with a lot of great ideas, and in the next second it introduces some kind of restriction that makes this ideas pretty much irrelevant in a regular ttrpg game. Granted, these ideas could work for novels, but given how much lore you have to know to use and understand them, I'd rather just read full on original story.
The Wall of the Faithless is the worst fate any soul can go through, being an actual Atheist (as in refusing gods and affirming they don't exist despite the fact they do, not like the absence of worship but recognising the existence of gods) is a one way ticket to eternal suffering and damnation regardless of your alignement and deeds.
And yeah, every planes either brainwash you, removing your mortal memories and ties and/or tries to absord your soul into itself, which is very dubious and dark for me
Point of order on the noble farmer who dies in battle: given that he worshiped the god of harvest, hearth, and fertility his entire life, which in the forgotten realms is chauntea, his soul would likely be claimed by her, rather than the god of battle, Tempus. When he does go to the city of dead and gets judged by Kelemvor, it's not just that he is judged, but that he is allowed a chance to explain where his soul truly belongs. In a hyper agrarian society where people are generally good, if not overly zealous, peasant farmers, Chauntea is likely the primary deity worshiped amongst these people, and has the largest number of petitioners in the afterlife..... This is why she is a greater deity in the forgotten realms setting
I would surmise that the anxiety over death in a D&D world would partially revolve around the plethora of ways your soul can be destroyed and/or corrupted such that you don't go to your deserved afterlife.
Further, there's the fact that which afterlife you go to is canonically determined by your alignment. Depending on your personality, abilities, and inclinations, some afterlives would be ideal, while others would be horrific, even if they're *technically* one of the "good" aligned planes.
If we in the real world argue so vehemently about what actions lead to one having a specific alignment, how much more headache-inducing would those discussions be in a world where the lines between good and evil, law and chaos actually have practical, profound, and literally life-threatening consequences?
My players where still 100% worried about losing characters... for they will have Judgement!
Once you show them what some of the per-lore outcomes are, they often do not want to die.
Here is something very concerning to me, after decades of looking into this topic:
The Outer Planes are farming souls, churning them into methods designed to create plainer beings. It is far more obvious on the Infernal plane, look at the lore surrounding Hags for an example, but it is still there for the Celestial Planes as well. Eventually, regardless of which side you believe is an ideal afterlife for your character, they will become one of denizens of the plane in which they resided.
Of which none have a "soul" as we know it.
Nor do they have Free Will either....
@@lostbutfreesoulhaha I like that you came to a similar understanding. I once played a character years ago thats goal was to not die after coming to same realization, even in a best case scenario you go somewhere and lose your self and become some other being lacking free will. To them there was not a good answer to maintain your own will after death, so they decided to attempt to avoid it entirely. Free will is a unique trait to the prime material.
@@lostbutfreesoul That could actually feed into a plot for a campaign. The planes have become so saturated with souls that the mechanism for birthing new ones into the material plane has broken down, so now there's a cosmic imbalance where the population of mortals is swiftly dwindling, and eventually everyone will be an outsider.
@@lostbutfreesoul Wouldn't this only be a worry for those outer planes, though? In the Feywilde, you just eventually turn into a Fey, that still seem to have free will even if end up having to deal with the nonsense of the other Fey. (there's also the plane of Shadow, but that seems a lot less pleasant by comparison) These 2 planes are both overlapped with the material plane, so are not outer planes.
@@imALazyPandathat's why there are automatons that wander the multiverse, cleansing all those who attempt to avoid death, and will strike down any who aren't at least deity level. The gods don't allow one to not die. Momento mori is a rule that has an army of demigod level automatons who neither care nor will pause long enough to give you a moment to attempt reasoning with them. The gods will have you die, and only becoming a god will save you from that, and Io has made it clear in recebt lore, that he, the one who determines who becomes a god, that he's not accepting new applications.
So a comment about the "utter destruction" thing
Imagine it like permanently deleting a file on a computer. The data isn't *gone*, it's just torn to shreds so much that not even an insane super computer can retrieve it. It's like ripping paper to shreds then trying to make it a clean paper anew with your bare hands
Then, it is THEORETICALLY possible to get the "soul bits" back together, but only divine intervention has even the hope of doing so
And I imagine finding those bits is a pain in the arse for the god unless you're literally Ao
This overview actually makes it sound like ending up as a devil and just doing whatever in the hell planes is bizarrely the best option to a character who puts any value in their individuality. This convoluted, messy system is probably a result of various writers conflicting and having had different ideas on afterlives, leading to a system under which none of it is really what many characters would want.
I mean it makes sense. Most religions don't favor individuality and instead focus on collectivist so if your an individualist you'd probably want to reject any religion anyway you can and devil worship/contracting might be your best bet if you don't have any other means of saving your soul.
