PDA

View Full Version : What is the Soul?



Primal Fury
2009-10-25, 06:50 PM
What, in the context of D&D specifically, is the soul? If one were to separate a human's soul (or any other humanoid races soul for that matter) from their body and held it in their hand, what would it be? What would happen if you only took a piece of a person's soul?

And there is, of course, the obligatory question since this IS D&D afterall: How would one stat out a soul?

Sir_Elderberry
2009-10-25, 06:58 PM
It's a Cartesian Ego. An atom of consciousness. A piece of space or energy that's aware. Holding it in your hand and you have everything that defines one person as a single person for their entire life, as all the pieces of actual matter pass in and out of their body. If this sounds irritatingly vague, well, there's a reason some real-world thinkers don't like the concept, but let's not get into that.

KitsuneKionchi
2009-10-25, 07:11 PM
Stating a soul sounds as difficult as stating your love for someone or stating a photon.

There are some things extremely similiar to souls. Ghostwalk is soul + ectoplasm. Incarnum has soul + mysterious-spirit-energy monsters too.

Some might saw that an elemental is itself a soul devoid of all nature save one: its element.

In the simplest western fantasy game, the soul is a unique spiritual entity that is created and placed to grow inside a body until the body is destroyed. The soul then is sent to an afterlife based on how it grew in that body: into a being of evil, good, chaos, law or some mixture of that.

So a soul would simply be a being with no physical stats. He would have all mental stats, memories and even a tangle form similar to the body itself. In some cases the soul's form is similiar to its host body for the same reason frozen water conforms to the shape of a glass. In other mythos, it takes the form of a user's ideal or mental image of itself (see: order of the stick).

This, of course, makes me wonder what happens to the spiritual bodies of insane folk who think themselves gods...

Of course, this brings up a lot of ethical problems. Why would you maintain your memories when you can be physically damaged and recieve memory damage? Are the brain damaged also "soul damage". The quick and easy answer is "yes". The body and soul are irrevocably linked until one of the pair is destroyed. Hence why if the body does something evil, the soul reflects it.

Primal Fury
2009-10-25, 07:36 PM
So the soul itself is just the conciousness; it's the incarnum or ectoplasm or whatever that gives it form. Outside of that it's completely immaterial... Hm.

Jergmo
2009-10-25, 07:46 PM
The soul is the character, but with the Incorporeal and Extraplanar subtypes, I'd guess.

KitsuneKionchi
2009-10-25, 07:48 PM
Correct. Its almost like how heat without fuel or air doesn't make fire. The soul is the heat. The body is the fuel. The air is...well I suppose you could say that which we consume to live (water, food, etc...). One could say the analogy is flawed since fire "consumes fuel", but its almost like how our soul 'consumes our body' by letting us live our lives. Could be why things like Vampires don't age--no soul growing inside their body.

So the soul is the character sheet. The body is the mini.

Paulus
2009-10-25, 07:52 PM
A weapon apparently.
Also armor and sometimes magic.

Nai_Calus
2009-10-25, 08:05 PM
There's actually been a fair amount written about the afterlife in D&D. Not so much about what a soul actually *is* or looks like, but some things can be inferred from various spells that trap it and the fact that evil things trade in them.

When you die, your soul leaves your body and passes through the Astral Plane on its way to one of two places: If you worshipped a god and aren't an alignment opposed to that god, you go to your god's realm. If you didn't worship a god or are like a LE follower of a CG god, you go to the plane that matches your alignment.

As your soul passes through the Astral plane, it loses its memories. (Which kind of removes the point of an afterlife at all, wtf D&D) These float in the Astral plane as memory cores. It's possible for your god to retrieve them if he or she wants to, but since the Astral is infinite, this is not an easy or quick task and you had better have been the biggest damned hero ever. Usually they just float for a few thousand years until they fade away, or until something eats them, as there are things that feed on them.

Once your soul, now stripped of its memories but retaining most of the characteristics it had in life, arrives at its destination, you reform as a Petitioner. What form you take depends on the plane and whether you're in the care of a god or not. A LG soul arriving in Mount Celestia becomes a Lantern Archon. A CG soul belonging to a worshipper of Corellon Larethian will show up in Arvandor, likely in the form of an elf or some fey creature. Supposedly people who knew you in life, should they happen to run into you, would be able to figure out who you were, but obviously since you don't remember them, this isn't very useful for them and upsetting to you - Most Petitioners aren't aware that they're dead.

