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Siege Tower
2012-11-26, 03:59 PM
I'm currently making a character that had previously had their soul completely removed by an incubus. I'm wondering what consequences this character would have from the lack of a soul. Despite the obvious things that happen (or don't happen) when they die.

I'm wondering if things like divine magic would be extra effective on them or possibly do nothing at all. Maybe animals naturally dislike this character? I usually play 3.5 so do any gods ever interact with these kinds of characters in a specific way?

I'm thinking of making this character as lecherous and sinful as possible. Since they have no soul they have nothing to taint.

CarpeGuitarrem
2012-11-26, 04:11 PM
I'm thinking of making this character as lecherous and sinful as possible. Since they have no soul they have nothing to taint.
Actually, I wouldn't go this route. Because they have no soul, they have no real reason to amp their wickedness.

Instead, I'd play them as detached, even Faerie-like, with heapings of "Blue and Orange Morality" (as opposed to Black and White Morality). They don't relate to the world in terms of good and evil as we understand it, so their actions won't necessarily make sense from that axis.

Instead, find one that they do make sense from. Maybe they operate according to a specific set of protocols?

the clumsy bard
2012-11-26, 04:17 PM
It might sound weird and it also might sound like it is supporting the wicked route, but I would say act with no conscience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience).

Siege Tower
2012-11-26, 04:29 PM
I was planning for the character to have full knowledge that they have no soul so they would understand morality from when they did have one. The character would end up being freed of consequence since they lost it which is what would lead them to behave improperly. The character's ultimate goal would be to live forever since there's nothing good waiting for them in death but they can't be punished by the gods in life.

kieza
2012-11-26, 04:34 PM
I introduced soullessness into my campaign as a very rare congenital defect; affected people behaved much like psychopaths, being incapable of empathy or guilt. They also lacked real capacity for creativity, learning tasks simply by rote, and often seemed "machine-like" in their movements.

Water_Bear
2012-11-26, 04:51 PM
What happens should depend on how souls work in your game (Captain Obvious to the rescue!).

If it's more of a Western cosmology with a one-to-one soul:body ratio, souls retaining personality and memories, and reward/punishement of the soul after death, then there are several issues. If you can have a mind without a soul, what is the soul doing? Is it just a backup, or is it providing some other part of your personality, like a conscience? Are there physical/magical abilities which depend on souls, and if so how does not having a soul affect them?

If it's an Eastern cosmology with reincarnation, then not having a soul might actually be a good thing; you don't have to deal with Karma from past lives and you don't have any means of accruing more in your lifetime. Plus, seeing as their versions of the soul don't act as personality or memory it means there's relatively little to lose. Then again, losing your soul has got to mess up your Ki something awful, so good luck trying to win any martial-arts tournaments or defeat opposing Magical Girls.

Also, if this is 3.5 specific you should ask the mods to move the thread to the appropriate sub-forum.

KillianHawkeye
2012-11-26, 05:03 PM
If I had a character with no soul, my first line of thinking would be to ask what kind of spiritual entity has moved in to take its place. An empty human being has got to be an awfully tempting living space for spirits, and a character with no soul should be doubly easy to possess.

Gildedragon
2012-11-26, 05:42 PM
How concerned would your character be with getting their soul back?
Is it possible to regrow a soul?
What'd happen if your character got a "raise dead" or "reincarnate" used on them?
These sort of things are what ya've gotta talk to your DM about

Sidmen
2012-11-26, 06:03 PM
If you have the time and some money, I'd suggest picking up and watching Season 6 of Supernatural (you might also find it on some online streaming sites, I've never used them but my boss watches stuff online).

Anyway, one of the main characters in that season runs around without a soul. That's the best suggestion I can give for how I'd imagine someone without a soul acting.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-11-26, 06:25 PM
What happens should depend on how souls work in your game (Captain Obvious to the rescue!).

If it's more of a Western cosmology with a one-to-one soul:body ratio, souls retaining personality and memories, and reward/punishement of the soul after death, then there are several issues. If you can have a mind without a soul, what is the soul doing? Is it just a backup, or is it providing some other part of your personality, like a conscience? Are there physical/magical abilities which depend on souls, and if so how does not having a soul affect them?