A lot of conflicting afterlives and ways to end up there have caused some conflicts to arise. Some intentional, many that are not.
It is more a testament to the wonky values of the creators. Ed Greenwood has some very... out there, and quite strong, opinions, and 4e was a whole thing unto itself.
You are telling on yourself, OP. Evil is not a pleasant path to self actualisation.
According to Pirates of the Caribbean, if Davy Jones rescues you, eventually you become part of the ship. Sounds similar.
I think one reason the afterlife in D&D is such a raw deal is because of the conflicting purposes of describing it in the first place. The Outer Planes have to be interesting enough to make people want to set adventures there, so there have to be monsters, conflicts, dungeons, intrigues, and the like.
But the inclusion of these kind of things necessarily make the planes less appealing for the people who actually have to live there.
They have to be high-level challenges at that, it isn't normal for level 3's to "Wander Outer."
Read then, on what happens to Residents whom die on the Outer Planes....
"I was promised forever lasting peace in Heaven and this is the Third incursion of Demons this week!"
@@lostbutfreesoul In Ysgard, don't they just respawn every day like nothing happened? Like an eternal groundhog Day, except everyone actually remembers every death.
There are more-or-less safe settlements in the Outer Planes, even in the lower planes. And they also are metaphysical with layers that are infinite, so it could very well be that for petitioners AKA those who spend their afterlife in the outer planes, or those that are born there like the people that are specifically mentioned to be born in Arcadia, Elysium and the likes, the outer planes are easier to traverse safely.
So, what I think answers most of your qurstions, is that dnd alignment is/was a literal representation of your "team" in an interplanar war.
So, for instance, signing away your soul is bad in the treason way, not in any moral or practical way. And a Lich is effectively stealing the gods' property. You just sort of have to walk backwards from the cosmic alignment perspective to see how the dnd world works- it's surprisingly uncomplicated in that way.
But it also makes getting rid of alignment have subtly profound worldbuilding implications, to the point of me deciding to make an entire new cosmology of planes recently because a lack of alignment throws so much out of wack, despite seeming very straightforward at first glance
@@wanderingshade8383that's part of why I keep alignment, but also tell my players they are not bound by it. In time, I might even check in to see if they're still the alignment they chose last time.
It's mostly a DM tool, as far as I am concerned, as some monsters have abilities that have different effect depending on the targets alignment and alignment can matter when a character enters an outer plane by death or planar travel. Outside of that though, it has little effect on play.
It's one of those "It really doesn't matter until it suddenly does, and then it really matters!"-mechanics, and I've really come around from "I hate it!" as a player, as it initially fealt like I had to follow it (but you don't) to "I love it! 🥰🤗" as a DM.
I think they've got the right balance now. As a player, it's just a reminder of your character's broad moral ideals. But as a DM it's a great storytelling tool once things start getting planar.
So around tier 3-4 in play, which is generally the least played, which is why so many players thinks alignment doesn't matter and can just be removed as pointless bloat. But the D&D cosmology runs on alignment, and without it you do not have a D&D cosmology and have to invent your own and then you're just building a new weird bike to be different (as far as I am concerned). 😂
Part of the ship; part of the crew.
If I were to write an isekai into a D&D universe, something I'd love would be to somehow wind up dying in a way that got the attention of multiple divine powers including Garl Glittergold agreeing to referee the debate between Moradin and Corellon until a Druid starts to try and cast Reincarnate on me and all of them agree to let my actions in my new chance determine where I'd wind up... and waking up a Dwelf.
9:45 Actually there's a 1st level ritual spell on the cleric, druid, paladin, and ranger spell list in 5e called Detect Poison and Disease that lets you instantly know what illness someone near you has. So it's apparently not difficult at all for divine and nature magic users.
"Digesting a soul, leading to its utter destruction, and inability to be resurrected by anything but divine intervention." Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transmuted into another form of energy. Also, if you're not buying that explanation for deific intervention: The god or gods in question take some random energy from the unformed soulstuff of the multiverse from which all souls are made and just recreate your soul; they are gods after all.
Omw to make 100,000 clones of the soul of my most legendary follower and shotgunning them out over the Material Plane to plant the seeds of a couple generations of my favorite mortal.
@@michaelvisosky743 Explanations for why stuff like this doesn't happen usually boils down to "the other gods intervene". It could make for a fun campaign or adventure premise, but no way is doing that going to fly unobstructed with so many powers vying for control of the Material Plane.
The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy does not apply to Positive/Negative Energy in D&D, nor does it have a very consistent or accurate understanding of real world physics.
"Being a cog in the universe", does that mean eventually everyone is ground-down then reincarnated as a Modron to become part of the Great March? (Algorithm tweaked. ;-p )
Whom can dispute this Logic?