Petitioners all have a singular goal that is always at the front of their minds - Merging. Petitioners of a plane want to merge with the plane, Petitioners of a god want to merge with their god. Their existance is focused around becoming more and more like their ideal until they become perfectly attuned to it and finally merge with their plane or their God. Some souls don't make it and simply fade away after a couple thousand years.

Petitioners are in a very tenuous position even without such things - If they're killed, they're *killed*, period. Their soul is destroyed and there's nothing left.

Most of this comes from 2e, though the basic concepts were retained in 3e. 4e of course does its own thing that's even more depressing.

...Yeah the D&D afterlife sucks ass, which is why I mostly ignore it and change it for worldbuilding.

Inhuman Bot
2009-10-25, 08:12 PM
What, iWhat would happen if you only took a piece of a person's soul?

The general consensus, I belive, is EXP/Stat loss.

Primal Fury
2009-10-25, 08:14 PM
A weapon apparently.
Also armor and sometimes magic.

Explain please? :smallconfused:

Roland St. Jude
2009-10-25, 08:21 PM
Sheriff of Moddingham: This is a fine discussion as long as it remains about D&D. Real world religious concepts, even if they'd be helpful to the discussion, are not permitted.

Gralamin
2009-10-25, 08:25 PM
The soul is Incarnum. At least, According to Magic of Incarnum

Chrono22
2009-10-25, 08:36 PM
Trap the Soul references a creature's HD and "life force".
I figure there are two souls in DnD- the living soul (animus) and the eternal soul (cartesian ego).

Sir_Elderberry
2009-10-25, 08:40 PM
Trap the Soul references a creature's HD and "life force".
I figure there are two souls in DnD- the living soul (animus) and the eternal soul (cartesian ego).

In 4e, this is explicitly true--it's brought up in "Open Grave".

Paulus
2009-10-25, 08:45 PM
Explain please? :smallconfused:

Soulmelds, soulknives, magic-comes-from-the-soul... that sort of thing.

Indon
2009-10-25, 09:04 PM
The soul is Incarnum. At least, According to Magic of Incarnum

Not quite; souls are made out of Incarnum - and return to it (wherever it comes from) when they die. (The book uses the term, "essence of all creatures")

Which leads to a fascinating situation - when a creature with a soul dies, I'm reasonably certain the incarnum which constitutes the soul returns to incarnum-place, but the soul itself can potentially travel to another plane in accordance with the plane's religious setting.

Edit: (Oh, hey, relevant!)


In 4e, this is explicitly true--it's brought up in "Open Grave".

Then Incarnum would be the 'distilled' and usable aspect of the animus.

Primal Fury
2009-10-25, 09:36 PM
Trap the Soul references a creature's HD and "life force".
I figure there are two souls in DnD- the living soul (animus) and the eternal soul (cartesian ego).

But what's the difference between the two in the D&D setting?

Zaydos
2009-10-25, 09:44 PM
I would actually say the D&D soul is made up of 2 parts; 1 part lifeforce (incarnum, etc) 1 part ego (identity, etc). The 1st is used for incarnum, other such stuff, XP costs, attacks that damage the soul by inflicting XP drain; the 2nd is the part that goes to the afterlife, etc although even this is a great source of power for demons; also it's this that gets sealed away by things that trap souls to avoid resurrection. With a resurrection spell you call back the ego but because it was divorced from its lifeforce for some time you fail to call back all of the second.

Chrono22
2009-10-25, 09:58 PM
But what's the difference between the two in the D&D setting?
The practical difference between them would be whether or not you can be raised.
The lower level spells that can bring characters back from the dead usually have time constraints- I imagine this is because the animus disseminates.
The higher level ones (True Resurrection) recreate the animus, or entirely new bodies.

This could be a good reason for why outsiders can't be raised by normal methods.

Primal Fury
2009-10-25, 10:01 PM
This could be a good reason for why outsiders can't be raised by normal methods.

Because their animus and their flesh are one in the same?

Chrono22
2009-10-25, 10:05 PM
What Nai_Calus mentioned about planar petitioners is what I meant.
Also, read the entry about Outsiders (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typessubtypes.htm). It states in no unclear terms that they are partially made up of the plane of their origin.
I imagine they are born out of the plane when they become petitioners- their eternal soul binds to the material of the plane to form a new body.
So, Outsiders that are from evil planes will be evil- and their physical bodies will come to reflect the plane of their origin.