If it's an Eastern cosmology with reincarnation, then not having a soul might actually be a good thing; you don't have to deal with Karma from past lives and you don't have any means of accruing more in your lifetime. Plus, seeing as their versions of the soul don't act as personality or memory it means there's relatively little to lose. Then again, losing your soul has got to mess up your Ki something awful, so good luck trying to win any martial-arts tournaments or defeat opposing Magical Girls.

Also, if this is 3.5 specific you should ask the mods to move the thread to the appropriate sub-forum.

Other religions also have souls consisting of multiple parts, with complicated interactions between them. Traditional tengerists, for example, believe that a person needs 3 different souls to function normally, but depending on the circumstances you can house as many as 5. Their beliefs go into great detail on the different kinds of damages to your souls that are possible, the effect they have on the body, and what rites need to be performed and what medicines need to be taken to fix them.

So yeah, it's pretty much anything goes.

invinible
2012-11-26, 07:04 PM
So something from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus?

holywhippet
2012-11-26, 08:03 PM
I'd say the character would be much like a roughly intelligent zombie. Able to follow instructions but with no will power or wisdom behind their actions.

Either that or the character should be emotionally numb. They might see an murder and know intellectually they should do something but not feel any rage against the perpertrator or sympathy for the victim.

Ravens_cry
2012-11-26, 08:24 PM
What is a soul in your universe?
Is it the person themselves, riding the body in life?
Then the body is now comatose, autonomous functions like breathing and heartbeat only.
Is it a sense of ethics and morals, right and wrong?
Than they are now amoral. Not necessarily bad, but with a child's ignorant innocence.
Is it the vehicle consciousness rides into whatever passes for an afterlife?
Well, then things get interesting, as for most purposes it makes no difference. But spells like Soul Jar or Trap the Soul might have no effect, but death might leave them trapped in their body, dead but unable to pass on.

Grimsage Matt
2012-11-26, 10:16 PM
How did they lose it? And, if needs be, they can always win a new soul in a poker game.

Jay R
2012-11-26, 10:54 PM
You don't have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body. Losing your soul means losing your self.

So if the PC's soul has been lost, you aren't playing the soulless body; you are playing the body-less soul, trapped and in the keeping of the incubus.

(If the DM goes with it, that could be an extremely cool game.)

TuggyNE
2012-11-26, 11:59 PM
You don't have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body. Losing your soul means losing your self.

Heartily seconded, and literature points for the quote. :smallwink:

Ravens_cry
2012-11-27, 01:09 AM
Heartily seconded, and literature points for the quote. :smallwink:
A good book, though the ending made me cry both times I read it.

Driderman
2012-11-27, 03:25 AM
What is a soul anyway? What does it do?
You need to answer these question before you can answer "what does missing a soul do to me", as far as I'm concerned.
I personally like the idea that missing a soul somehow detaches you and prevents from "connecting" with other beings and the world around you. Giving you a jarring sense of "wrongness" deep in your being, a sense that you are at all times alone, wrong.
I'm also very fond of the idea that having no soul makes room for something else to occupy that space and that even if that something is something horrible, having it will alleviate the sense of wrongness you suffer from.

Xuc Xac
2012-11-27, 08:22 AM
You could also go the other way with it:

"I feel fine, actually. Turns out the soul is a lot like the appendix: you don't even use it."

Absol197
2012-11-27, 09:31 AM
You don't have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body. Losing your soul means losing your self.

Okay, what is this line from? I know I've read it in its original context before, but I can't remember what it was.

I keep thinking Dresden Files, but I'm not sure...


~Phoenix~

Ravens_cry
2012-11-27, 09:40 AM
Okay, what is this line from? I know I've read it in its original context before, but I can't remember what it was.

I keep thinking Dresden Files, but I'm not sure...


~Phoenix~
A Canticle for Leibowitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz), a science fiction novel about a post-nuclear holocaust order of monks who sought to preserve pre-apocalypse knowledge and the consequences thereof.

Incom
2012-11-27, 09:40 AM
I had the idea that the body actually regrows a new soul over time, as the soul has an important function: it is a backup personality in case something happens to the mind (such as death, insanity [magical insanity cures act by basically reloading the soul], mind control [the soul can reassert itself], whatever else). Normally this means that having the soul removed is relatively unproblematic--it might lead to being susceptible to long-term mind control, reduced will saves, or similar effects, but it's not a permanent effect (although expect at least some personality changes--someone whose soul is normally good at controlling emotions may replace it with one that isn't, etc.--but since personality is already filtered through body chemistry it likely won't be as extreme as one might expect).