"Dying, is bad."
Absolutely perfect opening, 10/10, no notes.
(Because this is text I'll specify I'm not being sarcastic; that got a very surprised water-filled laugh out of me.)
The ticking sound in the background really hammers in the inevitably of it all.
imagine being a kobold who ended up in the gnome afterlife.
your life is going to be a living hell.
I can imagine the gnome gods doing this to some influential Kobold as a "prank"
The only way this is possible is if Kobold worshipped the gnome god
I've had thoughts about afterlives trapping you in before because there seems to be no lore about wizards, warlocks, or sorcerers (but wizards especially) teleporting back to the material plane after their deaths. Demiplane only requires a somatic component, and you could store a tuning fork in one for Plane Shift and use that to get to the material plane. I simply cannot believe that no wizard powerful enough to cast Demiplane has ever been curious about this in life. So when those wizards die and go to the afterlife, but fail to plane shift back, it's because something stops them from doing so. Either you just can't leave the afterlife, or you can't cast spells in the afterlife (sucks for anyone who loves magic), or you're changed to not want to leave the afterlife, even briefly to fulfill your curiosity about whether it's possible.
I really like this idea of "becoming part of the plane" in a more literal sense: 200 years to become part of the plane, whether that means turning into a devil, being absorbed into the fabric of that plane, or something else. It also makes the idea that whatever form your soul takes in the afterlife, spellcasting isn't the same as it was in your material plane life. Perhaps you don't get any magic, or perhaps whether you do or don't and what kind of magic it is depends on the plane you spend your afterlife in and not what you had in life. That would explain the lack of resurrection via plane shift: whatever form your soul takes in the afterlife, magic just ain't the same.
It does seem kinda one-sided as far as soul ecology goes though, whatever stuff makes the soul is leaving the material plane and going into other planes. Maybe souls are just created out of nothing and over that 200-year span (or suddenly at its end) they disappear into nothing, so nothing is lost or gained. Maybe it's made of the same stuff as magic and this one-sided flow means magic in the material plane is slowly getting weaker ("magic was more powerful long ago" is a pretty common trope after all). Or maybe there's some flow of soul stuff from these afterlives into the material plane, kinda like reincarnation except with less reuse and more recycle, where souls are disassembled into soulstuff and that soulstuff makes new different souls. Maybe every plane has a "thing" it does, and this is the material plane's thing, hence the name Material Plane: soulstuff on this plane can't help but to materialize as a soul. It's not exactly a material being in the traditional sense, but it is a discrete entity.
Planescape defines petitioners as not being able to remember their past lies, and not retain anything useful from what fleeting images they do retain (I.E. Spells.).
I guess if you tp to material plane you'll be a soul without body which will probably send you back to the city of dead or make you a ghost. So you just repeated the same process but made your god angry.
Also it makes me wonder if wizard can ressurect himself while his soul haven't left material plane yet.
A quick web search pointed me to the term Monolatry, which apparently means consistently worshipping only one god out of many (that is, playing favorites), or maybe Kathenotheism, which means worshipping one god a time (which might be a good way of describing praying to whichever god is relevant to one's immediate concern instead of to all of them or to one exclusively). Some might even be Polymorphists, which in religious terms seems to be the term for taking multiple deities as separate faces of one entity.
A note about entreating a deity to give you that next chance, it's generally the case that Petitioners don't have memories to build their goals off of
"A petitioner retains the mannerisms, speech, even general interests of his or her former self, but all memories of the past are wiped completely away. At best, a petitioner has a shadowy recollection of a previous life, but little or nothing useful can be learned from these fleeting images."
(Planescape Campaign Setting: A Player's Guide to the Planes, page 9)
Granted Planescape isn't where every game takes place, but no setting went deeper on the philosophy of death than Planescape. Just worth considering, as in some of the examples given, the Petitioner wouldn't remember the family they lost or where they should be (sub note to this note: a soul can't be tricked into the wrong afterlife or be taken by the wrong entity, so the farmer could probably get where he wants to go even if he more recently had the war god's blessing).
Now, some homework for those who are interested, try out the game Planescape: Torment to learn a little more about where your PCs might go after death.
Biting off too much is more interesting than biting off too little. I enjoyed it, and it gave me some fuel for my next character who, coincidentally, is obsessed with the/an afterlife. Thanks for the great video!
I have two interpretations of cosmic wheel theory i like to use in regards to the soul-conomy.
1. Once your soul is reabsorbed into your afterlife, it becomes eligible for reincarnation. Most living things are netural at worst on the material plane, and if not for the evil planes actively working to steal souls both morally and literally it would just be a cycle without end.
2. The material plane is the place where new souls are grown, taking energy from the positive/negative plane to do so. Reincarnation can exist in various forms of course, but the primary production is just new souls.