Kelb_Panthera
2009-10-25, 10:31 PM
I've actually given this subject quite some thought. This is what I've come up with from the information found in various sources, including both Fiendish Codexes, the manual of the planes, both the book of vile darkness, and the book of exalted deeds, magic of incarnum, tome of magic, and a few others.

The soul is composed of three parts; the consciousness, which becomes a vestige if separated from the other two; the essentia, which binds the soul to the body and gives it form; and the spark of divinity, which arises from small portions of the parents souls, is nurtured by a lifetime of experience (xp,) and is the piece extracted by devils for their power.

It should be noted that the essentia used by meldshapers is not their own. It is the essentia they've learned to draw into themselves from the world around them. Because of the nature of essentia it does not leave the body once it is drawn in, until the body dies. The amount of essentia that meldshapers gain from levels in the class represents those characters ability to force more essentia into their bodies than is necessary to maintain the link between body and soul.

When a character dies the essentia dissipates leaving the mind and divine spark to travel to the outer planes, barring the direct influence of negative energy or some extreme emotional force arising from the consciousness itself.

In the event that negative energy binds to the soul, usually from the actions of some kind of undead or magical anomaly, essentia is recollected and either forms an incorporeal undead, or binds the soul to its own dead flesh. Since the essentia gathered isn't composed solely of the creature's own, original essentia an undead creature is only a twisted mockery of its former self. This is also why the minds of undead don't seem to function in the same way as living creatures'.

In some rare instances, the mind is able, in the throes of tremendous emotional upheaval, to unwittingly force the essentia of its soul to remain after death. This corrupts some of the essentia and does not prevent the body from dying, the result is that a small planar tear opens between the soul and the negative energy plane, and an undead is formed.

If the remainder of a creature's soul is free to move on however, it is drawn through the astral plain by some unknown force exerted by the planes themselves to a plane that matches its own alignment(I'm still working on deciphering that one.) If the creature was a devout worshiper of a deity, but doesn't match his deity's alignment, the deity's agents draw it from the ever-flowing stream of the recently deceased flowing into the appropriate neighboring plane. If the creature was only a professed worshiper of a deity, but his alignment is in some way opposed to that deity, the soul will not be bound for a plane close enough to his deity's for the deity's agents to find it.

Those souls bound for the lower planes find themselves in tremendous danger. Depending on which plane they fall upon, the soul may be driven mad by the nature of the plane, devoured by demons; which separates the mind from the divine spark, leaving the mind as a vestige, and the demon slightly stronger for the divine energy it gained by devouring the soul. They could be tortured by devils until the souls new body, composed of the elements of the plane itself, is corrupted utterly and its divine spark drained away for infernal use, resulting in a new devil. The most fortunate of these damned souls will simply go unnoticed by the fiendish denizens of their plane until they become a petitioner, and eventually merge with the plane itself.

Those souls bound for the celestial planes are treated with the kindness and fairness of their celestial host, in whatever form that treatment takes, until they forget their mortal lives and become petitioners. Celestial petitioners either petition their celestial host to be elevated to celestial denizens themselves or simply merge with the plane itself.

Those who find themselves in the planes that are neither good nor evil, simply continue to "live" out their afterlives in the fashion which suits them best until, again they forget their mortal lives and eventually merge with the plane itself.

This is, as far as I can tell, how souls work in D&D.

Chrono22
2009-10-25, 10:44 PM
If the remainder of a creature's soul is free to move on however, it is drawn through the astral plain by some unknown force exerted by the planes themselves to a plane that matches its own alignment(I'm still working on deciphering that one.)
This unknown force you are speaking of- I have an inkling as to what it might be. Each of the planes corresponds to a specific alignment, element, or kind of energy. But how did they form? The same mysterious force that guides souls to planes of the same alignment also drew together the planes.
Sympathy- similar things (ideas, concepts, ideals, elements) cluster together. I guess you could say sympathy is the spiritual equivalent to mass... if there were multiple kinds of mass.