However, what happens when the old soul returns? Do they merge? This would be a neat way to handle memory (the soulless character knows intellectually things that happened to them before the soul was removed but they can't remember) but does that mean that two different people's souls can also merge? And what happens then? Alternatively, do they stay separate? Maybe it manifests as a pseudo-split-personality. If so, is it antagonistic (ie. they're fighting for control over one body), or symbiotic (ie. they switch off with each other because they're better at different tasks)?

And of course, how do you crunch all of this? Is the soul responsible for, say, spell slots (as OOTS seems to imply with the soul splice thing)?

This sounds like the kind of thing you could build a system on, actually.

RedWarlock
2012-11-27, 11:09 AM
Okay, what is this line from? I know I've read it in its original context before, but I can't remember what it was.

I keep thinking Dresden Files, but I'm not sure...


~Phoenix~

I think it was said in Dresden Files, Ghost Story as I recall, but I think even there it was phrased as a quote rather than an original line.

NichG
2012-11-27, 08:44 PM
Since you want a character at the end of the day, lets exclude all the various interpretations that would make the character unplayable. As others have said, it comes down to what a soul means after that is said and done. It can't be persona and memory, because then you don't have a character, but the following ideas might be interesting:

- The soul is a vote. Each person gets one say as to what cosmic forces win the day at the end of time, as well as the current disposition of things in the universe. If there are more evil people, their souls make evil stronger. Because this character lacks a soul, the divine are completely unconcerned with them (and perhaps cannot even see them) - their vote has already been cast and there's no taking it back. This could also have implications for fate, if such a thing is important in the campaign: no soul means no fated role left to play, so anything they do 'breaks' the divine plan somehow. The character's personality might not be strongly affected by this, but there could be subtle things: they are incapable of faith, lack a visceral moral response (all their morality is intellectual, not based on feeling), etc.

- The soul is a connection to something. This idea would have souls being like some sort of link to a collective (and ancestral) consciousness of the world. Hunches, intuition, coincidence, premonitions, and so on all stem from people subtly learning from the soul-link. The character sometimes is just blank on things that people normally are very intuitive about. They can't tell when people are looking at them, their long-term memory is more limited (because everyone else can lean on ancestral memory), etc.

- The soul is the creative part. This person need not be robotic per-se, but they have trouble with any truly creative endeavors. Research, art, poetry, and such are beyond them. Furthermore, they absolutely cannot get innuendo (e.g. creative interpretations).

- The soul connects mind and body. This one is a little weird - the modifiers to RP are sort of physical ticks rather than mental changes. This person has to control every muscle individually when they move, rather than just naturally moving by instinct. So when they move they are concentrating very hard and can easily be distracted. Every thing they do would be painstaking, and would use as few muscles as possible at any given time.

- The soul is hope. A bit of a darker one - the soul acts as protection against every bad thing in the world, because everyone at a deep level has an instinctual understanding that no matter what happens they can eventually live on and escape it in the afterlife. For this character, they are living in an endlessly decaying body - every minor cosmetic change is just a reminder of the inevitable destruction of their self and all that makes them up.

- The soul as social reality. Another kind of weird one. If you've ever read Neverwhere, that's a good inspiration for this. Basically, people only remember you if you have a soul. Otherwise, things you do tend to fade from memory and importance. The character is used to being ignored, used to being immune to the consequences of social misbehavior (at least the long term ones), and may be somewhat jaded and self-centered because of it.

Slipperychicken
2012-11-27, 09:13 PM
Well, look at the bright side: You don't need to worry about demons or church-recruiters anymore.

White_Drake
2012-11-27, 09:13 PM
- The soul is hope. A bit of a darker one - the soul acts as protection against every bad thing in the world, because everyone at a deep level has an instinctual understanding that no matter what happens they can eventually live on and escape it in the afterlife. For this character, they are living in an endlessly decaying body - every minor cosmetic change is just a reminder of the inevitable destruction of their self and all that makes them up.


This reminds me of Raistlin, which means it automatically gets my vote; after all, he wasn't so bad, right?

Anxe
2012-11-27, 10:05 PM
Isn't a person without a soul dead within D&D? That's by RAW though, so who cares.