In either case, the outer planes are competing for their share of souls, good vs evil, law vs chaos, in the hopes of irrevocably tipping the balance one way or another. What happens should a winner ever appear in this cosmic tug of war is anyones guess.
In my DND-like campaign, if you die you can't play for a whole session, and in the next, you will create a new character, but, what if every player dies in one session, in the rare event of this happening, the players will get the bad/secret ending where they don't defeat the final boss and they find themselves in heaven, in there, there is all of their past characters and current ones
Also, nabassu... They're pretty scary due to the fact that they're cr15 fiends that travel the multiverse in search of souls to devour .
Good exploration here. I also think "ability to come back from the dead" is a factor that d&d could do a lot more with than it does. Imagine if it were less about spell levels and resources and more about what happens to specifically the souls. It could be about having a divine mission, being assigned a fate unfinished, family bloodlines that can't be broken, following the right gods very specific rules, being a celebrated hero, or simply having a more powerful soul - all could be keys to an easier return from death or even the ability to do it at all. Could be a very powerful motivator for the actions of both players and NPCs.
And it can extended to health and harm - preventing death in the first place. Gods of the harvest preserving health and vitality for those tending their fields. A war god with blessings of strength and skill in battle - gifts that are rescinded from those who decide not to fight on theit gods behalf.
And for those accepted by no god at all.... the terror of lacking any hereafter driving them into heroism to be noticed by Fate. Or more often falling into the twisted arms of cults. Cults that may promise that they will be revived in new (monstrous) forms, or incorporated into (eaten by) an ineffable being who will then (maybe) become an eternal god.
My interpretation for the soul being destroyed utterly but still being able to be restored is this. I assume when a lich eats a soul whatever energy makes up that soul just gets turned into something else but doesn't stop existing. This is similar to how eating regular food works. Lets say I had a pet mouse that I really loved that was tragically eaten by a snake. If someone had god like powers it would technically be possible to find all the atoms that had once been my pet mouse and put them all back together. This sounds really hard even for a god so i understand why they dont always do it
This entire messy subject is why I made my setting's post-death stuff very simple. All "sparks" return to the Heart Of The World, the source of all magic, where they are re-integrated into it. Evil or severely egotistical people tend to have a harder time on that journey.
Nice and simple and fair, no icky moral questions. XD
I’m not so sure that becoming an undead if you weren’t ready to leave the material plane is ever that great. My understanding of most of these creatures is that they are twisted and warped by their unfinished business making them constantly angry, pained, and/or obsessed with whatever task kept them there. Some are probably less affected by this - ghosts are said to be any alignment, but baked in is that they yearn to resolve their business. They can’t just chill - their entire day to day probably revolves around seeking the resolution. That’s not really a great existence. And other undead like specters aren’t so lucky - they have this line in the MM: “a specter always succumbs to its hatred and sorrow.”
DnD's gods seem like they were designed by non-theists/ those unfamiliar with god(s)
Could you comment further?
Gary Gygax was a devout Jehovah witness And Dave Arneson was a born again Christian.
"Death is only the beginning"
One thing I think wasn't mentioned that regardless if you become a petitioner or a devil you will most likely forget the life you had as a mortal.
My party is visiting the beastlands and that video gave me the perfect encounter of an unwilling soul to want to be taken with them , or being repositioned elsewhere, thank you you're a godsend
Crazy inconsistencies in d&d lore histories.
Bars
I think in the case of your young warrior dying in battle, sure that might get a war deity's attention, but that doesn't mean the warrior's soul would stay with that war god forever. The war god, being part of a pantheon, might claim that person as a petitioner, but that petitioner isn't bound to the god of war, he is bound to the pantheon. Think of it kind of like how POWs get traded even in wartime. The warrior probably didn't care too much about the war god specifically, but his heroic death would be enough for the god to say "aha, I've found a great new recruit for my sister's fertility cult" or something along those lines.
The bravest kobold throwing his life away fully believing he will become a dragon god in the afterlife
Also intentionally having your shadow stolen seems dope as hell for like a villain or sneaky guy, very intimidating as well
What an epic video on a really broad topic- I'm quite impressed that you were able to keep it to 30 mins. Well done as always, sir.
I enjoy these philosophical arguments about what is really going on in fantasy settings.
Learn a little about the Outer Planes and you are fine.
Heaven has a Revolving Door, after all.
It is interesting that I come across this very well thought out and interesting video! I recently have been reading two games specifically designed for an "afterlife" scenario. One of the two even advertising itself as a great supplement for when a TPK occurs. Acheron Games' Inferno, clearly based very heavily on Dante's Divine Comedy, and The Black Ballad by The Storytellers Forge.