KitsuneKionchi
2009-10-25, 11:10 PM
This unknown force you are speaking of- I have an inkling as to what it might be. Each of the planes corresponds to a specific alignment, element, or kind of energy. But how did they form? The same mysterious force that guides souls to planes of the same alignment also drew together the planes.
Sympathy- similar things (ideas, concepts, ideals, elements) cluster together. I guess you could say sympathy is the spiritual equivalent to mass... if there were multiple kinds of mass.

Hmm I had a setting a while ago in which these planes were formed by a fracture of a perfect plane or element...then each of these planes filtered tiny pieces of their essence together in a collusive bond to create the material plane. The idea of the setting was that a torrent of souls from the last time this very crises occured in the past (souls being quite literally 'energy') broke through the planes (which were set up in my mind more like disks on an axis in which this axis is a loop through other reallities in the multiverse). The metaphysical 'hole' these souls made on their travel (these particular souls having no home for their energy to go atfter they die) was pouring in too much energy of one kind, causing instability in the material plane.

The only way to solve it is to restabilize the holes. Which requires 6 human souls (one for each major plane of alignment in the setting) to sacrifice themselves in order to become "guardians" of these "lenses" or "filters" until their essence completely dilluted itself in the ever orbitting torrent of souls and they had to pass on their legacy.

Main problem was I didn't know what other choice the PCs at the end other than becoming these half-sentient and completely isolated lenses for this energy or letting the universe reset.

But it would be amusing watching the universe reset and then dropping the PCs in it with their old universe knowledge...

Kelb_Panthera
2009-10-25, 11:13 PM
This unknown force you are speaking of- I have an inkling as to what it might be. Each of the planes corresponds to a specific alignment, element, or kind of energy. But how did they form? The same mysterious force that guides souls to planes of the same alignment also drew together the planes.
Sympathy- similar things (ideas, concepts, ideals, elements) cluster together. I guess you could say sympathy is the spiritual equivalent to mass... if there were multiple kinds of mass.

you may be onto somethng there. I'll have to see what I can find. That would explain the penalties imposed on characters of the wrong alignment on any given plane.

Primal Fury
2009-10-26, 03:20 PM
So a soul DOES contain a spark of divinity in D&D. Thank you for preemptively answering my next question Kelb. :smallbiggrin:

hamishspence
2009-10-26, 03:27 PM
As your soul passes through the Astral plane, it loses its memories. (Which kind of removes the point of an afterlife at all, wtf D&D) These float in the Astral plane as memory cores. It's possible for your god to retrieve them if he or she wants to, but since the Astral is infinite, this is not an easy or quick task and you had better have been the biggest damned hero ever. Usually they just float for a few thousand years until they fade away, or until something eats them, as there are things that feed on them.

Once your soul, now stripped of its memories but retaining most of the characteristics it had in life, arrives at its destination, you reform as a Petitioner. What form you take depends on the plane and whether you're in the care of a god or not. A LG soul arriving in Mount Celestia becomes a Lantern Archon. A CG soul belonging to a worshipper of Corellon Larethian will show up in Arvandor, likely in the form of an elf or some fey creature. Supposedly people who knew you in life, should they happen to run into you, would be able to figure out who you were, but obviously since you don't remember them, this isn't very useful for them and upsetting to you - Most Petitioners aren't aware that they're dead.

Going by Complete Divine- most souls just float around on the plane- only "special" souls become petitioners.

Once you've become a petitioner, you can't normally be raised- since "you have been brought back to life again- as a new entity"

My guess is, to get around this, if for one reason or another, the petitioner has to be raised, it gets killed first, the soul is released back onto the plane, and before it starts to be absorbed (as normally happens when an Outsider is slain) the resurrection spell (or Wish, or Miracle) spell catches the soul, and brings it back to the material plane to enter its body (which will have been recreated, if necessary, by the spell)

Jothki
2009-10-26, 03:57 PM
Because their animus and their flesh are one in the same?

Or because they don't actually have an eternal soul, they're bound to the essence of their plane instead. Same with elementals, they're linked to some form of elemental energy.

Indon
2009-10-26, 04:06 PM
So a soul DOES contain a spark of divinity in D&D. Thank you for preemptively answering my next question Kelb. :smallbiggrin:

Well, it's implied that any soul has the ability to call upon divine power, and one of the major interpretations of divinity in D&D is that belief powers deities.

Zen Master
2009-10-26, 04:08 PM
It's the warranty slip for the body. When you die, you go back to the issuing party to have it repaired or replaced. If the warranty is void, you become a petitioner.