For your character, you might want to read A Modest Destiny (http://www.squidi.net/comic/amd/view.php?series=amd&ep=1&id=1). It covers what someone without a soul would act like. It's rather long, but the best webcomic I've ever read. Have fun reading it!

Ravens_cry
2012-11-27, 10:08 PM
Well, in D&D, you can raise a dead person as a mindless undead, awaken that undead to sentience, then kill them and cast resurrection on the corpse. Now for the fun part, just who gets raised, exactly?
It's a similar question to what Incom asked.

TuggyNE
2012-11-27, 11:03 PM
A Canticle for Leibowitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz), a science fiction novel about a post-nuclear holocaust order of monks who sought to preserve pre-apocalypse knowledge and the consequences thereof.

Huh. I was referring to what I believe(d) to be its original source: C.S. Lewis, specifically his Mere Christianity.

I haven't actually read A Canticle for Leibowitz, so uh, mutual agreement to expand our repertoire?

Alaris
2012-11-27, 11:27 PM
I'll echo what many people have said. It depends on your game world. As far as I know, there isn't 'much' concrete evidence in regards to souls in 3.5.

Nonetheless, as far as I'm concerned, and I think for my world (though I'm still fine-tuning things), a soul is the embodiment of who you are. It is your mind, your sentience, etc.

Most living creatures that have achieved certain levels of sentience have a soul. The basic humanoid races. Animals. Hell, even plants have souls. For many Outsiders, their body IS their soul; it is one and the same. Ghosts are a manifestation of the soul. Certain undead (Vampires, Lich's) retain their soul, though in the latter case, they hide it in a safe place.

So for my world, to not have a soul at all, is to not be sentient, to not be. Unless something strange was at work, where your soul is connected to your body, but from the outside, then you could not live without a soul. You are the soul.

Again, this is the opinion of Alaris, mostly for his world. I'm not saying you should necessarily use it, especially since it does not work for your idea, but I figured I would give you my perspective.


Well, in D&D, you can raise a dead person as a mindless undead, awaken that undead to sentience, then kill them and cast resurrection on the corpse. Now for the fun part, just who gets raised, exactly?
It's a similar question to what Incom asked.

Ooh, an interesting question. And one I think I want to answer. At least, in theory.

In my opinion, it essentially would go like this (for my world anyway):

Dead Human is raised as a Zombie!
Awaken [Undead?] is cast on him, giving him mental scores!
Either a soul is bestowed upon him (by a Deity, or something), one is reincarnated into him (not standard rules), or a new soul is born.
The now sentient Zombie is killed!
The new soul, being the last resident of that body, is called back into it, if he so chooses to come.


Naturally, if some wizard started to abuse this to "create souls," the Deities may step in, as 'the soul' is not a domain for mortals to be toying with.

At least, that's my interpretation. ^_^

Ravens_cry
2012-11-27, 11:34 PM
Huh. I was referring to what I believe(d) to be its original source: C.S. Lewis, specifically his Mere Christianity.

I haven't actually read A Canticle for Leibowitz, so uh, mutual agreement to expand our repertoire?
Interesting. I have read parts of Mere Christinity, though I don't remember that particular line.
On topic and in relation to the recent thread about 'demons and devils that don't punish people', soul as your minds 'vehicle' to the afterlife could be why devils want to buy them, as they could allow a two way journey, potentially bringing devils out of their imprisonment in Hell and into the mortal world. The seller's punishment is being stuck in their rotting decaying body for all eternity after death. Sounds like fun, no?
Oh, and if they decide to take the trip early, the track ends in the seller's skull, and now you have demonic possession.
Fun for the whole family!

Crazyfailure13
2012-11-27, 11:34 PM
Chaotic neutral to the extreme, your soul is gone, with it your moral compass, it's not that you'll suddenly become horribly evil, you just don't have guilt, or for that matter social cares anymore, if you feel hunger you become a glutton, if your angry you lash out at the source without care of retribution, If you suddenly want to sleep in the road, screw those that would care.

on another note, maybe the lack of a soul leaves your character feeling empty, so much so that they eat, sleep, of indulge in various activities often and in bulk to try to fill the void inside.

Gildedragon
2012-11-27, 11:48 PM
Chaotic neutral to the extreme, your soul is gone, with it your moral compass...
True Neutral it'd be I reckon. You have no reason to want the ideals of Freedom or Order.