In my world, I describe the souls in the afterlife going to be judged and generally going into the Good Plane (basically Heaven) and the Evil Plane (basically Hell). This way most commoners go to the Good Plane (as most are generally neutral or good), unless claimed by another being.
Most souls go to the Good Plane and eventually "move on" to the next part of their existence. No one knows what happens to them, I like to keep it open ended. This is also why destroying souls is considered evil, denying the soul from this other stage of the journey.
I love your videos so much, I never thought about the fact that turning into a spirit or a specter or some undead creature that lives forever or at least close to forever until their business on earth is done whatever that may be would be the most positive solution. My good aligned Domain of life cleric who has vowed to defend the living by slaying undead At every turn may need To come to realize this and have a qualm of conscience. He may need to realize that these are simply people who did not wish to leave the world of the living quite so soon. I think my party is going to have a fit if I start protecting undead from them or trying to get them to run away instead of defeating them utterly. This will be a very interesting bit of role-playing! I think my new mantra is going to be "undead our people too".
My setting (for DnD) has souls go to the plane most aligned with the sum of their actions in life. The gods preside over their domain/planes, however their power in part comes from how well their actions(as deities) align with the domain that they claim influence over. So if someone whose life was dedicated to healing/caring for the sick was turned away from Elysium by its god, that would have a material cost for that god, as they are diverging from the natural alignment they ought to embody.
Because the vast majority of people live simple lives that aren't extraordinarily focused on a particular ideal, the majority of people do go to the same afterlife, which is not eternal paradise, but still reasonably pleasant. They can then be reincarnated, and have another shot at a life of greater purpose and merit the next time around. In this ordinary afterlife, it is mostly elective, as long as the lord of the dead consents (which he usually would, because more souls living mortal lives = more power for the gods). However in other domains, the gods may choose unilaterally, particularly if they are evil, and are betting that this reincarnated evil soul will do more of the same in their next life.
The problem I see from a deity’s ability to re-create a soul after 100% utter destruction is how come they cannot just create a soul from scratch out of nothing? Also, by what pattern would that deity be able to reconstitute an individual soul without some kind of “spiritual blueprint”? And even then, would that new individual be the SAME person as before?
Character is resurrected but has to be played by a different player
This would've been the perfect video to be sponsored by Erevan's Guide to Death & Beyond
Well thought out. Well presented. Completely depressing for the citizens of our D&D worlds.
My idea for why divine intervention can do things that deities can't usually is because it is referring to the cleric's Divine Intervention. The only way deities can actually do some of these things is with the help and conduit of one of their powerful clerics, one who likely was connected to the soul trying to be brought back. This also explains why, even when a deity would have no reason to not intervene, they may not, the d100 roll has to be successful in order for the deity and cleric to actually achieve the connection necessary for divine intervention. At level 20, a cleric would be so connected to their deity that they would always be able to make the connection.
I am now inspired to make a character who is afraid of death and sold his soul to a devil simply for the certainty in the afterlife. He will be completely nonchalant about his cool devil powers since, to him, they are just a side benefit.
detect poison and disease is a good spell and its only first level and tells you the type of poison and disease
I'm first time dming for my gf and her friend who gets a little upset when she thinks she's getting even close to death and thinks I'm playing against them even though I'm adjusting things so much to make sure they don't die because they told me they just wouldn't play anymore if they died. I'm running rime of the frostmaiden so it's already difficult to balance but I'm managing and my gf says it's great. I just wish I could play around with death or make them actually scared of dying and not just know it's not gonna happen because they'll quit
I always click on your vids when you upload. Keep it up! Much love
5:43 It's actually probably waaay cooler then that. The deity could create a fake soul as a sacrifice, then travels through time, swaps the two souls, then returns to the present and restores the person.
The gods are actually pretty unlikely to leave a soul entirely unclaimed. They don’t just maintain afterlives for purely altruistic reasons, even the good gods. A soul is a resource, so you’d have to put ALL the gods off to some degree - perhaps just by not leading a life that pursues any sort of principles or appreciates any aspect of life and the world at all. THAT is what a real faithless soul is.
9:45 Why in the world do you say that it is very difficult to diagnose a disease by magic? The text of the 1st level spell Detect Poison and Disease is as follows:
For the duration [10 minutes], you can sense the presence and location of poisons, poisonous creatures, and diseases within 30 feet of you. You also identify the kind of poison, poisonous creature, or disease in each case.
The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.
iS dEaTh ActUaLly gOoD? Me after hearing about the ideas in the bible in third grade (and until i finally came out of my emo phase ten years later)
The Baghest mostly targets Goblins. They are a curse put on the goblin race. I've heard they are the equivalent to werewolves.
It’s pretty clear that the genuine RAW lore for most of D&D regarding the afterlife is tremendously convoluted. I wouldn’t even try to
Make Sense of it. It’s a dozen different pantheons and ideas mashed together.