Nai_Calus
2009-10-26, 06:39 PM
Going by Complete Divine- most souls just float around on the plane- only "special" souls become petitioners.


Which is why I said most of it came from 2e and the basic concepts were retained in 3e. I'm going by 2e AD&D Planescape's On Hallowed Ground. :smallwink: (And doesn't that contradict earlier 3e crap? I know there was stuff for 'Petioners' and then 'Exceptional Petitioners', I think in MotP, but I can't bring myself to care enough to look it up.

For the purposes of actually running a campaign, I wouldn't use either edition's versions of things. As I said, it's depressing and largely pointless.

Zanticor
2009-10-26, 08:13 PM
This is actually a very important questing if your body is missing a soul and the other way around. Sound absurd maybe but if your draw a void cart for the deck of many things it becomes a pain in the where ever. A soul contains your int, wis, cha, skills, feats and memory. But after a divorce who gets the hp? What does a body snatcher get and how do you stat something that you put a soul in? Happens more than you think.

Zanticor

Kelb_Panthera
2009-10-26, 11:05 PM
Going by Complete Divine- most souls just float around on the plane- only "special" souls become petitioners.

Once you've become a petitioner, you can't normally be raised- since "you have been brought back to life again- as a new entity"

My guess is, to get around this, if for one reason or another, the petitioner has to be raised, it gets killed first, the soul is released back onto the plane, and before it starts to be absorbed (as normally happens when an Outsider is slain) the resurrection spell (or Wish, or Miracle) spell catches the soul, and brings it back to the material plane to enter its body (which will have been recreated, if necessary, by the spell)

Unfortunately, several sources either don't match up exactly or, directly contradict one another. Manual of the planes directly contradicts Complete Divine in this particular case. The information I put forward in my previous post is my best estimation of what a soul is and how it works based on all the sources available to me, 43 books in total, not counting campaign specific material.

hamishspence
2009-10-27, 07:01 AM
Yes- but Manual of the Planes is 3.0 and Complete Divine is 3.5.

That said- i'd probably rule that, given enough time, a soul on the plane will morph into a petitioner.

OoTS seems to follow a principle slightly closer to Complete Divine: you have Souls- the Greenhilt family- and you have Petitioners- Roy's Archon. (since Lantern Archon is the basic petitioner for the Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia.

Kelb_Panthera
2009-10-27, 02:00 PM
Yes- but Manual of the Planes is 3.0 and Complete Divine is 3.5.

That said- i'd probably rule that, given enough time, a soul on the plane will morph into a petitioner.

OoTS seems to follow a principle slightly closer to Complete Divine: you have Souls- the Greenhilt family- and you have Petitioners- Roy's Archon. (since Lantern Archon is the basic petitioner for the Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia.

I'm not really all that concerned about the 3e vs 3.5 thing. Some of the crunch changes but the fluff isn't really version specific. That is to say, 3.x is 3.x. Obviously 2e and 4e have their own fluff, that is massively different from 3.x.

hamishspence
2009-10-27, 02:13 PM
its more that Complete Divine was published somewhat later.

Also- it goes into a bit more depth on what a soul is, what can happen to it, what effects destroy it (Sphere of Annihilation) or damage it (barghest special ability)

And how Speak With Dead only contacts an "echo" of the living personality, not the soul- and how ghosts form.

To sum up, it is the closest thing to an in-depth source on souls and the afterlife within 3.0-3.5 period D&D.

(Manual of the Planes describes several different options- one of which, it that petitioners are failures- and the souls judged to have live up to the standard, get absorbed- and the petitioners are waiting around, trying to qualify through more work).

So it not clear what's "official" afterlife-wise, in 3rd ed.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-27, 02:55 PM
What, in the context of D&D specifically, is the soul?

Tasty.

Your mom is too short, and needs to have at least 10 characters.

Kelb_Panthera
2009-10-27, 09:26 PM
It's not clear what the official standpoint on the soul is, you'll note that all the sources consider their words to be suggestions, is because WotC didn't want to put down a solid statement on such a potentially explosive subject. I doubt very seriously that the game designers gave the matter any considerable thought, since the crunch is so much more important than the fluff. After all, how much do you really need to know about the nature of the soul for res magic to work? Heck, most of the supplements that have info on the soul don't even have the same writers. Dave Noonan was in on both MotP and CD, but that's about it.