PersonMan
2012-11-28, 12:56 PM
I've actually had an idea for a character with no soul - basically, a pacifist who goes around trying to help as many people as possible. They know they won't exist after they die, so they try to make as big a (good) mark on the world as possible during their oh-so-limited time.

Due to their unique (since everyone else has a soul) outlook, they eschew violence whenever possible. Time on the Material Plane is sacred, something rare for both them and everyone else. Killing someone means ending their time there and forever banishing them - potentially to Hell or the Abyss. They avoid drugs, etc. as well, since they know that falling into an addiction once can end everything. Forever. There might be internal conflict about luxuries - the "I only have one life, let's live it up" side against the "Everything I have should go towards helping others" one.

Lots of conversion will be happening. Oblivion after death is one thing, but torture is worse - they will try to help people caught in vicious cycles and forced to lives of crime or into acting wicked to live whenever possible. The character will confront authorities whenever they are acting at odds with what they should be doing, but always with a knowledge that they only have one shot - they would rather sneak in and prepare a Zanatos Gambit-esque situation than rush in and die.

Utter serenity. Their time will come...when it will come, no sooner and no later. There is no postponing the inevitable, but it should also not be rushed towards. Life is precious.

ReaderAt2046
2012-12-05, 04:15 PM
I don't think a character with no soul would even be playable, because removing the soul would turn you into a literal animal. With no soul, your biological instincts would function, but you wouldn't be able to think or read or work magic or make choices any more than an animal could.

A Tad Insane
2012-12-05, 05:28 PM
A pysicopathic Data, maybe? Like they can sort of some what understand and emulate emotions, but they're still deep in the uncanny valley. I think there should be innate consequences, othewise owning a soul is just owning guilt

hamishspence
2012-12-05, 05:37 PM
I liked the Malus Darkblade approach- while he doesn't bleed properly anymore- and there's something emotionally missing- he's still functional enough to go hunting down the daemon who took it, and make the daemon give it back.

Xuc Xac
2012-12-06, 01:12 AM
I don't think a character with no soul would even be playable, because removing the soul would turn you into a literal animal. With no soul, your biological instincts would function, but you wouldn't be able to think or read or work magic or make choices any more than an animal could.

Those are functions of the brain, not the soul. It's like saying a computer without off-site backup is unusable.

Ravens_cry
2012-12-06, 01:15 AM
A pysicopathic Data, maybe? I think there should be innate consequences, othewise owning a soul is just owning guilt
So, Lore?
Data's 'brother' for the uninitiated.

ReaderAt2046
2012-12-06, 03:52 PM
Those are functions of the brain, not the soul. It's like saying a computer without off-site backup is unusable.

No, I'm saying that the soul is responsible for concious thought, thought that recognizes the existence of an "I", of good and evil, etc, etc. A brain without a soul will not be capable of this kind of thought, as we can see in the example of animals of every sort.

Water_Bear
2012-12-06, 09:04 PM
No, I'm saying that the soul is responsible for concious thought, thought that recognizes the existence of an "I", of good and evil, etc, etc. A brain without a soul will not be capable of this kind of thought, as we can see in the example of animals of every sort.

There are quite a few sentient animals. Sentient in the scientific definition, being aware of itself, not the SF one. More with empathy, long-term mating attachments, guilt, etc.

DontEatRawHagis
2012-12-07, 12:58 AM
my personal opinion:


Under control of Soul Taker, think demonic slave.
Numb feeling, but intelligence stays
Lack of self preservation, souls already gone, nothing to care for.

Heliomance
2012-12-07, 03:23 AM
I was going to cite the effects of Trap the Soul, but when I read it I realised it doesn't actually give details on what happens.

Regardless, I would tend to say that a body without a soul is entirely inanimate.

Alcyius
2012-12-07, 10:25 AM
Well, if we see it as the soul is the self, loosing it would be like loosing oneself. The body may still function, and it indeed may retain intelligence, but it wouldn't be able to maintain a sense of self. It would likely develop an extreme Dissociative Personality disorder, incapable of perceiving itself as a living being. This would probably be coupled with extreme apathy and lethargy, making the character only eat and drink of his own accord, and he'd have to be forced to do anything that isn't directly related to staying alive. He'd be perfectly happy(or the equivalent) to sit in a room forever wearing a Ring of Sustenance, but someone is forcing him to actually do something.