Im not certain of this, but from what Ive read for the forgotten realms at least, it seems that while Souls await judgement on the Fugue plane, the gods that have a 'passive' claim and care enough to do so send someone to present the offer of becoming their petitioner, and among these offers the soul can choose.
This is of course superseded by any 'active' claims a being has. Like making a deal with a devil before or after death, sending you down to the Nine Hells to become a Mane, or a higher Devil if you were particularly useful. Or getting kidnapped by Demon raids on the City of the Dead, which mostly target the Wall of the Faithless.
If you get past all of the above, then I believe you are judged by Kelemvor, who decides where to place your soul.
Using the logic of the world I'm building for a book. The reason deities try to bring people in willingly is because their power comes from these souls. The worshipping and such is all a process of aligning a person's soul to the deity's energy. When this is done, the energy they provide is essentially inexhaustible, but at a finite rate. So the more followers a divinity has, the more powerful they are. In contrast, if the deity just obliterated the person to take their soul by force, the soul would be destroyed in the process, a big burst of energy, but only one-use. Petty, lesser beings might destroy souls to boost their power, but older divinities value the longer-term benefits.
Very interesting perspectives!
It seems like there was a notable absence of any discussion of Elvish reincarnation in this video. It would probably be a bit of a tangent, but for the record, none of what is said here applies to non-Drow Elves, who may be reincarnated indefinitely, unless they become fey Eladrin and so become functionally immortal beings. Technically, there are also undead Elves who are outside the cycle of reincarnation (notably archliches), but that’s another thing again.
if you were to ask me how a deity can resurrect someone whose soul was completely and utterly destroyed, I'd say that it's probably because they're recreating it from their own power, literally bringing it back from the past, before it was destroyed
It's actually much easier to diagnose in dnd than the real world. See detect poison and disease. 20 mins, 10 to cast as a ritual, and 10 for the duration of the spell, from one caster can diagnose the illnesses of 100s of people if you put them in a line. Even if they all have different illnesses from one another.
In the real world diagnostic tests are specialized, and even the people who diagnose diseases are specialized. And a single person takes at least 10 minutes of explanation in a one on one appointment to be diagnosed, if not several hours or days of tests and lab work. My sleep disorder took 12 months just to have access to the specialized equipment to detect it. With a spell, I'd be diagnosed by the masses
tbh the idea of reincarnation being a provable fact in worlds that work by dnd rules is really cool. it’s a nice alternative to eurocentric, christian-based fantasy. it also even maybe provides a reason for some form of atheism to exist even though the gods are probably real: if your soul is eventually going to fade into being one with the universe anyway, does it *really* matter which deity you align yourself with?
…i also now have an idea about a warlock character trying to reach nirvana in order to get out of having sold their soul to their patron. maybe even a vaguely buddhist-inspired faction that comes into conflict with some of the more traditional pantheons because encouraging people to look forward to the ego-death stage of their soul is depriving the deities of useful minions.
and as for deities being able to recreate a destroyed soul - it makes sense that if souls eventually fade into nothingness anyway, there has to be some way of creating new souls. what if when someone’s soul is consumed by a lich or other monster, the deity resurrecting them isn’t so much putting their soul back together as they are just creating an entirely new soul and slapping it into the resurrected person complete with their memories… and a massive identity crisis about whether they’re actually the same person they were before they died :D
there are sooo many cool story ideas here, im 100% gonna have to incorporate some of this stuff into my campaigns
Remember that gods are not confined to the linear progression of time. For them it's just as easy as taking back a step and yoinking the soul to the present.
I’m just gonna chill with the halfling in the after life.
death brings an end to suffering
Don’t you go to the plane matching your alignment if you worship no deity
Depends the setting:
Pathfinder's Glorian feeds Atheists to a eldritch moon.
The Wall of the Faithless, as mentioned in this video, is Forgotten Realms.
@@lostbutfreesoul And that keeps said moon from devouring the world or smth
I do object to the whole "become part of the substance of the plane"-part for those who follow a god. For followers of gods, they instead become so aligned with their god that there is no difference between them and thwir god, at which point they simply become a part of their god (thus, the god grows stronger of souls). So the endpoint for any worshiper is to literally become their god.
If you instead follow a philosophy, then I can see you becoming part of the plane that allows perfection of that pursuit instead. Which would be how the planes themselves grow.
Anyhow, that's how I run things on a meta-level to justify why gods want worshipers. They literally wither and die without them, as avatars can be destroyed, and gods being a collection of identical souls is just cool. That's how they can hold thousands of conversations at once, they're one mind multiplied by however many identical souls they consist of. 🤓
Man I LOVE your fucking voice and your antics
It seems that the only way to retain your personality is to become some powerful undead. Probably it's a horrible experience but at least you stay yourself.
Like if you'll become a devil or petitioner you'll probably still lose your personality. I can't imagine that at least somebody of them doesn't want to look at what descendants/motherland/property have became after his death but I don't think thar anybody have done it.
I guess necromancer/lich/vampire that thinks making everybody an undead would be objectively better for them and he doesn't need to ask can be a nice villian.
After you die, you’re done. You’re now a petitioner on your outer plane of choice and waiting for judgement. You get no more progress, no more adventure, no more nothing. It is bad for the player.
What I often don't get is how the DnD universe is not completely overfilled with the undead, with ghosts etc, and how can simple common mortals be in the majority..
So in other words what your saying is that at some point dnd religions would just boil down to aggressive monotheism or demon contracting/worship in order to make sure your preferred god favors you or to reject the gods entirely to preserve your ego/soul.
Divi e beings of a certain power level can use reality alteration and make, unmake, remake anything less powerful than themselves. I'm sure they don't use it as frequently because of politics.
An element I did not hear; sometimes souls with join with the various elemental plane that they pass through otw to the after life and instead become a genie or other denizen of the plane
Then you have the Forgotten Realms elves who all know, literally know that they will be reincarnated on the material plane after a brief stint in Avandor when they die. Of course that is assuming they don't do something monumentally stupid, like make a deal with the devil, start worshiping Grumsh or Lolth, adventure into some soul trap or be a Drow(This last one is meant to be Ironic). So really most regular elves would have less reason to fear death then any other peoples in the Forgotten Realms at least.
Quite a shame that in the 5e books there is no real detailed description of what happens after death. The information is partly scattered behind various pay-walls. I read through "On Hallowed Ground" for 2e. I don't know if 3e or 4e has similar text sections about death and the afterlife. Since 2e is the biggest source for Planescape, I wouldn't be surprised if it's also the most detailed description of an afterlife.
On Hallowed Ground describes when you die and nothing unusual happens, your soul travels through the Astral Plane. Then the astral plane absorbs your memory. Even gods have a problem retaining memory. You travel to the outer plane that best suits your beliefs or to the realm of the god or phandeon you have served the most. You are reborn from the plane itself or from a power as a petitioner. with qausi no memory, but your soul is still somehow shaped by your memory. Without a free will. In this new life you try to fight your way in the new hicheraie of the plane. Your faith is moulded into the philosophy of the plane to such an extent that you become a littery part of the plane. Or you fulfil tasks of your power and try to be as similar as possible to your power in order to be absorbed by your God.
Sometimes On Hallowed Ground is formulated selstam. You can't approach it with the Christian idea of the afterlife. That's not how Planescape works.
To me it seems more like that. When the multiverse was created, it was decided on 17 philosophies, in the form of the 17 outer planes. and then the cosmos underwent the greatest experiment in its structure - life. You are born in the Prime to form a first belief. It serves as a categorisation of where your soul goes after death. Once in one of the outer planes or in the realm of your Power, you try to further consolidate your belief to eventually become a part of the plane or Power. The multiverse becomes more and more complex as life becomes more complex. With each soul that becomes one with a plane or power, the cosmic structure becomes stronger and more complex.
The only way to understand soul stuff in DnD is too make the only reasonable decision, can the whole thing, and make it up yourself.
If my choices are to be a slave to a god or be stuck in a wall for eternity, I choose lichdom.
@Jebbtube
doesn't that include trapping other people souls though?
Yo I def don't want to be a hater, but why does this video look like it still has the plastic/film wrap over the lense. Maybe it's the light? But I don't remember your videos normally being this kinda fuzzy and slightly less clear.
Interesting topic to think of really, never thought of the groups of people who wouldn't actually want to be in that afterlife they are in.
From the title, I was assuming you would discuss the etiquette of killing off your character at the table.
I had a similar realization and played a character based on this years ago. They realized that free will is a trait unique to the prime material, and sought to avoid death at all costs, or if death is inevitable, destory their soul entirely and experience a true death.
@imALazyPanda
hopefully they didn't try to do the same with other people.
like a lich would.
@@chongwillson972 i thought about maybe going through a villain arc with them but ultimately decided they weren't against the gods, but for free will. And that it is an individuals right to choose to lose their free will, so they wouldn't force maintaining free will on anyone.
Death is a Gift... Tolkin
You can make your videos as long as you want! I understand you're playing the algorithm game, but you need only use a clickbait-esque title to ensure all of your usual viewers click, you may not get them to watch in the 1st 24 hours like the algorithm wants but everyone will click the 50 minute if they like the topic/title
"lem-yoor" is the correct English pronunciation.