Absol197
2012-12-07, 10:58 AM
The way it's described in Vampire: the Requiem might be useful, as the designers had to wrestle with this same question: the character has no soul, but still has to be playable and interesting.

The method they used was that a soulless being is without the ability to feel emotion. They retain their memories and intellectual capability, but they cannot feel emotions. They can still feel the "shadow" of old emotions, basically by remembering a similar situation and how they felt, but it's not the same as feeling the emotion itself. Additionally, if the soulless one never felt a particulat emotion, then they can never experience it at all, because they have no memory to compare to. Vampires typically engage in difficult mental activities, such as political conniving and manipulation, to distract themselves from the fact that they have no souls and no real feelings.

This also has an impact on their morality. Since they can no longer feel empathy any more, they have to rely on their constantly fading memories of it, meaning they begin to lose the ability to share how others feel. They can understand it mentally, and even use that to their advantage, but its more like a calculation instead. This causes them to slowly slide towards "evil" (although that word is never used), because they stop being able to understand how their actions hurt others.

For my own personal world that I'm writing about, the question of what is the soul is very complicated.
A person is composed of three parts: their Body, their Mind, and their Spirit. Each is run by separate types of energy: physical energies, mental energies, and spiritual energies.

These three types of energies (at least for living creatures) are really just different facets of the same thing: the chi or the soul, and your body, mind, and spirit are different facets of the same being. Not so much different aspects, but parts of you existing in different "phases." Like you body might be a chunk of ice, surrounded by your mind made of water, surrounded by some steam which is your soul. It's all just one big mass of H20, but not all of it is physical/solid. The measureable physical energies of the body, heat, electricity, chemical energy, motion, and so on, are just the "cast off" of the physical aspects of your chi as it moves through your body, just like light and sound are "cast-off" of the electrical energy of a lightning strike.

Every living thing has chi, and therefore a soul. It's a prerequisite of being alive. The spirit is the most basic part, so spirits (the creatures) exist with only a spirit. More advanced life also has a mind, and the most advanced life also has a body (meaning that even the most basic bacterium not only has a mind and a spirit, but is also more advanced, although not necessarily more intelligent, than any creature that doesn't have a body).

And just like a person's body, your spirit and mind also have a base framework that is unique and individual to you, and it's the chi that animates it. The framework is what makes you you, but the energies that make up your chi change constantly, coming from the things you eat and the thoughts and ideas you take in and the emotional bonds you make, and are expended when you exert yourself. You can also consciously change the energy-state of your chi, taking mental or spiritual parts of it and converting it to physical energy (just like converting electricity to heat), but there's an exchange rate which makes it easier to use, for example, physical energy to do physical things. But this allows you to expand past physical limits.

So, obviously, being without your soul means that you are dead. Or, rather, that you can't be without your soul, but if it is no longer connected to your body, your body becomes a lump of dead matter. Also, when you die (as in your body), you can either become a ghost, where your mental and spiritual body remain intact (as long as they actually are), with the remainder of your chi still moving through them. Or, your mental and spiritual "bodies" fade away, going elsewhere. What that elsewhere is, or what happens to you afterwards, is left a mystery, except for the fact that it does indeed go somewhere. The true mystery of life remains death :smallsmile: .

Sorries for the long explanation, but I've been thinking about this for a while ^_^'


~Phoenix~

QuidEst
2012-12-09, 05:12 PM
Well, there was a joke 3.5 trait, Ginger (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Ginger_(3.5e_Trait)), which dealt with the mechanics of not having a soul. There's not much there, though.

I would probably make a soulless character into a very calculating businessman. Their goals in life are roughly balanced between pleasure and money, and they care enough about their reputation insofar as it affects their business. Killing people is a bad idea, since it carries the risk of being locked in jail for decades, and is unlikely to carry a benefit large enough to offset that risk. Any crime should be considered on a risk vs. rewards basis. They are probably an excellent bluffer and intimidator, but poor at diplomacy and sense motive. They can, however, reason a person's course of action if they have an idea of their character.

With respect to divine magic, I would give them either a bonus to saves, but additional effect (empowered, extended, or some other minor metamagic), or a penalty to saves but reduced effects.