"le-MOO-rays" is for posh folks who want to show off that they learned classical Latin in school... and you can then out-posh them by telling them it's a plural-only word, so they're still wrong saying "le-MOO-ray", singular. 😄
Dude, please don't die yourself. The shadows around your eyes do certainly not look all too healthy. Get some sleep … and then maybe address the over-exposure of the video. Decent topic, though. ;)
Thanks for the video that's really nice but usually overlooked topic
In my opinion afterlife in FR is inhumane and cruel as shit, deities aren't doing good for people by intervening and promoting "miracles", they're FARMING mortals
The wall that receives unclaimed people should be proof enough when you consider that it wasn't always there and that proven alternatives like reincarnation exist
I'm not saying that anyone should go to a heaven or whatever, just that the afterlife-cycle of petitioners point out that they're not important and that deities, and the cosmic forces for that matter, only move in relation to the people for their self preservation or innate method
As an addendum, this whole stuff could be due to the fact that FR lives under many eternal wars but who knows
In the faerun setting souls do at least get what i have now realised is a MERCY Of forgetting evrything about their past life on the materiale plain, by the time that they get to their afterlife plain, over the course of a 10 day journey through the astral plane, to their afterlife! But this is the setting without the courtroom of the dead, and no the forgotten realms! Unless of course they make a deal With an entitet wich then garanteres their arrival their!
In dnd belief held real power and influence on reality. So a group of people can channel their beliefs to create a new realm and afterlife for the non-god followers.
My world has multiple pantheons which pantheons you follow determine what heaven or hell if your soul was chosen to incarnate as a einherjar a spirit not an undead or reincarnated. If not chosen you would be a wisp in heaven that would come back into the spiritual energy. If you not a follower of any pantheons your so would lose consciousness and being slowing just convert into energy part of the world.
Dying is the most important part of DnD and should be avoided at any costs. But your DM is not to pull punches.
So... the end of The Good Place?
deathics in gaming
Compelling thumbnail
I swear I though he was going to say "dying is gay" at the beggining of the video. I have too much brainrot.
And then there are the elves, who just reincarnate 😂
I think that's part of the problem of tying D&D too closely to Forgotten Realms. Their cosmology is pretty shitty. I don't know anyone who actually ues it
I absolutely refuse to play in a group that allows "Player Character Deaths" outside of extreme/deliberate situations.
Examples: Jumping off a High Cliff without being a Slow-Fall Monk or Feather-Fall Wizard. The entire Multiverse being destroyed. Being a Major Murderhobo (as a DM I would severely punish them with a torturous demise).
Outside of those 3 examples I refuse to play with or allow "Player Character Deaths"!!!
As for my World if I was DMing I'd have it be that when someone dies they get sent to a Grand Crossroads between all Afterlives. Then the person faces Judgment and must convince the Deities for your Afterlife Choice.
in my experience when people aren't afraid of death they begin to play very differently than compared to when death is a risk they face, however minor. for example, a lawful good hero paladin of sorts would simply never retreat from a fight if they knew there was no inherent risk in trying to stop evil.
the second every battle becomes a fight for your life, the definitions of "good" and "evil" shift and being a person with a sense of self preservation no longer makes you into objectively just a coward.
i wouldn't blame anyone from running away from a guy with a gun irl; in a dnd world we often say a person who left their friends to get killed by bandits is an evil/unheroic coward.
obviously i would never kill a player for getting bad luck with dice if they play smart and execute clever tactics and strike at enemies weaknesses and such, but imo the second you stop taking the threats seriously the training wheels are off
@@ferrisffalcis Each their own preferences, instead of Player Character Deaths when they get knocked out/lose all HP I instead use a different system.
IF THEY GET KNOCKED OUT they suffer a new permanent Scar/Marking and lose half the potential experience from the encounter. They then stay unconscious for 1 minute before they pop back up at full health with temporary doubled AC for the remainder of the encounter. What's more if they consistently get knocked out at 50% Scarred they permanently lose 5 points of Charisma and can no longer get scarred but in the future if they get knocked out again they still lose half the potential experience from an encounter.
@@ferrisffalcis I mean, making it so that your charcters don't die but there is a setback might work
Dying is so bad the players do it to everything
I've always thought of the Prime Material worlds to be something of a "kindergarten", where individuals get their first taste of free will, and based on their life choices, they "graduate" upon death to join the "real" game of Planar politics. Each Plane has its own agenda that reflects individual notions of good, evil, law, and chaos. By graduating from the kiddie pool of the Prime Material, each individual must take responsibility for their own eternal soul, and that soul's alignment determines which plane it is naturally drawn towards. For some people, that might mean fighting fiends for all eternity, so off they go to Mount Celestia. Others are content to enjoy the wisdom and peace of Elysium, and so on for each of the various Planes.